Of course the sky is apocalyptic this week
an orange hue signaling a climate change
both here
and abroad
A shift in the very air we breathe
New and different and unsettling all around us
A golden glow lit up a heart etched in tree bark,
but it only looked so beautiful
because the world is on fire.
I wore the wrong shoes for a walk on the beach yesterday. Loose, low-top, canvas. Perfect for sand spillage and saltwater seepage.
But the beach was empty and we wandered across it. There’s always the gravitational pull of the ocean, of course, but the surface packed firm by the pounding waves also makes for a firm path to walk.
Mindful of the play of wind-whipped froth, we measured our distance to the shoreline.
This liminal space always provides so much to observe. Constant creation and movement. Destruction and rebuilding. Patterning and cleaning the slate.
The wind rolled the masses of bubbles into balls of foam and then skidded them across the sand to nothingness.
The salt water splayed out on the sand stiffened into sheets of lace overlay.
As I watched all this, my feet suddenly fell upon solid ground. A rippled strip of wrack felt firm underneath. Steps easier to take, path more sure. I experimented as I followed the serpentine line where the sea left its mark. It didn’t always prove my hypothesis, depending on how much extra sand and bits of sea grass or driftwood were pushed up along with the water. But given the choice between shifting deeps that threatened to overflow the upper lip of my shoe or absorbent sand that would suck me down in, the twisting line of possibility seemed the way forward.
And as does any calm, quiet time in nature, a fully formed realization pushed its way to the front of my consciousness.
That elusive, ever-shifting sprite, flitting just beyond the fingertips of our most focused days.
For years, I’ve complained about balance. I’ve mocked gurus in their long-flowing robes and elasticized outfits. On more than one occasion, I’ve muttered, fucking balance. But we hate that which we most need, what we are most like.
In the great irony of the universe, I’ve finally come back to what I’ve known from the beginning.
It’s all about balance.
Shooting a straight a line down the seashore isn’t optimal for sure footing because the terrain changes. Based on the moveable sands on the left and the perpetually mobile sea on the right, the way forward turns and twists. The up and down, in and out of the wrack line is the perfect balance of dry, fine sand that slips through fingers and wet, moldable sand that suctions around whatever is placed in it. Of course, there may be plastic tangled up in seaweed on that line. But there might also be the iridescent sheen of mussel shell shimmering in the sunlight.
So, yes, I should wear proper footwear for the journey, but on-going adaptation and give-and-take are givens. And whether I acknowledge it or fight against it, the ebb and flow of the ocean is always a stronger force than I. Better to work with the ebb and flow of life than stubbornly stumble a straight line.
This past weekend, I stepped out onto my porch and heard the most glorious sound. The delicate yet undulating and overlapping squeaking of spring peepers.
Officially known as pseudacris crucifer, spring peepers are also defined as chorus frogs. And that is exactly what they were doing at my Saturday evening concert.
In this neck of the woods, we haven’t really had any sort of winter to speak of. The low spot in the sky the sun has hung from has affected me, of course, but it hasn’t been incredibly cold and we had but one (and a half?) snow event(s) all season.
Still, this harbinger of spring sets the wings of my soul aflutter.
Just as the little sparrows flitting from porch railing to the bush branches just below my dining room window do. Coming down the stairs in the early glow of dawn, their chirps sound almost as if they’ve entered the house to say hello.
In the rush of the bus stop, if I tune my ear between the hum of the engine melting the morning frost and the calls of my daughter, I can hear the scree of what must be a juvenile hawk hanging around its nest from last spring. And in the quiet rush of afternoon wind before the bus comes back, I can pinpoint chirrups high up in the tree tops.
Spring
Nature
Rebirth
Signs
The sigh of the universe
Our own intuition,
desires,
designs,
they’re all there
If we but step outside, still ourselves, and listen.
Images: Farmers Almanac, Wicked Local, Jonathan Eckerson respectively
Why do some people have a fear of failure and others believe they can do anything?
It isn’t as simple as ego,
for some people possess profound confidence without arrogance.
For some, anxiety factors in somewhere,
looping a lasso around self-esteem and dragging it down.
Is fear of failure fueled by perfectionism?
The idea that an ideal is unreachable
so the motor is cut before passing go.
In what way are we programmed?
How is failure default for some and left to previous versions for others?
How do those infected with the virus
code switch
and update the mainframe?
Disregard my previous missive.
While that advice may have been sound – in a low-level survivalist sort of way – it was ordered toward others rather than centered on you.
Yes, it suggested simple ways to keep the lid on things at home with small children – and you would be the one responsible for completing them – but that’s the only part of YOU that factored into that equation.
It put you at the center of others’ judgment of you – via your home and your housekeeping skills.
Rather than giving you the legacy of neurosis founded on society’s standards of good parenting and homemaking, I challenge you to give yourself the gift of not caring what unexpected guests think of your house; of not deriving your own worth based on how the physical place you share with a slew of other people with their own free wills and sets of hands and collections of things looks.
And if you want to stay in your pajamas all day, please do so without explaining yourself to anyone. You work damn hard and deserve a comfy pair of pants when you want them.
There are no such things as control freaks. They are simply the adult version of children whose autonomy has been wrested from them.
– Jennifer Butler Basile
That may be the single most profound thing I have realized and written in my life.
Measure distance covered in the length of a song
Imagine geographic area given the musicians to roam
Number songs down before destination done
Hit corner by time clock hits the next minute
Shave time off ETA
Not late until start time elapses
Envision window into where you are
Just how close, closer,
every inch, every minute, every mile
Pray for a well-played EP
I don’t know when it started exactly.
Perhaps as early as second grade when we had to cut out a construction paper bear and dress it according to our chosen profession. My brown bear with peached fur of circa 1986 seriously-thick construction paper was clothed in a crisp white uniform emblazoned with a bright red cross on her cap. My godmother was a nurse, a professional woman performing heroic feats on the daily. I wanted to grow up and do the same. I actually kept the bear for years and years, its rounded belly and little ears a visual reminder of a future I thought I had pinned down. Then I learned what nurses actually did and how little I wanted to see or attend to blood and that plan went out the window. In sixth grade, I had a folder of detailed drawings, ruled with my grandfather’s drafting pencils. Architecture became my new career goal – until I learned how much math was involved. In junior high, I began the self-awakening and introspection of adolescence and writing became and stayed my love, but it was certainly not a straight line from there. There were – and are – many detours – self-imposed and otherwise.
But wondering about my future wasn’t limited to only possible career paths. I was not one of those girls who played dress up and dreamed of her wedding day in a frilly white dress, but my parents were happily married and I assumed I would be someday, too. Likewise, I never dreamed of being a mother. I didn’t love little kids or clamor to babysit, but I did figure someday it would be different when they were my own.
Though at times I wondered – and worried – exactly how it would all shake down, there seemed to be a pretty clear progression of how life was expected to go. Do well in school, get a part-time job and save for college, graduate and go to college, get a degree, a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, and – be fulfilled?
The entire first two (plus) decades of my life were so consumed with working towards these goals, it never occurred to me what would come after that.
My husband is three and a half years older than me. He has hit many of these milestones just slightly before me. He turned 41 a month before we welcomed our fourth child – and started shopping for a motorcycle. I told all our friends that he was going through a mid-life crisis. While it amused me to no end, there was part of me that wondered if it was true. I began to wonder in earnest about what that clichéd phrase actually meant.
I hadn’t yet figured it out when I hit the big 4-0. Age ain’t nothin’ but a number, or so the song goes, but it did mess with me. Whether it was the extra introspection or society’s insistence of a shift, I did feel different. It could have something to do with knowing you’ve reached the back end of your life. That stupid ‘over the hill’ metaphor does have some potent imagery. But my musings presented a different metaphor.
As I sat in the driver’s seat of our little standard-shift car, having just pulled into the driveway after a rare coffee date sans kids, I stared out the windshield at the garage doors and the bright light blooming over the roof and explained my theory to my husband.
The whole first segment of our lives, we are propelled forward by the steady string of goals we seek to accomplish. Then, suddenly, we find ourselves in a state of slack. We’ve pushed and pushed and pushed, ticking the boxes and striving for all those markers that make a life – or the conditions of a successful life we’ve been sold – and now we’ve reached them. Completed most or all of them. Our sense of forward movement is stalled. And in that sudden, unfamiliar stasis, we take stock. We look at what we have accomplished and how – or what we haven’t – and have to decide if we like where we are. We may not recognize where we are, where we have ended up. We may realize that pushing ever forward has made us miss the sights or alternate paths along the way.
Rather than seeing the second stage of life as a downhill slide on the other side of the mountain, I see a sailboat. The first phase of life moves at a good clip, a strong wind pushing the sail straight out in a fully formed billow, propelling it across the tips of the waves, blowing our hair back and ruddying our cheeks with exhilaration. At midlife, we are becalmed. The wind drops out with no warning and the sails go slack, leaving us wondering if we’ll get back to port before sundown. We feel a loss of control. We look around and wonder what we did to find ourselves in this predicament. We don’t know when or how we’ll start moving again or in which direction.
But the beauty of sailing, and midlife and beyond, is that we have the power to tack; to move in varied directions to get to a fixed point. Or to change course completely. We also have a bit more time to sit and float for a bit while we assess or wait for the next gust of wind to present itself.
Becalmed by twjthornton
It’s strange and different, but the mind shift that comes with this age allows us to focus on what we want in a totally different way than when we were young and obsessed with success. Now success means listening to what our soul is calling us to do; achieving what we can’t bear to leave undone. We care less about what we’re supposed to do and more about what we want to do. We are more willing to take risks to achieve our wildest dreams because we’ve lived one version of our lives for too long and it’s time. And because we have some very wonderful things under our belt and wonderful people beside us.
I didn’t go out and buy a motorcycle, but I did look around and wonder, what now? I won’t even get into how the total consumption of motherhood came into play; that could be, and perhaps someday will be, an entire book. It’s scary that floating in this lull, alone and independent, means I am responsible for fashioning the next phase. It’s also exhilarating if I keep breathing and don’t let fear take hold. Two (plus) decades in, I feel it’s my time to pick the path. I can draw on the examples of others, but know, deep down in my soul now, that the ultimate decision is mine.
There is nothing in the mid-dle about that.
As a child, I looked to the towering clouds, capped with billows, and imagined walking atop them like I’d watched the Care Bears do. I imagined that’s what heaven would be like when I got there someday. As a teen, Jonathan Livingston Seagull brought me such joy, such heights to which to aspire, the tips of his wings touched with light as he soared to such transcendent levels. As an adult, I watched birds glide on the wind, effortlessly floating above the rest of the world and its worries. I dreamed my own body could fly and always felt great disappointment when my legs started to drift back toward the ground. I gathered images and ideas for tattoos with silhouettes of birds, wings spread, to serve as a physical reminder of opening up, letting go, and ascending.
There is a line, though, where metaphysical musings turn into depression and anxiety.
I began to feel a great sadness watching birds wheel through the sky, their wide open wings and swooping motions a freedom I would never have. Watching the clouds edged with light filled me with a longing that I would never have the peace I imagined lived among their water crystals. No amount or configuration of ink etched on my skin would seep that sense of freedom into my soul.
And then as I sat on a shaded deck this morning, forcing myself to focus on a wisp of cloud and nothing else, staring into the middle distance, forcing all thoughts from my head or repeating a prayed mantra – a pair of birds streaked across, running a parallel line with the shore in front of me. Their pointed wings reminded me of the swallows with which I’ve been obsessed. They darted and swooped and disappeared behind a house a few doors down.
It occurred to me then that I can continue to stay focused on the peace and quiet in front of me while noticing the promise of freedom. I can long to be truly free, but that doesn’t stop me from embracing the joys in the here and now while I wait. I will not be free until my soul flies up to heaven, but I can open my heart now to accept what this life has to offer. I can use this time between now and then to wait and lament and be miserable or live in each moment mindfully soaking up what is there instead of not seeing it because I’m so fixated on what I don’t have.
Photo by Jennifer Butler Basile
Our task is not to learn how to be loving; the love within us is already full and alive. Our practice is to melt the fear and armor that imprisons our hearts. Then our impulses to love and our inclinations to be generous and kind blossom easily and surely within us.
from Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood
by Wayne Muller
Chopping Potatoes 