Waiting

I've never been a patient person, and waiting for anything can be excruciating. Yet waiting for something painful, for a medical procedure that has the potential to reveal that I'm another number added to a horrendous statistic (close to 20,000 women in California are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and 1 in 9 Caucasian women will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes) seems almost impossible to bear at times, yet my fear increases as the day of reckoning approaches. I've "dodged this bullet" before, ten years ago, and now I struggle not to apply yet another cliché superstition to my own life----that my "luck may have run out."

Of course, it has nothing to do with luck. I'm older and have been exposed to dioxin (along with every other person on Earth) and a long list of other poisons for longer. After all, I lived in "Cancer Alley" down in Louisiana for most of my life. What should I expect.

So I've been watching documentaries (THE CORPORATION, which I highly recommend, and THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, on an interesting musician) and science fiction (KNOWING, predictable, but it kept my attention)----trying to keep my mind off of worry, of fear.

Distractions are what we turn to when we can no longer control our feelings.

Ahhh, Music

Ecstatic music by Andrew Bird

The Discipline of Doing

Sometimes pushing oneself to do what one believes is best can become an internal battle, the voices arguing for so long that time passes, and the deeds go undone, regardless. We have so many choices to make in our lives----the primary ones, I believe, being how to spend this moment and upon whom (or with whom).

Dividing our time to spend on what we desire to do and on what we need to do in order to feel balanced is essential, yet how often do I just let my feelings hold sway on my days. Somedays I'm like a blind person, listening, listening to my body, wondering what I feel like doing, examining my feelings like fingers over corduroy, then getting mesmerized with the process, losing all sense of time, and finding the hours to act have passed.

So. . . do I plan my days, schedule them tightly, and act upon them, regardless of my feelings? Of course, I do plan larger events----travel, events like music festivals and writing conferences, hiking.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to reading, writing, exercising, gardening, the myriad hobbies that we wish to pursue-----in addition to most folks' need to earn "a living" (i.e., pay the doctor bills, put food on the table, repair the roof or pay rent).

How do we ensure our lives are a balance of desires and necessities? Is it merely good planning? Somehow creating a schedule for everything I want to do doesn't seem right, yet how else can we accomplish that which we desire?

Signs

Our friends took us for a long hike yesterday, a hike with a destination----a place known as "Dr. Rock." The modern-sounding name is actually a sacred site to the Yuroks, who make a twice-a-year pilgrimage to the place to experience its power and conduct their rituals. I know little more than this, which made me nervous enough about going, since I'm sensitive (not that my friends are not) to other culture's holy places and didn't want to feel I was defiling it unwittingly by going there.

On the winding road we drove to get to the trail, Jon suddenly said "Did you see that snake?" and our friend stopped the car and backed up a bit. We all got out to watch a five-foot-long rattler, his little package held high, accompanying his slithering fat body across the road with its constant percussion, sending a chill through me, while Jon walked closer, stick in hand, to observe.

I wondered whether this was some kind of warning to us not to approach any closer and fully expected to see other snakes on the trail, as that has been my experience. It seems that because I have such a fear of snakes, they are put in my path and in my dreams at every turn. Yet I do have a fascination with them, too, and have forced myself to touch the nonpoisonous ones and have even held a boa constrictor before.

When we finally arrived at the huge rock, we sat on a ledge, looking down into the crevasse where Yuroks camp and cook, felt the power of the place, honored it as best we knew, with silence, with a prayer and a response from another percussionist----some kind of unseen insect that clicked its legs or wings noisily----before taking the long, hot hike back.

Herbing

I like the idea of herbs as plant allies. That plants feel us (as we do them) and wish to be helpful to us, too, is encouraging.

Sunday, over sixty folks from our small community showed up for a talk and walk with a local herbalist, which surprised me and delighted the sponsors, who naturally profess a desire for everyone to be knowledgable about the plants that live here. I selfishly find larger groups of people draining after a short while, but if I can stand off at the edges, I'm better.

Being in large groups of people brings out my desire to be separate, and I often start feeling depressed because I'm reminded of how overpopulated our world is becoming. I also started picturing hoards of people marauding the local fields, pulling at plants and stuffing them in their mouths like voracious cows.

Okay, okay. . . I know it's an exaggeration.

As a child in Louisiana, my grandmother taught me the names of our plants, but as a newcomer to Northern California, it's younger folk who're teaching me the names of herbs that proliferate here.

Learning herbs and their uses is a wonderful addition to the bumper-sticker admonition to "think globally, act locally." I'd like to see another sticker that says "Be kind to plants; they're people, too."

Self-Heal

Seeing this lovely flower in our yard, I was reminded of bee balm's flower and thought it must be some sort of herb, so the quest was on. What is its name? I asked some old-timers at the Fourth of July parade, and they agreed that it's self-heal, also known as heal-all.

How much better (in the language of medicinal herbs, that is) can it get?

After sitting with it (á la Jane) in our sunny front yard yesterday, I found it to be a twisty little plant, as I had to insinuate my fingers into its close-growing body to find a place to pull off a branch to sniff. No discernable scent (other than purple, which most folks may be perplexed by, but it's meaningful to me in that it's reminiscent of grape Kool-Aid, which most kids of my era are fully familiar with), even when I crushed a leaf a little between my fingers. But then I thought I smelled the green of any plant's leaf-scent (such marvelous science conducted here!).

According to the herbal I found it in (100 Favorite Herbs by Teri Dunn), this relative of the mint obviously enjoyed a fine reputation as a treatment for many things, including a topical salve or poultice for cuts, burns, rashes, and bleeding hemorrhoids. Taken internally, it was reputed to reduce fevers and could serve as a diuretic. A tea brewed from its leaves was said to be soothing to gum inflammations and sore throats or as a mouthwash.

Another way humans have used this beautiful plant is for its dye properties. Its leaves are said to produce a soft yellow to golden color in fabrics.

But it's not a plant's "usefulness" that interests me most, it's its beauty, and the humble self-heal has insinuated itself into our lawn like a hidden treasure.

Writing

Posting something here gives what's been written such an air of finality----as is typical of any sort of recording, whether through art or writing. (Type-)Writing can look so finished, which is why many people fear and avoid it (and many others should) because our lives and thoughts are not in any sense finished, not even when we die. We're always open for revision. . . for learning. . . for change.

And so when I look back at something I've written (which isn't all that often) and suddenly find all sorts of arguments against it, part of me wants to stop recording, to acknowledge my general inability to encompass enough to ever feel I've written the true thing.

But I keep at it because I'm never quite convinced, and occasionally, there are moments of clarity for me, and maybe even for someone else. And not only that----sometimes these pieces just serve as sparks, whether to further thought or argument or doing something.

I guess I'll keep at it a little longer.

Flowers

My own mother and grandmother always kept fresh flowers (or leaves, or twigs or whatever was available to their itchy fingers and visual palettes) in vases in their homes, and I find that I'm happiest when I keep to this tradition. Though Mamaw (as I called my grandmother in the Deep South) also knew some medicinal plants, it was the medicine of their beauty she most desired, as, apparently, so do I since I keep putting off making that rose tincture or elixir and instead imbibe through my eyes (and nose, since my favorite flowers are scented).

Some recent bouquets:

Inspiration

From whence does inspiration come? The unconscious? The fully conscious, responding to Earth and its myriad forms? Other folks? All of the above and more.

Yet sometimes I find myself slipping into a realm that believes only in mystery, in the half-looked upon, the star that can't be seen directly, and I come to believe that my own inspiration and ability to act upon it is somehow tied to that mystery, a mystery that will disappear if I look at it directly or question it.

Of course, that's superstitious, and I try not to encourage that vein in myself, but inspiration can be so wonderfully present at times and then so dried up at others that one can't help but try to figure it out----this essence that cannot, will not be captured----yet can be encouraged (and of course, dismayed).

Reading and Doing

I write to learn. If someone else reads it and learns, too, that's a bonus.

As a child, my favorite book was THE LITTLE RED HEN ("I'll do it myself" is what I carried with me from it), and, according to my mother, I never tired of hearing her read it to me. I can picture myself, book in hand, asking her to read, wanting us to sit in the rocker where she almost always read to me, to hear that creaking wood soothe me with its familiar sounds and rhythms, to feel the warmth of my mother's lap, her accepting and cocooning self keeping me safe in the moment, rocking.

A new friend of mine recently told me that she's not writing so much anymore, not reading so much, but is living more, attending to her spirit more.

Her saying this caused me to consider how often I've believed that if only I can learn just a little more about whatever it is that's currently obsessing me, to read just one more book, then I'll be okay (and what does "okay" mean?). But what these books often do is put off the inevitable, the crucial, the necessity of my simply acting.

It's as if I think that I can figure out how to live my life by reading what others have done, and yes----it's interesting to do this and often helpful and inspiring, but knowing what others have done doesn't necessarily prompt me to act. In fact, reading about others' actions frequently keeps me from acting on my own; instead, I live vicariously.

I guess what I'm finally figuring out is this: Books and ideas aren't going to save me from these emotions that overwhelm me still on occasion. Nor can they make the decisions for me about how to live each day.

Now that may sound a little ridiculous, but at one point in my life I actually thought that If only I had more time to read. . ., kind of like those people who say to themselves, If only I had more money [or time or whatever]. Yet now that I have all the time in the world to read, I realize it's not enough. Reading is not enough to make me happy, though I admit that I love ideas, I love considering this life of ours through the prisms of different people's ideas, and reading remains a great pleasure for me.

"I know I don't have much to give"

This line from an old song by Blind Faith prompted me to say in response----It doesn't matter how much we give of ourselves, all we can do is give what we have. Of course, that's Steve Winwood singing, and he's given quite a lot, in my opinion, and if I had to compare my own giving ability with his, I might feel pretty empty-handed, but that's not the point, is it.

If we value diversity, and if we see that life is not a hierarchy, then what we each give from the overflowing of our beings is enough, plenty, and can only have the wonderful effect of adding to the lovely diversity of life and an increase in all that is good.

No comparisons necessary.