Sparkling Lotus-land

a brief retreat

Regular readers of this blog know I take two time-outs during each lunar cycle - one at the full moon stage and one to span the shifts between the ending of one cycle and the beginning of the next.  This month I changed the "shift" time-out to coincide with some important happenings in the lives of myself and those I hold most dear.  I'll be back online Friday-ish.

Meanwhile, last week saw the birth of an AMAZING website centered on the Bead Journal Project.  If you've been following the year's BJP progress and wished you had been able to participate you can click here to sign up for the 2008 cycle.   Each member of the 2007 project has been given an opportunity to create a personal page to showcase their work.  The main directory for these pages is right here; no doubt many more pages will be added over the next few weeks.  For once in my life I didn't procrastinate so my personal page is up and running.  If you'd like to see it click here.

I finished my February page yesterday afternoon but couldn't get it uploaded until this morning.  So if you visit my BJP personal page and find February hasn't been added yet, you can take a look at it over at nichobella.

Seeya on the flipside ....

a snowy lion

Here in central Mass, March "came in" with a snowstorm.  Was still awake when it began just past midnight.  I stood at the kitchen door and gazed through the window for several minutes seeking comfort and peace from the mesmerizing motion of the steadily falling flakes.

Yesterday, shortly before the dinner hour, I hit a kind of wall within the sunnier side of my nature.  What I'd been calling marginal optimism dwindled to the very slim dimensions of a razor's edge.  By the time Jim came home, I was huddled under a quilt in a dark house, watching 12 Angry Men.  Why was I so glum, chum?  It's really very simple.

During Monday's visit to the ER, the nurses and doctor I saw kept remarking on my elevated temperature.  I kept replying that I was getting over the flu.  Each one of them asked knowingly is there a lot of coughing?  In fact, there'd been virtually none.  The symptoms revolved around fever, body aches and GI distress of an extended nature.  But there were plenty of people coughing non-stop there at the hospital.  So it was quite unwelcome but hardly a surprise when I noticed partway through yesterday morning that I seemed to be running a fever again.  When I took my temperature, I saw it was higher than I would have guessed.  And then, as I stood staring balefully at the unwelcome number on the thermometer, I started to cough.

I've been coughing ever since.  The body aches have returned after precious little time without them and, once again, my stomach has no interest in anything more substantive than sips of ginger ale and a few nibbles on a saltine.  I got dressed in street clothes today solely because I felt a stubborn unwillingness to spend yet another day in my pajamas.  Funny how much I enjoy doing that when I feel just-fine and how quickly it grows intolerable when I feel considerably less than fine!  And so much for my plans to accompany Jim to a swing band concert tonight.  I'm quite disappointed about that as I was really looking forward to it.   So I gave myself the evening as a kind of time-out grace period in which to wallow in the mud of a piss-poor mood.

Today I feel a lot more reconciled to reality and, thus, less invested in what I  had planned for the weekend.  Bluntly put, this "other" flu is hitting hard & fast so I'm starting to care less than I did yesterday.  Instead of putting most of my energy into wishing I could go to the concert, I'm wishing Jim has a good time.  Of course it's nowhere near the same as being there myself, but whenever he returns from a concert he's enjoyed, his enthusiasm and vibrancy is like an elixir.

At the big picture level there are some very cool things that have been happening throughout the week relating to long term plans and aspirations.  Certain happenstances that I could only dream of at this same time last year have come to pass and I'm very grateful for that.  I'm even grateful for my lousy mood of last night because I was wondering when said mood was going to make its inevitable appearance.  I think by the time I was through with it, that my psyche had personified every one of the jurors in that classic Lumet film I watched.  Except the Henry Fonda role.  That fell to my husband, who patiently sat with me until I'd gone from voting myself 100% GUILTY of caving-in to a weak physicality to NOT GUILTY as charged.  What is my ultimate "crime", anyway?  Being fallibly human instead of a well-oiled machine?  Perhaps, in the long-run sense, that really is the silver lining of a thoroughly unpleasant span of time.

A lousy month is not the same as an unrelentingly horrible lifetime.  My travails, such as they are, do not actually signify the end of the world I know it.   I still see myself having a great deal of power concerning how I choose to react or respond - and whether I choose to react OR respond - and what I'm capable of giving myself by way of authentic self-soothing.  I figure this will have to be sufficient good news for now.  When I'm capable of more, I do retain trust that "more" will indeed find me and grow an appropriate root system.  Sometimes that's really as much as you can ask of or for yourself...

forming attachments

Couldn't resist that title to accompany some closeups from the work table.  I did spend a couple of hours today "forming attachments" and it was extremely satisfying.  Finished my January BJP page and also got a bit of work done on the TIF collage/wall organizer.  Tons of other stuff was also accomplished, plus it was a bright, sunny day.  Sorry this isn't much of an entry; I may not be around online much for the next few days.  It's nothing to worry about, just the usual juggling act... 

kind of hush

Today we're having our first snowfall.  It's nothing major but it did bring with it that lovely blanket of silence that's my favorite part of a snowy day.   Spent my standing meditation watching the birds.  Then I took advantage of a ride to a bead store over in Webster.  Decided a little while ago that I was going to go there at some point in order to purchase two specific beads for next month's BJP page.  While I could have replicated the same general idea in some other way, I have a few symbolic & psychological reasons for wishing to have the image ready-made.



These beads represent (1) the devil you know and (2) the devil you don't.   Not quite what the mainstream culture likes to associate with the month of December but I know that giving myself license to work with this particular motif will do me a [largely untold] world of healing good.  I have been clear on this for about two weeks so attaining the beads has featured prominently in my I should really litany.  Unfortunately I've had some neurological issues that preclude getting behind the wheel of a car.  So I've wondered just how much of a major production it was going to be to get this particular mission accomplished.  Now I can relax.  I won't have to obsess on the beads anymore or think about the general design issues until it's actually December.* 

Incidentally, I am still slow-poking my way through accumulated emails and notice a few from folks who wonder why I haven't been blogging about my creative sewing projects.  Please note in the sidebar that I now have a separate blog for my handworking adventures.  Have had it for a few months now so if you haven't been following along, there's plenty to look at over there.

This afternoon holds some pleasant excitement for me.  It's the first chance I've had to go to creativi-tea in a month.  Am really looking forward to the socializing aspects as well as the opportunity to see what others are sewing.  Have been literally counting the minutes until it's time to leave; my sewing basket's been ready for the last several hours!  Also, when I first began writing this post, I noticed a beautiful red bellied woodpecker going to town on the suet feeder.  And on my way out to meet friends for the ride the bead store, I saw a pair of northern flickers on the silver maple tree.

Inclement weather often brings the more reclusive woodpeckers to my yard.  It's usually a lot more inclement when they arrive but perhaps this first bit of snow caught them offguard.  Did not actively plan to have this post illustrate the dichotomy of angels and devils but perhaps it can be considered a nod to the song lyrics I linked last week on my other blog.  Thanks, btw for all the cool leopard links and info that's been arriving in email.

*I haven't done a lot of planning ahead with the BJP pages.  The only other time I chose a focus bead before the month actually started was back in August when I was certain I wanted to highlight the cloisonne hummingbird. I'm as clear now as I was then regarding the ultimate applicability of the beads in question.  Those readers who share similar Survivor issues will surely understand what I'm saying, and not ...

thank you

Am really grateful today for the comments about my last post and to those who have reached out via email or telephone.   It's been good (if difficult) to open up a bit more - flatout wonderful to get a taste of the ripple effect that comes from a collective spirit of generosity and paying it forward.  Probably won't be saying any more about the emergent challenges in this kind of public space but please know how much I appreciate each and every offering of care and support.

In the earlier afternoon I completed my October BJP page.  You can see it and read some details over at nichobella.  Came to the machine to create that post and was pleasantly surprised by these beautiful cream colored abutilons blooming next to the computer tower.    There are more buds as well as some ripening seedheads.   While taking this inventory I also noticed an astonishing number of gardenia buds.  Allies are everywhere ...

in which nothing is explained

This particular retrograde shadow phase has been a very dis-equalizing space of time for so many people I know!  Sometimes the off-kilter-ness is more pleasant or easily assimilated than others. This week brings me a very basic stripped-down landscape in which I am without both vehicle and computer.  It's been raining which the ground badly needs. For the past few days & nights I've been sleeping in erratic as-needed patterns.  This is a favorite way to stay grounded in the spring and autumn seasons of flux.  It sounds weird and counter-intuitive but it really works.  After a few more days the circadian rhythms will re-assert themselves.

For now, the weird sleep patterns mean I haven't yet been awake in the right time frame to call for technical know-how from Tony.  I truly haven't a clue what's wrong with my computer.  Since it's raining I wouldn't be taking pictures in the larger world but it's still strange to understand I'm cut-off from the capability of processing and sharing any images.  This morning I have been working on my october BJP page.  In order to make a blog post or otherwise use the internet I have to literally descend into the lower level of our home.  And I am not a big fan of basements - not even the tricked-out kind.  The one we have is a pleasant no-woman's land that combines all the guys' favorite collections of parts for this and that plus this computer. 

I have figured out how to use bare minimum functions for business purposes.  Elsewise, I've hoped to do a lot more automatic writing.  A few weeks back I even bought a notebook for that specific purpose.  Now it seems I will not have the computer for either distraction or the seducing notion that it will be faster to work on a machine than with more basic eye-hand coordination and automatic thought transfer.  Speed isn't always its own justification for being and nobody knows that better than a handworker ...

saturdaze

Yesterday afternoon, I completed September's BJP project.  You can read more about it over at nichobella.  I figured today's post for this blog would revolve around plans to bring my collection of exotic plants back inside for the winter.  Then the Sox clinched the AL East division title and changed my mind.  Today's post will be about one of the books I've read in the past week.  Don't worry if you'd rather hear about plants than baseball because the exotics will get their moment of limelight tomorrow, for Green Thumb Sunday.  Meanwhile, how 'bout those O's huh?  First they tied with the Yankees at the bottom of the ninth and then in the tenth they won with a squeeze bunt.  And then?  Jubilant chaos reigned here in Massachusetts.  And elsewhere as well thanks to the Cubs clinching the central division.   



This is why I decided to make today's post about the book pictured below.  My original plan was to feather it in with a couple of other books on completely different topics.  But what the hell.  It only happens once a year, right?  And then only when a dizzying array of variables fall into perfect alignment.



I got this book out of the library last Monday.  In fact, when I first entered the building, I zeroed right in on it sitting in the center of a display tier of new non-fiction books.  Without pausing for anything as peripheral as conscious thought, I scooped it up before I could distract myself with the offerings in categories that are far more typical of my normal reading material.  As I was reading the cover blurbs and a few pages at random I could quite literally feel blood pounding in my ears.

Who knew it was possible to get so excited about something I've stalwartly ignored for so many years!  This intensely somatized fact has taught me something very important about never-saying-never and remaining open minded to the self as well as other people and the world we collectively share.   Only when the book was safely ensconced in my book bag did I feel an inclination to return to familiar reading stomping grounds and a more predictable comfort zone.  When I got home I quasi-tricked myself into imagining that I'd have to browse through all my selections before I chose what I'd read first.  That killed about fifteen minutes of a totally lame exercise in an absolutely faked decision making process.

By the time Jim got home from work that evening I was deeply engrossed in this book - concentrating as intently as if it had been a Psychology Of that was far more weighty in nature.  I stopped myself just short of taking notes and now I rather regret that.   Arguably, you could say this volume is a study of abnormal psychology.  You could also say its author, Mike Stadler, has earned a place on my imaginary Who I'd Most Like To Have For Dinner list.  It can be a very difficult and unwieldy thing to make psychology's penchant for statistics and behavioral/motivational labeling into something that's authentically readable.  From where I sit, it's also a genuine gift to be able to breathe appealing life into matters of pure psychics as well as a whole other breed of statistics.  Stadler has succeeded on both fronts in some significant ways that I can only hope brings him a decent slice of professional and creative satisfaction.

There's a blurb on the back cover that promises the reader they will think differently about the game after they read this book.  I've found that to be true - in part because I learned some things that can really only be answered along psychological lines.  And also because I now have validation and specific references points for some aspects of my viewing that were formerly floating around in the nebulous province of instinct & intuition.  Some people are interested to psychology, and/or called to a career in it, because they love solving puzzles.  Others hold a somewhat unquantifiable love of shining light in dark places.  Some, unfortunately, crave a legitimized form of power-over or seek to do something constructive with their micro-managing fetishes.   Some have a craving to know why and an equal compulsion to know what's to be done about it.  Some (like me ...) prefer to know how and then bang-out an idea or twenty related to what's to be done about that.

I really wouldn't want to permit myself the kind of hubris that would see fit to label what Stadler gets from/brings to the psycho-logical banquet but he manages to make it vividly clear what he gets out of baseball.  His writing makes it equally clear why people have long called this sport a thinking person's game.  As fascinating as major league mentality may be, there's also something observationally compelling about the psychology of fans.  This lure is carefully examined in the second part of the book.   And that's the section that performs another very useful & necessary function that quite often gets short shrift in today's whirled - e.g. NOT falling into the shallow but potent canyon of pop psychology.

Somebody (not me - no way, NO THANK YOU ...) really needs to write a book on Red Sox Nation psych specifically but, in the meantime, this book dealt with fan psychology in general.  And The Nation did get some focused airplay since I don't think it's possible to write about fan psychology and not devote a page or two to the all-pervasive Sox-Yankees rivalry.   In other fan matters, I have never understood precisely why "the goat" is always mentioned in connection with the Cubs.  Now I do and, like a great many other things in this book, it's amazing to realize that it's really only been a few months of my life that I've cared about such things.  If I'd seen this book any earlier than the beginning of June, it wouldn't have registered on my radar.   Now I realize I apparently have something in common with major league players and ace pitchers in particular i.e. a very highly developed need for cognition.   The steeper the learning curve. the more fervently I'll embrace it once that's what my mind and power-of-volition has decided to do.  So I'm hoping a specific group of blog readers are able to find time to read this book.  Because now?  I want to discuss it.  Extensively.

time out

Some rather profound and intensely personal issues are calling for my undivided attention at the moment.  This is a development that may be taking some surprising-to-me forms but I've felt the underlying issue of knowing when to step back from extroversion and focus the lion's share of my energy on self-nurturance and personal needs bubbling closer & closer to surface.  For a couple of weeks I've been pre-occupied over the [imagined and/or projected] logistics of how I'd manage such a radical shift; treading some internalized water while I tried to figure out a set of details that don't actually hold the degree of relevance I was ascribing to them.

The time is now.  The way is ...clear if largely unknown and untested.  Catchya on the flipside.   If you'd like to see how this reflects in my September BJP page, here's today's entry from nichobella.

keeping perspective

It's a very beautiful day today and I'm finally fully rested from our whirlwind weekend - just in time to have another one although it will move at a much more leisurely pace!   While I was doing errands I gave myself a bit of a shock.  Kept noticing numerous drifts of a flowering weed that had an absolutely gorgeous aura. Wow, I kept saying to myself. What is that and why haven't I noticed it any sooner in my life?  Imagine my sniffling, wheezing, itchy-eyed shock when I realized I was admiring my botanical nemesis a/k/a ragweed!   



I wouldn't have expected that.  Nor would I have expected to encounter another Red Sox fan who feels Certain Rivalries are way over the top and completely unncessary fodder for knee-jerk socially accepted (but WHY!!?!) hatred and other forms of negativity.   Apparently there's at least one other person (besides Jim of course) who isn't any more interested in Evil Empires or gleeful anticipation of pitching payback than I am.  How cool.  And damned near as shocking to me as the sudden admiration of ragweed.  Therefore I don't delude myself that this perspective is very widespread.  For that reason you couldn't possibly pay or otherwise bribe me enough to be at Fenway tonight or at any other point of this weekend.



The top two images are from the wild grass garden at Longwood Gardens.  The Foo dog above guards an entrance to the topiary garden.  It's been great to reflect on our visit there throughout this week.  I've also enjoyed browsing through the keepsake books I purchased at the gift shop. It's good to know that some important parts of childhood memories can exceed themselves upon re-visitation at a later point in time.  Love this place!  Can't recommend it enough for anyone who loves plants or simply enjoys a good walk in ultra-pleasant surroundings.

Last night we drove out to Amherst to retrieve my car from Tony.  It's been a bit tricky to synchronize everyone's schedule for this.  The interim days gave me a chance to chill out and truly rest.  The visit was brief but very enjoyable.  We had a chance to meet a few of his housemates and view his room.  Something in their beautiful gigantic yard smelled incredibly good in the evening air.  I suspect virgin's bower.

If you'd like to see the beginning stages of my BJP page for Setember, I've just posted about it over at nichobella.

and so it zens

Here is my BJP page for july - in progress.  The piece is entitled White Water Shrine.  Make sure you enlarge to see details like the sculpted silk waves.  I figured that making the textured water surface with torn strips of the china silk would be very similar to working with silk ribbon.  The process is fairly addictive.  It's been highly pleasant to spend so much time with this beautiful deep blue color.  Not sure I will find time/energy to get back to this piece until later in the week ... if you haven't already seen the most recent Nichobella posts, this one gives you the backstory on the page itself.

Things have been moving at a very high gear since Saturday night.   I have not had a chance to consciously set any goals for this work week; today has been fairly family-centric so far.  I don't expect to have any sustained personal recalibration time until tomorrow.  If I do stitch, it will have to be in the context of something where it really doesn't matter if I'm a bit distracted and scattered.  Seems like my time might actually be far better spent on the beach blanket quilt, back-side up - "doing" nothing more or less than be-ing quiet and thankful there at the edges of the main garden bed...