4.25.14 Middle Age Resonates

"Middle age resonates with so much loss, profound and superficial; expectations die, friendships fade, hairlines recede, looks change, and health and hope are no longer givens.
It becomes easy to forget the fullness that has come before; self-pity, while a dreary threadbare flannel when worn by others, has a luxuriant silky feel when we wrap it around ourselves.
We may have no idea what will happen next, but it seems ungrateful to complain when there has been so much that was good in the past, whether or not we had the wit to recognize it.
We then find a way forward, despite fear and paralysis. We create boundaries and then we defy them."
Lynn Darling

4.28.14 There Is A Special Place

There is a special place 
reserved in my heart 
for those who do not take good care of animals,
 and will not listen.

4.25.14 Beneath and Between -Aging, And Getting To Know The Terrain

Beneath and Between -Aging, And Getting To Know The Terrain

To know where we're going, it helps to know where we've been. It certainly is of use to have some quiet and functional sense if where we are -at this very moment. 

Sometimes, it seems , as that furious, confusing pace of growing up, figuring out, learning, accomplishing, measuring ourselves ,becoming independent, and having the morass of our choices and consequence - eventually slows... 

As we become somewhat accustomed to the who that we seem to be, the overwhelm of what is our life does seem to slowly settle. 

I tell this to adolescents and young adults in my practice all the time. I say 'Your life is moving so fast. It won't always be this way. Soon enough, you'll begin to have a chance to get a sense of who on earth you are. You will begin to develop a lay of the land. Simply try - to keep your eyes and your mind -open.'

Each of us 'gets' to have some experiences, and not others. It's simply how it is. 

That means adequate income, or not- at jobs we relish, tolerate, or detest. Living in places that are unsafe and choked with pollution and crime and unkind others , in clean country , or rich city neighborhoods. With open hearted brethren, crabby gossipy people who don't like us on sight, or most often, some complication of in-between. 

Sometimes we love-and have groups of friends, or a very good friend for awhile. Sometimes we have lovers and partners- and sometimes for just a while, or much longer. 

Sometimes, if we're allowed, we marry. And sometimes we persist in sibling-ship or friendship or lover-ship , past predictable fears and projections and mid-matched fits- 

and sometimes one or another of us simply throws in the towel. And heads off , glad and relieved, or regretful and later saddened by a sore lack of foresight or tenacity. 

There are connections and communities in some lives. Neighborhoods . Spiritual or religious connections. Offspring , biological or chosen, that either grate or enrich our days, as they grow and extend their own selves , tentatively, out into the world. 

At times we know tragedy and great loss , or cleave another to us who lives through or survives through this. 

All the while , our difficult, breathlessly precious, unique, mysterious life is progressing, from our very birth , to however far along we live into.
And beneath and between all of this, continually, like a rich life soup, all we are and have been is added each day .
By what we encounter in our dream last night, or what season it is. Or by how our neighbor or horse or beloved or left knee is managing on this day. 

One of the discoveries is how, as each year progresses, the agenda or defensive self-portrayal often shimmers and then slowly crumbles at our feet. 

Who cares how well we write or draw or understand concepts - we're going to apply for that job or go take that class or engage in that discussion and enjoy it. 

Who cares if we have a belly that interferes, but bicycling slowly down the bike path a bit is pure pleasure. If our face wrinkles and the pleasure of giving people whiplash when you walk into a room is long gone. 

Because in the midst of these days that linger, nourished by brain supplements and healthy helpings of orange and leafy green vegetables , and cooling our minds out any which way so we can sleep deeply and well... beneath and between all of this passage of time and increasing familiarity of the terrain of our own lives - grows a nascent, imperturbable solidity of sense of self. No more fooling around. No more pretending, posturing, or living 'as if'. Because it simply doesn't make it. 

It's not substantive and it's not satisfying and it doesn't help and it creates anxiety and uncertainty, and who on earth wants that crap? It just begins to be clear . Which is one of those pretty cool things about getting older. If we keep our eyes open and our emotions expressed and we truly want to be in the present moment as it actually is. 

Nope. Beneath and between all of where we've been and who we morph into, like rings of a tree, gestates this prescient stuff that tenders no nonsense and thrives on what is . Today.

4.26.14 May The Forest Be With You

4.30.14 A Delicious What-Is-Left-In-The-House-Delight

Making gluten-free baking powder biscuits and reheating 

a delicious what-is-left-in-the- house

 Cannelloni bean, cabbage, Brussels sprout, brown rice, turnip, carrot, onion, shallot Delight. 

 Resting up for tomorrow . When two dear friends have insisted

 on doing the 6 hours of driving ( and paying for the gas) 

so I can go see a brilliant health educator and herbalist

 I've known for years and saw years ago. 

Saved saved and now it's time to wander up toward Montpelier,

 and see what she may be able to do , for me.

4.27.14 Warm and Cozy and Quiet

Saw a dear friend in my new home office- 

warm and cozy and quiet 

and one of those really short commutes

4.29.14 Often We Accrue Damage From What We Experience

We often accrue damage  

not so much from actual experiences

as  the wounded filter slowly grown

That thick obscuring film impairs our clarity of vision
Our capacity to orient ourselves to the present moment in time

We mistakenly conclude in that which is inaccurate, untrue
riddled with our fears, shorn of our awareness

So many stories we persist in telling ourselves
over and over again
keeping alive that which we dread most
Pressing away from us the actual life 
that holds depth, solace

to our own  detriment

5.1.14 Mutual Experience and Years of Insight

Two friends drove me three hours, up up in Vermont near St. Johnsbury, 

to visit a gifted healer in a yurt, surrounded by dogs and unruly hillsides, on along a mud-gutted dirt back road.

Vestiges of snow lingering in the countryside along the way; enormous chunks of blue white ice slowly separating from sheer rock faces, larger than your house. 

The glory of endless mountain views. The clean air and feel of Vermont. 

Once, long ago, as a wild young one, I lived there; Brattleboro my home and community. 

Three young deer prancing across the highway. 

We pass through woods with such altitude they look like small Boreal forests. 

A few hours looking carefully at many aspects of health together, with fascinating results, borne of mutual experience and years of insight.

Life at times is simply chock-full of love and devotion and brilliance, despite challenges and illness and surprises.

4.30.14 Slowly We Clean The Land

Little beauty boy- ever protector. 

Wonder what it's like to bounce about 

with your tongue out, panting, all the time? 

He is SO careful when, each visit into the woods,

 I carefully cut a bit more horrible 

hidden rusted barbed wire 

from embedded trees 

and beneath leaves and brush.

 Slowly we clean the land 

of these dangerous-to-wildlife 

abandoned old fences.

5.1.14 Such Loveliness In Flight

The storm clouds approached swiftly this evening

deep purple turning to grey and black,

letting loose huge spring raindrops

amidst much posturing 

 until they all blew back 

out of the neighborhood 

Two bats returned

 for the first evening of thick bitey bugs

one stuck in my throat

as a most inquisitive bat flew

three feet from my head

possibly for a sniff or an

echolocation

to my absolute delight

In the fresh start of dusk

I often catch sight of

the two of them

carousing, fleet, through the

wooded land about my home

and theirs

racing and careening and

clicking and squeaking

such loveliness in 

flight

5.2.14 Unto The Upright

"Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness: 

for they shall be gracious, 

and full of compassion, and righteous."

5.3.14 Everything Passes: Everything Changes

I've heard you say many times 
that you're better than no one 
and no one is better than you 

If you really believe that 
you know you got nothing 
to win and nothing to lose

Everything passes
everything changes
Just do you think you should do

And who knows baby
someday maybe
I'll come and be crying to you

The Irreplaceable poet, Bob Dylan

5.3.14 We Find Ourselves

I'm sitting outside on fragrant layered forest ground , having made my usual way here by twists, turns ; the same system of landmarks and wayfaring you used as a child, if you were lucky enough to be grown up near a forest. To become friends . To greet you at the end of the difficult or delicious day.

We always turn left at the Maple, down by the edge of the yard -up and over the fallen rotting trunk. Beneath the painful and capturing wild Rose fronds , twist round past the brambles curved around another tree; hang a right at the small Juniper . The oldest Maple now in sight, recently shorn of it's embedded rusted barb wire, as we head down the hill. Then up and over fieldstones , into the deer thicket of Paperbirch saplings. Turn right heading down the steepening land, as the expanse of river Outwaters , far below the ridge , becomes visible.

I sit down on some luscious spot, surrounded by masses of emerging tender Fern , as  moss spreads up the north side of the forest's trees, from the spate of recent rains.

The magnificent light show begins, as we settle ourselves; Dante still for a moment from his careening about the forest.

Pale pungent blues and fluttering pink stripes careen across the skies overhead, seen through the staccato of delicate treetops. The sun, gilded, slowly sheds it's incandescence- disappearing quietly behind a far off range of mountains. 

In the meantime, there's some insect, inhaled as I walked the hills, now stuck, dead,in my throat.

The sunset is fading behind still bare trees, that hold a barely discernible sprinkle of green tipped leaf beginnings. Before us spreads a carpet of Solomon's Seal and Trillium beneath and between all of the forest. 

We stand to turn and tromp back up the foothill, Dante again racing in laps about me, a streak of young, glistening black , across the loam and leaf covered hills- as I look up to watch steep dark lands of storm clouds passing by overhead. 

Reaching the house, darkness falls. as our two neighborhood bats swoop and feed . I sit outside, alone, infused with the stillness and songs of evening creatures moving into the night. One elegant bat swings by , 3 feet from my face , to say hello; and there I am, left, utterly entranced. 

Moths begin fluttering about under cover of dusk, rushing to do their business, while avoiding capture from the Phoebes , and later, the bats; then taking refuge beneath the creases of the aged Maple's bark. 

I sit, as insects appear with their impeccable seasonal timing . I am soaking in the essence of the foothill I live upon, the history of glacier and basalt and steep decline down to the times that dug out this aged river.  So soon the trees again will explode with tender new leaves, and the view on three sides of blue hills will be invisible once again, until fall comes round, the cold progresses, and the trees fall deeply asleep. Here, is the present, pregnant with past and future rhythms and cycles that begin to make sense, far within, as we slowly age. And find ourselves, sitting out, gazing out across the vast distant expanse of everywhere at home. 

The stream ,on the far edge of the conservation field ,following its aged ravine, sings loudly with the surfeit  from recent storms, as  rain , large ungainly springtime drops, again begins to fall upon the land.