Groundswell

Paradox of Perspective

2012-01-28T09:11:00.000-08:00

When I am off-center, wallowing in self pity, feeling bad about my life for all the reasons I think are justified (the Alzheimer's afflicted Mother, the family and old friends so far away, the husband who hates his corporate job), I look at others' immensely positive and uplifting blogs, filled with creative projects and mindful meditations about life, and I picture a scene that's become cliche----the crazed character jerking the fully-laden tablecloth from the table or making a huge swipe with an arm across a desk filled with books, pens, inks, brushes, and paper, sending them all crashing to the floor, leaving a space, a blank space.

That space will be filled. Keeping it open takes as much energy as filling it.

But I also know that the carefully constructed images and words posted here on the Interweb (as my friend likes to call it) are just that. . . . Picture Toto grasping that curtain with his teeth and pulling it away from the frenzied, jerking movements of the "Wizard."

So I must remember that I'm not alone in my struggles. Even though others' lives appear perfect in this neatly formatted place online, beyond the edges of this snapshot, REAL LIFE happens, and it ain't always pretty.

Cropped photo of mountain cloud, taken from I-5 in Oregon with traffic whizzing by

"Building the Inner Sensorium"

2012-01-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

I was happy to have the company of my husband on the two and a half hour drive to Ashland, Oregon, yesterday to hear Jean Houston speak, a woman whose works I've not read in depth (only in online skimming or listening to short recordings) yet who piques my curiosity as someone many consider to be a "great" woman, a genius, and world traveler (who's lived and worked with Margaret Mead and many other folk, famous in their fields, including presidents and their wives). I wanted to see what it felt like to be in her presence. Besides being a benefit for a local counseling center, the drive and the views getting there are always more than worthwhile.

Dr. Houston (who lives part of the year in Ashland, part in NYC) had just returned from speaking at the United Nations, and everyone in the audience (including Jon and I) seemed glued to her every word. Some of what she said I'd heard before (as she has a message she's trying to spread, consciousness to raise), but even so, she's a wonderful storyteller, using her melodious voice and skills at mimicry to mesmerize us.

I don't seem to be able to get enough of storytelling, and she reminded us all of the importance of doing this (and whatever arts we participate in) face-to-face, not only to visualize our various projects (as we dream them) but also to "embody" them through all our senses in order to give them greater potential.

A flooded Smith River

Same spot (see prior post), flooded and a different color now. . .

Ashland Springs Hotel

Facing Fear and Finding Balance

2012-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Smith River yesterday, from Hwy. 199

Okay. Because my absence from posting here was purposeful (as opposed to oblivious---and I've had those kinds of absences, too), my return reminds me of childhood fears of unworthiness and of facing the fact that no one is focused on the energies and rhythms of your own life as much as yourself (and rightfully so).

I am prone to becoming overwhelmed, which is easy to have happen, especially since I've been reinventing my life since having retired when I turned 55 at the end of 2008 and moving almost 2500 miles away from all family and friends. When the slate's been cleared like that, you can drown in the depth of possibility (the number of books and blogs to read, movies to watch, projects to complete, places to travel, healing to happen. . . ).

But if I can manage to be patient enough to allow the water to clear a bit around me (no mean feat for me), the reasons for continuing a practice (such as maintaining a blog) can begin to pop up around me and I find them, well, lifesaving, even.

My tendency is to set up extremes from which to find a balance between. One extreme might be losing oneself in the endlessly interesting realm of taking in information and inspiration from others online, living one's life as if projected into The Next Blog Entry, The Next Photograph to Share, THE NEXT, oblivious to what is happening NOW.

The other extreme might be living as a hermit, not focused on sharing my life but on living it.

But those are the extremes. The balance is a joyful overflow of sharing, of the beauty of writing that is tasting life twice (Anais Nin), and the clarity that can come from learning what I think by seeing what I say (E.M. Forster). And while I'm spouting some of my favorite quotes, I may as well end on a Beatles summary: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love . . . you make." Balance.

Taking In, Giving Out

2012-01-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

The image of a spiral----and how our energetic lives so similarly lie along such lines----presented itself to me this morning as I stared at our fire after checking the e-mail I'd received since yesterday afternoon, signing onto FB to quickly scan the posts, and then looking into my favorite blogs, albeit briefly: a silent hello and hug to heart-felt friends who share themselves so freely and beautifully, yet acknowledging to myself that I could spend all my time and energy taking in what others are giving and have no time left to do what I need to do!

Which brings me to this: I am thinking that I will not be writing here for the foreseeable future, and instead will be using actual pen and page, a common resolution of mine for the past 40 years (good grief!), but which feels different now because I have the time and the will and a plan to carry it out.

It's mold-breaking time again, as I'm on the outer ring of the spiral these days, feeling free, open, and spacious (as opposed to tightly wound and wondering what's next at the dark center), ready to take the next step.

I thank those of you who have checked in on me from time to time here for caring, for reading, for commenting. You have been a warm encouraging hand for me. May I be so for you.

2011-12-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Driving anywhere from here is an adventure, with astounding views of nature and surprise visits from our hoofed neighbors. Yet it is my own little yard I'm appreciating now with its December nasturtiums in bloom, sunshine I can pick after the frost and bring in to a windowsill to enjoy.

How good it is to focus on feeling fine (instead of my usual intense efforts at trying to improve myself, which today I am experiencing as quite tiresome, even nagging).

May you find joy in contentment, too.

Inspiration isn't only about breathing in. . .

2011-11-30T07:01:00.000-08:00

I met this remarkable woman at a John Fox poetry workshop I attended early this month. She's only been writing poetry for a year or so, yet look how it's set her afire (and the soprano and violinist who add their voices to the mix) as she reads from her various journals, her wonderful raw energy and love and light spilling out for others to drink in as they will. Inspiration from Abu Dhabi to San Francisco and back again! It's days like this, having received the link to this video this morning, that I love technology. Thank you, Bahareh!

Open-Ended Pondering

2011-11-24T08:33:00.000-08:00

On this traditional day of thanksgiving, I woke to a sky and earth washed clean by recent storms, and my own body felt a similar clarity after some personal shifts in the weather. I am grateful.

And I wondered about a statement a healer used while working on me over a year ago: "You don't have to believe this for it to work, you know," she said as she held a pendulum before me and moved her hands gently, beautifully around me (before I closed my eyes to avoid being caught up in sight and my questioning mind that was eager to jump in and name it all hocus pocus), finally touching my back in a place that hasn't hurt since.

How could she know the immense effect this would have on me? How can any of us know how we affect others, sometimes simply by our mere presence?

So this morning, I noticed myself counting up all the variations of the word "healing" that have appeared in my life over the past three years, and the list continues to grow quite long, but the terms that stick with me today are those that bear the concept of one's "inner healer" (Holotropic Breathwork) and "higher power" (everything spiritual)----the idea that we are little chips off the Old Block and have exactly what we need right now; we are enough----and more than enough----if only we could accept that and become who we already are.

Wondering why some of us find these questions enticing even amid the continually dangling disbelief of others doesn't dissuade (Oh, my: say that fast five times!). Somehow it simply ups the ante and makes the risks more appealing. What are the risks? On many days, I am finding them to be a continual tugging anxiety that grows with the progress of the day, an anxiety that some might label in need of an antidepressant----i.e., the quick fix of unconsciousness or distraction our culture seems to value most----but I am discovering that my stubborn nature, the one that has always questioned "authority" (including the overarching one of culture) is enjoying tinkering with alternative responses to these feelings.

What are feelings, after all? A therapist once said that "thoughts lead to feelings," which is true, but sometimes feelings are not attached to anything we can recognize. Sometimes, it appears, feelings are more appropriately named "energy" and these energies can be swirling around us and coming from places near and far----in time and place. It is these sorts of feelings that I am curious about. Are they messengers of some sort? Prompts to get us moving in a certain direction? That seems to be the operative definition I've been using. . . and I do love exploring Mystery.

Elk dawdling in the lagoon 20 minutes from home

2011-11-22T09:25:00.000-08:00

I'm easily overstimulated, and the Internet in its various manifestations (whether exploring infinitely creative blogs, ordering yet more books that promise to make me a much better person, Googling anything curious that comes to mind, or watching too many documentaries and other films) can quickly send me over the edge, it appears. I trudge over the sand dunes, heart beating wildly, mirages beckoning me on, and I'm still in my pajamas.

All these possibilities, yet it's raining out, and there's a fire in the fireplace, and my dear sweet dog on my lap prevents me from wanting to move.

I'll take a cue from Mauser the cat instead.

2011-11-16T08:25:00.001-08:00

2011-11-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

Needing to laugh, I felt a memory float belly-up like those 8-ball messages we played with as children----a memory from my daughter's childhood of one of my favorite Sesame Street vignettes, and then of one of my favorite poems by British writer Craig Raine. Hope you enjoy both!

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
--Craig Raine, 1979

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Compost

2011-11-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

I remember a college teacher's definition of tragedy: the death of a beautiful woman (which, when I refreshed my memory through that scholarly tome Wikipedia, turns out to have been E.A. Poe's definition), and have often pondered (oh, why not use Poe-language?!) its truth. One thing I do believe: few of us have much sympathy or patience with dying and death----or even darkness. Just scrolling down my own sparse little entries here reminds me of how much I try to focus on the positive (though I'm not always successful).

Yet sandwiched between everything beautiful is the stink of decay, without which that beauty would not have the strength to bloom. Who wants to smell it at this stage? Few if any hands go up. After all, that person who agreed to take a whiff? She has nothing to say about it. It simply IS. . . No consolation but in sharing company in the stink.

As a fifty-something (knocking on the next decade's door in a couple of years, if you must know), I protest being pidgeon-holed because of my age, yet that glance in the mirror tells me I am (at least on looks) properly placed. It's funny how I will look at photos of people who have their age typed neatly beside them, and I compare----Oh, my! He looks like he's in his 80's, or She looks so much younger (it's the hair dye and that "Life Lift," likely)! I could work harder at cheating the judgments and gain, perhaps, ten years, but it wouldn't negate the reality.

And it's REALITY I have the hardest time with: the reality that my mother has Alzheimer's and lives over two thousand miles away, that my daughter and granddaughter are comparably distant. And I? Though I live in paradise I am often miserable because my mind is with my loved ones, whether they want me or not, and mostly they do not. (Here, my long-gone grandmother's voice resounds: "Oh, Chris, of course they want you," and I say, "No; they do not, and they have even said so.")

And so I sit in meditation for a time each day, reminding my body that the mind's stories are only a part of life (and that these stories we tell ourselves are not real), though we once lived a version of them and are now living in the moving stream of time, but even though this gains me some semblance of equanimity in my daily life, I will still break down sobbing, deeply saddened by these disconnects and overwhelmed by my own upstream-striving that seems to change very little.

Synchronicity. . . Again

2011-11-04T08:52:00.000-07:00

In one of Stan Grof's books, I was reminded that just because you follow a string of synchronicities doesn't necessarily mean that you'll end up in Nirvana. However, I have found that following my intuition about what I will choose to do next makes for an interesting path.

At a workshop I attended this past weekend near San Francisco, we worked from a booklet of poems that John Fox had collected and copied for us, and in the few days since, I have come upon a couple of those poems again. One, here ("the road is made by walking"), and another, there (the Martha Graham quote about our individuality, our uniqueness).

How do these work together, and how do I personally make sense of this?

They are, in part, "answers" to questions that I've carried with me as long as I remember (and their asking has different phrasing, for example): Is there a path I'm supposed to be on? How do I know it's the "right" one? Do others know HOW TO LIVE and am I somehow missing the point? Does my individual voice really matter? "If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?"

And somehow, through this rich and complex medium that allows me to peek in on the tender, shared shards of others' lives, I experience a moment of LIGHT, in which all the once-confused and tangled lines suddenly converge and illuminate. No competition. No comparisons. No need even to understand it all.

Meeting in person one of these lights after the workshop ended became another convergence, as did another instance of meeting a playwright, David A. Moss (on a different retreat at the same location). I am driving the almost-eight-hour road back south next weekend to see the play, CRACKED CLOWN, and staying with a fellow Southerner (now grateful Californian) I met at the retreat.

Perhaps as a whole this post is simply a mish-mash of details that make no sense to anyone but me. If so, I apologize. (This post could actually be book length from all the synchronicities of the past few years.) But somehow I am energized by it all. And if nothing more, this will be a jumping-off point as a reminder to explore the ideas in more detail later.

So, if you want to open up your life, try telling the Universe (or God or Goddess or Divine Spirit or. . . ) you're willing to be an "empty vessel."

2011-10-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

Only a week ago, Kipper and I were walking this beach almost every day, stopping to gather the light-filled jewels of agates, but all that has suddenly changed. What was a relatively peaceful bowl of ocean is off-kilter and sloshing over seastacks more regularly now as we move into the wet season, and those warm, dry pebbles we agate-hunters lolled against? They're now wet and chilled, scattered and rearranged, scooped out to sea by the persistent fingers of higher tides.

Yes. Change is the only constant.

Tractors!

2011-10-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Sue's post today led me here, there, and yonder----as is typical when one begins reading from this electronic thing----rather like the mental machinations of a person who's consumed too much caffeine, I think, as I sip from my cup of coffee and contemplate my need for meditation (some might say "medication"), for smoothing the sheets of my mind and tucking in the corners snuggly so nothing too crazy can crawl between with me.

I careened to Kate's blog and was blown away by her writing and photos, and then back again to, well, photos of TRACTORS on Sue's blog, which blasted me back into reminiscing. . .

I learned to drive on a tractor over forty years ago. My dad and grandfather (my mother's dad) both owned a succession of tractors over their lifetimes, and I enjoyed driving each of them, earning money as a pre-teen and teenager by mowing their Louisiana lawns (about five acres around my parent's house, and close to the same around my grandparents' and my aunt and uncle's at $5 each place), singing to my heart's content while simultaneously working on basting and browning my skin in the great oven of Louisiana summer heat. At around three hours per yard, I didn't calculate the hourly rate, only that I'd earned enough to buy three albums from my favorite record store in Baton Rouge.

Music, literature, and nature sustained me then. . . and now, though I can add to this the delights of surprise I feel in connecting with real people (mostly women these days, though) via this machine on my lap.

Agate-Hunting

2011-10-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Another truism: look at small rocks, and you'll find small ones; open your gaze a little to the larger ones, and voila!

Yet no matter how carefully I look for the rocks that I feel have the swirls of the Milky Way or the fine-lined layers of Earth stamped upon them in miniature, the person who comes behind me will find an agate just sitting there, as I----when I tire and stand to leave----never fail to find a beautiful stone right where I'd been (rather than in the distance I was looking).

Ahhh. . . the lessons we must continue to learn, again and again (though in different ways). I love object lessons----which are metaphorical----things I can learn through movement, through experience, through doing. Somehow they hold in my body more readily than that which I merely read (though I love reading, too).

2011-09-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

I've been gathering a handful of strawberries every few days for the last couple of months from the one row that produced berries; unfortunately, the other didn't get quite enough sun. How strange (and glorious) it is to have fresh strawberries in late September!

Late-September Blooms

2011-09-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

These sweet peas, picked from remnants still growing in my garden here in late September, are in memory of my dear maternal grandmother, who's no longer with us, and my own mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's. My grandmother and mother loved all things pink, and I was always a purple-lover, though as I get older my fondness for pink grows, too; after all, I am a grandmother myself.

In picking these flowers, sniffing deeply their fragrance, I am struck by the contrast of what are more typically spring flowers still blooming during this autumnal equinox, equating this scene with my own renewed feelings of hope as this wheel of year turns toward darker times.

Words and Experience

2011-09-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

"In the West, discussion and debate are very important, especially in the context of education. This is another area where the West differs from the indigenous world. Indigenous people would prefer to preserve in its naked form the material encountered in one's experience. Experience, to indigenous people, looks like a different kind of discourse that parallels, but does not intersect, the verbal. The more intense an experience, the more likely indigenous people are to leave it in the language in which it came rather than to discuss and dissect it with words. It is almost as if discussing diminishes what is being discussed. Villagers feel that words conquer experience, dislodging experience from its rightful place of power. So unless powerful experiences and ideas are addressed poetically, or with proverbs, people don't want to take the risk of losing in a fog of words what they have struggled so hard to acquire."

--The Healing Wisdom of Africa, Malidoma Some

2011-09-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite photos of me with my granddaughter, taken almost five years ago at our home in Louisiana. As I recall, we were out in the late afternoon hoping to see some deer on the levee, and I was enjoying hugging close the lovely sweetness of my daughter's daughter.

I've always avoided cameras and generally do not enjoy seeing myself in a photo----for many reasons. Primarily, though, I don't like the feeling of being pinned down by a photo, which in part is a feeling of being judged.

At my dentist's office yesterday, her looking at my tiny braid and saying to me, "My, your hair is so thin!" had a similar effect on me, causing me to squirm a bit and then to automatically denigrate my poor hair even further (as if I'd somehow done something wrong). When I closed the subject with a sincere statement of not really caring much and then opening my mouth for her to begin her work, I considered what else bothers me about such statements. The implication is that I do not meet some standard of "perfect hair," one promoted by corporate media in order to sell products that purport to give one such hair. This sort of standard promotes conformity, not acceptance and love of our uniqueness, which is what I choose to align myself with.

Recognizing our commonalities while appreciating our uniqueness requires continual balancing.

The Wind

2011-08-31T22:45:00.000-07:00

In a journal I kept at 20, I copied a poem by May Swenson, one I still love:

Hearing the Wind at Night

I heard the wind coming,
transferred from tree to tree.
I heard the leaves
swish, wishing to be free

to come with the wind, yet wanting to stay
with the boughs like sleeves.
The wind was a green ghost.
Possessed of tearing breath

the body of each tree
whined, a whipping post,
then straightened and resumed
its vegetable oath.

I heard the wind going
and it went wild.
Somewhere the forest threw itself
into tantrum like a child.

I heard the trees tossing
in punishment or grief,
then sighing and soughing,
soothing themselves to sleep.

Lines from this poem frequently come to me, especially in windy weather, and sure enough, all my plans for today came to naught because Kipper and I were almost blown off the top of the long flight of stairs down to the beach and instead turned back home. . . where I made a couple of butterflies to send to the Houston Holocaust Museum via Canada (thanks to Christine, who recommended I look at HeartSongs, where I saw the project's logo), another example of the seemingly simple yet immensely complex web of associations (through The Web, of course) through which we connect to each other.

And to further illustrate this synchronicity of connectivity, today began with my realizing that writing as relationship----whether in learning more about oneself or in relating with and to others----feels so true that I don't feel compelled to argue with myself about it. . . not now, anyway. (Yes, I realize that "writing as an aspect of relationship" is a truism, but even the obvious sometimes doesn't feel true unless one can personally relate.)

2011-08-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

People here complain about the fog, about the wind, and about being cold----year 'round. Even though we live in a natural paradise, we still feel the need to complain about. . . something, anything.

I'm remembering how I've missed the sun lately and so am taking full, everyday advantage of our (all-too-brief, I know) bout of sunny, warm (it got up to 70 at the ocean yesterday!) weather, basking on the balmy sand and pebbles at the beach, listening to waves crashing, seagulls squawking, and sea lions barking in the distance while hanging out with my constant companion, Kipper-the-dog. On this third day in a row of doing essentially the same thing, I think I will add a picnic lunch and a journal to the scene (and try harder not to temporarily lose my keys today) and allow us even more time to BE.

Clouds on Earth

2011-08-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

"What do you call those white things in the sky?"
"Clouds."
"And when they are on Earth?"
"Fog."
"There was fog today."
"Si."
This Peruvian spoke much better English than I did Spanish.

On a foggy evening by the ocean this evening, after walking and running a bit with my short-legged companion, I stopped to sit in the relatively warm rocks to run my hands over and through them comfortingly, seeking the light of agates that may be found on our own Pebble Beach. I've been an agate hound since finding my first one as a teenager walking Louisiana river beaches. Those I've found here are much less "impressive" though no less fun to find.

Jon took this photo of one of our Louisiana agates on a bed of the newer-finds of California.

Overwhelmed

2011-08-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

I recognize the reaction well----wanting to shut down, pull the covers over my head, disappear into dreams: I'm overwhelmed by too many choices, not too few. Though I am curious about what's going on in others' lives, as I scroll down the Facebook page to see what they have posted I feel almost as if I'm being swallowed by all the show-and-tell, and my throat constricts. Rather than causing me to want to share of myself, I want to hide. . . Why? Because I see these people----not as they picture themselves in the shared photos or in the descriptions of their activities----but as I am here, staring at the computer screen, distracted from what is real, missing relationship, suddenly feeling lonely.

I think I'll take my neighbor some flowers!

Feather Obsession

2011-08-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

This blue jay rendition was sewn while we were on an adventure today, exploring a rocky mountain road in the Siskiyou Wilderness area near Patrick's Creek, stopping for a picnic at High Dome, breathing deeply the clear sunny air before our drive home.

One more feather (at least) to be embroidered----a golden one, of course.

More Feathers on My Mind. . .

2011-08-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

Magic Feather Project

2011-08-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

One link leads to another and another (thanks, Peggy!) . . . and I was inspired by Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth to embroider a feather to send. I used some batiked fine-wale corduroy (scraps from a hat I made), though of the feathers I've seen that others have made, mine's my least favorite. It illustrates a common trait of mine: trying to be different (or contrary, as my parents used to say) to see what happens.

Dead Flowers

2011-08-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

I love flowers----all aspects of them----in the wild, grown for cutting. . . but deciding when to finally dump a vase of flowers seems so difficult for me. In part, it's because I find beauty even in their decomposition, their letting go of color, their shriveling petals----patterns of dropped ones forming colorfully textured shadows.

Those in the photograph are being staged for release to the compost pile (moving them away from where they were originally placed seems important; otherwise, as time passes, they become objects of art in themselves, important statements about ephemeral life [instead of the more obvious comment on my lackadaisical housekeeping]). These have made it to the preliminary phase, where I look at them again, drink in their more muted colors with my eyes, and finally take them outside.

How to Live?

2011-08-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

If I had to settle on one question that's been the most persistent in my life thus far, I think wondering how to live my life----and also wanting to find out how others live theirs----has formed the common thread that's stitched me from my past to now. I'm curious about how different people spend their days, how they create meaning in their lives, yet I'm also aware that what I see and how they feel may be entirely different. That is, a photograph depicting "a day in the life" may look colorful and fascinating, but just beyond the outlines of the image may exist a hellish chaos.

For example, the movie with Clive Owen, TRUST, that I watched last night, depicts with some skill the complexity of our current culture's focus on sexualizing everything and then having to witness its effects on the innocent ones, the pre-adolescents and younger children who are tethered to their iPods (given by well-meaning [in this movie, affluent] parents who think they'll help protect their children), texting and receiving illicit photos from Internet stalkers while having dinner with their parents. The parents were oblivious to their daughter's plight, unable to prevent what we movie-watchers could see coming a mile away. A therapist later wisely reminds the father that we can't protect our children from everything but only be there to help pick them up after they've fallen (though if you watch this film, there's a moment that the father's lifestyle and job come into stark contrast with his apparent shock at what happened to his daughter, and we can only wonder what he will do to better align his ideals with his lifestyle).

Also, I must remind myself all-too-often (I'd have thought I'd have learned this, for good, by now) that no one's life is always in tune. Yet I keep looking for that perfect key that sounds most true, that sends its harmonies through my days and causes me to feel the rightness of the moment I am living now, in the present.

Of course, this kind of striving for an ideal can be a cause of depression (because we often fall short), yet having ideals seems to be essential to those of us who not only try to be fully present yet also are intent upon creating an even better tomorrow. It's a zig-zagged flight. . .

What I Was Really Thinking. . .

2011-08-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

When I began the post yesterday----after a several-month hiatus----I was filled with a swirl of ideas to write about but settled instead on the simplicity of the title, on my need to move energy around (by making changes to the appearance of this blog, by going outside, by clearing away what had become extraneous, by opening doors).

And then this morning, when our tiny newspaper didn't show up in its usual place, after sitting quietly, staring at the fire and its uncanny anthropomorphic nibbling at the wood, I grabbed my laptop and began a little cleaning up and exploring of old bookmarked pages. In the process, I found an acquaintance's blog in which she writes of her own efforts (and seeming failure) at finding "community," and of wondering what the point of her writing a blog might be if nobody reads it. That entry was dated over a year ago, and there I was, reading it, and becoming inspired by someone whose thoughts I recognized a kinship with.

And so, these occasional words and images that we send out in cyberspace, just as our energy pulses outward, do "matter."

Consider what that phrase means: "Does writing a blog matter?" That is, does writing produce a significant substance? Of course it does, though it cannot be quantified nor set in a specific time or space, and so use of the term "matter" is wonderfully oxymoronic.

Airing Out

2011-08-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

Having moved three years ago from the Deep South, I anticipated loving the coolness of the climate here, where the ocean keeps us----year 'round----at an average 60 degrees. In the old house we live in, we refuse to use the central heater (for various reasons, including environmental, economic, and aesthetic) and instead use a wood heater to provide a source of warmth inside. But how could I have ever believed that on August 1st, I'd build a fire to warm myself in front of?

And so, whenever the sun's out (as opposed to hiding behind our frequent low-lying clouds----also known as fog), we go outside to bask, even if it requires wearing several layers of clothing because of chilly winds.

But I must admit, I have of late found myself nostalgic for heat.

2011-03-28T09:50:00.001-07:00

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

--Joseph Campbell

Ruminating lately on why it's so difficult to communicate to others that which is most important to ourselves, I understand that in part it's because one's perception of experience is so idiosyncratic. This is yet another paradox of our existence because we are all quite alike, in spite of our diversity, and we are all connected, in spite of our egocentric arguments to the contrary. But these statements, too, must be experienced before one can accept them as true; otherwise they sound like so much "fluff," or, as someone sarcastically said, like "all blue skies and bunnies hopping." (Sarcasm is my least favorite mode of communication; my experience of it is as a cutting off, a silencing of the other, rather like a slap in the face. Thus, between individuals, it isn't communication at all but its antithesis, though sarcasm can have its place with a broad audience.)

It may seem strange, but my own experience of the best communication that's occurred in my life was one of the most painful times, too. I won't go into too much detail here, but it occurred in a mental hospital, where those who deemed themselves "unfit for society" had retreated (or been put in retreat). Yet the communication there was the most unpretentious, the most open and nonjudgmental of any I'd ever experienced. People spoke of their feelings in spite of their societal conditioning to be hesitant and fearful of doing so. Of course, this openness was expected there (just as it's usually expected that we hide our true feelings) because such openness was touted as being an important part of healing, something we were all eager to do.

And so, my own ideas about what I relish most in the society of others continue to include open communication, acceptance of diversity of experience and ability to relate that experience, and acknowledgement that (and encouragement for) the fact that we all are on experiential healing journeys (as in "becoming whole") of one sort or another.

2011-03-25T15:13:00.001-07:00

Communication can be so difficult, especially across many miles. What to say? When to remain silent? Trying to be uplifting can be interpreted as Pollyanna-ish, yet remaining mute seems uncaring. And regardless of its plusses, electronic communication is colder than the handwritten word with its lack of expediency.

Figuring out how to remain close to friends and relatives who live so far away is one of the greatest challenges of living here, and Facebook just doesn't seem to do it for me. . . Our furry friends manage well enough, but I'm feeling soaked, through and through.

Dark Blooms

2011-03-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Sideways rain and the screeching of branches against our windows, trees throwing themselves "into tantrum like a child" (as poet May Swenson says) are predominant these days, so when there's a break in the clouds and sun manages to burn through, I run outside to praise and feel gratitude for any flowers blooming, to dig a bit in the dirt, pulling out the wild onions (which my neighbor calls ramps) and encouraging my strawberries and little lettuces. A few of the violets I planted a couple of years ago are blooming, but I only took one in----as a kind of commemoration of the days many years ago in Louisiana when I'd pick thousands of wild violets (and doing so without fear of hurting them since their reproduction isn't tied to their blooms) to line my windowsills and cheer myself.

Though I no longer have the profusion of windowsill blooms, I do feel internally as if I'm blossoming, no longer focused on how I might (or might not) appear to those around me and instead feeling my way along to what I want to do next, which is leading me to Peru in May and June, another adventure I stepped into from a line of synchronicities, one important practical one being an unexpected windfall tax refund, just in time. It's true that synchronicities are not necessarily proof-positive of a favorable outcome (all flowers and no thorns), but in my experience they provide for a more meaningful journey, unfolding into Mystery.

Ships Sinking

2011-03-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Crescent City, where I live a little over a block from the tsunami zone (an arbitrary safety demarcation line based on the 1964 tsunami that destroyed the town) was (too) much in the news lately----mostly because the town is usually the first to receive the wrath of any resulting tsunamis from earthquakes in this half of the world.

But the status of our town is not what I wish to write about; it's how the world feels to me now very much like the images from our local harbor relay: we humans are experiencing our little boats sinking, being swallowed by forces much greater than our frail bodies can stand.

My heart grieves for Japan as they suffer, and we sense how close they are to us here as we wait to see the fate of their nuclear power plants. Just as Crescent City feels the ocean's wrath first, I'm told she will also feel the winds of fallout first if such a disaster were to occur in Japan.

Yes. We are all connected.

Drawn to Green

2011-03-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel as if I'm itching on the inside, about to burst my seams with a kind of inexplicable energy that----if I'm lucky----pushes me outside. Today a brief burst of warm sunshine has blessed us between storms, cold and rainy here on the coast, snowy a half hour inland.

I'm grateful for the spinning rainbows in my kitchen, the iridescent rusty-orange throats of the Allen's hummingbirds feeding just outside my window, but in this restless mood, Kipper (the dog) and I took a brief walk on Crescent Beach at low tide as the wind blew my hat's brim back. We didn't last long in that cold wind, but in our walk back to the car, I spotted just the plants I'd been needing since having learned about the Irish St. Brigid in my research about Imbolc and looking up directions on "how to make a St. Brigid's cross." This was a month ago, and the green cross has been on my mind to make ever since.

Thank you little reeds and UTube. I admire the calm good humor of the lady (and her filming companion) in this video:

Basic Goodness

2011-01-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

In preparing to attend a workshop on "Healing Bodies, Healing Fear" in Chartres, France, this past June, I was asked to bring a photograph of myself as a child, and this happened to be one I could put my hands on (my mother has others, but they're with her in Louisiana). What I like about this photograph is my open and direct stare. It reminds me of all the times I've been chastised in my life for staring, and of how much I've always liked to try to see----not just look----into things. It isn't so much an attempt to categorize or think about what I'm seeing as much as it is to actually be, in some sense, what I'm seeing. Also, the set of my mouth, slightly open, shows that I am rather absorbed in the moment, watching expectantly.

In the actual workshop, we used these photographs of ourselves as innocents in part to remind ourselves of what it is to love oneself. After all, who can look at a child (or an infant of any species), and not feel that sense of protective love. (Of course, that's why little ones are so cute since they really need this sort of protection to survive.)

For those of us who are healing from a long-time separation from our own sense of "basic goodness"----whether it's from having been raised with the religious concept of "original sin" or from other familial, societal, and cultural abuses----I recommend looking at a photograph of one's child-self and remembering that innocent "wide, wide open stare," that Joni Mitchell has sung about.

Wow.

2011-01-21T15:43:00.001-08:00

Comparisons

2011-01-16T08:13:00.000-08:00

Lost in comparisons, lost in the crowds, I have hidden, feeling diminished, or, conversely, quite powerfully invisible; after all, when one is not noticed, one gains a certain confidence and freedom. At times it can be equally freeing to allow yourself to hide in the crowds until a great wind comes. You can see how long it's possible to hang on and gain that perspective. Or, you can learn the slow drift of the soggy puddles.

Comfort Food

2011-01-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

Though I noted (somewhere in my online skimming) that snow is on the ground in all states but one today, it's the fluffy white-stuff of meringue that's appealing to me now. I'd just as soon eat it all raw, but a pan usually ends up in the oven because I like to defer gratification, too.

Raw meringue (and isn't meringue a lovely word in itself, worthy of being consumed like the delicacy it describes?) is smooth and fills one's mouth rather foam-like, reminiscent of marshmallow cream, but not as sweet or sticky. In fact, the meringue recipe I use calls for 2/3rds cup sugar, but I use only 1/8 cup, so I don't feel so bad about eating it all, and it's plenty sweet enough.

Once baked, the little puffs sound rather chalk-like if you gather a few in your hands and shake them, but they are not for writing. . . Instead, place one between your teeth and enjoy the lovely sensation of their disappearance, rather like cotton candy's act, yet somehow more satisfying because the ingredients are more wholesome and you've made them yourself.

Music Calls to Me

2011-01-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

Routine

2010-12-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

We humans like routines, even when we think we don't.

I have fought routine my entire life, seeing it in my OCD-now-Alzheimer's-afflicted mother's life as chains around the neck.

We are ever seeking comfort, grounding, the metal teeth that fit perfectly in the grooves that turn our days. Some days we are happy with the inspiration, the beauty, the cat curled in the lap before a fire, snowflakes falling outside as we tap away at our story lines.

And some days we awaken and want to fall back asleep.

But our routines can call to us from the warm comfort of sleep: I enjoy this early-morning sitting before the fire with our animal-family, sipping my coffee, reading e-mail and our little 5-day-daily paper, wondering what I will learn or do as I pursue my current interests. . . learning the Tarot, meditating, painting, knitting, playing with all kinds of art (key word for me: "playing"), reading, writing, visiting with friends here, perhaps.

I have also learned how to use the infernal Facebook without its driving me insane, zipping through it once or twice a day (or less often if I'm not at home), much as I zip through most of our newspaper----rather like chatting internally with friends and acquaintances. On occasion, I learn something useful or even inspiring, and I am able to lightly touch upon some folk I love who live too far away. This is good routine, I suppose, yet I've never liked or been good at chatting.

But routines are meant to be broken.

Peaceful Day, Lovely Song

2010-12-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Sunshine!

2010-12-23T08:09:00.001-08:00

Now that the wheel of the year is on its upward turn, opening to longer days and more light, I felt especially joyous about this rainbow's end that set down across the street from us during this rainy season here in northernmost California, when any break in the clouds (even without a rainbow) is cause for celebration.

Having gone out a couple of days ago in blustery conditions to buy new strawberry plants, I was delighted to awaken yesterday to clear skies and the urge to get the berries in the ground. Clearing away the two garden rows, trying to focus on what I was doing rather than my tendency to hurry and "get the job done," I found myself thinking about how important it is to cultivate the garden one HAS----and what that means to me.

As a younger woman, I rebelled against the idea, thinking it meant I was "settling" for the ordinary or conforming, somehow. Yet as I dug in the rich dark soil, trying to avoid chopping any earthworms in two, smoothing the surface to ensure I'd pulled away all the spindly weeds, and then digging spots to set each shiny-leaved strawberry plant, I felt the lovely security of home and was able to delight in it----in spite of my knowledge that many folk are desiring and deserving of home and do not have this pleasure, or that I, too, know that such pleasures are elusive, or even that I (quite recently) felt that I could not live here any longer after we lost our dog Fritz to some sort of poisoning.

We never identified what killed Fritz (and almost took his brother Kipper), and so our yard took on a larger-than-life, dangerous element, filled with "what ifs" and growing in my mind to be emblematic of the trouble that our entire Mother Earth is in.

Though Jon enclosed a smaller, safer segment of yard for Kipper and he's been fine in the months since his brother died, I told my husband I had to move to the country; I could no longer live here (where he delights in being able to walk to work) if I had to fear our own dog's being poisoned. However, taking some tours around the area with a real estate agent who also "bought high" around the same time we did a couple of years ago, I know that we can't really afford to sell our house and move right now (presuming someone would be on hand to buy it), good information that helped me cool my heels, and further served to remind me of the importance of being with where we are, with what we have, and making the best of it.

After all, when is anyone ever really "safe," whether at home or not? And safety isn't my goal anyway. . . . Only by taking risks, opening one's heart, and living fully is there any meaning to life. Yes, I know it's obvious, but look how easily it's forgotten, and how often we seem to need to remind ourselves of this.

Security

2010-12-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

Having lost one of my dear animal companions recently----and almost losing both dogs----set my world on edge for a while. Add to that my increasingly regular practice of meditation while reading as much as I can about Buddhism, and one can deduce a little how I feel these days----rather as if my skin has been peeled back and a constant wind is blowing.

I exaggerate. . . a little.

What continues to bubble up are many truisms I used to take for granted as being, well, true, sayings like "Better safe than sorry," that seem now designed to imprison a person by fear, though not in any concerted way, just as a typical human tendency to seek safety, and through this continual seeking after the safe, finding that our hearts are closing more and more and that we begin to hide in the comfort of our homes, and that we begin to forget how to love. Sound like the typical American?

Another statement, that "Pain is not a punishment and pleasure is not a reward," continues to roll around in my mind but the meaning is as slippery as ever. On the one hand, it seems obvious and perfectly contradictory to how we are conditioned to believe life works. Even though many of us have argued vehemently against the idea that "pain is a punishment" (i.e., that homeless person deserves his fate because he did something bad), it's not quite as easy to argue that "pleasure is not a reward." We tend to want to believe that one.

But the most beneficial basic belief I am attempting each day to internalize is a belief in my (and all beings') basic goodness. My Southern Baptist upbringing almost beat that out of me, though some part of me always denied those precepts about exclusivity---that we are somehow "born into sin" and must make a conscious choice---One Choice---in order to be "saved."

And these are the sorts of thoughts that rush in after I've sat and meditated and labeled what pops up at that time as merely thoughts, those ephemeral visions we tend to stitch our worlds from rather than experience the real, live, world of this very moment, the one that Mauser, the cat in the photo above, does. . .

More Ranting about Facebook

2010-11-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

One shouldn't rant against what one is unfamiliar with. . . and so, I have been experimenting with Facebook more lately, opening up the focal lens a bit and befriending acquaintances, posting photographs, and looking a little into others'. Now I find myself brimming with thoughts about how we hang onto certain images of ourselves, especially after seeing the profile picture of a woman who's several years older than I, and it's a sixties photo of a beautiful teenager with poofy, smooth blond hair. This is little different from the obituary photographs in the local paper that feature the 92-year-old deceased as a twenty-year-old.

Of course, all of us have difficulty at some point coming to terms with our aging looks----the greying hair, the wrinkles and spots----so much so that at first when we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror out in public, we may not recognize ourselves. But why do some wish to live a constant lie rather than come to terms with the inevitability of decline and death? Do they believe that "fighting" the inevitable actually staves it off?

On this wheel of life, some apparently feel they can miraculously step off and do all they can to stand in that place, still, watching pridefully, perhaps, as everyone else continues to spin. In our youth, especially, we feel exempt as long days and nights seem to stretch eternally, and we feel change comes too slowly. As a young person, in fact, I never imagined I'd live this long. Does that mean I lacked imagination? More than that, I think, it meant that no one in my circle talked of death and decline as a natural part of life; it remained an aberration to the young, and set in the dim, mostly unreal "future."

I suppose this is the part of Facebook I don't admire----the aspect that causes others to continually compare their lives with others' lives. One friend listed 100 "classic" books and asked others to join her in bolding those they'd read, which I did, but then I simply deleted the list. Why should I care whether others know how many books I've read? Wouldn't it only serve to make someone feel "less well-read" or "more well-read"? What is the point? To feel "different" and more "special"?

A real-live friend of mine once told me that our insistence on these three things----judgment, comparisons, and understanding----are best let go of, and I've found I agree; however, Facebook tends to cause us to strive for all of them.

2010-11-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

In Memory: Rosemeade's Fritz, August 20, 2002--October 27, 2010

2010-10-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon

2010-09-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

A seven-hour drive took me and a friend to a meditation retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs last weekend, where we mostly remained silent among the sounds of the Breitenbush River rushing, ravens calling from a bare branched tree-top, an evening thunderstorm followed by a steady rain and dripping from cedars and firs, and regular dinner bells announcing organic vegetarian, colorful, sumptuous, and nourishing meals. And, of course, the mineral-rich amazing hot springs in pools we women stepped into, melting away all pretense and care, soothing muscles and skin accustomed to holding stress, leaving only softness. So you see, heaven is really Earth.

More on Feline Aesthetics

2010-08-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

I'd like to be able to give artistic credit to our kitten----to feel he was creating something beautiful (in his eyes) by shredding our Japanese paper lamp. . . But, as my neighbor once told me in regard to some of the people she felt she may have unfairly criticized for their behavior, "I'm not that evolved yet." Me, either; I want the old design back, Cat!

Why does Facebook bother me so?

2010-08-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been afraid of technology, only pessimistic about it. It's always felt like another gadget that comes between life that is more real, more direct, more personal. Computers are so expensive and quickly obsolete that they seem too much a part of our sad throw-away society, with corporations making bundles as people become more and more isolated, sitting and staring at these glowing screens as time blurs away.

When e-mail became prevalent, I readily accepted it for work-related purposes because it made my work life easier, but I hated it for personal correspondence and clung to my black pens and various papers and my playful handwriting, remembering how good it feels to find a letter with a friend's handwriting among the stack of faceless bills and advertisements. In spite of this pleasure, I've long since given up my reluctance and now primarily use e-mail with only occasional cards and letters mailed the old-fashioned way, though I continue to feel I've allowed an important part of me to slip away.

When my dear friend began a blog, I swallowed my criticism and wondered what on earth would make one want to put oneself so vulnerably before strangers. Yet here I am. (Though I have connected with some real friends through this means of communication.)

And when Facebook splashed across computers, I ignored it completely, until I realized that my daughter primarily communicates this way, that she'd given up answering my e-mails (though she sometimes responds to text messages), and all the promised photographs never arrived because they are accessible from her Facebook page.

So what bothers me still about Facebook?

I do not like its tiny bits and pieces of information scrolling down the page like so much advertising for individuals. These little pieces remind me of the short attention spans that are being cultivated (the better to keep folks from thinking seriously about anything). They also remind me of the scrolling newslines at the bottom of a TV screen, the little intense bursts of inflammatory "news" that isn't news, sort of like the color-coded alarm system for airport security (the better to keep one's adrenalin levels up while at the same time causing us all to wonder what the heck we're supposed to DO----and, of course, the answer is "nothing". . . Just do nothing and let Big Brother worry about it. . . ).

I do not like the perversion of the word "friend" that includes total strangers and mere acquaintances who can dip into your life at will. Such mindless "democracy" makes me feel that my friends don't really think of me as a true friend, only another number in a stack of Facebook Friends, all with equal access to what has become my only access to some of my true friends.

And, I absolutely abhor only being able to see this surface facet of my only child----and very little else.

But as I think about it here, perhaps Facebook allows me to see too much of my only child (who's a young woman), and this is what disturbs me. I am part of an audience that includes her best friends and they know so much more about her than I.

Facebook is just that: very little. . . a tiny taste of a friend's or relative's life, experienced by scrolling down a computer screen, distant, words with feelings attached on one end without having the real connection at the other.

How to Be Alone: Lovely Video

2010-08-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

I enjoy Stephanie Voigt's posts in Space Clear Reflections, and appreciate her references to various creative YouTube videos, including this one:

Wishful Thinking

2010-08-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Being with loved ones who live far away fills me to overflowing with gratitude and joy.

I am also confronted by my ways of thinking that can be problematic. I love giving gifts, yet I am not always so astute in my choices. For example, I bought my granddaughter a fanciful skirt and shirt when I was in Paris last month, thinking how fun it'd be to see her in it----and forgetting that she might not find it so fun at all.

And she didn't. In fact, during her recent visit with me, it took all my persuasive powers to get her to simply try on the outfit. Then, when I realized what a ruckus she was making over wearing it (and when the tears rose to my eyes), I understood that it was merely my own wishful thinking that she'd want to wear that outfit, and that the very idea apparently made her feel absolutely horrible. Nothing I said made a difference. . . and I began to feel that I was merely trying to manipulate her.

So, I went in another room, cried about my idealistic nature that sets me up for disappointment too often, and made yet another vow to myself to accept people for who they are, rather than crying that they're not what I want them to be.

Sitting with Discomfort

2010-08-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

At a ritual celebration of Lammas, we considered aspects of our lives that have come to fruition or that have been metaphorically harvested. Of course, along with a celebration of the harvest is the juxtaposed sadness of completion and inevitable death of the old. . . . And the turning of the wheel continues.

Our culture encourages a (rather mindless) seeking after constant comfort, so when we feel discomfort, we are led to believe that something is "wrong" and that the answer is to seek comfort and stability again.

Or---if you're like me---you roll it over and over in your mind and attempt to put words to what it is you feel. I'll fish around in recent events in my life, wondering whether they're the cause. Or, I'll troll through my recent readings or think about what friends and family have said to me. Perhaps it was that dream, the one where I was pushing through, birth-like, a series of tightly woven cardboard boxes, all the while wondering who'd thought up such a predicament.

That's my ego trying to "fix" things.

Perhaps instead I should simply allow the discomfort to dwell in me for a while, and see what happens.

Perspective

2010-07-31T08:32:00.001-07:00

Reminding ourselves of aspects of perspective is almost always helpful, but surprisingly enough, many forget to do this and make snap assumptions and judgments about people and ideas based on a very limited perspective. We do this in part because not doing so can make us feel absolutely dizzy as we try to acclimate ourselves to the feeling of living in the moment and allowing our senses to take in everything without trying to hold onto it all too tightly, without immediately naming each aspect of our experience.

A spate of recent robberies in our small town, not surprisingly, has many folks believing that the homeless population is behind these, with neighbors getting upset and clamoring that something needs to be done. However, our town's newspaper reported today that the police chief noted that many of the robberies resulted from unlocked houses and cars that made it rather simple for someone to steal from them (and though it's sad we don't live in a society where we can still leave things unlocked, that's long gone for most of us). And, of course, there's a great deal more to this situation: the state of the economy, our culture's widening gap between those who have and those who don't, our culture's intensifying focus on (to quote a Pink Floyd song) "us and them," and all sorts of other things that affect individuals and groups, not to mention the fact that our town's leaders allowed a maximum security prison to be built nearby (leveling a huge swath of forest), so those who are newly incarcerated or released and their families who visit end up hanging around, which many believe adds to the problems our town experiences.

And so, that prosecuting attorney staying next door----the one who successfully presented a case against some meth dealers----has taken it upon himself to "warn" his landlady (my friend) about the folks he sees walking by who have prison records or are in some sort of trouble with the law. My friend asked him----What do you want me to do about it? I likened this to our former illustrious president's travel warnings: So, it's a code "orange": what do we do?

Maintain perspective and don't let fear rule.

Writing

2010-07-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a lot of "tasting life twice" these days, not only writing these first-draft-thoughts here, but also trading poems and song lyrics with my daughter in a private blog, and I participate in two writing groups (one that meets monthly, one semimonthly), sharing poetry that I am working on or have honed as much as I can.

Writing IS healing, and more and more I see evidence of this outside of my personal experience. (Besides many others, there's Kim Rosen's SAVED BY A POEM and John Fox's FINDING WHAT YOU DIDN'T LOSE and his Institute of Poetic Medicine.) My next-door neighbor, who's become one of my mentors, writes beautiful essays full of humor and provoking thoughtfulness that make her audience wish for more. However, she reads her pieces to us and tells us that she has no desire to publish them. We cannot even hold her words in our hands.

Words flee from us, just like the moment
when we first understood
and tried to write down what that was
but the images
only suggest it all
and in memory
the edges become blurry.
Nevertheless,
we were happy
for a moment.

Pilgrim Photos

2010-07-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

Judgment

2010-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Why am I going back, AGAIN, to discuss this jury experience I had? Because it seems to have tapped into many issues that face me and likely many people.

It's judgment---in the heavy, "I'm right and you're wrong" tone that disturbs me, and that's what came across so clearly to me after being on that damn jury. Though the LAW asks that jurors be objective (aka "fair"), most human beings are not capable (or have not advanced to the point) of seeing through entirely clear lens. And so we were asked to achieve something that neither the judge nor the attorneys practice themselves (they all had agendas and only made an effort to hide them from the jury, not from each other or from the defendants I found out later). In fact, the defendants, the prosecuting attorney told me, were counting on a hung jury, which explained their cavalier attitudes during the trial and their little winks and smiles to each other.

And---like the judge---I, too, believe that drugs are more a social issue than a legal one, but I was asked to put my beliefs aside and to judge impartially, based on the evidence.

I walked to the courthouse one day to make a point to myself that I would not walk in fear of retaliation (for whatever happened in the courtroom), and one of the little chants we sang while I was in Chartres came to me in the rhythm of my walking: "All healing is the release from fear, and without fear there is no need to judge."

This was helpful to me, but still----I had a job to judge as a juror.

And now, over a week later, I'm having a hard time washing my hands (yes---Judas-like) of that feeling, and I wonder whether to stop this public writing (because it's so easy for others---if there are any others reading this----to judge you by your writing, with its illusion of permanence and certainty) and hide out to think these things through on my own.

2010-07-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

To continue this conversation I began about being "open" (and all full of love) after being in a supportive group experience and then being stunned by the stark cold-water-splash-in-the-face of ordinary life----as in being chosen to be on a jury for a trial of two people who, as it turns out, were convicted of intending to sell crystal methamphetamine in our small town. . .

How strange to notice the judge in the case seemed bored and a little irritated, and definitely prejudicial toward the defense attorneys, and then to learn afterward from the prosecuting attorney that the judge's son has had some drug problems and believes that drug abuse should be addressed primarily through social institutions rather than legal ones.

We were all asked----before being chosen as jurors----to put aside such "beliefs" and to be impartial, judging the case before us merely on the evidence shown. The prosecuting attorney was excruciatingly thorough in laying out the evidence: the one-ounce baggie of crystal meth, the five digital scales, the many tiny empty baggies (some of which had drug residue in them), the tiny spoon, the large sums of cash. . .

The defense attorney had little to go on and attempted to draw our sympathy (which he did, but it seemed "irrelevant" in the face of the facts) toward the woman defendant, who---he said---has multiple sclerosis, and she was merely "self-medicating," not selling the stuff. Oh. And what about all those digital scales? The baggies?

Yes. She and her lover were declared guilty of intending to sell this drug. It seemed rather evident, but at one point in our deliberations, I thought that it was possible that it'd be a hung jury, amazingly enough.

And what has continued to disturb me are the various tales associated with this entire trial----not just finding out about the judge's "history," but also listening to the prosecuting attorney's take on how jurors are chosen. (I spoke with the fellow afterward, mainly because he's staying in our neighbor's spare apartment and it was convenient for me to do so, which assuaged my curiosity with little effort on my part, I admit.) That is, young people are avoided (they may sympathize with the defendants), as are people who appear "too smart" (that really made me feel good, since I was chosen!) like college teachers (Hah, I thought; I've taught college classes!). They also avoid therapists (though one did make it in our group, and we deemed him the leader, which came close to being a mistake because he was so intent on being "fair" that he drew out conversations that were entirely beside the point and ended up confusing matters rather than clarifying them).

This is how our system of justice works, and it's not nearly as impartial as we might like to think. The prosecuting attorney talked also of juries with "CSI" people on them, implying that it's almost impossible to get a verdict from them. He also asked whether I'd noticed certain of his and the defense attorney's "techniques," which were, essentially, ways of manipulating the "facts" to portray the story in the way they wished it to appear.

How often does this happen in the media (see my friend's post) and in our own lives----when people are quick to judge based on partial truths? And wouldn't it be awful to be on trial and at the mercy of all of these factors? In my own life, I try to withhold judgment, to have issues resonate in my heart and mind against my experience, knowledge, and feelings to determine truth. But of course there is no one truth except, paradoxically, that we are all one.

Holding On

2010-07-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

In our culture, we try so desperately sometimes to hold on to our youth, continually moving the sliding scale of age up, up, as we age, signifying and re-signifying the age at which we believe one has become "old." We look in the mirror, add up the wrinkles, the sags, gray hair, and the pounds, and come up short---no longer good enough, young enough.

For what?

To relate to the endless images of eternal youth marked by the actors and actresses that continually parade across our vision in movies that help ease our craving for story and meaning?

To re-enter the job market, where our young are chewed up and spit out in too short a time only to be replaced by yet another young wiz?

To cast off another friend or lover for one who has the excitement and mystery of newness?

To convince ourselves that we can live forever?

Heart and Mind

2010-07-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

Until all too recently, I believed that I should be more focused on my mind than my heart, to listen to reason, weigh facts, allowing my heart also to weigh in, but attempting to understand what I feel, to puzzle-out everything, making feelings of secondary importance and reason primary. After all, I have a couple of college degrees, like a great many of us middle-class Americans who became convinced that education (that is, earning "degrees") is the key to a "better" life. We learned that logic and reason would somehow "save" us. During my work life (from which I'm now almost two years retired, gratefully), I also witnessed the doors that closed to those who expressed what was considered "excess emotion" and learned to hide myself, to maintain silence and a placid face when I recognized how little good it did to speak. I wasn't effective in keeping this attitude restricted to work, however, and almost lost myself in the process.

Having grown up with a father and brother who were much more adept at argument, I frequently felt overwhelmed by emotion when they displayed impatience at my bumbling attempts to recall facts when all I truly knew was how I felt---which didn't support a thing in their minds, except that I'm "too emotional" (read: "not as smart"). This pattern repeats itself in me even now when I feel that someone isn't giving credence to something that feels "obviously true" to me, merely because I am unable to line up the facts and figures perfectly. I finally realized that I will never know enough (and I still love to read), never have all the facts that will keep me from looking like the fool to someone. I have also begun to recognize that paying more attention to my intuition, my feelings, makes my life much more exciting, interesting, and purpose-filled than being led by mere intellectual curiosity.

And so, as I waited in the courtroom today to find out whether I would be chosen for jury duty (and I felt it a paradox that I was), I read from the July issue of The Sun an interview of Malidoma Some'----whom I'd never heard of before, but who----at least in this interview----sounds so wonderfully wise and expresses exactly how I'm feeling. The entire interview is fascinating and well worth reading, but I'm going to focus on the part that seems particularly applicable to my life now.

Since only a week and a half ago I returned from a six-day workshop and I'm signed up for a couple more over the next few months, I'm sensitive to his remarks about people in "the West" who are "starving for ritual. . . When one is over, they shed tears of dread: now they must return to the so-called real world, where there is no room for what they have experienced. It is not valued or even tolerated. This is a serious problem. . . Until there are communities in which these rituals are done consistently and can be reconciled with everyday living, there will always be what we call 'workshop junkies'. . ."

Of course, he doesn't have any easy answers for this problem, other than one must strive to maintain the "ritual energy" in spite of one's culture and, more importantly, one can become a part of creating a community where such support is a part of everyday life. I suppose the striving is what "real life" is all about, this recognizing and acknowledging the sacred amid the mundane, all the while attempting to keep one's heart open, one's connection to others----and love----in tact.

Home Again

2010-07-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

What draws me to travel, even though I don't like feeling like a tourist or being in crowds? All I can say is that a convergence happens----feelings, events, facts, dreams begin to add up and create, puzzle-like, a whole that urges me on.

For example, this is a picture I took a couple of weeks ago of Mont Saint Michel, a French monestary. When I was 22, just out of college, I briefly worked for an architect in Baton Rouge, John Desmond, who offered me a choice of some of his drawings before I left, and I chose two for myself----of Mont Saint Michel and another monestary in France. My mother had them framed for me, and they've been hanging in my various abodes ever since.

And the image of Mont Saint Michel has appeared throughout my life, in the film MINDWALK, for example, which I bought back in the 80s and loved. Later, one of my friends from work and her husband, an architect, visited our home in Louisiana, and they brought along two friends, one of whom was John Desmond's son, and it pleased him to see his dad's drawings on our wall.

When I decided to go to France, in the back of my mind was an intention to see Mont Saint Michel, even though the original trip was in southern France, and it is located in the north. The original trip fell through, but since I'd sold my engagement ring to pay for the trip and already had paid my airfare, I worked up another trip, and on this one, my intentions became real. In my travels around this area, I even stopped to photograph a sign (though I didn't follow it) with my maiden name on it because I'd been thinking lately about how I know nothing about my father's side of the family. How odd that I should pass this sign---- this village was not on any map I held. The sign merely popped up on my path, reminding me of the bizarre synchronicities that can occur when we wander. My father's family probably came over from France as various outlaws (that word just fits for my dad, even though he was in the Air Force and became a university teacher) to populate the Louisiana Purchase.

Traveling

2010-06-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

I am about to embark on a trip to France, a voyage of discovery and one in which I can face many fears----of traveling alone to a place where I am not fluent in the language, for example, and of being dependent on the kindness of strangers. But I will also be exercising my strengths, remaining open to learning, reveling in beauty, and feeling the depth and intensity of the ancient places as I walk on paths others have walked, recognizing my connections to all.

One Life

2010-05-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

"Tell me----what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" --Mary Oliver

At various times in my life, this famous and lovely quote from poet Mary Oliver would compel me to interpret it differently based on the stress I might place on different words.

That is, if "one" is stressed, I might wonder whether there should be one thing I focus on in my own life, one gift I should be honing to give to the world.

Or, I might focus on "plan" and wonder whether I have been lax in this aspect of my life----especially since my life has tended to unfold rather mysteriously, with my seeing patterns mostly in reflection rather than in advance.

Recently, I have been focused on its "precious"-ness, its fleeting aspects, especially since I'm now on the downward slope of my fifth decade, an age when many women begin to feel they wish to give of themselves to the greater good (having raised their children and fulfilled various practical societal commitments like helping pay the mortgage)----and I feel an intense desire to discover what I can commit my heart to now.

I have also been focused on my life's "wild" nature, that is, my continuing discovery of what it is to be an "authentic" woman. Raised in a patriarchal culture (as Western civilization is), and especially having grown up in the South among traditional Baptists, who interpret the Bible to mean quite literally that women are meant to be subservient to men (as men are supposed to be subservient to God---an aspect of the equation that is usually forgotten), I have nevertheless always been rebellious and questioning of all things cultural. This hardheaded rebelliousness has served to protect my spirit, but its emphasis has been on the intellect, on reason, on gathering information (and never feeling I have enough!).

And so, when I copied this quote from Jean S. Bolen's CROSSING TO AVALON, I realized that this is where I am now, and I feel privileged to find myself standing with many other women in this place:

We must remember how and when each of us has had an experience of the Goddess, and felt healed and made whole by her. . . Without words they are difficult to retrieve. But when someone else speaks of a similar experience, it can evoke the memory and bring back the feelings, which restores the experience. Only if we speak from personal experience does this happen. This is why we need words for women's mysteries, which, like everything else that is of women, seems to require that one woman at a time birth what she knows. We serve as midwives to each other's consciousness. To speak our own truth the first time feels fraught with danger. . . In the bones of our collective experience as women we know there are risks. . . " [I added the bold for emphasis.]

Life's Kaleidoscope

2010-05-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

How wonderful to feel the patterns forming and to enjoy how the pieces are beginning to fit. Of course, sometimes when we are living through the pain and fragmentation in our lives, we can't understand that one day it may all take on a greater purpose, but it's valuable to have this perspective----that even darkness and despair have meaning, no matter how difficult it feels as it's happening.

In my continuing recreation of myself after retiring from a full time job and moving to a different part of the country (not to mention all of the internal changes that occurred simultaneously), I kept returning to the idea of volunteering in a local women's shelter, where victims of domestic violence can go for various kinds of help. However, the time never felt quite right until a couple of weeks ago when an application form accompanied our little daily hometown newspaper. That was all it took----completing that form----and now, I've received an internship for a two-week training period, and I'm on my way to doing what I've been intending.

Over twenty years ago, when I was gaining the experience in my miserable home life and the therapy I attended to help me figure out how to cope, who could have known that I would one day be able to use the misery I experienced to help someone else.

Here's a list detailing forms of domestic violence from the handout this organization provides (and I experienced almost every one of these):

Domestic violence. . .

. . . can be physical:
- preventing you from leaving the home or going where you want to
- intimidating or trying to control you or your children
- hitting, slapping, shoving, choking you
- throwing or breaking objects in the home
- following you when you leave the home
- forcing sexual acts against your will

. . . can be emotional:
- criticizing your abilities as a spouse or partner, parent or employee
- embarrassing you in front of other people
- disapproving of your friends, relatives, neighbors
- hampering you in your job or school
- having angry outbursts or "losing their temper"
- being over-protective or extremely jealous
- threatening you, your children, pets, family members, friends, or themselves
- leaving excessive phone messages

. . . can be financial:
- denying you access to bank accounts, credit cards, or the car; forcing you to account for money

Realizing that none of this sort of behavior is "normal" is a first step in getting help and support in order for a woman (and any children) to begin to create a new kind of normal, one that is loving and supportive and creative.

Stony Creek

2010-05-17T08:35:00.001-07:00

We've been on a roll lately, celebrating our diverse and magnificent landbase---Del Norte County, California----first by attending several events at the California Redwoods Bird and Nature Festival, and then by continuing our explorations into areas we haven't been before: here, Stony Creek, where the exotic Lady's Slipper and Darlingtonia Lily (or Cobra Lily, a carnivorous plant) bloom profusely, enjoying habitat where they can keep their feet cool, and wowing us with the amazing close-up and distance views, just a short hike through the woods from the tiny village of Gasquet.

Truth in Symbols

2010-05-11T08:09:00.001-07:00

Truth can be difficult to discern sometimes, especially when we seek what is sometimes beyond reason, beyond the five senses, even.

My reading over the past six months has been focused on various aspects of the Divine Feminine, the dark Madonna, labyrinths, and various other symbols that resonate within our souls and connect us with ancient truths.

How interesting it was to learn that the fish symbol appropriated by modern Christians for their bumper stickers had its origins in pagan symbology----as a vulva, symbol of the Divine Feminine, the Goddess, who is present in both spirit and body, a mix of life sorely missing in Western civilization's pride in its "conquering" of nature through its "superior science" and focus on the mind's powers to the exclusion of what was often considered humans' "dumb animal" nature.

And so we are all connected through symbols----whether we know their various meanings or not----something that can remind us that, though we are all unique, we are nonetheless connected.

Healing Fear

2010-04-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

I almost don't know what to make of it all. . . the continual changes to my plans, the strange branchings-out and connections. Before I moved here almost two years ago, I'd never heard of Reiki healing, which---miraculously enough----"is not dependent on belief at all and will work whether you believe in it or not." This suits me because I'm slow to believe, even though I'm quite open to possibilities. (I know that sounds contradictory.)

I became curious about Reiki after reading Jane's blog but hadn't had a chance to learn much more personally until this trip to France (that I'd sold my engagement ring to pay for) was canceled. I'd committed to go with a group of women intent on exploring the dark feminine (and various other themes inherent in that, including various beliefs revolving around the probability that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married and had children [Da Vinci Code stuff]----and how that information was suppressed by the Roman Church, intent on subjugating women, among other things)----all interesting themes that seemed to speak to my own feelings of having been silenced, so I thought I was somehow "meant" to go. So much for that.

However, when I got my money back from the woman who'd canceled that trip, she gave me someone else's name and told me that I might be interested in participating in a small workshop in Chartres Cathedral for a week---called "Healing Bodies, Healing Fear"----and after several other doors closed (including my looking at other possible tours), I decided to connect with the woman leading this group and make this a part of what has turned out to be my self-guided tour of France. And she's a healing touch practitioner (similar to Reiki) who actually performed a healing session for me while I sat in her living room, since I mentioned to her my most recent (annually occurring) breast cancer scare. I told her I don't believe I have cancer, and after the treatment, she agreed----so that felt good. (I'll still go back to have the radiologist confirm it with a sonogram.)

I grew up hearing stories of how my mother resented giving up her ideas of how she might have lived her life, so I vowed never to do this myself. However, fear is sticky and sometimes disguises itself as "practicality" or as "safety" or even as statements like "I wasn't meant to do" whatever.

Here in this time of wondering how to live my life, I am intent on pushing against the barriers of who I pictured I once was in order to become who I am. . . and FEAR will not hold me back.

Shifting

2010-04-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

How strange to think I know myself in a basic way and then to find myself shifting in ways that are contrary to the stories I've told myself ABOUT myself before. . .

That is, I have always called myself a "loner," yet in the (almost two years) since I've moved, I've reached out to others with a constancy that is rather shocking to my formerly isolated self. In fact, someone told me that my "transparency" disturbed her.

Until recently, I have tried not to reveal myself, I have remained quiet, believing (as I'd learned from Carlos Castenada's Don Juan when I was a teenager) that those who tell their histories to others allow themselves to be trapped by others' judgments. Rather than freeing me, this idea actually kept me pent up and too-conscious of what others may or may not be thinking.

How freeing it is to simply say to oneself, "I am not responsible for what others think about me. All I can do is attempt to live and be as wholly myself as possible, trusting that I am unfolding and becoming who I am meant to become. . . always learning, always finding bits and pieces burned away, then regrown."

Dreaming

2010-04-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

After writing about thinking of "building walls and barriers" to protect myself from unwanted conversations from strangers while enjoying my front yard, I dreamed I was swinging from the top of one narrow wall to another (from a trapeze connected somewhere in the sky), trying to find balance and stay safe from a coming flood.

I only now recognized the relationship between my thoughts and dream, coming back to this electronic space, wondering whether anything was happening here.

And so, in my continuing questioning of what is private and what is public, I wonder whether this sort of writing should remain private or whether it has a place in a public realm.

Town Life from My Front Yard

2010-04-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

I've rarely lived in town over the course of my life thus far, and it's a challenge for someone who's mostly a loner (and frequently a curmudgeon), who prefers the company of a book to small talk and a walk in the woods or through a field and along a creek to shopping. We're still in the Wet Season here in northern coastal California, so on the rare occasions when the sun appears, almost everyone shows up outside, as I did yesterday, chopping around with my hoe, attempting to free flowers and vegetables from some of the choking weeds.

And so as I looked up to see a man walking on the street toward me with a big grin on his face, my own face grinned in response, but unfortunately this served as sufficient invitation to a visit from someone who (apparently) knows no boundaries because he proceeded to ask me about how much we paid for our house ("We don't talk about that") and to chatter on nonsensically before finally wandering away, talking loudly to himself (since I was no longer paying attention). I'd prefer not to believe the fellow was hopped up on meth (an unfortunate problem of our area) and instead is merely eccentric, but. . . this is why I don't like to spend any time in the front yard.

Instead, I dream of creating walls and barriers.

Not five minutes later, an 11- or 12-year-old boy appeared, introducing himself as our new neighbor, and asking whether he could help me (for a price, of course), and whether we have any fruit trees. I told him our apple trees are still young but that when they begin to produce enough apples to share, we would, and I suggested that he talk to his parents about planting one in their yard, too. (I bit back a wicked impulse to tell him we have cameras and motion detectors focused on those trees 24 hours a day.) He was polite and easy enough to talk to (with his shyer friend standing a bit behind him), and after he left, I began to see myself from his youthful perspective, wondering whether one day he might remember living on this street, talking to the lady who lived up the street about growing apples, and whether he'd remember her as kind; if so, I'm sure he'll also remember me as old.

Observing all these differing perspectives is what happens when I'm around people, whereas when I'm observing nature, I can simply watch and be.

Out to St. George Reef Lighthouse

2010-04-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

Lighthouses have always fascinated me----for all the obvious, Romantic reasons, and then for more personal ones (like my grandfather's having been a seafaring man)----and so when we had a chance to benefit the folks who are working to restore the St. George Reef Lighthouse, located about 7 miles off the coast near where we live, by our buying a helicopter trip out for a too-short tour of less than two hours, we jumped at the chance. Opportunities don't come often or easily: the tour is only available on weekends that the weather permits and only from November through mid-April (today's was the last for this year) to spare the endangered stellar sea lions the noise and bother of us humans.

I may post a few other photos of Jon's later----he has the high-powered camera----but here are some I took today.

Links and Connections

2010-04-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

Since I stepped away from this blog, questioning the value of the time I was spending with this metal box, I've come across several reasons to continue, but within limits. Reading this piece and watching the fascinating short film at the bottom of the page on the "social media revolution" reminded me, however, of the value of technology, too.

Of course, I still get angry with its too-quick obsolescence, with people who spend more time staring at screens (small and large) than they do at nature or their loved ones----and I don't want to be one of those, but I cannot deny that I enjoy the connections I've found via technology, as long as my more immediate and personal life with those around me here does not suffer.

Because one thing so easily leads to another. . .

Sailing Away

2010-03-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Thank you, dear readers, fellow seekers, for sharing time with me here. I am leaving behind these electronic creations for the time being to more fully attend to ink and paper, seed and dirt, warm hand in mine, cat in the lap, dog at my feet.

Feeling Blessed

2010-02-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

Traffic where we lived near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was awful, and every day I bemoaned the loss of nature---given over to highways and buildings and concrete.

Here, however, the drive anywhere (except within the tiny confines of this little town where we live and mostly walk) is absolutely stunning. The following are some photos of the Smith River (about ten miles from our town), one of the last undammed rivers in California, and also one of the clearest. If you're driving from here anywhere north (besides along the coast), this is the route you take.

If you look closely in the first photograph, you can see an RV driving on the winding mountain road from which these photos were taken----because no matter how many times I see these lovely views, I'm still incredulous and sometimes use pictures to look back on and pinch myself to remind me (when it's stormy and rainy and I'm feeling trapped inside) of how fortunate I am to live so close to such beauty.

Thoughts from the Tub

2010-02-23T10:12:00.000-08:00

During my brief (but wonderful) stay at the Anima sanctuary, I was reminded again that the main luxury I will miss when civilization collapses will be my easily acquired hot tub baths, not just because I enjoy all of the physical sensations but also because I do a great deal of contemplating in the tub. It's as if sitting in hot water condenses my thoughts so that I'm able to see them more clearly, like the finger-writing we can do on a steamy bathroom mirror.

This morning, it occurred to me how strange it is to finally realize how hard I am on myself (after others have told me time and again that they notice) and to consider the reasons (in an attempt finally to break their hold on me)----especially since I can no longer believe that this stance serves me but only tears me down. This mental (as opposed to physical) self-flagellation isn't because one enjoys the pain but because one believes that the pain can be transformative and thus beneficial. Oh, how twisted. . .

Where did this thought pattern originate? Partly in patriarchy, partly in the Puritan-inspired work ethic of my grandparents (with whom I grew up closely), and partly in the morality I learned from Southern Baptists. It says that we can do good, but we mustn't take pleasure in or be recognized for the good we do. Good grief.

Only One?

2010-02-18T09:24:00.001-08:00

Looking for the reasons my chest has been feeling so tight, why I become so restless and feel I must get out---move---anywhere sometimes, I reflected on a recent conversation that centered around the topic of "How to live one's life" in the everyday, and this person said that it's important to find one's passion.

Of course, this idea isn't new to me, but it reminded me of how long I've been seeking what others seem to know in their hearts early on. Some people discover in childhood or as teenagers what they wish to pursue, to focus on in their lives and they become accomplished at that art or craft or profession and stay with it.

Instead, I seem intent on tasting a little of everything I'm interested in, of experiencing as much as possible, knowing that this may make my experiences more shallow than those who delve more deeply over time into a certain passion, but also feeling that it's just my way----something I don't really desire to change because it feels natural to me, even though it may not seem ideal.

If I had to point to a single "passion" I've pursued with any regularity I'd say it's been writing, but its pursuit has been as fragmentary and on-again, off-again as any other aspect of my life, and thus the results are equally fragmented and poorly honed, forming not a body of work but scattered papers (and credentials now gathering dust). And so I wonder whether my passion is simply misnamed, or whether I lack the fire of discipline. I'm not sure writing is one of those saving passions, though (at least for me)---that is, the kind of passion that knits together days and makes a life feel whole and purposeful. But maybe it will be, especially if it's connected to nature, one of my other passions. . . .

from: Why Cats Paint, a Theory of Feline Aesthetics

2010-02-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

Beware the dangers of "bovine hypnosis"! (Please click on the image below to see it full-size.)

Feeling Uprooted

2010-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

It's finally dawned on me. Even though I always reckoned myself a free spirit, able to live anywhere, move anywhere, the fact is that I lived in the same 100-mile-region almost my entire life. In my mind, I didn't move away because I couldn't----too many ties, too little money. And, though I thought that I never really felt at home in the South, it was my home, by default, anyway. That is, there were people who came to know me, to accept me (whether begrudgingly or not), to forgive me (if not accept me for) my eccentricities, to know that even though I may come across too strongly for some, they at least could count on my meaning well. And. . . I had my "credentials" associated with my employment----that is, my college degrees, my sterling evaluations from jobs deemed well done.

A year and a half later, I am realizing how isolated I feel, how dependent I am on this technology to keep me in touch with my loved ones----my daughter and granddaughter and friends----who are so far away. And, though I don't really want to work again, part of me misses those affirmations of my strengths.

Which brings me to technology again: this morning I actually signed up to receive five e-mails weekly from "The Universe," little affirmations that are supposed to boost one's spirits. Add to this the poem I read each day from The Writer's Almanac, today's by Norah Pollard, that ends so sadly, so truly, and my tears just mix with the rain that is falling, falling, falling steadily.

When you did not give me
a Valentine today,
I was undone.
And I wept in the shower
even though I am an adult and know
gifts are materialistic shallow
commercially driven wasteful crap.

But why, why could you not have
Wasted some mute love on me?

The Nature of Privacy*

2010-02-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

My notions of privacy were formed from an early age, imposed in great part by a mother who is excruciatingly private in most ways, as she learned from her father, who didn't talk about his own experiences (as a sixteen-year-old who joined the navy to enter WWI by lying about his age, who won the Croix de Guerre for heroic actions in France)----even to his own brother. As a teenager, I strongly related to what I read of Henry David Thoreau's isolation at Walden Pond and to the ideas that Carlos Castanada presented as Don Juan's, especially in regard to not telling anyone else your "personal history," for that would allow someone else to trap you in their own ideas of who you are.

Thus, I still have very conflicting ideas about whether to reveal my ever-changing self----and at what point. That is, I used to think that I'd eventually reach a point where I'd honed this self to an acceptable sharpness, brightness, that would be "worthy" of revealing to a larger world. Then I realized that my life was passing and I was merely hiding, waiting for a perfection that I could never attain, and that I was missing many opportunities of interacting with delightful people who generously accept me as I am . . . becoming.

And that's it. I intend never merely to be what I am now, but to continue always to become what I want to be (regardless of the social "acceptability"). Those folk who prefer to box you up, tie the strings tightly, and tape up your mouth, keep you conveniently on the shelf and expect you to behave just so----they don't interest me, but I must admit that when I examine my feelings about such people, I fear them. They are the ones who judge, who imprison, who hurt, the ones who try to make us feel we are always being watched from the infamous Panopticon.

And this is the crux of what I feel about privacy at present: it is the keeper of individuality, of differences, especially since I now live in a very small town, one with cliques very much like those that develop in one's school years. In revealing too many of our idiosyncrasies to the world at large (through this vast technology), I wonder whether we endanger them. Zombies are out there looking for life to consume; the impulse to remain hidden still seems viable.

*Inspired by reading "The Observer and the Observed," Marcy Peek

Budding Out

2010-02-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

In the midst of a typically rainy, coolly mild Pacific coast winter, I stare from windows often at the rain slanting down. Sometimes it's the horizontal rain that the locals brag about, other times merely the mist we tend to ignore after a while, going out without umbrellas, which are the sure sign of a tourist.

Against a dark background, though, are the bright stars of blossoms on our cherry plum tree bursting out from full buds humming with life, with potential.

Being Present

2010-01-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

I'd started several posts over the last couple of months and then left them unfinished as drafts; here in this post, I've tried to consolidate the ideas and deleted the drafts. It's interesting (and disconcerting) to see that the same ideas have kept coming up, unresolved, in my life since I was a teenager. I keep twirling them over and over in my mind, looking----always----for how to live my life.

Figuring out how to act, what to do, isn't so easy, especially when one desires to live with purpose and intent. So many diversions call to me----reading, writing, crafts (I learned to knit a couple of years ago, anticipating living in a cooler clime), watching movies, traveling----and I jump from one to another, all the while attempting to maintain touch with people I desire to have a relationship with.

After reading Wolf's piece, "A Case for Presence," I considered again why the average person seems to have such difficulty sustaining this sense of presence for any length of time. Of course, many people are uncomfortable with what may be perceived as not producing anything. We are taught that we must always have something to show for our time, so that leaves out observing for the sake of observation, experience for its own sake. Not-doing has come to mean instead watching television, becoming numb.

Most of us are trained from childhood to fit into a certain mold, our lives planned out for us from school to career to retirement to death. It's no wonder we become uncomfortable when we act outside the typical, the norm.

Saying that the experience of danger tends to snap us into attention to the present serves to remind us of the attractions of camping out, of riding a motorcycle, long hikes, of any sort of movement into the unknown where the unexpected can occur. More typically, we arrange our lives in just the opposite way, surrounding ourselves with comfort and predictability, becoming fearful and distraught when a schedule is disrupted or the electricity goes off.

Homogeneity has become the standard so that no one is surprised by any potential unpleasantness----which precludes the possibility of the unexpected delight, too.

And when I do try to communicate, I remember that no matter what I say or don't say, do or don't do, someone else can always see that as a hook to capture me and place me neatly folded in a box of theirs. But that in itself should never stop me from saying or doing what I feel is true and right in the moment, even when, upon circumspection or learning more, I find out that I was wrong. How else can anyone ever discover and experience truth as a part of the world? Otherwise, I would continue as I have been for much of my life----isolated, ruminating alone, silencing my voice that I'd learned to characterize as a bit too strange and never quite good enough.

Who am I?

2010-01-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

For many reasons lately, I've been frustrated with technology, including many aspects of modern life----computers, flying, driving, movies----often compelling aspects that nevertheless can make me feel hurried, unheard, invisible, and separated from the natural world.

And so, reading A Harper's Garden, I was pleased to find questions asking me to (re)consider some basic aspects of my life. As an exercise in being more attentive and to slow down and focus, I have written some answers here, though they are only tiny shards of the whole.

What do I love in life? I love being attuned to my feelings, my intuition, and allowing my feelings to lead me or to teach me. For example, recently I felt overwhelmed and confused by the enormity of my emotions and the way I appeared to overreact to something my husband said. I felt as if I would fly in all directions at once----rather like exploding. It happened quickly and the outburst was over after ten minutes or so, but what interests me now is looking back at my reaction and what happened later in the day: an earthquake, 6.5, occurred 90 miles south of here, one strong enough to create a boom (rather like a sonic boom) and cause our old house to sway. And so I wondered whether my feelings earlier in the day were in response to the energy building in the earth beneath me.

Remembering that I have a part in the greater whole of life is important to me; it's what I love about life----that I am not this lone, separate being, and though I am unique, I also share with others----humans, animals, plants, rocks----in the greater good of all. This is also my greatest challenge: to remember I am important, too.

Asked to consider what I enjoy about reading A Harper's Garden, I like the mix of art, fantasy, magic, music, and thought-provoking, personal writing. I return to read the blog because I am often delightfully surprised by its contents and by the synchronicity to my own experiences. Also, I like the pauses----sometimes longer pauses in the regularity of the posts----because we all need breaks. I enjoy reading about others who are struggling to evolve, to be more sensitive, to live more fully.

To answer what my greatest wish for the planet might be, I would wish for zero population growth, zero new development, and to allow nature to begin to recover from the devastation civilization has wreaked upon it, which would also be the sentiment I'd voice if I knew that I'd be heard and attended to, along with loving and being tolerant of others and their differences.

Uncomfortably Stretched

2010-01-06T05:35:00.000-08:00

Writing here has become daunting to me in my month-long absence from it, yet it's also measured how time can seem to encompass so much because a great deal has happened. If I had to describe my feelings, I'd say I feel as if I've been beaten up, pummeled. If my mirror image could reflect my feelings, it would be stretched, distorted, smeared across the glass.

Part of this feeling is because my feet have been in the air (along with the rest of me, of course), flying (or driving) all over the place, visiting family, friends, and former haunts, some places I was glad to have left behind.

And it's partly because of news I received last night of a former colleague who killed herself Sunday, the day I was traveling home. Over the course of my work-life, she is the second person I worked with who killed herself, and I'm just so saddened.

Synchronicity

2009-12-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

Whenever I use this term, I must sing it syllabically ("Syn-chro-ni-ci-ty") whether in my head only or aloud to the melody of the Police song by that title. Lately, so many instances have occurred that I feel buzzing with excitement.

This particular time began with a forwarded e-mail referring me to a talk by poet Kim Rosen titled "Poetry: Medicine for the Soul." I'd not heard of Kim before, but I've always loved the idea (and experienced the reality) of poetry as a means of healing, so after listening to this talk, I ordered her book (with an accompanying CD), Saved by a Poem.

Though I didn't have time to begin reading the book before leaving for a short trip to southern Oregon, I did bring along the CD to listen to on the way. While in Oregon, I was invited to stay the night at the lovely woman's home where I attended a meeting because temperatures dropped quickly into the teens and a late-night drive back to the California coast on icy winding mountain roads would have been dangerous.

The following morning, drinking tea and talking to my hostess, I mentioned Rosen's CD and asked whether she'd heard of her. "Well," my new friend said, "Kim began writing that book in the room you just spent the night in. In fact, she's going to be in Eugene soon, which is only three hours from here." The details of how Kim Rosen ended up staying there are my friend's own tale of synchronicity, one rich in meaning to her life.

Needless to say, we are going to hear Kim Rosen in Eugene on Sunday and my anticipation over following the next length of thread to this event is growing.

Women Who Run with the Wolves

2009-12-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

Lately, I read from this book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes (I fondly think of her as "Pinky") each day, allowing these archetypal stories to slowly steep in me. Over the last few days, I've felt this sinking in my spirit, a feeling I once named depression but now choose not to name it (and thus all-too-conveniently wrap it up in all the [sometimes false] notions I have about it) but to explore the feeling instead.

Estes refers to the "peaks and valleys" of our lives and how wolves "ride them as efficiently, as fluidly, as possible." She goes on to write that "the instinctual nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon, all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to self, to another." I've been working to become more attuned to my instincts and intuition over the last year (as opposed to focusing on knowledge and reasoning), which has opened me up to remarkable and surprising synchronicities and associations/relationships----what I've been needing for so long. It's these relationships that our culture so easily cuts off with its pressures on us to produce and maintain a certain style of living.

And so, I am trying to focus on looking at the depressions I fall into on occasion not as something I should or even can avoid, but as a kind of "compost pile" I'm naturally a part of at certain points on my wheel of living, a necessary breaking down in order to find myself built up again.

To quote Estes: "We have erroneously been trained to accept a broken form of one of the most profound and basic aspects of the wild nature. We have been taught that death is always followed by more death. It is simply not so, death is always in the process of incubating new life, even when one's existence has been cut down to the bones."

Thus, when I'm depressed, I can remind myself that I am in a necessary period of incubation, preparing for the new (and surprising) that is to come.

2009-12-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

I Am Thankful. . .

2009-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

for the bountiful beauty all around, the peace and warmth of our home with our fellow furry beings, for friends---old and new---my heart's full to bursting.

In the Company of Women

2009-11-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

Having grown up in the South with only an older brother (no sisters), and relating more to my father than my mother, in general I've seemed to look up to men more than women for much of my life. As a pre-adolescent, I hung out with my younger male cousins, leading them into the dense pine woods "in the back" and proving to them (and myself) that I could find a way out again. In high school, I admired and looked up to my brother and his musician friends (and even married two of them).

Conversely, I looked at (and experienced) most women as shallow, interested only in the trivialities of appearance, in vicious gossip or fundamentalist Christianity, or in out-doing other women somehow, whether in gaining power in the workplace (and working head-to-head with paternalistic men) or in their homes, bragging on how they manipulate their husbands.

In this transitional time for me, now that I'm living in the Northwest and have retired from full-time work, I realize that in the fifty-four years I lived in the South, I formed only one long-term friendship with a woman whom I continue to stay connected with on any deeper level. Yet in the year and a half I've lived here, I've met and befriended (and continue to meet) several women of different ages who are willing and eager to connect at a level I never expected possible for me to enjoy----without competition, supporting and reveling in our differences and various talents and gifts.

What an unexpected pleasure it is to be in the company of women and to love it so.

Remembering Dreaming

2009-10-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dreams have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, so reading Jane's piece about dreams inspired me to take her advice and simply ask to remember my dreams (since remembering them has been a problem lately). Raised on Southern Baptist teachings, the biblical "Ask and ye shall receive" seems natural enough (though I've long since left behind the patriarchal religion), but I'm amazed at how often I don't allow myself to ask for what I need, even when all that is required is for me to personally address that entity, to treat her with respect, and acknowledge her mystery and power.

And what do you know. . . I've been remembering my dreams again, busily scribbling down their essence before fully waking each morning. Somehow this ritual makes me feel more whole, less hurried, and more attuned to the beauty of life. And I am grateful.

Sometimes I have "movie dreams" in which I'm not really a part of the dream but am merely an observer----and elaborate, often beautiful stories develop. Though I have my own examples, I'll refer you to a fascinating one recorded beautifully here by my dearest friend Anita.

Even my little Corgis seem to enjoy their dreams, their short legs twitching as they breathe heavily and irregularly, eyes rolled back in their heads. I remember visiting a friend once who had an Irish setter that apparently dreamed of running after some delectable prey while my friend prompted him on by whispering "Get him, Aesop; get him!" and the dog's legs, no longer relaxed though he was still asleep, would begin to move in unison, faster and faster, as if he were really carrying his body through that field of dreams.

And who is to say that our spirits aren't really visiting these places we dream of, that my father, dead these past four years, wasn't really communicating with me this morning as he pointed out to me the little squirrel turning and turning an acorn in his paws, and I showed him the blue jay perched in plain view.

Mill Creek Trail, Jedediah Smith State Park

2009-10-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

Mill Creek ripples over smooth stones with the gentle sound of applause from a distance, fall leaves drifting by in its clear water, sun breaking through clouds as I stopped to look up, to breathe deeply the cool fall air, recently rain-washed clear of the dry season's dust.

The irony that such a lovely body of water would be named "Mill Creek"----which speaks of man's belief that a creek is not an entity in itself so much as a thing to use----is just another reminder of how fortunate we are that this paradise was allowed to remain despite civilization's hunger for turning nature into man's designs.

Fear

2009-10-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Reading Resolute's piece on fear on the Anima website reminds me of how often fear has surrounded my life, constricted it in ways I have tried to ignore rather than face.

When I was a child I was so afraid of the dark, I'd lie in bed with the covers pulled over my head, trying not to breathe deeply, watching to see whether the covers moved when I took my shallow breaths, imagining something or someone looking at the bed and deciding that it was empty and thus moving on, leaving me alone, which was all I desired, I thought----to be left alone.

I lost this particular fear at some point but gained a whole slough of others, it seems, as I matured and came to see myself as somehow "different" and thus in need of hiding again----because how could I allow others to see what I really thought, that school was boring and pointless, that I had no true friends, that my parents didn't really care about me, that the world of so-called "normal" people seemed alien to me and I had no idea how or whether I even wanted to fit in.

And so, it seems, I've tried to do essentially the same childish thing again and again in my life, to figuratively hold my breath and remain unseen as I negotiated the world of school, marriages, family, work----hiding from others, and as it turns out, from myself.

The most pleasant release from this fear that I learned when I was young was through music, reading, and being in nature, all of which continue to soothe my fears, but it seems their release must come from more concentrated efforts that require me to be patient with their revealing themselves over time---- these layers and layers of suffocating blankets I'd come to hide under----peeling them off, one by one, and shaking myself free.

Red Rock

2009-10-09T12:32:00.001-07:00

Last week I drove with a friend over 3,000 miles on a (round) trip down to Taos, New Mexico, to participate in a writing workshop given by Natalie Goldberg, whose books WRITING DOWN THE BONES and WILD MIND continue to inspire new and experienced writers alike. As with any organized event, one can easily find fault, which I did, but after another day passed, I could feel what I'd learned begin to register in my body and mind, and I'm grateful for having gone, in spite of my disappointments.

All along the way, driving through such dramatically different country, I felt tugged and pulled to stop (which I had no time to do), to touch the ground, to linger and appreciate the beauty of the place. What torture it is to speed through nature. We did pause in our trip for a couple of hours at the Arches National Park, though, where monolithic sculptures stand as fabulous testaments to the passage of time and the wearing of wind and sand.

Another briefer stop was at the Earthships community, where we toured through one of the off-the-grid houses. Though I wouldn't want to live there---not enough trees, and the water supply is too limited---I would love to one day build one of these houses. The sloping, rounded edges of their colored-glass-studded interiors appeal to me, as do, of course, their energy efficiency, sustainability, and independence. What fun to use cast-off material to create such a lovely home, partially submerged and nestled into Earth as insulation and comfort.

WATER

2009-09-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Set in 1936 India, the film WATER explores the lives of widows, another horrid story of female oppression. I hadn't known about this tradition but it reminded me again of humans' darkest side, our ability to shut out others based on sex. And so I sobbed through this film before walking over to my neighbor's for a little visit, and she sent me home with an antidote, another movie titled KINKY BOOTS with a very similar theme, actually, though this time with a cross-dressing man in London as a central character and a more cheerful ending. Only now did the similarity between the two films strike me.

Which, I suppose, takes me to the value of writing (which I have a regular argument within myself about).

I'm a huge fan of Derrick Jensen's writing because he has broken through so many taboos about what can be written about (and writes with such courage about aspects of his own life), which has literally saved my life before because I can relate to his descriptions of how civilization silences us on so many levels.

I attended a conference recently where a great many brilliant, mostly younger (around my daughter's age) people met to talk about the era we're in----I'll use the title of a Jensen book to describe it----ENDGAME-----and how best to be the activists and proponents for Earth (as opposed to civilization).

Of course everyone at first acknowledged the elephant in the room, and then proceeded to speak the veiled language one must use when one must be super sensitive to how that language could be interpreted by someone unfriendly to one's causes. This lent an air of unreality to the entire scene that made me feel as if I were, indeed, playing a game, while at the same time knowing it wasn't.

And so, it was difficult for me to maintain focus on the tasks at hand because I wanted to discuss the "meta-" characteristics (i.e., situated behind or beyond; more comprehensive: transcending—usually used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one) of what I observed at the event and of civilization in general, which is one of Jensen's themes that most interests me, how people are silenced, how we learn to self-censor. To quote from A LANGUAGE OLDER THAN WORDS, "Underlying the different forms of coercison is a unifying factor: silence" (p. 263). Also, a bit further on, he states that "in order to maintain our current mode of being, we must ignore a tremendous amount of information" (p. 303). And, of course, "to ignore" is to repress, to silence. I'd jotted down this additional quote (and I may have truncated it) but don't know which Jensen text I took it from: "Abusive systems (whether personal or political) work best when the victims police themselves (through internalizing their helplessness in the face of 'invincible abusers')."

And so, I overheard in a nearby group one young woman wearing dark sunglasses in this bright room say, "I'm a hermit; I'm very shy; this is hard for me," and I could only praise her in my mind for being so brave in coming to the event, but I wondered whether she'd find what she was seeking----a relief from silence.

My own experience in one of the groups was more silencing----someone who said that the "personal" should be withheld and instead the political task at hand, a prompt, should be the focus of the discussion.

That's what made me realize I was in the wrong place for what I desired----there wasn't enough room for me to dip water from this stream. I see most things as personal (and definitely value the personal over the political). After all, without people who feel connected and trusting of one another, how far can the political take us?

Tolowa Dunes

2009-09-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Tolowa lived in this northern California paradise a long time before any pale European faces showed up with their conquering mentality and muskets. Walking through sandy-soil pastureland through patches of shady spruce on to the rolling sand dunes that finally lead to the ocean feels as if you're walking back to a simpler time, when plants spoke as clearly to you as the birds. The St. George Reef Lighthouse is visible from afar, a foggy reminder of men who wish to point the way.

Transported by Music

2009-09-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

Not Posting for Now

2009-09-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's enough to be silent, watch the garden grow, and now, begin to wither in its time.

Soaking up the sun of a bright fall day is preferable to the glare of a computer screen.

Events, visitors, and travels fill this month's and part of next month's calendar pages, welcome in their odd converging during this harvest time.

To any reader(s) out there, I'll be back!

Thinking about Tolle

2009-09-01T11:20:00.001-07:00

I'm reading Eckhardt Tolle's A NEW EARTH and also watched his DVD "meditation" in which he mentions something I wasn't aware of because I don't watch much TV nor do I keep up with popular news except when I'm reading magazine covers in the grocery line----that Opra featured his book a couple of years ago, apparently, and he is (or perhaps was, as such phenomena go) quite the rage. That in itself would have been enough to keep me away from him (since I am dubious about anything that masses of people go in for), but, as I mentioned, I was unaware of all of this when I bought his book for its subtitle (Finding Your Life's Purpose) in an airport bookstore.

What is his message's appeal? Learning to separate oneself (one's ego) from one's "stories," reminds me of my own youthful efforts (inspired by Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda's fictions that I consumed earnestly at the time) to not identify too closely with the language that builds up in our heads nor in that of others about who we "are" or even who we are not, which can be an equally appealing stance, making us feel strong and powerful in our fist-raising against the "majority" or some other group perpetrating what we perceive as wrong.

Yet Tolle reminds us to get out of our stories and to live in the present moment, to BE. Stop the incessant talking in our heads, the repetitious droning, and notice what is here, now. Experience it fully, bodily. Breathe deeply. Be open to possibility (rather than always defining it and thereby limiting it). Release yourself from the illusion that you have a future (since one can only truly experience the present; even when one remembers a past event, its memory is re-envisioned, and changed, in one's present mind).

I don't think it's "transcendence" he's proposing but total being, unless you understand his recommendation to release yourself from the mind's chatter as "transcending" the mind. He mentions four primary states-----sleep, dreaming, normal awareness (in which we are thinking and telling stories), and this state of more-than-awareness. This state is similar to that of an infant or of an animal who appears to be entirely present and unjudgmental, yet since it is accomplished by one who is learning to silence the endless mental storytelling, it's different from those who do not have words (and different from those who are ill, suffering from dementia and stranded in an eternal present moment filled with confusing pieces of stories, swirling incomprehensibly).

And I can't imagine that he proposes we remain in such a state, only that we are able to achieve it, to add this dimension of being to our awareness and to experience its many benefits to ourselves and to others.

Clearing

2009-08-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

Clearing away clutter in our study this morning, I came across a packet of old photographs and report cards my mother had given me some time ago, and discovered one of my favorites among them.

The excitement I felt as a brave four-year-old climbing atop a pony for the first time I can feel even now, fifty-one years later. How many suburban children of my generation knew this pleasure, made more real in its photographic commemoration?

Seeing our yard in Baton Rouge also brings back vivid memories of going outside to play in the morning, returning at lunch for fuel, and eagerly zipping back outside to play some more, digging with a spoon in dirt, making mudpies, exploring the ditches for tadpoles and frogs, stirring the street's hot asphalt bubbles with a stick, running back to the house to plead for a nickel to buy ice cream from the passing musical truck, tagging along with my older brother, observing his games with his friends. We didn't have television yet.

My mother sometimes caught me after lunch, made me lie down to nap, and I can remember measuring my breath against hers, watching her fingers tap out (seemingly unconsciously) piano tunes on the bedspread, her eyes shut, wondering how I could possibly sleep, with Mother saying "Just be still for a while," and then finally taking her advice and falling into a slumber, riding into the sunset on my painted pony.

Sinkyone Wilderness

2009-08-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

A friend and I drove down to the Sinkyone Wilderness, about four hours from here, in Mendicino County, California, a lovely place to hike, with elk roaming about but no bears, only marauding chipmunks that chewed up part of a peach we left out on our picnic table. The herd is seen here at dusk, bedding down. After clicking on the photo to enlarge it, notice the nursery of small ears in a grouping, and then some adolescent ones in another huddle.

This is the vast view beyond the herd.

And here's a proud male, looking quite ridiculous to me, but clearly feeling powerful and bold in his leafy headdress, which he hopes will catch some strong female's eye. . .

The visitors' center there, where friends are hosts for a while this summer, is named for Needle Rock.

Part of me likes to see nature consuming industrial remains, another part feels this poor tree must have indigestion.

Movie-Watching Again

2009-08-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT is a rich, beautiful film, full of the sadness of a life lived fully yet coming to its end, in contrast with that of a young person trying to find a way to live. (It's based on a novel by British author Elizabeth Taylor, which I've not read but plan to.)

I'm at the odd mid-point in life ("odd" only because I'm in it and if we pretend for a moment to view it linearly with an assumed quota of years), a tipping point of sorts, moments of youthful yearnings juxtaposed with longer periods of dealing with my own demise, and so this movie made me tearful as I considered the poignancy of the unexpected and undeserved generosity of relative strangers.

Who ever thinks of strangers as generous. Instead, people tend to fear those they don't know, ever believing the weird media accounts to be indicative of the entirety of humanity (except ourselves, of course). When a kindness is shown, it's inspiring to us all.