2.23.18 Settling On Down

It’s nice. Things are getting a little easier. Settling down.
Sometimes we have to break away from those closest to us,

 and honor what we know we must do, to get through. 

Even if it upsets others.
So I have, and another new day is coming, as much settles and calms. 

As much resolution and peace returns.
Whenever it’s time to get up , I go to the frig 

and take out the castor oil soaked pads, 

put the oven on low, and pop them in.
Mix some heated water with the cold water and miso in the mug.
Prepare to lie down with hot water bottles and castor oil compresses. 

On the still-not-all-better-but-functional-knee. 

On the dropped meta tarsal. On lungs.
Then I put on a Tara Brach guided meditation, lie back, 

and watch the day turn from night.

2.23.18 Nao Mesmo Montes. Not Even Mountains

Nao Mesmo Montes
Not even mountains
Remain unchanged

You, your countenance
stricken against the arrival of dawn

Olho escurecer
eyes darkened
from dreams, from the strain
of morning’s recalcitrant song

a minha espera
waiting for me
a pause with no moment

inverno de ponta a ponta
winter from end to end

2.23.13

2.22.18 So Very Grateful

I get that sometimes each of us may face circumstances, 
that are so extreme ,and so shocking,
 that go on and on.
In a way that shakes and harms those who just visit our life for a bit. 

So when this kind of extreme crap is happening to you, 
and your closer siblings come and go, 
and your wonderful other family can move in and then disappear , 
it is a wondrous thing when your two dear friends are right right there.  

Willing and able to remain solid, strong, while listening and weighing in.
While giving gifts and checking in. 

Course, Healers can do this stuff. 
While retaining stability and balance. 
So very grateful, for friendship and love.

2.22.18 Rise Up

Please, on this day, help us rise up.
With a deep knowing of our own wisdom, imbued with our own strength. 

Please help us continue on,with honesty and integrity, even when the path is indistinct, and we are suffering doubt and uncertainty. 

For the ways of strength and persistence fill us from every corner of the cosmos, from all those who came before, with such courage. 

Please help us take this precious day far into ourselves, that we may repair our injuries, regain our footing, and continue on.

That we may support a better, more equitable life, for all living beings.

2.21.18 The Power of Tenderness

When we meet a wounded place with love

it becomes a vast place of tenderness

2.21.18 Engaging

When we push away a part of ourselves, we move into a trance. 
Where we are partly awake, partly asleep. 

The cost of closing down a part of ourselves. 
Where we don’t have full access to all of our awareness or our resources. 

We divide ourselves when we are uncertain what to do with our own perceptions. 
When our own perceptions do not fit well with what we are being told or what we are being urged to believe in the world. From others.

When we are unable to have the strength or courage to believe our own perceptions, or the probable consequences, our next best bet is to turn away from ourselves and make believe.

Make believe never ends well.
But sometimes it’s all we manage at the time.

So now that we realize , now that we understand what we chose, 
and what went down as a result, 
we turn and refuse shame or self-recrimination. 

We turn and we forgive ourselves our mistakes.

We turn toward our selves with compassion and kindness. 
Embracing all of us. 
Understanding what happened. 
Not needing lament, but engaging in forgiveness. 

And kindness . 

Coming upon grace. And love.

2.20.18 Grace

To be honest and true 
saves us 
filling our heart 
and mind 
with grace

2.20.18 Luckily

We each trudge along, on lousy sad misery no good days, 
making our struggled way.
Lucky for us, the natural world always
will be teeming with miracle and wonder
and beauty.

2.20.18 Grappling Hooks

We often grapple with truths in our lives, that are difficult to accept. 

And so, we tend to go round and round with them , in our minds,

 messing up our health as we tumble and spin. 

What we eventually realize is that we have the option to simply say to ourselves ‘Yes.’
Yes, that is happening, and then feel the tough feeling of this truth. 

Let the sadness or hurt or shock or pain or sadness or anger BE, right here and right now.
No matter how searing or desperately hard. 

What we learn is that if we just take some moments and BE with the emotions, the realizations, it will each time sink in a bit more. Become real to us on a deep emotional and cognitive and visceral level.
And in this way, we are no longer subjected to shock or the sense of surprise, each time we turn and find this to be true, once again. 

Instead, it becomes KNOWN. Deep down within us.

And we can take that in, each time.
We can allow it to settle.
We can recover the injury.
And then move on with our present life.

2.19.18 1. Rest in truth 2. Move on

So often, humans are fond of blaming the victim. After all, if you search around and come up with a good enough rationale, you just might be able to make believe some bad thing won’t happen to you. 

But stuff happens to us. All the time.
Deception and harm and manipulation and conning. 

And if you have a generous heart and enough integrity, there’s a good chance YOU are a good mark. All yummy and ready to be played. 

Consumed, until your health suffers, and your mind begins to believe the Con pretty well.

Perhaps the best protection is watching what someone does... more than what they say. 

Because Cons ( and your everyday garden variety Psychopath, and there’s a bunch of them on the unmitigated unnoticed Psychopathic Spectrum) are very inspired and excited about a long con, slowly taking down someone with a generous heart and enough integrity.

Cons are empty. 

They are low to no, of empathy, compassion, love and being relational.
In fact, they’re so low in these , they can’t usually notice that anything is wrong.
With them . Or what they do. 

And the more lousy sneaky behind-the-scenes things they’re delighting in doing, the better.
They love nothing more than lying or cheating or taking people down slowly, with long concerted gossip. 

Or slowly driving a wedge between someone and their self confidence. 

Better still is the double or multiple con, where they pit two or more people against each other, even if they never meet. The Con feeds upon the secret knowledge kept from others.

Lying while arranging to go for a walk with one person , in the place that means so much to the other. How hurt and horrified both would be , knowing of each other . 

Putting people in proximity to each other, and feeding off of how horrible it would be if they all found out. 

Cons love to manipulate small and large situations, slowly lining every unsuspecting person up. Beaming at them with their indistinguishable psychopathic charm. 

Eating up that gullibility. 

Luxuriating in their contempt for each mark.

 Feeding, always feeding their endless emptiness with conflict and manipulation and deception and harm .

Grooming their targets endlessly. Some hobby.

The only thing that is imperceptible to a Con is their own desperate emptiness, as they shuffle people-as-chess-pieces frantically about.

Trying to get off. Trying to get off bigger and better.
Trying in vain to harm others enough to fill their empty desperate self. 

So, if you get conned....Especially if you are the object of a Long Con....Beware of two things. 

1. There will be those who will unthinkingly blame you , for being harmed.
To avoid how upset they are at the Con. 

Most who have been conned run a great risk of feeling shame and humiliation, and never recovering.
Don’t let yourself do that for one second. Even if someone else sets you up.

2. They might have fooled you . For one decade or many. 

But at the end of the day, they are just empty malevolence. 

Whereas you have integrity, and a fine generous heart.
Rest in that truth, and move on.

2.18.18 Backup

Down by the farmers fields, we backed up, 

from warmer weather and melting earth and oozing mud 

and small green growing things, 

to a cooler day, with some inches of snow, 
re-covering everything in sight.

2.18.18 The Funniest Thing

It’s the funniest thing to become single at 65.

 To live alone for the first time in your life.
It’s surprisingly nice.
Perhaps if you’ve had many decades of a million siblings and roommates and partners and kids, or you’ve taken care of siblings and kids and partners. it’s a relief. 

Suddenly it’s quiet. The only messes here are yours. ( Or the dogs’ , or the two cats).
Perhaps you’re quickly getting well, after being pretty sick in bed for years. No more vampire feeding off you.

You get that you plan two things a day, out of the house.
There are so many things that don’t cost. If you have a car.
It’s mind blowing. 

To be well enough to drive 2 1/2 hours to see a psychic.
To go to church because it’s a nice thing to go do.
To help cook meals for people without homes or food.
To up and steam your carpet and be able to keep your home clean. Unless you’re challenged, you have no idea how amazing that is.  

To zip through the bills and it’s actually no big deal.
To sit around and paint mandalas because it’s so simple a meditative pastime, and the last 40 years, turns out, all kinds of weird was happening . So why not soak up nice ? 

And instead of doing it for your kid or your partner, 

you’re just doing everything for your self.
What a strange new lovely thing.

2.18.18 The Loveliness of Midwinter

2.17.18 Term Limits

Here in this place of prayer and meditation
I find myself moving from self-doubt to compassion.

 From being consumed by continual shock and betrayal, 

to a deep settled-down way of breathing and being and meh acceptance. Of what is.

In this place, the roles of they who harmed vs who was harmed slowly dissipate. 

And within the practice, for it needs practice, what I come upon, 

beneath all that unctuous noise and posturing, is self-delineating clarity. 

I come upon compassion, with term limits on allowing others to behave badly. 

Here, self-doubt becomes replaced by love, trust and delight.
Fear , shock and hurt evolve into powerful boundary.

There slowly grows acceptance of what has been, I now see, for so long, in my life, and what is now.

I find tender renewed awareness of human propensity and process.

And a true blue faith, while residing in this beautiful new day we have been given.

2.16.18 Slippy Sloppy

Down by the farmers fields we went , 
among the slippy sloppy mud ruts, 
and that reticent thin filagree ice. 
The trees are in bud, of course. 
No matter the mess in your life or mine, nature perseveres. 
Replicating one living being after another, 
because that’s just the way it goes.

2.16.18 Out Of Some Darkness

On this quiet dark February day, I slowly come out of some darkness, of some 40 years, as I gather to me a village.
Of those who knew , in ways different than I did. 
Of those who care, and will listen, hold my hand and cry their own tears. 
Of those who will stand by me, as I struggle and move down this sad tough path.

I gather to me those who surprise me with offers. 
With insight that makes me weep.
With suggestions that bring a smile, gratitude.

Here in this place, where I sequestered myself for my own, now I go Village.
Now I seek conversation. Understanding. Theirs, and my own.

Here in this place, I am not alone, trying to piece together who on earth they were.
Why on earth they did what they did.

It’s not just about drama or shock .
There is great perpetuated harm.
There is how they ‘presented as simplicity, transparency, responsibility, and goodness—straight-up and straightforward. Not so.’

Here in this place, it is about embraces. It is about the wonder and balm of compassion. It is about loving intent, grief for what has been lost . And profound ,honest love.

As we all slowly unpack the truth.

As I look forward to when I can lay them to rest.

And, my own, and my self, be set free.

2.14.18 Inching Toward

Sometimes we have the sense we are inching toward some kind of breaking point.
Where the conflusion of factors is intense and complex, and yet there is a very real necessity of our own, to respond to them. In ways far beyond what we can normally manage. In any sort of stability and balance.

So we pause. We stabilize and balance our selves, in whatever ways soothe and calm and clarify.

Perhaps we go chop mounds of potatoes and onions for a church breakfast for those with no home.

Perhaps we go to a fitness place, and mindfully breathe in and out, while feeling the pleasure of stretching this muscle, that spine.

Perhaps we have a big sweet dog who must have a run, and we find ourselves out on the farmers fields, digesting recent death , sad missteps, misunderstandings with tender loved ones, and approaching tough sad conversations.

Where those who falsely elevated themselves, and were held high , in place by many, will be found down along the ground, with the rest of us.

Their pathology clear in the new light of day.

2.14.18 As Life Flips and Tumbles

We take serenity where we can find it

as life flips and tumbles

as we breathe our way along

2.14.18 The Endless Winter Sky

The deep green of the icy waters 
beneath the trees. 
The pale blue of the endless winter sky.

2.14.18 Cast Down Upon

As we crunched along, the morning sunlight shifted
 and tossed itself down along one tree, then another, 
their stately limbs and trunks such a thing of beauty.
 Their shadows cast down upon the icy shimmering ground.

2.13.18 The Pleasure of Their Company

Here, one of my kids calls now, every work day. 

Because things have been tough tough, for us all.
I’m not certain if I feel kind of like an old person, or a loved person,

 or perhaps just a 65 year old loved mom, whose kid just wants to say hi.

So early in the morning, and late in the day, I have the new pleasure of their company.
Talking over new things and old confusions and and sweet things and hard things. 

As we move along , and heal. 

I begin to understand so very much about them, and their life, 

that I never had the opportunity to listen to before. 

And so, as I slowly come to terms with how very alone and unaccompanied I actually was for so long, I am now persistently filled with life . 

And deep regard. 

From some remarkable friends, some siblings , 

and these fine kids of mine.

2.7.18 Here in this place of sudden sorrows and intrepid grief

Anger is a worthy opponent. 
Not uncertainty, nor self-doubt, nor self-deceit.
But anger, red hot rage, can fuel the changes needed, the shifts you await.
Here in this place of sudden sorrows and intrepid grief, the coals of anger rip my tide 
and deliver me home.

2.7.18 Travesty Arrived and Gone

In my mind, I had dreaded so many things.
Like being alone, or dealing with the kids by myself.
But travesty arrived in my home. 
It stormed in revealing all, 
trashing memories I’d believed in, 
that turned now to ash.
And realization brought the honest light of day.
And suddenly I saw I had always been by myself, 
and always my days had shined.