Sparkling Lotus-land

inside & out

Yesterday I literally woke up in a state of beginner's mind.  It was raining and I found my ears and inner consciousness highly attuned to the atmosphere.  Looking through the window I could see the silver maple branches looming through mist.  The sound of water hitting leaves and grounds has become very familiar here in the northeast.  I am the first to admit that I am not always delighted by it; sometimes I wake up feeling restless for sunlight.

I noticed right away that there was an absence of even a glimmer of that restlessness.  I was glad it was raining.  I felt myself cleansed by it at a psychic and emotional level.   This was like finding a very smooth and super appealing river stone - the kind you have to bend over and retrieve to turn it around in your palm.  You stare as if it's a scrying mirror even if you don't believe in such things.

Later the sun came out and I was even more delighted.   Grabbed my camera to move through the jeweled green and colorful highlights of the garden beds.  It occurred to me that I was remaining utterly willing to stay suspended in the moment.  I wasn't doing anything to be in that place; it's just how I was at the core level.  To my way of thinking this kind of extended trance is always an enormous gift of Self for self as well as the larger environment.

I wasn't planning to share the following life tidbit but, since I think the experience and my reaction to it has so much to do with my state of ongoing zen, I've decided what the hell.  On Tuesday afternoon I was cleaning my kitchen floor.  Right after I started the second rinse I fell.  I hit the floor hard in a fullout belly flop position.  My mind registered the loud and rather sickening smack of my body making contact with the linoleum.  I realized most of weight had landed on my knee (the "bad" one I might add) and that I'd hit my nose pretty hard.

My first fully formed thought was thank god I didn't make floor contact with my mouth.  I might have cracked some teeth.  Then I thought shit.  I said it out loud a couple of times.  That left me free to shake the shock off enough to be practical and start a useful campaign of response. I thought Ice.  Get up off this floor and put some ice on your nose and knee.  As the day progressed into evening I realized I was bruised but not broken.  And, thanks to the ice and how diligently I applied it, I wasn't that bruised, either.

I knew I was going to wake up very sore and, indeed, yesterday was quite slowed down in the physical sense.  Fortunately I was in the middle of reading an excellent novel so that helped me stay quiet and relaxed while my body healed.  This involved wearing glasses more than I usually do so by nightfall the bridge of my nose was pretty damn sore.  Fortunately my knee is doing quite well.  All of me is fine.  And I have had the gratifying experience of re-calling the accident in minute detail for my husband and son.

It's a weird form of satisfaction to take but there's definitely something cleansing about standing on the scene of an accident and going through a play-by-play.  And then I went down, right there.  Look how close I was to the sink!  I could have whacked my head but good on that or the edge of the counter but I didn't!  I do feel extremely lucky about not hitting my head.  And, also, that I fell front-ways rather than backwards.  If I'd done the latter I'm pretty sure I would have wrenched my back and, more than likely, still not able to sit here at my desk this morning.

While I was icing my body I watched a film called Stranded.  It is partially a documentary and also a re-enactment of a South American plane wreck in the early 1970's.  In recent times the survivors traveled to the site of their 72 day ordeal with a film crew and some family members.  This is not a movie for the squeamish or faint of heart but I believe it's an extremely well made film and am quite glad to have seen it.   So many difficult and seemingly 'impossible' subjects were embraced and articulated as an expressive mandala of tremendous significance.

Today I woke up before the rain started.  But now here it is again moving from a soft patter to more serious rhythms.  As I was typing that sentence a female hummingbird approached the window by my desk.  She hovered right above eye level and looked in at me.  This is only the second time I've seen a hummingbird this year. Must be time to change the feeder syrup!

The novel I've been enjoying really was a fully satisfying read.  I learned about it by happening upon a glowing review in The Improper Bostonian while I was waiting for Jim to finish a meeting the weekend we went into town.  I was intrigued enough to list the book in my carry-along all purpose notebook and then request it through inter-library loan.  This is wonderful story of two sisters, culture clashes, unalterable/regrettable choices, and many other things.  Tania James has a sharp and humanistic eye for detail and a profoundly generous heart that's well applied to character development and internalized landscaping.

In recent months I have been collecting a lot of book cover art to keep in my creative source journal.  I am making note of design trends as well as what I like about them.  Sometimes the covers inspire me to play on their themes.  In this case it will be challenging not to mimic what I like in a direct fashion.  Because I've been thinking:  in the atlas of my own 'unknowns' what linear maps of actual places form the backcloth and highlights?  It's a question that's bringing a great deal to mind and so last night I asked my husband - the compulsive map collector - if he had anything on hand that was too worn out to use/obsess over but still whole enough to provide graphic interest.

He told me he'd 'bring the box down' so I could look through it.  I almost clutched at him with excitement.  He has an entire box of such treasures?  I think I sort of knew that without having a clue of how much delighted anticipation I'd feel at the prospect of benefiting from perusal of the cache ...

talking cures

just words in this one.  and it's long.

Since my last post I have finished Linda Hogan's fabulous novel Power.  Am now reading her memoir The Woman Who Watches Over the World.  It's subtitled A Native Memoir and ain't it just.  Since I first began my memoir reading campaign last autumn I have frequently been touched, inspired, and re-arranged by what I've read.  But I had not yet been spoken to at a level that cut so deep and true that I could comprehend my own feelings, experience and life's learning curve with an increased sense of illumination. 

The reader-as-witness gap closed itself when I was less than a full page into this particular book.  It would be hard to explain why the resonance feels so strong in terms of ordinary language or direct comparisons.  What I've experienced of life and the way it's been shaped or contained or in need of healing is very different from the places and people Linda Hogan describes.  And yet it's not that different; not at a cellular level that moves so far beyond words it seems something of a miracle if not downright impossibility to imagine that words might express anything close to authentic accuracy.

Because words are as big a failure as they are keepers of power, it's something of a related miracle to me that Linda Hogan has been able to express so much that normally slips under the wire of verbal expression.  It amazes me that she can coax so much feeling from words; that I can remain so utterly riveted that time and distance has slipped away from me as I read.

The fluid writing entices us to enter a landscape of difficult and painful themes.  It's been a long time since I gave sustained thought to historical pain and yet I live with it every day.  Here in the allegedly united states, we all do whether or not we happen to have native blood in our veins.  I have felt this to be true for a long time.  At moments I feel it much too acutely; especially when someone with a non-native lineage insists that the underbelly of this country's structure as we've come to know it has nothing to do with them.

I wasn't here then.  I'm not responsible.  There's nearly always panic as well as impatience in these words.  Because what if it's not true.  What if responsibility gets carried across the boundaries of direct relational choice-making?  What if, within insisting that those with native lineage get over it, those who don't hold a cellular awareness of what it means to be conquered and systematically obliterated do indeed conquer and obliterate significant parts of their own soul on a very regular basis?

I have been asking myself these two questions for more than a quarter of a century.   Before that I felt the questions without knowing how to contain them in a verbal structure.  And so often my concern and sense of direct connection and a vested interest in the unfathomable answers had to grow from very fallow ground.  Unlike Linda Hogan I was raised in anglo culture without a clue of what my Other status really meant or what it could offer me.   As a result nothing geographic feels like a true Homeland to me; no specific group of collective individuals feel like my People.

Other folks I know who spent much of their life culturally estranged can't quite believe that.  They have no idea how painful (and fruitless) it is for me when they insist it can't possibly be true.  If I would just Fight and Seek enough to establish the re-connections they themselves have found I would be whole and healed; just as they imagine themselves to be - and sometimes they are - because that's how it works.  All these conversations prove to me is that something inside of me does NOT actually "work" and it's up to me to make some sort of ongoing lemonade from that bitter fact.

Through a mixture of blunt assertions and tacit subtleties, I was taught to perceive myself as wrong rather than wronged.   I was taught to either apologize for or ignore the "unsuitable" nature of my father's ethnicity.  I always felt this to be an outrageous expectation as well as an emotional & psychic impossibility.  Yet I did my best to be and do what felt right rather than wrong.  That included rigorous and ongoing questioning of all authorities on my homefront.   And that approach to self-salvation, while being an undeniably enormous pain in the ass for anybody who had to deal with me in my younger years, is now perceived by me as being my most powerful and sustained Ace of Soul.

Whenever I chose to challenge the inconceivable goals that were rather constantly stated for me, I was told I was acting too much like my father.  Who, I was frequently reminded, was not a very good man.  As if that solved the riddle of my ethnicity's equation.  Everything I've been able to learn about him suggests he was, for sure, not very good at being human in relation to also being humane.  Nonetheless he's a solid half of my genes.  And he came from a culture with a firmly maintained matrilinear structure.  And so, that culture as well as my anglo family members, would seem to deny my existence as if it were, indeed, all too easy to deny the sheer fact of such existence.

All kids seem to go through transient states of feeling unreal.   Many kids have a variety of reasons for also feeling unseen and/or unheard.  This leads to psychic, mental and emotional deformities.  And yet at some point of the individual healing curve we all have to circle back to who we are at an organic level rather than fixating on what we've been shaped to become.   Linda Hogan's book highlights this truth without direct explication.  Yet the blueprint is right there in front of the reader.  It hums and buzzes through every single sentence in the book.

Some of us are indeed blessed to know what and who we are from lessons learned within the security of family structure and its mythology.  I have never and will never know such blessing.  In my teens this made me angry.  In my twenties I did pretty much anything I could think of to numb myself to the force of that anger.  In my thirties and forties, as a mother of somebody who had no choice but to confront some of the same brick or blank walls I myself faced on a daily basis, I did whatever seemed possible to transcend both the anger and my carefully constructed numbness.

Now I'm in my fifties - a fact that means something extra special for many females.  My mind and body are in such a constant state of transitional flux that I don't know what I think or feel half the time.  I believe an inability (and perhaps it's also an equal matter of unwillingness) to crack my own code accounts for a large part of why my body's chosen to speak in the haywire language of illness.  Cause and effect are profound components of any given day.  Like it or not (and, believe me, I don't like it much it all...) I've become one of those people who cannot become too upset unless I want to wind up visiting an emergency ward.  Thus I have rediscovered the ham-fisted tool of numbness as a way to cope with my fears and anxiety related to personal mortality.

Not getting upset can put a serious crimp in living an authentic life experience.  It's probably a good thing that I'm not particularly skilled at maintaining an untroubled keel.  For instance, on mother's day I had an unscheduled and disconcerting emotional meltdown.  It didn't last all that long but it was profoundly intense.  Nobody really knew about it but myself and my son.  At one point his father wandered into the room, expressed great surprise and dismay at what I was apparently "going through", and we were both quick to send him out again.  Only my son needed to bear witness to a suddenly dislodged river of grief and despair.  And, as difficult as it was for my personality to accept, I in turn needed him bearing that witness as much as he needed to be in that precise moment of my tumultuous experience.

Does it matter why I was crying?  Or is it simply enough to express that I was indeed crying in a way that signified profound release rather than emotional reflex.  While I wept my son sat quite calmly beside me holding my hand.  After the storm began to abate he spoke to me in a kind gentle voice.  I know exactly where he got that tone.  He inherited it from me and so I recognize the space where it resides within his soul as well as his linear nature.  I've held his role in this type of situation so many times it makes me incredibly dizzy to contemplate both overview and a handful of particularly potent specifics.

When I was once again capable of taking in information and advice my son told me I really didn't cry enough and, also, I didn't talk about crying or its need very often.  I shakily agreed with him.  We continued to hold hands.  I told him how very precious the past 14 months of his kindness and care have been; how much he's meant to me in the choices he's made to be both near and dear.  I told him how often I think of how lucky his friends are - to have him in their life by flukes of circumstance as well as choice.  And how I feel that I'm the luckiest of all the people that he knows.  Because I've been in his life from the beginning watching him grow; doing my best to learn when to step aside and when to stick in my oars of belief and conviction.

This is an incredibly powerful blessing of my life and, I hope, something that will always be significant to my son.  Maybe it goes without saying that these aren't the words I pre-supposed when I sat down to write a post about the book I'm currently reading.  The post that's emerged is a lot more curative than expository and so I suppose I knew where I needed to go when I first typed out the header. 

In her memoir Linda Hogan makes a passing reference to talking cures.  The words leapt off the page as if it were a brand new concept.  Which is ironic at the very least.  I have spent so much time in The Listening Chair that it often seems to me I've done virtually no talking of my own and that's why my thyroid's unclear about its own sense of functional balance.  But that's more about clinical burnout than truth.  I've definitely talked - and talked and talked.

My first therapist, visited when I was 22 and 23, said virtually nothing.  I'd go in, sit down and hit the metaphorical ground running at top speed.  After my initial claim that I was willing to talk about anything but my mother, I talked about her for as long as my insurance coverage authorized a co-pay.  Then I went back the following year and did the same thing. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say my therapist was mute.  He would have needed to be a lot more aggressive a personality than he was if he hoped to get a word in sideways.  As it was, he did neck rolls; sometimes with a fervor that suggested he would never cease.  Even at that young and untrained age I thought he should be chiming in; directing my flow of words and helping me shape some useful meaning from so much disconbobulated experience.  I still think that.  And yet, when I was in my early thirties and suffering from a depression so profound and bleak I couldn't have expected myself (as I sometimes do within the powers & privilege of retrospect) to understand it was merely one overpowering symptom of PTSD, I went back to this man.  We spent three sessions discussing Buddha's "all too apparent" psychotic break and, also, the fact that I might be experiencing a very late-blooming Saturn Return.

That's the insightful best he had to offer.   And so I found somebody to work with who knew a great deal about PTSD in general and pre-verbal abuse in particular.  I believe she helped me to define my life as well as its experiences and that in turn allowed me to save myself one difficult increment at a time.  My son was very young then.  It was years before I could explain what had happened to me; to feel he was developed and strong enough to hear what had triggered an awful fall down a treacherous rabbit hole.

Still these aren't the words I intended when I sat down at the keyboard.  Linda Hogan's experiences and her writing about them have informed the inspiration for this post but that immediate influence hasn't shaped what I'm saying the way I presumed it would while the post was still bouncing around in my head.  It's a central point, however, that talking cures are something that traditional indigenous cultures view with suspicion.  Native women, in particular, are not usually given to spilling their guts to anyone but their own soul and/or Creator.

This is so true that I can't help admiring Hogan's bravery above and beyond the authentic nature of her writing voice.  I would call the book unflinching in its honesty but I tend to believe she flinched plenty within the process of weaving personal process and experience within the daunting context of a collective american history that's routinely disavowed, downplayed, or outright ignored.   Given that context, as well as experiential specifics, it's quite a triumph that this book was written in a spirit of abundant love rather than anger or despair. 

I do my best to embody such love; it's my son's way of walking and being in the world that lets me know I've been successful enough to imprint the message.  But I fear in a larger context it's a matter of rage that's carried me to this point.  I fear this because at times I wonder if that's the sum total of my be-ing; an essential nature from which I cannot escape because that's what is there at a foundational level.

For the past thirty one years I have lived with an uncommonly gentle soul who has helped me grow and raise a person who is even more gentle.  I am the sound, motion and fury of anything that falls beyond the boundaries of ahimsa.  These men who move beside me rarely get angry.  One of the few times I've seen my husband seriously riled relates to an instance when I was telling our son about a few of the atrocities this country's government visited on the native tribes. 

Jim thought Tony was too young to assimilate the information in a way that gave him more to work with than emotional detonation.  And I will not have a racist son, he concluded.  Our eyes held each other without an exchange of challenges so much as stark clarity I, for one, might have preferred to avoid.  It was that defining moment in which I confronted my own racism.  At the time I might have imagined that demon was an indivisible twin to anger; that I might eradicate two rat's nests with one swift blow of ox-headed determination.  Now, many years later, I think the two elements of personal unbalance are surely related but not necessarily symbiotic.

In the past year and a half my organic capacity for rage has found several points of focus.  None have been as potent or potentially crippling as the anger I've felt towards myself.  Not towards my body but self if you see the difference.  Sometimes I can't believe I had the series of accidents that led to a sustained spinal injury.  I can't believe I didn't know how to pay attention to my thyroid's messages before it went completely bonkers.  Nor can I believe I waste so much time and precious energy skating in an endless figure 8 within these things I can't-believe.  Life is moving forward and I need to concentrate on accepting what-is and has-been.

Something about Linda Hogan's writing has given me a fresh infusion of hope; hope that I can become larger than the all-too-predictable sum of my parts and, also, hope that I have at least one more miraculous comeback left in my being.  It's important to me to feed that hope instead of starving it.  What I have read has helped me to realize that I'm nowhere near ready to roll over and say Uncle.  So now I face the grunt work of moving myself through the opening paces of yet another personal evolution.  And I am just Apache enough to say that will be my triumph if not a direct pleasure ...

green whirled

The silver maple tree in our side yard is one of the slowest to get leaves; it's still a bit of a surprise to open the bedroom curtains each morning and see the bright green haze of fresh growth.  The swamp oaks are even slower.  Their leaf buds are still tightly closed.  But the rest of the garden is brimming with life.  In some places, a bit too much life.

The northernmost bed (and, for that matter, the old tomato bed) is crying out for some sustained attention.  I must thin the lady bells and valerian before the overflow chokes on itself.   Today I did not have enough energy for even small increments of working time.   But I did manage to collect some dandelion & celandine flowers to press for a color collection journal I've been keeping.

As I recuperate from an active weekend I am reading a very good novel:  Power by Linda Hogan.  The writing is vivid and compelling.  It's somewhat unusual to find a novel that's equally driven by plot, character and spirituality.  So I consider this one quite a treasure.  I'm going to enjoy it for what it is before delving into research of the tribal situations and corresponding mythology that's described in this story. 

It felt so good to spend some simple be-ing time in the garden at various points in the day.    Currently in bloom:  sweet woodruff, gardenia narcissus, sweet cicely, white lilacs, species tulips, dandelions, celandine, violets and chickweed.  And the poison ivy has re-emerged just as I reached a point of convincing myself it wasn't going to make a comeback...

a day well spent

The cat grass sprouts have reached the stage where they might be offered as kitty treats.  I think Celeste's response speaks for itself.

Yesterday I didn't quite get as far as clearing under the spruce tree.  Decided it would be better to approach a task I was more certain I could complete and then build on the encouragement that yielded.  So I cleared beneath the crabapple tree.  It was just as dense a tangle of untended space but considerably smaller in scope.

Today I was indeed encouraged and physically flexible enough to press onward.  Got nearly everything cleared from under the spruce except for some deep-rooted sourwood saplings and a really stubborn wisteria.  Jim dug them out and finished the last tiny bit of clearing that I'd been obliged to leave undone.  Later I kept walking out the front door just to admire the job we'd co-managed.

The weather was beautiful and I was delighted to spend time outside.  It's so grounding to do these particular chores.  I definitely worked in small increments with plenty of water and muscle-resting breaks.  My next task is to clear the main garden path and then I can tidy-up the beds themselves.  By the time it's actually planting season things should be in fine shape.

For the past two days I've spent my reading time absorbed in Mary Karr's second memoir Cherry.  Am finding it fairly rivetting in both content and writing caliber although I chose the review I linked because it highlights something that was a bit distracting.  Partway through there's a sudden super noticeable shift from first person narration to a more distanced second person.  This took a bit of mental adjusting but I find that second person narration doesn't tend to irk me the way third person does.  For me the choice to tell a personal story "away" from a direct I-experience feels self-consciously studied and a little too twee to swallow it gracefully.  Thus  she or he as a self-definition holds the annoying power to push me into a judgemental stance that puts me at odds with an innate desire to relate favorably to the basic construction principles and emotional purpose of  memoirs.

I have been thinking that if I were to speak as candidly about my sexual awakening(s) and coming of age individuation process as Karr does, I might be more comfortable with you as a vehicle for getting the story told.  Not sure about that.  For the past five or six months I've been doing a fair amount of memoir experimentation.  And will admit that nearly everything that truly hits close to the authentic bones of my recalled life story usually leaves me thinking: sweet merciful christ i can't possibly expose these tales to the eyes and minds and reactive eventualities of Just Anybody.

So I give points for guts even though the braggadocio factor is at times undeniable.  But this was automatically tempered by the heart-stabbing quality of the foreward which is actually a lot like listening to a Jim Carrol song - especially People Who Died or [when the] City Drops Into Night.   For me this kind of thing hits some vulnerable planes of authentic resonation rather than evoking cynical disaffect or a sense of being asked to embrace situational unreality.

Am not sure why I am currently so driven to write out my story in a memoir construction - especially when the genre is so unquestionably overdone and I apparently don't really want to put myself on any kind of authentic line where publication is concerned.  Perhaps the drive is simply part & parcel of a basic midlife introspection process.   And I do tend to process everything, sooner or later, through some degree of intensive writing.

Demons can be elusive in that sense.  So, for that matter are angels or whatever other guardian spirit (including our own horse sense) we may feel to be at play as the story unwinds itself.   Now I see by the clock on my computer that it is once again a quarter of one in the morning.  Sleep isn't coming too easily right now; am much too buzzy from the shift in season to actually want to shut things down at a reasonable hour of the evening ...

aries!! acceleration!!!

One aspects of Aries energy that I especially love is the impulse to follow a powerful jump/lunge forward.  Right now the sun & moon are both in that astrological sign and it's the first full day of a new lunar cycle.  I've certainly been feeling my inner ram ramping up for some accelerated fun & games.  Had a lot of trouble settling down for sleep last night and still woke up earlier than usual this morning.

After an extended session with some personal ceremonies of new moon acknowledgment I felt even more energized. Had some errands to run and so did Tony.  Usually we'd do mine first and then he'd drop me back home.  But today I felt so revitalized that I decided to accompany him.   Was good to catch up with greater detail of his daily doings during the drive.  The good natured conversation seemed to sparkle like a pretty stream in the sunlight.   Even though it's a very gray day that's once again much chillier than the weather predictions I do indeed feel sunny.  Soon enough Spring will grace us with her presence.  In the meantime I am resolved to keep some level of connection to the brighter side of my own nature.

For a number of months now I've been library book browsing mainly online through the inter-library loan system and in our town's library.  That building is undeniably beautiful but, within the relatively new and dramatically increased space for books (not to mention severe statewide budgetary cuts), it's not exactly full to the rafters.  And sometimes you just want to be fully surrounded by books while you make your choices.

Tony needed to do something in the next town which has a rather wonderful library.  I've often considered it a sanity-saving lifeline since moving away from the authentic treasure trove that is the Boston public library system.  So along the way to fulfilling his errand I asked if he'd mind the slight detour.  He didn't.  And thus my good mood skyrocketted into the potentially obnoxious range.

Even though I'd neglected to grab my reading glasses before we left the house I thought I'd be fine if I stuck to seeking out books by known authors in sections of the library that are best known to me.    This optimistic certainty overlooked the fact that I'm incapable of going into a library and not heading directly for the new books section.  Just can't do it.  Don't actually want to.

Even before I got that far I was further waylaid by the current art exhibit.  In a nod to national women's month it was comprised of recent collage work, photographs and paintings by local females.   Since my sight issues are relatively minor I could look at the art more or less properly.  One largely green collage that included an evocative buddha image and some wired sea glass held my interest for several moments as did an awesome painting of fresh asparagus spears.   But I couldn't read the accompanying artist biographies and notes.  I felt this was unfortunate.  Have been reading some blogs lately that have shared, in both posts and comments, an apparently popularized disinterest in knowing why or how people render their creative expression(s).  Yet, for oh-so-unfashionable and un-trendy me, that sort of thing is of ongoing interest and something I greatly enjoy absorbing.

While I missed being able to appreciate the exhibit in that capacity, not being able to decipher regular sized print became even more debilitating when I was drawn to turn my attention to the new fiction shelves.  Selected one book of short stories while flying relatively blind.  Then I saw a novel with a title and cover that attracted me enormously but we all know how that can go.  So I corralled Tony into reading the inside flap for me.  Partway through I sensed both of our attention flagging so I interrupted to prompt:  now read the rest of it as Gregory House.  Hilarity and some pointed looks from the ladies at the circulation booth ensued.  And the book did indeed sound interesting enough to bring it home.

Undeterred by my inability to read properly (and Tony's tactful yet very definite drifting off before I could ask for more read-aloud cues) I moved on to the new non-fiction.  Without any help I was able to see and comprehend the covers of the book pictured above.  And that was enough to bring it home without a closer inspection process.  This one looks completely fabulous now that I've gotten it home  and had an eyeglass enhanced opportunity to flip through it for a few moments.  Will probably write a review on my other blog once I've actually absorbed the contents more fully.

There are still two in-house projects I want to implement before night's end.  This particular lunar cycle may be an excellent opportunity to prove some personalized points about innumerable journeys that begin with a single step.  Once I post the day's offering at nichobella I'll move on to those tasks and, maybe, unplug for a day or two.  Not sure about that yet - the ending of the last cycle and the beginning of this one seems to be asking for some flexibility and greater mindfulness about how/when/why I plan the now customary unplugged days I've come to cherish...

shifting towards spring

Lightness has been entering my general mood flow as well as my daily attitude.   And just in the nick of time - Tuesday was our 25th wedding anniversary and yesterday was Tony's 24th birthday.   The family celebrations were modest and heartfelt; a nice compliment to the full moon's brilliance in the sky.  Today I saw my primary care doc to review my latest bloodwork and also discuss my ongoing spine/leg issues.  Now I have lidoderm patches to add to my cache of pain management tools.  And an acupuncturist referral. 

While waiting to see her I started a new library book - Face to Face: Women Writing on Faith, Mysticism and Awakening.  It's a collection of essays, poems and excerpts from larger pieces from a variety of women edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson.  Once I was a paragraph or two into the the introduction I found myself blocking out the wailing toddler and mind-numbing easy listening radio station in the waiting room.  Had a chance to read the first offering from new-to-me Mohja Kahf and a second piece by long-time fave Terry Tempest Williams.

From just that much I'm already thinking of this book as a keeper; if it were my own instead of the library's I would be hauling out some highlighters to mark especially evocative or thought-provoking passages.  As it is, I've found a handful of items to copy into my all purpose collection-of-word-related-things notebook.   And when I got back home I was a lot more interested in googling Mohja Kahf, and then reading the WaPo article that I linked, than I cared about reading the informative info that came with the box of lidoderm patches.

This book will now join the one I've nearly finished as bedtime and first-waking up reading.  The latter - Close to the Bone by Jean Shinoda Bolen - has been so satisfying that I need something really strong to follow.  Am a long term admirer of both Bolen's healing work and her writing style.  This particular volume is a thought provoking and emotionally affirming examination of the alterative aspects of chronic and life threatening illnesses.  I've linked to the preface, published on Bolen's website, for those interested in learning more.

This book's impact on my psyche and more mundane attitude has been profoundly positive.   As spring approaches I am ready to develop a new and less frustrating relationship to the assortment of health/physical issues that I'm obliged to embrace.  And I do find myself wanting to authentically embrace the reality of it all rather than simply tolerating that which I can't control as fully or simply as I might wish.  So yay.  Over the past few months I've been working overtime to keep faith that I would reach this point in a way that anchored deep beneath the superficial/lip-servicey level.

My bloodwork was declared perfect beyond a continued thyroid anomaly - right now it's swung in the opposite direction of Graves presentation and is functioning a bit too slowly.  So I'll have to go for another draw in six weeks.  In the meantime I'm likely to re-commence daily work with Lemon Balm.  Although it is most commonly associate with hyperthyroidism I have read and heard a lot of positive things about its use in regulating more moderate cases of hypo-function.  This seems to be an especially helpful herbal ally for those who started out on the hyper end of the functioning spectrum. 

I have plenty left from last year's harvest to drink as tea, and my friend Robin has thoughtfully supplied enough tincture to allow for alternating between the two applications.  I found Robin's support invaluable during the more crisis-oriented aspects of the Graves diagnosis.  Integrative healing can raise hackles on both sides of the choice-making fence so I was very selective about who I picked for sharing details of my decisions at the point where I felt most vulnerable.

Over time Robin and I have both worked diligently to achieve and maintain tenderness and a trans-personal sisterly love and respect for each other.  A variety of life experiences leads me to understand that this is no small accomplishment.  In fact simply holding the ongoing inclination, and consistent willigness to embody it, seems rather exceptional in spite of the fact that my personal life philosophy would suggest that it ought to be an ongoing way of the world.   Thinking of our shared process, and knowing of Robin's strong gift for intentional medicine-making, I felt particularly honored, protected and loved to include her tincture in my wellness-building regime. 

The dried herb that I've been using to brew tea comes from my own garden beds.  Lemon balm is an especially prolific ally there so I'm already anticipating the first harvests of fresh leaves once the new growing season gets underway.    Infusions from the freshly picked leaves have a wonderfully deep yet delicate green color.  The distinctive lemony scent fills the sensory mind and, I believe, opens the body's cellular being to welcome this marvellously effective and gentle healing agent.

Back to the doc visit details - my blood pressure and heart rate are now in the optimum range so, for now, I'll stay with the modest amount of beta block I've been taking.  My hope/healing intention is that I can develop a more even-keeled exercise regime that will allow me to release this maintenance drug.   An absence of ice means an end to corollary fear of falling on it and further damaging my spine.   And, without that fear, I'm a lot more likely to follow through with the kind of practical application cardio exercise that's part of my strongest comfort zone. Am simply not a treadmill or step-class sort of person but I suppose if it comes down to it I will bite the emotional bullet and do what I gotta.

I told the doctor I was struggling a great deal to get my work done and further struggling to deal with the increased spine/leg pain that results when I do actually manage to lose myself in the writing process long enough to effectively dissociate from physical sensation.  Then I professed my lack of understanding for why I was having so much trouble getting a handle on this situation, given my fairly extensive history with pain management.  She just looked at me for a moment and then said very simply it's because you're human.

Obvious and yet revelatory; I have spent the last few months criticizing myself for not finding a successful way of handling either the pain or a re-structured schedule/general lifestyle that allows me to find ways of decompensating the pain's levels of impact and influence.   For too long I have been qualifying my human-ness with the sense I ought to know what I'm doing in re. pain management well enough to do it successfully.  Right?  I mean the basic premise does make a lot of sense to me but I doubt I'd feel nearly as rigorously certain of what the outcome ought to be if I was listening to somebody else's process rather than second-guessing my own.

By the time I got done listing all the things I routinely do to help and heal myself the doctor was looking at me like just how much more do you think you can  sanely expect of yourself , anyway.  So I went the distance and vocalized what she was clearly weighing the value of saying herself:   I'm not being realistic or empathetic enough within the goals I encourage myself to attain.

And that particular insight - as well as the changes it implies I'd be wise to pursue - brings us back to Close to the Bone and how immeasurably nourishing I'm finding it.  This is another book from the library that I'd like to own.   Because it's been so instructive and psychologically helpful to me, I think I will probably purchase it sooner rather than later...

ice-land

The garage windows have an intricate glaze that reminds me of a miniaturized (and albino) fern glade.  Yesterday's storm brought us a few more inches of snow and a lot of sleet and rain.   My neurological challenges got progressively more pronounced as the day wore on; after I'd walked into my fourth or fifth wall I decided to hang out in bed reading Man Bites Log.

This morning's sunlight encouraged me to begin the faltering process of re-stringing my equilibrium.  Kicked things off with yoga practice and then asked Tony if he'd mind driving me on a few errands beyond the town limits.  Along the way we saw countless birch trees bent all the way to the ground.   So far it's been a difficult winter for hardwoods...     

going back & forward

A few months back I encountered a couple of very different blog posts that sang vivid praises for Deena Metzger's writing guide pictured above.  Without question, those praises are justified.  Deena is as gifted a healer and personal/political/ecological reclamation guru as she is a writer.  If you don't know her work, or simply want to refresh your understanding of it, click here.

Last night I finished re-reading this book which is quite wonderful for anyone who wants to deepen their awareness of how & why they use words.  I think that's true whether or not you actively consider yourself a writer.   But, for writers in particular, the book is fairly invaluable.  I haven't opened it for at least a dozen years but in that time I have kept it as power talisman on the shelf beside my desk.  There are four or five other writing related books that I've kept on this shelf; last week I started re-reading them with Deena's being the second I've completed.

Here's what's wild.  The final section of the book deals with writing as a spiritual practice.  The concluding portion of that section deals with dreamtime and how we might choose record and work with what we gather there.  It also explores how dreamtime relates to the waking world.  I read avidly.  Then I went to sleep and dreamed a whopper of a power dream if ever there was one.

But that's not how it struck me at first.  I woke with a start at about two a.m. with the the uneasy sense I'd just had a first class "bad" dream; a nightmare full of disturbing personal symbols that my fatalistic aspects were quick to interpret as the very nature of dis-empowerment.  But something in a deeper part of my sleepy awareness goaded me to force myself into a greater state of wakefulness.  I asked myself to repeat a key phrase I'd been chanting in the dream - RETURN TO SOURCE - and seek the meanings it held beyond the reasons I'd been chanting it.  As well as why I'd been chanting it.  And, as I did this, I began to understand two things.  The dream enabled me to turn a very significant corner of personal development and coalescence.  And ... my thyroid wasn't sore.  At all.  For the first time in over two months I could swallow without the slightest sense of awkwardness or discomfort.

Wow, I thought.  That Deena Metzger is one hell of a medicine maker.  Her written suggestions and wisdom, first inscribed nearly two decades ago, had invoked something in me that has been patiently seeking release for a long while.  Like:  'way before I developed a hyperactive thyroid as a conduit for message giving and receiving with my ordinary fairly oblivious consciousness.  It's not that I haven't known this release was biding its time so much as I sought the proper and most effective tools to help it/myself find a new and more authentic voice.  And I haven't necessarily known how or when those tools were going to present themselves in a more finished and directly viable sort of form.  And then? They came in a dream so potent and meaningful that it took me four densely filled pages and nearly an hours worth of writing time to start unwinding what happened while I slept.

Interesting that, as I re-read a book that had radically changed my writerly perceptions when I first encountered it, I didn't remember anything about the contents.  I couldn't even clearly fathom what had been so meaningful to me the first time I read it.  Was too busy absorbing what it meant to me in the present tense.  This did not surprise me too much because the same thing happened last week when I was reading the Bonnie Friedman book pictured above. 

I remember, fairly vividly, picking up Writing Past Dark from the New Release table at Seven Stars when the store was still located in Harvard Square.   I also remember carrying it around with great reverence and insisting that certain members of my writing group might gain a lot of insight and galvanization from reading it.  I recall that I thought it was exquisitely written and hugely illuminating.  But I only recall two sentences out of the entire book and didn't remember those specific words until I was partway through re-reading them last Thursday afternoon.

I found this astonishing and, as a result, I kept talking about it to anyone who would listen.  People kept saying to me that's really odd because you have such an exceptional memory.  And I kept thinking this experience is teaching me to re-visit a very important piece of personal mythology.  Because my allegedly excellent memory has probably forgotten the context and details of many other things that I've found to hold a pivotal significance.  Books, conversations, long solitary walks in the woods ... the perceived "treasured details" of these things are actually a colorful blur.  What I tend to remember is the importance itself rather than what shaped my sense of profound meaning.

Both these books have nudged me to recall that it's been quite awhile since I made a blog post confessing my desire to pick up my abandoned interest in Fictionland.  For a long time I have questioned (or ignored) the reason why I feel that writing a novel is actually a meaningful endeavor.  In the time of my questioning I've been vocal about it. I can't even count the number of people who have countered with exclamations about where the world might be if J. K. Rowling had asked that sort of question.

Not to be flippant but 'the world' would be exactly where it is with or without Harry Potter stories.  Fictionland itself might not be the same, and any number of Potterphiles might have a very different relationship to both writing and reading but that's not seemed like any sort of reason to write novels or consider the act of writing them as some sort of Important and/or rarified process that's worth the time and energy it takes.

Bonnie Friedman's book nudged me to wonder why, exactly, I can't seem to effectively answer the larger question of what would be the point.  Deena Metzger's book helped me to begin discerning such a point.  Unfortunately I didn't record my initial ideas on the subject and, at this exact moment, I can't remember what they were.  But I do know they were inciting as well as valid.  Enough so I started thinking Why Not rather than Why.

I don't usually question writing in general because, for me, asking why write is a lot like asking why breathe or why eat lunch.  But novel-writing has long been a huge question mark for me.  I've written a few of them now without making any serious effort to get any of them published and that fact alone has prompted me to repeatedly ask so why are you doing it.  After a certain point, it grew clear that I can, in fact, "do" it and so continuing to do it just to prove I have the ability no longer seemed relevant or worth the effort and solitude involved.

Over time many people have quite enthusiastically jumped in with both feet to interpret the whys and wherefores of both the choices I make and those I reject - especially where novel writing is concerned.  Sometimes I try to be polite about it.  Sometimes I'm abrupt and impatient and, most usually, I'm quite silent.  Because, really, what does anybody else's opinion have to do with my authentic reasons?  Nine times out of ten, little to nothing.

So ... as I was writing that last sentence ... I did manage to remember what Metzger's book evoked in terms of an explanation for why I have spent so much previous time focused on one particular novel that I haven't yet completed.   My reason for writing it in the first place "suddenly" became so vividly clear that I thought to myself Oh Wow. I should finish this thing.  At this point in my life it seems senseless to consider that without also considering the seemingly inexorable (and largely distasteful-to-me) process of self-promotion and a serious effort to get it in print.  You know.  With a "real" a/k/a "regular" publishing house.  Even though all that's entailed both in getting that far and then complying with the sorts of things that publishing houses tend to expect from their writers really is HUGELY distasteful to me.

But my thyroid's stopped hurting.  And I have a much stronger sense of what "return to source" means to me in the writerly sense; what it could mean to a novelist - specifically the novelist that I have previously decided I don't actually care to be.  Is this making sense to you?  No serious matter one way or the other.  It's making a lot of sense to me and I have both of the guidebooks I've recently re-read to thank for that ...

John Gillow #2

Here's another textile volume that's well worth searching-out - especially if you love batiks and/or ikats.  My copy is an oversized paperback.  I purchased it sight unseen because I had been so impressed and inspired by the other two Gillow books that I previewed through library loans.  The back cover reads in part:  In this book the rich design tradition is reflected in over 200 dazzling photographs.  Based on first-hand research, often conducted in remote areas, John Gillow's account comprises a comprehensive history of textile production in the Indonesian archipelago and a complete guide to the islands and their products - from Balinese double ikats and Javanese silks to the gold-thread brocades of Sumatra.

Once again many of the textiles are presented in full page images.  There are also wonderful pictures of the processes involved with bringing these amazing cloths to life.

I have spent several happy hours studying the images and text; this is a book I want to keep close at hand for dreaming over and ongoing inspiration value.  The book has five chapters: The Textile History of Indonesia, Yarns Looms & Dyes,  The Decorative Craft of Batik, A World of Pattern (ikat-centric), and The Art of Embellishment. 

I was very happy to receive this book and start absorbing the information it contained because I happen to love Indonesian textiles without actually knowing much about them from a process-oriented or contextual point of view.  It's always been one of those know-what-I-like type of attractions and that can get old after awhile - especially when it's so obvious that the beauty and craftsmanship gains more emotional and visual value the more you actually know about its cultural purpose and derivations.

It is impossible to select favorite images and so I just opened the book at random in order to provide these glimpses.  Returning to the the book as a way of framing these written remarks kept me happily preoccupied for several minutes of contented gawking.  The visual richness of the textiles is actually a bit overwhelming.  It's nice to have something on hand that can be reviewed over time; when I go to textile exhibitions I always feel that my brain is processing only a fragment of what I see on display.  That's why I always try to visit more than once and take notes on my impressions in between the visits.  With the Gillow books, that kind of work is done for me and I have all the time in the world to look, sketch and reflect at my leisure.  To my mind, the volume is quite reasonably priced even without discount.  It happens my own copy had such a steep discount that, even with shipping, it wound up being a bit less than half the cover price.  Either way, the cost factor makes it rather indispensable for those of us who may never be lucky enough to amass a comprehensive collection of the Real Thing.

Note:  if you missed my review of Gillow's African Textiles, you can read it right here.

the challenge of be-ing

Woooooooo!  There's been some herbal medicine making in this work room!  I mean the very practical down-to-earth type of medicine making that starts with a trip to the garden, a collecting basket and freshly cleaned collecting shears.  Was very glad to get the two largest baskets filled with lemon balm and spearmint before the rains came on Sunday.   But a few technical difficulty type problems emerged in retrospect because the gathering process really messed with my blood pressure.  I tried to avoid getting up and down quickly but was not able to avoid feeling both dizzy and exhausted.  So I have been experiencing the spiral-around portion of the healing process.  Greater patience, more resting time and  increased self-compassion are the things I need most right now.

I collected enough lemon balm for a few nice drying bunches and two recycled canning jars full of cold oil infusion.    This is such pleasant work because the leaves smell so nice.  But it took a LONG time to get all the air bubbles out of the oil jars.  The concentrated effort further exhausted me. This in turn has been making it more difficult for me to assimilate the medications I'm taking. So I will need to re-think my herb gathering habits and allow this aspect of life to become another place where I ask for more help than usual.  One good thing about the daily rain storms is the opportunity it gives me to mentally problem solve.

Instead of bundling the spearmint I just transferred the harvest to the largest basket once I'd processed all the lemon balm.  I toss the mint manually a couple times a day and have learned this is an acceptable way of getting it properly dried.  Right now, it's so damp that this lazy-way may actually be more effective than bundling.

The whole dizzy/exhausted thing has been calling most of the shots in this new week.  Yesterday's birthday celebrations were very low key but I still feel like I need to rest-up from them.  Had hoped to go to the ocean in Rhode Island today but am simply not up for it so Jim and Tony drove up to New Hampshire, instead.    Before they left they put frequently used items at natural standing level for me - cat food, water jug, pots and pans for heating my food, etc.  Plus they put everything I'd need from the refrigerator on the top shelf.  This has been a huge help.  Moving up and down, even when I do it super slowly, has a huge negative impact on me right now.

 This morning I found that out all over again when I was out in the garden getting some documentation shots.  For the next little while I'll need to stop taking the kind of pictures that involve squatting or crouching.  Will need to just be with greater mindful conviction.  So the studio journal class I'm taking is proving to be an invaluable distraction from my difficult moods and emotional spikes, weird thought patterns, etc.  Today I wrote a blog post for nichobella that details my relationship to journaling as an over-arching life theme.  Constructing written thoughts on the topic was extremely helpful for me in terms of clarifying who I am and what I'm about above and beyond the physical concerns of this particular moment.

Yesterday one of the gifts I received was Creating Sketchbooks for Embroiderers and Textile Artists.  I have read extremely varied/mixed responses to this book here online so I really wasn't sure what to expect.  So far I am liking what I see both in terms of the visuals and the way the written portions of the book are structured.   There is way more substance to the text (and the photos, for that matter) than some of the online reviews would suggest.  When I am not so dizzy and fatigued I expect I will get even more out of it.    Am going to unplug for a few days to prepare for the upcoming festival of medical appointments.  Hope everyone has a good week ...