Perched on cliff's edge
overlooking clear aquamarine
water tinted by serpentine rocks
creating surface ripples,
writhing intertwining ropes,
or wrinkly skin from gentle wind,
I am grateful, yet hear, too,
my dog's uncomfortable whining---
like my own undertones
of insecurity---wanting change
yet fearful when it happens,
looking back to solid ground,
forgetting the freedom
of this edge and the clarity
of the overview,
the soothing hush of rushing water
just around the bend.

What an interesting journey life can be. . . and sometimes, just when I am wondering whether I've settled in for a while and nothing big's going to happen (and the old question "Is this what I really want" begins to haunt me again), my life is upended.

An early interest in the Simplicity movement back when I was working full time and setting up a big house and yard and buying clothes (to play the working game) kept me asking myself, with regularity, "Is this all there is?" (collecting stuff, eating out because there's no time to cook, never feeling I had enough time to BE). Of course, I knew it wasn't, which is part of what fueled my anger toward our culture, toward myself.

And now, I will have a chance to actually use what I know to be true (and what I've visualized through unexpected fires or simply walking away)----that sometimes it's good to clear away all of the extraneous stuff in order to make room for who we are now.

We finally received news from the Big Corporation that my husband has lost his job. We are fortunate that we were only four years away from planned solvency and his own retirement and that, even having to discard that plan, we can pay our debts and probably survive well enough on my little retirement earnings, though likely excluding health insurance, which is a concern. My studying Healing Touch and Reiki may have had more than an esoteric purpose.

We will be selling most of our possessions (and letting go of many more things we've been clinging to for too long----like college papers, like too many books and furniture), and then finding a small place in the country near the Smith River. Or so our plan goes now. 

Okay. I can do this. I think. After all, it's what I've been wanting, in many ways. I've been missing my pal, my husband. I've been hating the noise of the town. I've been wanting to try my dream of living with less in the country, gardening more and having more animals around.

So now----my husband's former sense of Responsibility----has been wrenched from his once-clinging hands, and we are released to live another dream, one with less security, fewer possessions, and a great deal more SPACE! Tipping over into elderhood is not necessarily a time of sitting on the porch and rocking away one's remaining years, checking off failing body parts one by one (please forgive me for being facetious).

Stay tuned if such adventures interest you, my dear handful of blogging friends.

Smith River, near Rock Creek Ranch

More Paradox and (with Advance Apologies) Too Many References

Lately I've been spending a great deal of time sitting (not in the sense of "meditating," though I'm doing some of that, too), teaching myself to crochet again (an idea that began with failure in being able to knit squares of any consistent size and then began to, ahem, hook me after seeing one of my favorite blogger's efforts at crocheting, along with wondering whether crocheting might be less painful to my arthritic hands), and bringing me in closer touch with my grandmother's spirit (she usually had a crochet project going and often had the television on, too) and my dear friend who crochets.

And so, I have watched what sometimes feels like too many Netflix movies (we no longer have TV) and documentaries, with my latest choice four DVDs (titled EARTH AT RISK, Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet) I purchased after we walked, with Kipper, to our tiny local bookstore downtown for a talk given by a friend and writer, Derrick Jensen.

So far, I almost always get very depressed after reading or seeing Derrick's work and usually feel overwhelmed and weighted down by the fast-talking layering upon layering of facts (the number of species continuing to die, women raped, in this deadly industrial civilization we live in) presented by him and writer-friend Lierre Keith.

But I will continue to watch these DVDs, which also include a talk by Arundhati Roy, among others, and to crochet (jury's still out on whether my hands are less-pained by crocheting than knitting).

This morning, though, in following what is often my routine of reading from blogs and munching on my breakfast, I came across a reference from another favorite blogger to Tara Branch's work (which I'm also still sampling from via my Kindle) and followed it to this lovely piece, which brought to mind another favorite song of mine that perfectly describes yet another paradox of life.

Are you out of breath? Please, read:

Alter Boy, by Rickie Lee Jones
A monk with a hard on in a lavender robe
That scratches his thighs for the height that he strode
As he follows a path filled with harried desire
And mimics his footsteps and sets his prayers on fire
Glad to have chosen that which left no choice
To sing without loving in a solitary voice
To observe with passion each careful denial
The protrusions which give my life meaning for a while
Sometimes I see you in embarrasing ways
You're brushing your teeth with licorice seeds
Standing too close, holding your clothes
Smiling at God, the meaning of life grows
No, no I'll never tell and I'll never know
What candles you light after the show
And I'll never tell and I'll never ask
The meaning of life after mass

The Paradox of Practice

I've clutched tightly the idea of "practice," repeated so faithfully through Buddhist texts, even though as a child, I avoided everything that demanded it, refusing to learn piano, and giving up if any smattering of competition entered into my choices (as when I began to learn the guitar but put it down when my older brother picked it up).

As an adult, to practice meant I'd released the idea of a goal, of any end in sight, and was simply focused on this moment. Just what I needed. Yet under that momentary pretense (that I have no goal), I do recognize the assumption that my life will "improve," as the practice will reveal through my own experience. If it does not, why would I continue to practice?

Yet as a child, it was the idea that "Practice makes perfect" that scared me, as I was quite aware of all my perceived imperfections, made even more clear through my dear young parents' efforts at childrearing and their own Christian upbringing, where humanity's imperfections are focused upon to greater reveal the need for a Patriarchal God. I decided I wanted nothing to do with that guarantee of failure.

Of course, "perfection" is a subjective term, as is all of language, I suppose. Dictionaries lend us some agreed-upon terms, but fluid language refuses to remain in those tomes, just as we humans cannot be contained by definitions.

The concept that we are perfect as we are (with all our imperfections), that "the kingdom of heaven is within you," is easier to believe when things are going well.

There is no tidy ending to these thoughts, but somehow, rereading the following makes me feel better:

The Five Remembrances

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

[a Buddhist chant, tr. Thich Nhat Hanh]

Shadow Self

Those two heart-shaped stones on my little alter are part of this year's theme for me, something I felt significant back in January at a Candlemas ritual: addressing my "shadow." At the time, I couldn't know what this would mean for me (though I've read enough Jung and others to understand the basics) or how it might play out over the year, or even why this presented itself as important.

Right now, the heart stones are being interpreted  rather literally. My heart's beating has become so irregular (it's had a skip that would show up occasionally for almost as long as I can remember) that I'd guess it's at least half the time. (And, yes, I have an appointment with a cardiologist on Friday.) But what this has made me aware of is how much I fear not being "myself," mostly healthy and able to do whatever I want. This fear is not only of aging and physical decline, but also of having to live in some reduced way (a possibility with heart conditions), as my father did after a stroke and then the cancer that finally killed him.

Others write eloquently about aging, and I'm grateful to read their perspectives, and to be reminded of my gratitude for what I have now.

But it is a practice not to "borrow trouble," to let "tomorrow take care of itself," and all those cliches that serve to remind us of what we know in our hearts to be true.

Those two imperfectly shaped hearts, one pink, one grey, both exist as different aspects of the same thing, just as my shadow is part of me. That shadow grew large and ominous as my granddaughter visited and I was confronted with aspects of my child-self I wasn't proud of, the child that learned to be hard and sarcastic, the one who shielded herself from her sensitive nature by pretending not to care, who would tauntingly say, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me," knowing I was lying, knowing that I'd choose broken bones any day. Eight was barely different from fifty-eight for a time as I looked down the well and felt as if I were falling in.

All the granddaughter seemed to want was the familiarity of home; she was homesick. And her grandmother? The same----comfort, stability, beauty, strength, freedom. Finding that within oneself, within the time and place we find ourselves, is no mean trick, and my own failures can become comical in their momentary drama ("You want to mock me? Let me mock you and see how you feel!"), though sadness prevails. I want to love this imperfect self, this whole self, but my tendency is still to turn her away with disappointment, to point the finger away from myself, to try to forget that it is I who mocks myself while purporting to work for wholeness.

It's not fun to catch yourself lying to yourself.

A Walk in the Redwoods

We took a Sunday hike in Redwood National Forest, not far from home, with a cloud fog lingering close, large loud droplets hitting leaves around us as if against cardboard, the occasional birdcall from on high adding another layer of sound----but I'm not mentioning the nearby summer (much of it tourist) traffic from Highway 101, which we walked a good distance to muffle.

Temperatures felt warmer, but the car's thermometer registered 55 at close to noon, when we began our walk at the Damnation Creek trailhead, which also leads to where Old Highway 101 intersects, an easier stroll than the continuation to the ocean on the other trail (which is also lovely, but Jon was lugging his tripod and on a more "serious" photo expedition today). 

The duff trails in these old growth forests have a silencing effect and walking on them feels like you're walking on a huge body, on someone's chest.

Drawn back and forth from the large overviews to the closer ones, I love these little trampoline webs but didn't spot the spider who lives here.

Columbia lilies are the main reason we hiked today; they're in full bloom in dense numbers along the busy highway but not as prolific in the forest. But it's much safer to get close to them here.

I'd just wondered where all the banana slugs were. . . 

This photo doesn't capture what fascinated me about this group of ferns: their thin dark lines of stalks sketched boldly within their lovely green fronds.

Nettle's blooming. . . 

A large maiden-hair fern with their beautifully shaped leaves. . . 

Fallen columbia lily petal curled among duff. . . 

The more serious photographer I frequently left behind. . . 

. . . as I held my little camera beneath the subjects. . . 

. . . the lilies underneath their foggy canopy of redwoods . . . 

Dewy spiderwebs catching a breeze as gentle as a breath. . . 

. . . and redwood sorrel's green palate punctuated by a glare of white flower,

their purplish undersides reflecting against sticks, turning pinkish.

I think this pink, lavender, and white flower is a type of vetch.

As we began the return trip a couple of hours later, the sun began to break through, blue skies to shine, and our day retained the polish of fog against trees, of clear forest breathing.

Getting Out

Summer's buzzing energy

pulls me out and up, or

skimming the ground low

with my dog's short legs

close to warm rocks and 

steady ground.

Not the intruding swarm

of anxiety, imagined loss

exhaled, nor the desire to attach

to a hand, the balloon

tethered, held tight----

but the one that was let go,

bobbing against the

roof-tops, gingerly touching

that sharp old TV antenna

and miraculously not popping,

moving out of sight 

along with the anxiety

and my wanting to know

what’s next.

Outside the labyrinth in Ashland, OR

Wild sweet peas, another one of my favorites

Looks like the dog's driving, but it's an old Mini, straight from Britain. 

THE WHITE SNAKE, our Sunday afternoon's entertainment

Why? Why Not?

As my mother continues to decline, I find myself using her as an object lesson (and I'm aware of how awful this makes me sound). A few years ago, I thought that she might be more fortunate than her father, who became paranoid and violent toward the end of his life, that she might find herself "merely" silly, eccentric, and harmless as the disease progressed. This was not to be, however, though she is not the imposing figure her father was and so not as frightening physically, her verbal barbs nevertheless come sharp at her two children, now her enemies.

And so I recognize her----and our----continual tendency to set up opposing forces in our minds----someone, anyone or anything, to blame for our suffering, as if naming blame can somehow allow us more control over our lives, can allow us to fix, to correct, to alleviate our suffering. Yet taking this one step further, we can see that assigning blame changes nothing for the better, it only demonizes the blamed one, projecting onto the Other what we ourselves need to look at, to sit with, to heal from.

My brother and I both felt we were disappointments to our parents, that no matter what we did, it was never good enough. Of course, they felt the same toward their parents, and we----as parents----likely caused our own children to feel this way at some point. I can't tell you how many times my mother has told me that my brother "never" visits her (he lives within a half-mile of her), even after my brother tells me that he was just there. Mother simply can't get enough of him, it seems, and so she focuses on the lack, not what has been given, especially in her Alzheimer's state, when she simply can't remember what just happened. (And Mother tells my brother stories of how I disappoint her when she speaks to him.)

How often do we walk about focusing on what's wrong rather than living the life that we have at this moment, sipping the warm tea, watching the clouds clear away, noticing how green everything looks after the rain? Being aware of these tendencies allows us to wake up, at least for a moment, and see that our thoughts are simply that, and that reality doesn't have to be a constant churning in the stormy darkness of what isn't but can be those infinite clear blue skies, too.

Mont St. Michel's top spire 

Meanwhile. . .

"Rock" Songs ;-)

Two songs that I hum, sing, whistle to the rocks at Pebble Beach----the first, from my teenage idols (and I still love them), The Incredible String Band, expresses what has been a longtime practice of mine, focusing on "the moment," a theme that has revisited in various forms and names (and thus, I am in great need of the lesson!), and the second, is a song I learned last year from a shaman in Peru. The rocks love them both, though I understand that many will view this belief as sounding a bit silly. So be it.

A Walk to Pebble Beach (in our small town)

After a long rainy winter here, summer is finally arriving, and yesterday----with its temperatures in the low sixties, sunshine, and little wind----Kipper and I heard the siren call of Pebble Beach, where he enjoys the feel of warm sand and rocks on his rough pugs, and I get on my hands and knees, sometimes stretching out on my stomach across the rocks (lolling about, I think, just like the sea lions I can hear barking in the distance), to hum, whistle, and sing to them, as I sift and sort, feeling myself at points to be soaring above them, a sharp-eyed bird, at other times as if I am one of the rocks myself, asking to be singled out for my light, and to join with other agates. 

Yes. All that and more goes through this playful brain.

And then I recognize the Collector, the One Who Never Has Enough.

And I say to the rocks, "One day, I will release you all back to the ocean. . . even the river rocks I brought from Louisiana." 

Because this has been one of my common themes----going to the beach for agates----I thought I'd document it for you, my friends.

At the top of the stairs, we've parked our car, and Kipper impatiently tugs at the leash.

One more set of steps. . . (which, when we return, I take two at a time)

At the bottom, we survey the scene. Tide's out.

What a day.

We walk and look. . . Sometimes larger agates show themselves here.

But we like to relax without worrying about the ocean catching us, so we go nearer the cliff to look.

Kipper's smiling. . . 

My hand's there to show the relative size of the agates here.  Can you see their appeal? Yet it's not merely their clarity; agates have lovely lines and oftentimes EYES in them, or even entire COSMOS---swirls and lovely universes.

What stories we can make up to justify our attachments! ;-)

The Unseen

I've been a wishful skeptic for most of my life, always highly influenced by what I'm reading or watching, enjoying trying on the lives and points of view of others in an effort to discover my own preferences. After all, how can I know unless I've tried it myself?

As a child, I didn't observe anyone I associated with (these were not really "friends") who went to my little Baptist church being any better or worse off after baptism (aka: giving your heart to Jesus), but I also was told (and partially believed) that if one didn't do this by a certain age, then hell might be the outcome. So, I finally gave it a try, had a very cleansing and dramatic moment of feeling quite pure coming out of the baptismal waters, but I also noticed the feeling didn't last. My mother used to say that I could only be "good" for so long, and then I worked my way into deserving (i.e., by being a typical kid who couldn't always hold her tongue) another whipping (i.e., she hit my legs with my father's belt while holding on to my arm because I tried to get away). Supposedly this whipping "cleansed" me of my desire to "talk back" for a time. That didn't last either.

Of course, I do also have innate tendencies: I love the magical, being solitary in Nature (capitalized to denote I am recognizing my preference for what some consider to be the magical side of nature, the nature in which we communicate with the unseen and plants and rocks and trees and rivers), testing my intuition in various ways (predicting radio tunes, actually seeing someone I thought about, following synchronicity), and traveling.

My "wishful skepticism" also translates into a tendency to wishful thinking: I wish my mother didn't have Alzheimer's; I wish I could help her. I wish my husband didn't hate his job. I wish my daughter and granddaughter lived closer. I wish I didn't get depressed. These wishes go round and round through my mind, even when I don't realize it, when I'm not conscious of it. Wishful thinking is my bane.

Combine these tendencies and various series of synchronous events, and I go to Peru, alone, hoping to be permanently cured of depression. Before that, I traveled alone in France in the hope of becoming "healed" of fears that have been holding me back forever, and in between, practicing Holotropic Breathwork and experiencing fascinating visions of Truth in more hopes of becoming even more deeply  "healed" (preferably PERMANENTLY).

Extraordinary experiences are downright fun. I've never been afraid to try out what appeals to my heart----at least in what I perceive as "safe" levels. I'm no daredevil, and I don't have the money to experiment with everything I might desire.

But I also have learned (over and over, from childhood) that my greatest challenge in living is in THIS MOMENT, this present, ordinary moment. And so, I have been steered over the past few years, especially, toward meditation, and, more and more, the study and practice of Buddhism (which, in a Netflix production I recently watched of Columbia University professor Robert Thurman, is rightly defined as a method of learning).

Even as a child, I wondered about who this "I" is, and noted its continual changing. As a teenager and in my early twenties, I was taken by Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan's wisdom (and his noting that telling one's personal history can cause others to believe they'd "captured" you), and also by my own experience as I got older that such personal stories just get longer. . . and more tiresome to update (and listen to). Besides, I thought, it's the current "me" that I am, not necessarily the ones from yesterday, and I am not merely the sum of those stories.

What am I trying to say? In part, I am wondering (again) what to DO with my understanding. I am impatient, clearly, and got a good internal chuckle from a blog entry about such (typically Western) impatience this morning.

Reading IN THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS by Gabor Mate' is illuminating (and disturbing---in a good way). But I am also prone to thinking that if I read just one more book (as they pile up around me, no time to both live and read them all!) I will know what to do next . . .

So as it turns out, this is merely a mixed-up mish-mash of what's swimming in my head and heart right now, and perhaps should never be posted, yet here it is, evidence of my attempts to "evolve" (doesn't that make me sound noble ;-), and wondering, too, how the disturbed mix in the kaliedoscope (or, in a neat play on words someone made) kaliedoscape will settle again.

And, of course, it won't be a permanent settling. . . as there's always (until we die?) another tap that occurs, either from without or within.

Our little private (visually, anyway) yard space

Years May Go By*

There are two agates (at least) in this photo; can you see them?

I move from shadows into light with anticipation, and I also notice fear, fear of loss of light. Thus, I miss full enjoyment of the light as I fall into anticipated shadows. I think that I am "preparing" myself for darkness, yet an onlooker would only see me gloomily sitting inside while sunshine and blue skies gild the nearby.

Walking along a gravel road in the evening after a rain, puddles can look like shadows, shadows like puddles, and at a swift pace, only in the stepping does one discover the difference.

Yes. Only in the doing, the experiencing, can we understand more fully.

I play Mahjong on my computer, a relaxing, simple game of matching tiles with Chinese symbols on them that my brother introduced me to several years ago (and I remember thinking how inane it seemed, wondering how he could waste time with it). And then I realized while playing one day that THIS is what life is like. 

We think we are at the end. . . that no other possibilities for movement exist. . . and then, we see one more tile, turn it over, and everything opens up, everything changes. 

We can never see everything or be fully "prepared" for what's to come. And in this Mystery is much of the joy that is life, and, of course, some of the suffering.

* I'm humming Rickie Lee Jones' tune, "On Saturday Afternoons 1963," beautiful and melancholy.

Human Nature

Yosemite, like all national parks near enough to major population centers, has a high number of that population visiting it. We'd never been, but our research told us that the large crowds wouldn't start arriving until after our dates there yet wildflowers would be in abundance and snows likely wouldn't impede our explorations either. So that was the balance we sought.

What we found were larger crowds than we like, contrails scratching up an otherwise pristine blue sky above the fantastic granite mountains (along with sonorous passings), and a reminder that it's difficult to leave preconceptions behind. Ansel Adams' photos spoiled us. But Yosemite is, indeed, a photographer's dream, and people are "useful" for scale and may be Photoshopped out, otherwise.

These descriptions relate the irony of how I typically look at Nature (capital "N"), and having since read an article in ORION magazine ("False Idyll" by J.B. MacKinnon), I'm more aware than ever of the contrasts between our expectations of nature and its current reality. I want to be alone with Nature, but I also don't want to be eaten by wild animals.

Driving through the park, often in a line of steel-encased vehicles, we were reminded that "Speeding kills bears" by signs that were placed (we later read) where a bear had been hit by a car. At one point, a poor coyote stood beside the road and we simply stopped (on this mountainside, there was no shoulder to pull over onto), cameras clicking out the window, until the person in the car behind us began blowing the horn (important meeting to attend!), forcing us to move on, the coyote cringing and looking further confused by all the commotion, its one injured (or mange-stricken) ear crimped over.

And so after almost a week of attempting to avoid crowds and taking photographs of famously beautiful points (El Capitan and Half Dome), we returned home to our much less populated and equally beautiful wild place, happy that it's less convenient and farther away from any major population center. At least the photos look peaceful.

Old Camellias

Blooms past prime,
clenched fists forced open
by relentless winds,
blown from stems
clinging to bony branches,
pink shadow of petals
evidence
the continuing beauty
of letting go.

Blessing Ourselves

As I am able to feel the heavy blankets of depression begin to lift away from me, I realized (again) when I came across a passage in Jack Kornfield's A PATH WITH HEART that it is difficult for me to love myself. Even writing that I don't hurts me because I know and believe the truism that one cannot truly love others without self-love.

How I keep coming back to this confused state is circuitous and (perhaps) began in a childhood of mixed messages from well-meaning Baptists who taught we are born in sin, along with teenage Romantic literary notions of the tortured and suicidal artist, and, lately, heart-felt but excessive focus on all the suffering in the world, all of which can spin my mind down dark, dead-end alleyways (who am I to deserve the blessings I enjoy?). . . As if logic has the answers.

And so, these days I repeat the mantra from Kornfield and use it to bless myself so that I may once again bless others:

May I be filled with loving-kindess.

May I be well.

May I be peaceful and at ease.

May I be happy.

May you love yourselves also.

The Unique Is Universal

I often don't see it coming, but when I look back, it seems obvious: the focus on dark subjects, the frequent bouts of crying, disinterested in doing anything, and then asking, "What's the point?"----answered by a long, dead, silence.

That's common for how depression sneaks up on me, and though I do everything I know to avoid it, sometimes I fall in the pit, regardless----and my pride preceded me this time, too, as I enjoyed bragging to myself that I took no medications.

I have an aversion to thinking that I'm "covering up" anything, not facing an issue that seems important to my "personal growth"----regardless of how difficult it might be. And so, I stick out the pain longer, perhaps, than I should----for my own good health, especially since it's suicidal thoughts that are the trigger for me to ask for help with this life-long disease. As I've learned lately through my somewhat flighty "research" (watching THIS EMOTIONAL LIFE, a PBS special, and then following up with some Google questions about whether depression actually damages one's brain [yes], and also whether antidepressants can heal that damage [yes]), it seems that medication really isn't so bad on occasion. (I realize I sound ridiculously naive saying this, but I have an aversion to corporate pharmaceuticals and easy answers.) And so I swallow the pill and wait to feel better.

Today, I am grateful for breakfast fruit with homemade granola again, and the rain that's returned doesn't make me climb back in bed.

But the sun shone yesterday, when my husband and I attended a day-long meditation retreat at a nearby home on the beautiful Smith River, we participants holding to "noble silence," while the teacher spoke or we listened to Pema Chodron on CD, and I was reminded----again----of the truth that the unique is universal----oxymoronic, as many such truths are----that sharing my individual stories isn't at all "pointless" but worthy, too. . . because I rarely question others' sharing, only my own, it seems.

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

Reading from another writer's posts (from 2009) (here, I reference her as "the beautiful blog-writer") I recognize synchronicity on several levels, feel the curtains part, the breeze blowing in, and I am grateful for the feel of the sun----even if it's only on my back, even if I know now that in this place where I have lived almost four years, people like to say, "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes," and the sun will likely be covered again. But that's okay. At least it's not perpetually HOT, as it was in Louisiana.

Feeling as if I'm on this sort of threshold----as I described to two of my older, wiser friends in our weekly journaling meeting recently, when I said one of my favorite words is "liminal"----returns me to a sense of mystery. I feel my vision pulling back, back, back, as if I'm a bird flying very high, surveying the land with a soaring sense of freedom. But to get there, it seems I must first have been trapped for a while.

THIS is how it happens for me: I feel stuck, feet muddy and gathering more as I trudge along heavily, beginning to wonder whether that's me hanging from the rafters in the dark attic. No. No, it's not me----at least, it's not how my life will end, I don't think. And I am not at the end now, even though some days it's felt as much, as if I think I am preparing myself, which (of course) we all are, in some sense, each day.

Reading apocalyptic fiction (and nonfiction), in part, has brought me to this place. Margaret Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE and AFTER THE FLOOD, and now Kunstler's WORLD MADE BY HAND, and THE WITCH OF HEBRON, watching THE HUNGER GAMES at our local cinema. Why this theme? Chance? It wasn't purposeful but it has been synchronous.

Saying what's in my heart, on my mind, isn't easy. Words are more like constellations scattered, and when I've read someone who's said it (what I am feeling and thinking) so beautifully (as the referenced blog-writer did), I wonder "What's the point of my trying to say it any differently? What's the POINT of my additional (small) pebble thrown into the pond?"

Well, the point is, I am curious about what's down in the depths of me, stirring, and if I don't dip down there and attempt to put words to some of it, I feel I'll lose my muddy mind! Of course, that's a bit of melodrama, leftovers from my teenage self.

More than melodrama, I am looking for what the beautiful-blogwriter calls, "forbearance" now. Why that word makes me want to cry, to weep with sad joy, is in part because it's a word of my grandmother's, a word that once would have made me scream and shake my fist at the sky (I do not WANT to forbear, I'd say, I want to CHANGE, to do things differently, which really meant I see now----I do not want to get old and die), yet now I remember, again, how Mamaw learned forbearance in her aging, in her self-enforced positivity and naivete.

I feel all screamed out (and, if anyone's reading this, it's not [usually] a literal screaming, my neighbors in particular would be happy about). Screaming doesn't help much most times, and though it may appear interesting in a young person, it's rather frightening coming from a 58-year-old, not to mention exhausting. I think I shall try forbearance. And I can only hope that my dear friends and loved ones, near and far, are able to use it with me.