10.4.15 Gradually, we come to realize that

life is simply a matter of 

finding ourselves lost, then found.

Blind, then seeing.

Over and over and over.

Living with bootstrap in hand,

pulling ourselves up.

 

10.4.15 Mind cleared, muscles relaxed, lungs filled

Early this morning, we got up and out, went down the road a bit , hung a right on Chmura, and headed up to a forest path. This morning, instead of the thick overcast skies we had for days, we have beautiful bubble clouds, racing by far overhead, bright blue sky showing between them.
     We drove past carts with a mind boggling array of strange types of gourds and pumpkins In all shapes, all colors, you know? All those bumps. Just beautiful.
We drove past the old Hadley flea market, which is slowing to a close pretty soon, bustling with long lines of traffic and officers mediating, all summer long.
I slipped the leash on him, and also the long red line hanging from his harness, so that he's easy to retrieve. And then we set off into the woods.
Even after being on this planet all these years, it never fails to amaze me how easy it is to wake up in the morning, and say to yourself "oh! I'm just too ______. So I'm not going to_________ today."
     Right? And sometimes things are just too extreme. Illness , some serious protected energy expenditure, a bunch of events.
     But sometimes, it's just the new normal. It's just most probably going to be like this. Which means, if we are going to manage whatever it is, going for that walk, doing those sit ups, doing that little video of yoga, going to a yoga class, going to planet fitness, making and freezing that broth and drinking it, we're probably going to have to use the bootstrap method. Where we locate them, and we tug. 
The really amazing thing I've always known about having kids or dogs, is that it's a built in "pull yourself up by your bootstraps or you're going to suffer big time."
If you don't get those kids outside and running around and having some fun, they're going to be the biggest pain and they won't go to bed easily. Oh, and they won't eat well.
     If you don't get that dog for a good run, you're going to feel badly and the dog is going to be the biggest pain in the butt.
Some of us behaviorally respond better to misery chasing us, then the hanging carrot method. Which of course is pretty different than a hanging chad. Sheesh, what a world .
     So despite the fact that I wake up each morning and think "Oh God, not today. " Still , thank goodness, I pick things up and settle things, and then get that dog out the door. And then we go ahead and we do the walk. And afterwards, well, it was wonderful to be out and about, no matter the weather, and somehow it happened once again.
     I discovered this particular path this month, and it's beautiful. You can't really see it's a path from the road. I've never met anyone on it, which is good for walking with this fearful-thus-pretty-scary large black shepherd. It's in the ravine, so there's a beautiful stream, really high inclines either side, and usually when I am there early, the sun is just beginning to crest, falling down into the woods. 
     When you have kids or dogs, you begin to figure out the activities you can bring them on that get the most bang for the buck. This is a hilly terrain, complex, many fallen trees and branches and overgrowth, so it exhausts him while delighting him. Plus he gets to listen to all the chipmunks yelling at him as he runs about.
You can drink and play in the stream, and thunder far up the steep hills. While I walk, on the small path, watching how the leaves are slowly turning in bits.
I was walking along, and the forest floor was literally covered with acorns , so it's a little tricky. Plus there's all these little tiny stumps sticking up along the path, presumably where kind others cut small saplings.
     I was actually just waking up, the shepherd thundered up some steep hill and nowhere to be found, and I kept almost falling, bumping into these stumps. Thinking to myself "God. Is it because I'm getting older? Am I going to fall out here? Is there something wrong with me? Have a really gotten too exhausted this time?"
     And then I stopped. It was exquisite, the light. Silent, save the calling of the Chipmunks, some Blue Jays, one distant Hawk. I was deep in the forest, Hills rising up steeply on either side, bright green leaves surrounding me and overhead, speckled with some yellow, a bit of orange. The small stream was flowing beneath my feet, sparkling in the sunlight.
     The song Amazing Grace came into my head, "was blind, but now I see". And then I got it, the way we do. That it was OK. I was pretty tired out , but turning the corner. This simply happens to all of us. 
The forest floor was littered with a remarkable number of acorns, and I just needed to watch carefully. I turned and looked down at the path, and suddenly I saw every single tiny stump, that just need to be seen and walked around every single time. It's just like that. For all of us.
     I turned, to start back. Whistled for the pup. Stood there, listening. Whistled again. Gave a really big whistle. Waited a bit more. I waited. And suddenly, down he came, far off, high up on the ravine, his beautiful black shape thundering down the hill through the thick woods, across the stream, to me.
     He was a little nervous. Very excited. Completely innervated by the hike. All touchy about coming to me, so I threw him a few sticks, and then stepped on the red line next to him, which is why it's there. Just for those times.
     And then I noticed. How short it was. I put the leash on him, unhooked the red line, and sure enough, he had been caught somewhere in the woods. Chewed through, and then came running back to me. Sure gave me pause.
     Last year I was with a friend walking her four dogs, the smallest with her lead. She was fearful also, needed a lead running from behind, to be able to grab it in case she got scared of people , became aggressive. Only a problem in the thick woods. Luckily, these leads are made of very chewable stuff. I was there when two of her dogs didn't come back from running around in the woods. So we split up, searching. Calling. Finally the two missing dogs came back. Turns out, her line had been tangled in the woods. One of the other dog stayed with her, till she chewed through.
     So I hugged his big furred form, and started us back down the path again. The sun shining through all the greenery. The red brown of the Pine needles underfoot so golden in fall. My mind cleared, my muscles relaxed, lungs filled with the beneficial microbes inherent in any pine forest. As we slowly made our way home.

10.4.15 All in the miraculous manner of the 21st century

It's funny to realize that FB is the receptacle of our days, a journal of our musings and crabbings and errant thoughts and yes (dare I use the lingo) clicks. It saves the photos we posted when we posted them, and if one wanted, one could venture back back back among all the all the days and times and ways of feeling and comments. When it was still like that, or we were that age. Or we still lived there, or that was still going on. What a thing to have now,versus the lost and found journals of lives that have been rediscovered. Now it's all online, and the volume of information is staggering. Including our own. All in the miraculous manner of the 21st century, why there it all is.

10.3.15 The path we have taken to this day we are given

       One of the things that puzzled me in my early twenties was observing how people 'lost' exactly that which would be most difficult for them, as an individual. Something that would not be the worst thing to lose, for someone else. I spent years wondering at all the candidates for making sense. The 'meant to be' hypothesis, which I find comfy, but at this stage in the game, nothing to take seriously. Various contemplations on fate, karma, cause and effect, and so much more. 

        I remember knowing a women's band, being their casual groupie, going to practices and gigs with my best friend whose girlfriend was the drummer. The woman's wrists began to fall apart, the one thing that meant the most to her in her life. I thought a lot about that, how vital that was for her, how heart breaking, and all the consequences , at her young age. The probability of overuse that caught up with her without her ever looking into what might happen. Happens to most of us, sooner or later. 

         And if it seems you know people who are exempt, either look more closely, or wait a bit.                

          On and on these 63 years, I watch and experience the very thing that really would get to someone...approaching and being out of balance for so long. We don't tend to take note, take responsibility, have the energy or motivation or real time warning to really take stock of this,because it's going to gather momentum and become a deal breaker, a heart breaker, a calamitous thing sometime in the future, long before we think calamitous things will come to visit and stay.

            Myself, I had an abscessed tooth I ignored for 8 years, while one of mine had a brain injury, and went dangerously traipsing around the world, doing unfortunate things. I felt like a Plover parent, no control whatsoever, except my capacity to keen in the air overhead, and then feign a broken wing, to deter predators away from my mistaken one. 

             And so the infection spread, through the bones of my mouth, and eventually, a friend loaned me thousands of dollars to have the bone removed, upper and lower, the infection fought back, and relegated to daily topical naturopathic applications and herbal antibiotics to keep things quiet. This kind of thing leads to great vulnerability when exposed to tick disease, to chronic bronchitis, to so much more. 

              That one act, of ignoring something for years when it just seemed too much, set in place what is most challenging for me today. Not unlike all of us. But it's the perfect way that we all make choices, about what we eat, about repeated antibiotic use, about lack of exercise of some kind or too little sleep or regular inhalation of vapors that seep far into our bodies, inflame our organs, and create a gradual condition that then leaps upon us, typically in our 60's, if not sooner.

                So it ends up not really being as much a surprise, as a visitor we really really wanted to pretend would not get around to coming by our neck of the woods. And yet knowing that, with genetic predisposition or circumstance or repeated problems, it was simply a logical matter of time, if we didn't take action, breach the disbelief of natural remedies, and act.

               And so it happens, generation after generation. The ones before us with greater constitutional strength, so we approach this age thinking that, despite radical changes in diet, in environment, that somehow our own trajectory will be identical to our grandparents, to our parents. Only that assumption is so lacking in logic. It simply isn't so.

              So despite the happy repetition everyone has of the litany of "Well, MY grandparent lived to be 5,000 years old." the deal is simply going to be different for us. Moreso for the next generation, and then next.

              How we mourn Fukushima, how we feel distress over planes polluting as they fly by and all the boats spewing waste into the ocean and the rain containing recycled medications. Certainly we have some idea of what is gradually happening.

              This age that people my age find ourselves in is the current day version of what it has always been. Only our forbearers laid much to waste, what with chemical fertilizers and short sighted use of DDT, etc. etc. so many times over. Of formula instead of breast milk and foods grown without proper nutrients. We are veering back on track, but the consequence of the past 50 years is coming home to roost.

               This means that when we wake up, and once again encounter the cumulation of the imbalance you experienced for years, exacerbated by choices or occupational hazards or events, it simply is what it is. When my brother and I, after trading acupressure, agree that somehow, despite circumstance, I need to do far less if I don't want to become far more ill, there is no room really to rage or lament that this is a tough thing to work out. Noone is doing it to me. It simply is. I can get really distressed by it, or I can feel the huge range of stuff I feel, with mindfulness, let it come up and then let it go by, and then get down to the business of what is possible now.

               So I simply like to settle myself down, lay to rest whatever was pretty tough today, embrace the day I have been given, and then  do what I can, that works best, and is sustainable. May we all manage to embrace what it is that we have created, and on this day, have been given.

10.3.15 A dream in my waking dusk

          Out I went, after a day of resting, climbed out of the car, and set the  pup on his way, running here and there in the near darkness, as the cool evening air chilled my cheeks with it welcome freshness, and the cows across the way audibly lowed as their day came to an end. Up above in the overcast skies, somewhere, was a moon, shining, effervescent but muted by the cloud-cover, uneven blues and whites shifting as the breeze moved it all. The lane was almost indiscernible, the farmer's gardens dark silhouettes, as my scruffed sneakers found their way along the rocky road, as the pup thundered by  to retrieve the ball with great happiness.

         And yet somehow, the crickets were quiet, as were the cicadas; no geese flying by overhead, calling calling to each other. So many lights on in the cow barns as those hard working farmers did their dawn to dusk tasks, as least having a life lived so out-of-doors, with fresh air and no pensions and great freedom if you didn't count the necessity of making a living and milking cows and getting crops in before rains. 

          All the birds were fast asleep in the grasses, so we kept away from disturbing them, stuck to the dirt road,  as I mindfully watched all that concerned me pass by, filling me with all sorts of reticence and grief and resentment and disbelief, the cleansing act of letting all things rise to the surface, to be felt and have their air time, and quietly pass on by, until I was unburdened a bit, for the night, lighter, and found myself ambling down into the darkness, toward the river, with my dear four footed companion by my side, his black shape a dream in my waking dusk.