11.8.14 Learning Our Beauty

     I think we look at, puzzle over, digest, and share photos of ourselves when we were younger. 
     We say ' Wow! Youth!' And then inch by inch, if we want, we learn the beauty of the infant. Of the child, the adolescent. The young adult at reproductive prime. The middle age flavor of beauty.
     The beauty of the person who is sixty and seventy and eighty and ninety.
     We all remember being in our 20s, and gazing upon somebody in their 50s or 80s or 90s. It seemed like they were an alien, even if we loved them; all those changes in the body. The slowing of speech and mental processes, even if they were acutely aware and present.
     I myself had no capacity at that age to realize that my body would grow old. That my nose and feet and ears would keep growing! Oh! Really, that it was all true. That if I lived long enough, I would ever be different than I was that day.
     It seems understandable enough, right? There's just so much going on at that age. So much unknown. If you're lucky, so many plans.
     As we enter our 40s and reach our 50s and wander into our 60s, look at the focus. It's completely different. So is our awareness of the world. We've begun to get to know the terrain. We've begun to figure out how to navigate better.
     It also doesn't seem a huge mystery to me that our internal concept of who we are doesn't match with an aging body. Why should it?
     I think what our body looks like has been a continual surprise from childhood. I think it's simply something to learn to accept. So we don't have the repetitive stress of being surprised when we look in the mirror. And instead , learn to remind ourselves that, as the forest changes each and every day , so shall we.
     I think it's something we should anticipate. And say to ourselves "Yes. I'm going to be surprised every now and again when I look in the mirror, as I AM growing older.". And accept that we may never actually internally feel - the way we look on the outside.
     You know what it's like to love somebody? And only intermittently notice their physical appearance ; the things that differ from ads filled with photoshopped models?
     We look at people we care for , filled with love. That keeps us looking at that face, and seeing the beauty. The loveliness. Or feeling the attraction.
     It seems that this is what we want cultivate, toward ourselves. This affection. This deep compassion and tenderness. This appreciation of these beautiful aging hands and feet and face and mind.
     We all know by now that struggling against what is ...only causes us pain. Finding the way in, to what is, is key.
     It seems like that is the role of self-love. As is self-care. The pleasure of taking care of ourselves ;the affectionate acknowledgement of all the processes of aging. As opposed to the fear.
     The pragmatic planning, if we are able, as we grow older. Versus the anxiety and fear and denial; the putting off looking at, putting off the shock of the changes, putting off the inevitable aspects of aging.
     I think if we don't support in each other the courage to feel the grief and loss of aging, and come out the other side to the acceptance, it's harder to not recoil from wrinkling, age spots, lost elasticity of skin, old eyes and lips. Our own. Others.
     It seems, though, if we can manage to learn from wisdom of the past, wisdom of some elders, and of the oak and the bear and the earth, we are comforted by "a time for all things under heaven."
     It is then that we relax and discover the beauty that lies in older bodies. In our slowly growing older self.

11.7.14 Ah, The Glory of Dog Wrangling

11.7.14 On The Way Over The Bridge. Kind of Pretty. Don't You Expect Some Sort Of Heavenly Host ?

11.7.14 Each And Every Day; Something New

      What a day for a daydream. Every morning I somehow wake with that feeling you have as a little kid, when you are just certain deep inside of you that something- something is new. Since I was a kid, living in the middle of a Pine Forest with five brothers (and later, a sister), there was this overwhelming impulse to get...outside.
     Which is what I feel each day. Because always, always - there is something new.
     I think as a kid I began to notice this. All the tiny, incremental changes in the landscape of season and nature. And then, the imprinting of the cycles, as they moved round and round, and you began to learn to calibrate yourself to them, unconsciously, bonded to the land around you.
     This morning was no different. And somehow, clouds never get old. Oh, I think if I had things to research and treatment plans to write up and communiqués to local doctors to lay out related to clients, I would be distracted. Or, involved. In those things.
     Dharma is the word, in Buddhism, whose origins refer to "to uphold" and " to support". "It is to cultivate the knowledge and practice of the laws that hold together the fabric of reality, natural phenomena, and personality of human beings, in dynamic interdependence and harmony. Sometimes, dharma is where we each find ourselves. In our lives. Our very life...is our dharma, and we do what we can with it, as we live and wander and learn.
So when our lives change, in a big or small way, this is one vantage point to consider. That as a dharma, it is what it is. And it is ours. Our life. With these unexpected, non-Disney movie events, that we shall do with what we will.

As a kid, I knew this. My life was not nice. But it had such rich lovely things in it, nevertheless, such as my siblings, and the forest. Nature, and the cycles of life. The song of the Pines overhead, there for you in all seasons. And so much more.
     So, the very best part of life...was any time you could race outside.

     To this day, I feel the pulse of happiness, as I wake early on a morning, like today, tie the Shepherd out front, and let the little old lady dog wander out back, as she is asking to.

     Help her make her way through doorways and furniture and down steps, out into the yard.

     The cool, dew damp grass upon her sweet old paws, and soaking my slippers.

     Me, shivering in my nightgown, as I gaze out at Today's Special: the itinerant clouds, full and fast moving, spectacular, across the skies.  

When I was six or seven, we had a book called 'Something New'. The kid in the book was, of course, a boy. Almost always was, unless they wore skirts and acted nicely. Even Nancy Drew wore skirts, despite her daring. Anyway, he wants a puppy and noone but the King (another guy. all jokes. all stories. A guy walks into a bar...) is the only one who gets to have dogs.
     So the kid gets up his nerve and goes to the King, and says that he really really wants a dog. And the King looks at him kindly (idiot, keeping all dogs to himself) and says that if the kid can come back tomorrow with something new, that noone has ever ever seen before, he can have a dog. Wow.
     So the kid runs off and looks all over and under and through and past and within and without and finally gets his something new and goes to the King the next day, who never ever expected the kid to come up with something, right?
     And the kid holds out an egg.
     The King says "Man, what is this? Are you wasting my time?"
     And the kid says "Just wait." And keeps gently holding the egg in his (yeah, you guessed it) warm hand.
     And suddenly, there is a small crack that appears, and then a bigger one, as the whole court watches and the King squirms, thinking "Ruh roh, I think the kid might've come up with something..."
     And you got it. Out comes the tiny brand new, never seen, chick.

     And the kid gets the puppy. The King gets a brand new friend to walk dogs with (dumb King .keeping all the dogs). 

And I imagine the chick gets to go back to their family and peep and then cluck and grow up and have a hellofa great story to tell, for all time.
     When I was little, sitting reading this stuff, I sat up, in the land of discovery of books, right? That MOMENT..when your struggling over each word yields...soundlessly...and you can finally make out enough words enough of the time, that you make the big huge discovery.

     You discover that when you read these things with covers and papers and marks in them, that, lo and behold, MEAN something, you get transported.
     It was magic. I was transported.

     Noone talked about it. Noone. It was like a magical secret. I couldn't believe it. Why was noone going on and on and on about this? Who knew.

             But I had few friends, and somehow it wasn't a brother type thing, certainly not a to-the-parent thing.

     So I shut up and kept quiet and lived in the world of miracles, where you could go to the library, and slowly get really good at picking out the books that would carry you to amazing distant places. To be other people, or animals, or anything, really.
     And this book transported me. I WAS the kid. I came up with the brilliant idea. I got to have a dog (I had a black German Shepherd of my own, for some reason, in a house full of little kids.).

     I had those cool leggings and soft close-to-the-skin boots and the cool tunic and the hat. And the neighborhood and the nice parents and the pal the King with his gaggle of dogs, who came by each day to hang out with me and my dog, and go for walks.
     Magic. Like stepping outside.

     Each and every day, something new.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwH4wPz-URM