Sparkling Lotus-land

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I keep a separate blog devoted to my various experiments and work in progress.  Click here to visit! Scroll down to view the most recent post on this all-purpose blog.

butterfingers

Whups. I just accidentally deleted the post I published during the wee hours this morning.  Just came online to add a note that I'll be putting most of my time into filling orders this week.  Am then taking a long weekend for some quality family time.  See you on the flipside.

good companions

Every fall when the flowering exotics first come inside I feel a bit crowded here in my writing alcove.  It's the sunniest spot in the house and so a lot of the plants need to share the space with me during winter months.  The bigger they grow the more of an adjustment it is for me once they come inside.  But by this point of the late fall I'm re-calibrated.  The plants' company is enjoyable and comforting.

As I was typing the previous paragraph a huge bank of rain clouds rolled back in.  So I'm glad I was sitting here at the desk during our brief glimpse of brilliant sunlight.   Since last week I've been nursing a viral infection.  The past couple of days have been the most debilitating.  This is the first time since Tuesday when I've gotten beyond feeding the birds and lurching from one resting place to another. 

An un-retouched lens flare has me marveling afresh about the serendipitous placement of such things.  Of course there are those of us who often elect to perceive the colored lights beyond pragmatic explanation.  The magenta and violet healing rays hold many properties that feel especially useful and timely right now.  So I'm smiling and feeling more upbeat in terms of what's going on and how I'll be able to roll with it most gracefully.

I'm slowly catching up on personal email - patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.  If you're waiting for delivery of a flower essence order start watching your mailbox early next week!

inevitability

I love terra cotta - as a medium and as a color.  One of my favorite things about the later fall season is the way this color abounds in the natural landscape here in new england.  This year has been unseasonably warm and the dead leaves are lingering on the trees.  I've had plenty of time to relish the final understated spectrum of their color changes.

I don't make a secret of the fact that I have to put some concentrated effort into appreciating the colder seasons of the year.  But, in this particular part of the world, those seasons are inevitable. On today's walk I was thinking about that word; remembering how I learned it from a cousin of mine when he was newly returned from Vietnam.  We sometimes took walks together and I caught myself wishing I'd had a chance to share some of my favorite wandering spots of the here & now.

Although I have a very well developed set of crisis-handling skills, they don't include dealing with personal grief in a timely manner.  It's a particular (recurring) life challenge that tends to put me in deer-in-the-headlights mode and, in that context, I've felt myself slammed to hell and back by many a metaphorical Mack truck.  Frequently I don't know much about what I was feeling and trying to tell myself about my emotions until I've reached the sane, safe distance of retrospect.  Thus it sometimes feels as if I miss my cousin more actively with each passing year - especially when I hear a certain song he liked to sing during unselfconscious moments. It was something he favored as a background for a chore he was doing or an antidote for a boring stretch of road he driven hundreds of times.

This is a homey, intimate detail I noticed about him so vividly that it's become my cornerstone memory of him.  I wrote the previous paragraph with full intention of linking to song lyrics.  But then I hesitated.  It seems better to leave room for whatever song may remind you of someone special from your own life.  Somebody who had immeasurable patience with you.  They went places and did things you could never adequately imagine and you both knew that.  Yet they answered your questions about where they'd been with honesty and steady, compassionate eye contact.

In high school I imagined myself in love with someone who liked to sing the same song.   For them it was an over-the-top performance piece.  Their voice lilted and lingered over different words and sections of the melody than my cousin's low key version of the same tune.  When I think of those differences it's almost like I'm remembering two different songs.   And I've noticed that whenever I sing it myself (usually on walks, when I'm thinking of my cousin) I always stress one particular line that all but recedes when I consider my memories.  Or hear the popularized recording in a movie soundtrack or drifting out of somebody's car radio tuned to an oldies station.  In that version the phrase that means so much to me is hardly noticeable. 

My hands wavered over the keyboard as I considered ending this post before I'd gotten to the bombshell lurking in its uncharted depths.  But why bother to come back to this blog if I'm going to keep things tidy and sanitized.  There was a third person of special significance to me who frequently sang that song.  Today is the anniversary of their suicide.  And, when I woke to the realization that this was one inevitable thing the day meant to me, I felt the same primal shift of unease I feel every year.  My heartbeat was a wild salmon intent to swim upstream to the its source of origin.  And I thought what I always think: I didn't see it coming. 

Later in the morning, when I had talked myself past the sense of frozen disarray, I took my customary walk.  When I looked up at the empty bird's nest I had a powerful moment of helpless recollection. Because I didn't see it coming.  I can't even guess how often I've wished with all my might that I could have known and done something - anything - to keep someone safe when they didn't know the meaning of the word on their own terms.  

It doesn't matter what I know to be true of suicide's mechanics.  Obviously anything I could have known or done would not have prevented an outcome beyond my control.   And so my desire to have known and done something that defied all odds and obstacles is an impossible wish.   Knowing this is crucial but it doesn't make my sadness and regret any less potent.  I took a picture of the nest to remind myself:  we can only do our level best.  Whatever that may mean will shapeshift from moment to moment.  Inevitably.

the deep passage

Truth be told:  I have greatly enjoyed the past two months of blog silence.  It's representative of a rather extensive time-out I've allowed myself; the better to hear/know that Self as changes in all sorts of intentional and previously unimagined ways.   This coincided with a time in the year's natural order when I'm always very conscious of an energetic spiral that moves inward and then back out in a pattern of unwinding.  And that's what I've been doing:  unwinding various layers of buried tension, carefully crafted assumptions and presumptions, intentional focus that's outlived its organic lifespan, and so forth and so on.

When I decided to indulge in a growing need for more (meaning of a higher quality...) solitude it was very clear to me that I would have to be disciplined and self-compassionate enough to heed the rhythm of my own inner time clock rather than falling back on patterns of withdrawal that chronically short circuits itself by jumping back into the fray ASAP.  Or permitting my accommodation mechanisms to be activated through the stated needs/preferences of somebody else.

The latter part wasn't easy to maintain and I didn't expect it to be.  I'm the sort of person others depend on for inspiration and psychic nourishment.  I'm also someone who seems to spend an unusual amount of time hearing the (unsolicited) confessions and emotional outpourings of others.  Sometimes I know the people involved well enough to anticipate what's going to happen but, more often than not, it just happens and nine times out of ten without any acknowledgment that this process can be quite taxing (and perhaps not situationally appropriate) for The Listener.

Usually, the fact that it's nearly always up to me to set boundaries (and assume sole ongoing responsibility for maintaining them), causes some inner friction between my dualistic capacities for knee-jerk compassion and frustrated impatience.  For much of my life it's appeared that I have far more multi-directional empathy than is good or constructive from an I, Me, Mine perspective.  What this has tended to mean is that I chronically reach a point of critical mass when I must demand space to tend to my own issues in a way that seems very sudden and, more often than not, completely unexpected from the perspective of the person who has come to rely on me listening to them on their terms and otherwise behaving as if I don't have any issues or attendant neediness of my own.

Oftentimes, in the aftermath of making it clear (primarily to myself but then also [at times problematically] to the other party involved) that I've reached the end of the line, I seek out the company of a tree - such as the Weeping Cherry pictures above - with trailing branches.  These trees generally hold a medicine spirit that offers nourishment for those with a powerful need to ground their energy and re-connect with Source.

I also tend to seek out contained bodies of water that feed or are fed from a swiftly moving source.  This type of landscape offers great meditational value during times when I feel overly pressured or pressurized at an emotional and psychic level.  I began the time-out I'm currently attempting to end with a series of dreams that involved bird nests full of newly born babies.  They were always screaming insatiably for their mother's attention. 

Over the course of a few weeks the dreams morphed so that the mother was actively quashing the babies' demands.  She wasn't hurting them (which I kept expecting her to do with the part of my mind that generally remains lucid during dreamtime) but very firmly building little walls around them which were made from nesting materials.  And I took a cue from these dreams:  what if I didn't have to tell people to step off and let me breathe so much as I need to provide nest/nurturing material that offered them a sense of safety and comfort through the materials themselves rather than my unflagging attentiveness?

Something I fully realize:  for the [oftentimes damaged and emotionally bruised] recipient such attentiveness has an illusory quality that strongly appeals to anyone who hasn't received sufficient helpful/positive attention at critical points in their development.  As a result the helpful/positive quadrant of that equation doesn't tend to be understood.  It's oftentimes rejected or undervalued within a larger craving for attention, period.  And attention is a lot like potato chips.  The more you consume the more you entitle yourself to go right on consuming.

Thus the illusion of finally having "enough" attention is inevitably destined to shatter and sometimes that process can be quite spectacular in its unpleasantness.  Clinical healing dynamics make tangible allowances for such a process but more personal inter-relationship doesn't generally hold a mutually established blueprint.  And this is where a lot of murky dysfunction finds a place to root itself:  in the metaphor of a baby and bathwater, a great number of people will consciously strive to save the baby without due awareness focused on the fact that this often leaves them floundering in some ultra-grimy bathwater.

I've thought about that particular metaphor a lot over the past two and a half years; consciously striving to remain mindful of bathwater.  The swampier it's appeared the more diligently I've forced myself to deal with it.  And I've been analyzing my character and its inherent nature.  For example - what actual gift of useful value do I offer to those to whom I listen with a stalwart intention to keep on listening come hell or high water.  I've consciously replaced my established question:  how can I develop a longer and more authentically tolerant fuse for such things with:  what am I broadcasting about the gift of listening that needs to be fine-tuned or perhaps outright eliminated?

I definitely know enough about psychology and my own roots-of-origin underpinnings to realize I've held an ongoing degree of responsibility for the fact I often seem to magnetize other peoples' Inner Baby Bird.  I then silently collude with the resultant neediness that may start filling the metaphorical Baby's bathtub waaaaay too fast for effective bailing of bathwater.

Many lists, thought-squeezing/emotionally convoluting journal entries, and conversations with my own preferred confessor/Mama Bird figure later, I arrived at an inescapable awareness that if my conscious mind won't talk to me effectively than the rest of my physical body certainly will.  Having been at that crossroads of understanding before I have also periodically arrived at the understanding that some kind of inner lightbulb really needed to want to change or I was just going to keep looping back around to the same point of awareness with increasingly high personal stakes involved.

My resolve to actively develop a fertile seedbed for such change is what led, most pragmatically, to the life-encompassing time out I've just taken.  I entered the process feeling somewhat jury rigged and held together with tape and old paper clips; my psyche felt like it was supported in a tenuous fashion similar to the hydraulic jack pictured above.  That jack is holding up three stories worth of a rambling living structure.  It's no small measure of insanity to imagine it can go on doing so in an indefinite fashion. Likewise the time had come for me to begin re-building an emotional broadcasting system that's more realistic and hence a lot more authentically humane in the all-around manner.

What I've realized - and not just over the past two months -- this is something I've been thinking, talking, and writing about for upwards of a decade, now - is that the healing community (and this seems especially true in alterna-healing circles) doesn't really honor burn-out as part of a hero's/heroine's journey.  It's seen as a pattern of failure: something to be disavowed in the self and used as some kind of moralistic object lesson when it's perceived in somebody else.  But, more truly, this is just another form of necessary dismemberment at the gates of our collective underworld.  Only an authentic hero/heroine would want to acknowledge that it's happened for them - and, more than likely, repeatedly - and then set about the task of making something sensible and sustaining from the wreckage.

 
I won't claim to have managed such a task at a done-deal level but I have definitely committed myself to maintaining the effort rather than simply hosting a periodic realization that it's work that needs to be done.  Recovering a more authentic self from a period of professional and/or personal burn-out ought to involve more than simply heading back to routes of behavior and intention that inevitably double back to more spent fuses.

I know I'm not the only one working with this particular Chinese puzzle at this time.  Your thoughts and opinions are welcomed either in comments or by way of private mail ...

cherishing

Am very grateful that these last few days of the summer season have shown some sustained improvement with my stamina levels.  I've been able to spend some very enjoyable time in a few favorite spots: along the Charles River, at the local bird sanctuary and gathering herbs in my own sweet garden beds.    Tomorrow, with an equal balance of light and dark hours, may serve a personal recalibration day.  Will be back soon with some images from my wanderings because I took plenty of pictures ...

arrggh!

Help me I am trapped somewhere in "the new typepad".  Earlier today I clicked on that option because of course I was curious and also reassured by the note that said I "could always go back".  But now I can't get back; with or without my high heeled shoes and low necked sweater.  Normally I'm not somebody who likes to spend readers' time and effort kvetching about incidentals like my personal frustrations with a blogging program but damn it to hell!  I spent some concentrated effort writing a post that pleased me and then something went terribly wrong with the font size.  The more I tried to correct it the more it out of control it became.  That's when I decided I'd "go back".  But I can't.  And now I can't seem to load pictures, either.  So...I guess I'll BE back whenever I figure it out.   Right about now I can hardly wait for mercury to station direct again, how 'bout you?

record keeping

It's always interesting to keep track of the ways my written journal reflects its cover.  Usually I have something specific in mind when making a book selection.  This time I was thinking about moving forward and the ways this process enables us to go through passageways and portals - of time, experience and conscious growth.

This morning I realized how much of what I've been writing relates to acknowledging doors I've deliberately shut.  Some have been sealed for a long time and now I must retrace my steps in order to open them once more.  Some I ignored; as if they didn't exist and the choices they contained weren't mine to make.  A few didn't interest me enough to notice their existence.  Some doors belonged to other people and I could only stand on the outside pushing envelopes through the letter slot - metaphorically or otherwise.

The journal pictured above is relatively new but my general writing methodology is very well established.  The process reminds me of keeping a garden.  Over time I've found many parallels between various journal volumes and individual, always unique, growing seasons.  Advance planning frequently reaches a tipping point where organic life force asserts itself; trumping construction and blurring the edges of specific intentions...

present & accounted for

For the past ten days Celeste has been a little heartbroken and super-watchful.  It's because Jim was road-tripping it to Florida for a long overdue visit with his mom.  This morning he arrived back home.  Naturally the cat is now acting as if she couldn't care less and didn't pine for him intensely while he was gone.  This might not make emotional sense from a human point of view but it's absolutely classic feline psychology.

When he first got in I was still three quarters of the way asleep but I still caught the jubilation in his voice as he announced himself.   I am very glad he took this particular vacation, and fully delighted that he enjoyed the trip, but I'm even happier he's back home.  Life in the household just doesn't seem like it's fully itself without his swingin' bass laying the groove of our ongoing soundtrack.

The seasonal shifts that have been transpiring are making a vivid impression on him.  I am a gold-lit summer girl and so I don't always enjoy peoples' variety of fixations for pushing summer away and focusing on autumn's arrival. It doesn't make sense to take this sort of differing preference personally - any more than it makes sense for the cat to ignore someone she missed so dreadfully.   Yet at times I do find it a personal trial. 

From my perspective it seems no sooner has the sun peaked on the summer solstice than various people start bringing up 'the return to darkness'.   This year I was determined not to have that kind of discourse bother me and equally determined not to feel disturbed once summer reached a point of putting itself to sleep.  I thought I didn't need to keep making it my business if anyone else fancied the choice to leapfrog ahead.  They could do that without a scrim of my barely controlled disapproval.  And I could root myself in the now-ness of each passing moment during my favorite season of the year.  For the most part this intentional live-and-live endeavor has worked quite well. 

I am not sad this year so much as wistful.  Several plans or the simple ideas for plans needed to be tweaked or outright canceled due to my assortment of physical concerns.   For two days before Jim left our main topics of conversation revolved around his itinerary planning and how sorry for myself I felt about the fact that it would be a solo mission for him.  He kept trying to help me feel better about it all.  I kept insisting it was good for me to let myself express the sorrow rather than keeping my distance from such a significant part of the overall recuperative process.

While he was gone I spent a fair amount of time somewhat lost in the process of emotional recalibration.  Once I got rid of my accumulated sorrow and frustration it was time to take a more pleasant inventory of what has happened for & through me during this passing season.   Sifting through the details of that inventory has felt like an authentic blessing.

Plus even I, with my unabashed fantasies of living in an Endless Summer, find something undeniably powerful and appealing about the burnished quality of light as it fades a bit earlier each day.  As we ate dinner this evening Jim mentioned his acute awareness that the light's pattern across the daily timeframe has changed during his brief absence.  It won't be too long before leaf peepers start appearing and the landscape is punctuated by the distinctive gold-green color that's the very heartbeat of autumn's arrival in new england.

I adore that color.  It's part of the natural kingdom's seasonal statement that I authentically relish.  But in stoking my anticipation I'm getting a few weeks ahead of the organic order of things. For now it's still summer at least at the technical level.  This is a time of preparation:  a mini-season of making one last enormous batch of pesto sauce, picking some final sumptuous flower bouquets and assembling the culinary incidentals that lend themselves to pumpkin risotto and slow roasted root vegetable medleys...

shifting directions

The general landscape of Sparkling Lotus-land is changing on a daily basis.  Lush green knolls have been softened by the first drifts of New England asters.  Deep shadows beneath the trees are now brightened by brilliant flares of goldenrod flowers and gleaming scarlet belladona fruits.   The distinctive sharp-yet-honeyed scent of Queen Anne's Lace is everywhere. As the last few weeks of summer unwind themselves I've been enjoying daily therapeutic sun-sitting sessions in the center of the main garden bed.  It's felt so good to enter this part of my world very gently.  I'm enjoying a reconnected awareness of this beloved space from the perspective of a silent component.  It's quite different from pushing my way into the Other-ness of it all while being primarily immersed in a series of groundskeeping tasks.  There's plenty to see from my re-established stillpoint - including lots of insect drama.

And the evocative dream-nourishing scent of gardenia blooms is so wonderfully restorative that I tend to set my camp chair quite near the two bushes.  They smell stronger as the sun fades into evening but even at high noon they add a topnote of sweetness.

I believe one very important reason why the puzzling pile-up of health questions 'suddenly' began to form a strongly recognizable pattern is - you guessed it - my diligent work with flower essences.   I am continuing that regime with two brand new synergies that were formulated and prepared just a few short days before learning the results of my latest blood work.  I may have been thinking along somewhat specific pre-determined lines when I concocted the formulations but the healing applications of the essences I selected are also very well suited to my emergent needs.

Having modified my existing goals and expectations so that the bulk of my energy and focus can remain fixed on personal quantum healing needs, I really don't have much clue of what I'll be doing as summer melts into autumn.   The passageway of one season changing into another is very familiar and yet, during this particular transition, it's also virgin territory.

I'm resolved to stay as proactive and diligent as possible; understanding there will be slow and especially challenging days (today was one of them...) along with brilliant instances of profound growth and rejuvenation.  In the past week I've experienced some very positive shifts - in my attitude as well as direct circumstance.  My work output is modest and so is my daily to-do list.  This is something that's becoming more normalized for me and doesn't necessarily evoke panic or internalized alarm bells. And that, too, is progress - of a very useful and empowering nature!

tonight...

...it's much too hot on the second floor of our house.  The guys are toughing it out up there but Celeste and I will be sleeping in the slightly cooler living room.  The two gardenia bushes are blooming just outside the living room window and this is a beautiful trade-off for me; I love sleeping with gardenia tinged dreams.

Even as the physical days grow shorter I feel that they are becoming much longer due to my energy flow.  In the past month or so I've found that I get a lot of stuff done even when I have days (like the one that just past) where I am obliged to scale back on my plans and aspirations.  There is abundant evidence of my personal blessings and these far outweigh the difficulties I've been experiencing.

There's a lot I'd like to share about life's unfoldings but for now I am wishing all readers some portion of sweet dreams...