Sparkling Lotus-land

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 ...

making the most of it

Yesterday Jim and I enjoyed the rare sunlight with a bit of day tripping.  It's always nice to spend some time with the Charles River ...

Wandering with just the barest outline of a plan is fun for us.  Over the years I think we've most successfully learned how to merge our compatibilities and differences by taking time away from our normally scheduled programs.  Being together in an out-of-daily context becomes the context.  And that's both liberating and coalescent.

We took our time standing on the footbridge that crosses Newton Lower Falls.  The water's activity level was a great prompt for meditation. 

On our way home we stopped for some ice cream. 

Jim had a banana split and I had raspberry sherbet.

The highly satisfying centerpiece of our afternoon was a visit to the De Cordova museum in Lincoln.

I've shared some details about the exhibit we saw, and images from the sculpture park, over at nichobella.  Today I am fairly tired from all the activity but also quite well-satiated and ready to percolate with Unknown results of fresh visual and psychic input ...

snow pond

Sunday afternoon Jim and I visited Snow Pond.  It was a beautiful sunny day with a lovely cool breeze; perfect for sitting on the memorial bench and watching ripples fan across the water's surface.  

The longer I sat on the bench the more I felt certain I'd be able to walk around the pond.  We took the longer pathways around the edges of the berry fields. 

In the blueberry field (pictured above) milkweed was just coming into bloom.

We startled a large flock of small birds I haven't yet identified.  I also startled the blue heron while I was taking pictures of the water lilies.

The far edge of the overgrown raspberry field was loaded with a variety of wildflowers.  We took our time savoring the familiar landscape.  It's been awhile since we walked the outer perimeter together. 

The fields and woods have clearly benefited from all the rain.  Often, at this point in the summer, the creek that feeds the pond has dwindled to a trickle. 

Fortunately it hasn't rained enough to spoil the emergent berry crops.  Blueberries were especially plentiful.  Soon enough they will ripen ...

the long weekend

Jim and I spent some time with a few of our favorite trees; retracing well-known paths and speaking together of what they mean to us.

I had an important release ceremony to complete.  Having my husband along as a witness meant a great deal to me.  I believe that ceremonial release can have a huge impact on forward movement of various kinds.  In this case the turnaround impact began to form shape almost immediately.

Several weeks ago I realized it was important for me to return a special gift to the place where I had received it.  Sometimes I would think of nothing else for a few days in a row and then, right at a time when I could have followed through, the intention would slip my mind. 

All the life threads and individual fragments of meaning & intention needed to form a whole unit of consciousness.  Maybe that sounds like so much pretentious gobbledygook but, I can assure you, that's not how it felt.  And significant shifts did indeed start to materialize within a single day's passing.

Now, after a mere 72 hours, several personal and professional changes are forming a fresh grid of resolution.  And I am overcome with awareness of the leap of faith & perfect trust that's required in order to get from one point to another.

I don't mean to sound mysterious but all the shapes and puzzles of this new order are not yet aligned enough to present in a series of coherent thoughts/sentences.   Soon enough that will shift and the emergent shapes will be easier to describe.

Stabilizing the mind & body during these type of shifts can be a real challenge.  We all seek to fulfill our dreams and highest purpose.  But we also hesitate at points when we think we know what we want and how we expect our desires to manifest yet everything gets a little crazy and uncontrolled once that manifestation moves from our imagination to something more concrete.

Once our ideas start to take an actualized form beyond the inner landscape even the most common places of our daily world start to look a bit surreal and unfamiliar.

This is the point when we need to breathe deep; to dig deeply into our strengths.  We have to be strong enough to shine a light in the face of our vulnerability.  The two extremes of our individual natures are equally real.  They're both true of every human but the specific details of what that truth has to offer, and what we must offer it in return, can be very different from person to person.

It takes an effort to listen to what we need to tell ourselves in a truly mindful way.  It takes an even greater effort to listen just as carefully to those who are taking the leap with us.  We have to honor our combined fears as well as our bravery.

The more complex a situation appears to be the more we need to embrace simplicity.  We must be practical without losing a connection to our soul's poetry.  We need to give ourselves wings that allow us to stay connected to the most solid ground our instincts and experience can provide.

We need to remember where we come from and where we are going at a heart level.  Then we can actively embrace the moment of NOW where-ever it happens to find us ...

lunchtime idyll

It's a relatively warm and sunny day so Jim and I capped off our midday errands with a bit of quiet time at Snow Pond.  The maple trees are budding and beneath them the water gleamed dark blue.   We sat on the memorial bench to watch water birds fishing.  Also made note of the restoration work that's been accomplished in the berry fields.

Do you see the heron and mallards?  There was also a pair of Canada Geese.

We sat as quietly as possible so the heron wouldn't leave.  During our visit we watched the bird make its way about around the pond's edge.

The restoration efforts have cleared a lot of the debris left by winter storm damage. 

The blueberries have been completely reclaimed.  The old raspberry field appears to have been cleared; I wasn't able to walk around that far and Jim elected to sit with me rather than investigate on his own.

As we made our way back to the main road I noticed coltsfoot blooming in a ditch.   Jim obligingly pulled over so I could hop out and spend a few happy moments crouched beside them.  It's a favorite spring ritual of greeting that never fails to raise my spirits.  There have been times when I've spent a few hours sitting with the plant.  Today it seemed lucky to have much less time as physical expansion and contraction continues to be a very volatile healing component...

related matter

Yesterday my son and I celebrated spring with a trip to our favorite local greenhouse.  All the plants fairly pulsed with vitality.   I selected two small scented pelargoniums to bring home with us.  Also stocked up on my favorite flowering plant supplement.  We set these things on the checkout counter and then roamed at will for awhile.

The tour of inspection raised my enthusiasm level; it's very cold and windy outside but this is still the start of a new growing season!   I was especially elevated by the long row of herb seedlings.   Tony enjoyed touring the succulents and hanging baskets.  He is tall enough to see their contents at eye level.  During our first visits to this nursery he was considerably shorter.  Am delighted this is still the sort of excursion he enjoys sharing with me.

Some of the back greenhouses were open.  This is where Paul and Barbara tend the hundreds of vegetable and flower plants they raise from seed every spring.   As we peeked inside we saw Barbara working peacefully. 

It won't be long before the tables are bursting with flowering annuals and the hanging baskets are bright with several fuchsia varieties.   The sunny hillside was covered with greening thyme runners that added a crisp lively scent to our walk.   I was so inspired by the visit that I asked Tony to take the long way home, via Snow Pond.

The ice is still rather thick on the pond.  The wind was blowing with force strong enough to swallow our words as we tried to talk to each other.  My jacket wasn't heavy enough for lingering.  We walked to the edge of the pond, surveyed tree damage from last December's biggest storm, and hurried back to the warmth of the car.

The urge to plant had become so powerful that I got this seed packet for the cats' benefit.  After lunch I made a little ceremony of preparing a pot for each cat.  Covered with plastic, these offerings have been placed on high window ledges.  The animals are none the wiser.  But helping the wheatgrass grow to the recommended 3-4 inches without feline interference is going to be challenging!

It was a satisfying and active way to begin the season of fresh life.  Today I need to recharge and prepare for another active day tomorrow.  From there I'm planning a few days' break from blogging.  Will be back Tuesday or Wednesday...

freshly bloomed this morning on the silver leaf rose scented pelargonium settling in here at my desk.

out & about

Yesterday Tony had a day off from work.  We decided to have some quality time together and take our cameras to a nearby nature sanctuary.   I love this shot of him happily going about his business. 

The sanctuary is a favorite spot of ours.  We have been there many times in all kinds of weather.  Yesterday was bright and somewhat chilly.  Tony especially loves to check on the rescued animals in the visitors center so that was our first stop.

Since our last visit a water dragon has arrived to join the group that lives along the walls of the library room.  Love his brilliant green coloration.  I always think about reptiles when someone tries to tell me that my favorite forms of green are 'unnatural'.   Sometimes I mention it and sometimes I just let the opinions settle like leaves on the ground.  

This old bird feeder has been placed at ground level for the Hoppers.  It reminds me of a similar feeder that was attached to a kitchen window at the house where I was raised.  My grandmother loved bird-watching.  She taught me to identify the songs of many birds that were common in South Jersey.  When I first moved to our current home I was amazed at how much I recalled from those early lessons.  I still have some of her favorite nature books.  A few have the oilcloth covers she sewed for them.  Others have fallen into pieces from so much use.  They are important keepsakes for me.

I was glad to have this little excursion with my son.  We spent some time apart taking pictures and then met up for the walk back to the car.    Before we got that far I really enjoyed glimpsing Tony's silent communion with a favorite tree.  That's my kid!

Of course I visited my own favorite tree - the lightning struck Shagbark Hickory that I have blogged about a number of times.

There is always something new to discover about this friend.  Yesterday I noticed an abandoned egg in the bird box attached to the tree's trunk.  Wonder what made the mother leave it behind?  The question worried me a little and I am still thinking about it.

Today is sunnier and colder.  Don't think I'll get much farther than my own yard and bird feeding chores.  There's another viral thingy going around and I'm definitely feeling some of the symptoms.   So it will be a slow day with minimal accomplishment.  Which is fine, really ...

the local landscape

Since one of my current stitching projects involves a lot of brown I have been scouting the local surroundings for appropriate sources of photographic inspiration.  On Saturday I walked down to the creek's edge.  It was fairly chilly but I lingered to enjoy the crisp and crunchy nature of the fading brush.  This is a good time of year to study things that aren't visible during the warmer months when many of the creekbed's details are obscured by leaves and wildflowers.

Yesterday it snowed; shifting to hail as the day continued.  The gloomy wetness was the perfect backdrop for making up a pot of vegetable soup.  As I was working in the kitchen I noticed that the herb & spice shelves really need to be winnowed and reorganized.  Had vowed to make it a task of first priority for this week but now I sit in the sun dreamily watching squirrels chase each other around the trunk of a norwegian fir tree.

For most of the weekend the sky was gray but on Saturday's trip to the post office I saw a patch of blue beneath the clouds.   Today the sky is primarily clear and bright.  Right after I typed that sentence I decided to go to the Post Office before it was closed for lunch.  It's a good deal warmer today and my muscles craved a bit more extensive walking time.  I made my way upcreek and saw the water running from its wellspring at quite a pace.

The surrounding area was quiet and I was able to do a bit of quality birdwatching.  Was especially pleased to glimpse the elusive pair of flickers who only show up in our yard during the very worst storms.  Am so thankful to have regained enough stamina for local nature walks. 

Moving onwards now to see what the rest of this day may hold ...