Thoughts and actions of one who is trying to extricate herself from the "entrails of the intellect" and to live authentically, continually putting on and peeling off, as befits our natural selves (though living in a mostly unnatural culture)
In one of the e-mails I receive (and frequently only glance at because sometimes I'm too curious for my own good and get overwhelmed by a superabundance of information, not to mention more books to buy and stack up guiltily around me), I accidentally caught the title of a piece----something like "Using the Common Cold to Practice Dying," by Stephen Levine (I looked it up for the link but haven't read it and may not) and it's been naggingly on my mind ever since.
First, I laughed out loud at the title, later chuckling to myself over it. How perfect----and how true----that the common cold might be used as an experiment in immersing oneself in a kind of study of dying: the stuffy nose and yucky stuff clogging up nose and eyes and ears, the itchy throat, the watery eyes, the coughing and sneezing. Feeling as if one cannot breathe or sense anything clearly is surely a kind of analog of death.
Then floated up the memory of my father's and grandmother's faces just after their deaths: bones beneath stretched and yellowed, translucent, waxy skin. Who was once there now hovering elsewhere, for the moment, then the void created by their no longer being present.
Then came the realization that I'm not afraid of dying so much as I am of living.
And that, I presume, is one good reason for this practice (and other similar ones): to learn to live by facing the suffering we carry with us (and for others) with more courage, more openness, more presence and acceptance of the inevitable and real (as opposed to our dreamed-up wished-for worlds of desires that cause even more suffering), to continue to breathe (to inspire) as fully and freely as possible until we are no longer able.
I often awaken with a start these days (and my dreams, sadly, go flying out, unremembered) with a feeling of urgency, as if I've forgotten to do something and time is running out. And so I go looking for a reason for this feeling, sometimes finding one that makes a kind of sense to me, or sometimes just taking a deep breath, then another, and feeling my body relax, no need to make up a story for the feeling, no need to urgently do anything.
As we camped this past weekend, I experienced a similar feeling of urgency when I woke in that cramped bed and wondered How can one know the difference between a premonition and merely anxiety. . . .Only in the follow-up, I suppose, because when we drove home, I was relieved to see that our house hadn't burned, though that's what had come to my mind. (And I later recognized that this feeling/thought was almost a wish----a desire to clear away everything superfluous.)
Morning rituals these days find me in front of the fire, sipping coffee, Mauser-cat in my lap and Kipper-dog in the chair beside me, as I read our tiny, thrice-weekly newspaper (taking me all of ten minutes or less, usually), and then from my laptop reading e-mail (mostly deleting junk; personal ones are, sadly, more and more rare), and finally, some blogs, which always inspire me in some way and somehow anchor me, help me feel more rooted in the present moment.
This morning, it was enough for me to be reminded of how I LOVE poetry (including my own tinkering)----with thanks to Suki----and to honor those feelings I have and acknowledge their connection to Earth and the Whole (thank you, Peggy). Sometimes our feelings are like seeds, and we don't know what they are until much later. . . . Patience (not often one of my virtues)!
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
On the other hand, FEAR tells us to run away! Only fools run toward fear. . . right? But then we see the ubiquitous (at least to those of us who watch such films) image of the lone warrior running at her opponents, impossibly outnumbered, yet defeating them with a cool ease we watchers wish we could have. . . .
How we love to define, to attempt to FIX ourselves in identity. In part, this is our natural tendency toward belonging. At some point when I was about to retire from full-time employment, I found myself desperately grasping at straws of identity, wondering who the heck I AM (without a job, living in a new place without any family or friends but my husband). I took the Myers-Briggs (INFP), began to read more astrology (Sagittarius), tipped into numerology (22), the tarot (The Fool), and simultaneously fought against Major Depressive Disorder and constipation!
For me, more than finding comfort in belonging to a certain group, it seems I have enjoyed playing the iconoclast because regardless of what I learn and experience, instead of walling myself in, I see my fist raised to walls. What is this fist? Anger? Rebellion? Stubbornness? Fear?
How is it that this grandmother can watch a film like DRIVE and not feel absolutely ruined by its over-the-top violence? True, the main character (played by a young actor I enjoy watching, Ryan Gosling, thus my willingness to hang in to the end of this movie, especially since I'd first watched IDES OF MARCH) seems to have a kind of moral code that I admire, yet the character is also involved----indirectly at first----with the Mafia: not so admirable. Yet I still remember the Mother Bear rising in me when my daughter was small and helpless. Isn't this a similar impetus?
Where is this going? I don't really know. I just noticed how often the strictures of identity have burdened me throughout my life because no matter how we choose to define (or not define) ourselves, something remains, like swirling wine in a sniffer and watching the little legs streaking down the glass, and somehow I always want to name the remains, which inevitably leads to judgment and comparisons, often causing me to silence myself----a kind of preemptive act of avoidance, maybe. Or, perhaps it's affirming that life is continually unfixed and unfolding.
And. . . I like trying on different hats, just to see how they feel. Maybe I've decided that The Fool fits me, but even writing that (and allowing it to stay here) makes my heart clench with fear. THIS, in part, is what I mean by "running toward fear."
Part of my basic personality is to move toward that which I fear. This tendency takes me on adventures that others may or may not recognize as such, but I feel the pressure from within as fully as if I were facing a dragon, and I seem to need these adventures on a regular basis. Sometimes reading (or watching movies) about others' adventures helps----that is, it clears some sort of pent-up energy within me.
The ability to change (chameleon-like) in the moment, depending on one's surroundings, isn't often valued in our culture, and is sometimes considered downright despicable, as if the person just can't make up her mind. And yet, in my recent attempts at practicing some of the precepts of mindfulness, of attempting to be as fully present as possible with myself and the world, I wonder whether these actions are sometimes construed as merely indecisiveness. I like to experience (if only in my mind or by putting myself in proximity----as the proverbial fly on the wall) both sides of the fence, in addition to balancing between (yet I've always hated "wishy-washiness").
This is how I learn, I suppose, a kind of tasting the air (rather like snakes do) yet none of the "learning" seems to stay with me forever because I want to keep testing myself in the fresh air of a new day, a new place. In fact, I seem to have given up on any concept of "forever" as it might apply to WHO I AM. The idea of being FIXED in any mode scares the heck out of me. And yet, I once believed that this is what aging meant: that we become an accretion of thoughts and ideas and experiences. . . that this is our DEPTH; this is what our MEANING is (and the converse would be a skimming shallowness of being). But that can feel so heavy.
I don't think this way now. The labels (and their accompanying judgments) aren't important to me anymore. BEING is. Ah hah: The Incredible Lightness of Being!
Potted orange tree at a friend's in Louisiana
Tiny anole (we just call them "lizards") on a limb of the potted orange
Up close and personal (and if this little one stayed for a bit longer on this branch, she'd turn brown)
"Petting the dragon" (an iguana) on a vacation in Costa Rica in 2007
From http://zanirawfood.blogspot.com, this morning I happened upon (in a link titled "Grace" from this wonderful blog) a lovely, inspiring film showing a woman who has been fortunate to age differently from my dear mother. She attributes her good fortune to "Simplicity, work, and enjoyment," but please watch here: http://vimeo.com/user9184074/videos.
Such beauty and inspiration shared freely.
And I remind myself of the beauty I have been privileged to witness thus far this year in my former home state and current one. I am grateful.
I never know what's going to get me moving. . . what winds will blow through me, what breath will fill me to overflowing a little here on this electronic page.
This morning, I experimented (via Sukipoet's blog) with posting a little recording here (and subsequently deleted it), after creating a youthful cartoon version of myself (though her hair is grey, like mine now) using Voki.
Having begun reading ANAM CARA, A BOOK OF CELTIC WISDOM by John O'Donohue, I was revisited by my young self that tends to hold closely and dearly to books and music that my heart finds so true that it feels they came from me, somehow. It's a kind of fearsome and fearful feeling in which I am both overly protective of a kind of dearness I feel toward the (in this instance) book (and thus am almost afraid to read it, for fear of losing this sense too soon) while at the same time I feel almost evangelical toward sharing its beauty.
Holding close, letting go. . . this ever-turning cycle of living.
First, the Mother opens the proferred box of chocolates, distracted. . .
as the daughter works to clear away piles of stuff. . .
finally to gain breathing space from beneath. . .
Saturday, February 11, 2012
If I called every day, every hour before I finally arrive, would she ever remember? What perversity in me wonders this; what dense desire to control, to impose my will upon her, does this question expose?
"When will you be here?" she asks for the third time in our two-minute conversation.
"When you see me," I say, and then hear my frustration fully exposed in her silence before I correct myself again and quickly say, "Valentine's Day, Mother. You'll see me on Valentine's Day. Tuesday."
The apparent irony in my own practice of mindfulness, of working at being more fully present, in contrast with my mother's mindless presence as she's stricken with the disease of the Living Dead, doesn't make me smile. Instead, I intend to find some simple ways to bring light and space into her home while I'm visiting there----clearing away clutter, opening windows, bringing in flowers, sitting with her and listening, trying not to get hooked into her bitterness or my own impatience. I must remind myself of my intentions over and over again because I know the darkness of the reality of being there can be dense enough to blind me, heavy enough to feel like drowning.
Maybe I'll be able to tell myself "It's just another story; let it go" when I hear her distorted tales and my own versions clamoring to "correct" hers. I can take a walk when I'm no longer able to bear the feeling of being trapped in that house. I can remind myself that this could be the last time I see my mother alive.
I've discovered another place I feel safe to walk alone with Kipper: the Lake Earl Wildlife Conservation area, a five-minute drive from our house, where there are sand dunes, lakes, the ocean, and mountains on the skyline----not to mention plenty of birds (great blue herons, standing like self-important Baptist preachers in their pulpits; all manner of ducks; eagles----of those I've seen) and river otters (though I did not spot any myself).
This is also an ideal place to collect the little reeds from which a Brigid's cross can be made, as I've done---in honor of Imbolc/Candlemas.
Brigid's Cross (on top of the Tide Log, essential information for walking on beaches here, since signs warn "Never turn your back on the ocean!" because "sneaker waves" have pulled too many from their feet and to their deaths)
Lake Earl Wildlife Conservation area
And it is this walking (and sitting, and lying on) the land that is helping me to finally begin to feel more at home here. . . .
Lately I've been struggling, focused on what's wrong in my life and how I feel, but today, I awakened to this sky and felt it all spread widely like those gold and salmon clouds into a glorious sense of what's REAL, of what's hopeful, of what's possible, and despite my sensitivity to living in this small economically troubled town and of the sad history of this land (taken from the Tolowa and Yurok natives for its gold and timber), it's also quite beautiful, and I can appreciate that, too----regardless.
View this morning from our front porch
My best friend, Kipper, at Pebble Beach
The view from Pebble Beach (with a Coast Guard helicopter circling)
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
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. . .
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.
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.
Friday, December 9, 2011
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).
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!
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
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
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.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
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.
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.
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."
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
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.
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.
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).
Monday, September 26, 2011
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!
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.
"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
Thursday, September 1, 2011
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.
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.)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
