12.10.17 Down by the river

Early this morning Danto and I went on down the the arroyo by the river.
As the sun slowly eclipsed the range.
As the coyote tracks and the deer tracks and the possum tracks revealed themselves in the morning light.
As the cold seeped in and we wandered over to the fast flowing broad dream of a river
where the ice floes thumped and crashed into themselves and the shore
and somewhere in the depths of my heart I began realizing what was real.

12.9.17 The Darkest Hour

Is just before the dawn

12.9.17 Rendering

There are some things that are so difficult to accept, they are heart rending.
They render the heart through tough tough and agony and profound sadness and some fear.

And as we are rendered, as we fear and think it unfathomable, it happens. A little bit.
We are rendered. 

We are exhausted from the effort and we come up for air.
And the unfathomable we are managing to do. For now.

We open and stretch and reach to learn how on earth to remember, in the midst of our most difficult moments, the big picture. 

How the stretching and aching and sense of impossibility is all part of it becoming possible. 

Us growing the capacity to live something so very achingly tough. 

We struggle and stretch to learn to remember, in the toughest moments, how the moment it seems toughest is a moment that brings us through.

1.1.19 If you looked carefully

Another day, there was this enormous cloud with all sorts of small stringed fingers
that was blowing by

And if you look carefully you will see all those stringed lined up shapes 

It felt like a someone approaching and coming upside and peering down and then passing on by 

In all their extraordinary beauty

1.1.19 The sky was still frozen

That day, the sky was still frozen and the land was still frozen, and the road we usually walk was thick with flood-strewn corn stalks, laid this way and that. 

And the end of the road was still blocked from flooding, so I could just drive up to the flooding and park

and no one was going to drive on down the road, so we had it to ourselves 

to walk along and investigate and listen and deep breathe and sing

1.1.19 Avoiding Avoiding

The things that we are afraid of, the things that we’re avoiding, slowly but surely build up bigger and bigger obstructions in our lives.
We like to pretend we can go around them, because that way we can continue avoiding them. 

Pretending that it’s of no import, to tiptoe about, leave them be, instead of problem solve carefully and thoughtfully over time how to do the work. 

How to approach difficult upsetting stuff with patience and reassurance and the proper resources.

So that we can come up to them and we can deal with them and we can compost them down and then we become unobstructed a little bit more.

Thing is, we all want great access.
To our ability to focus, to implement changes, and to develop and sustain new habits. To open up our vast and innate capacity for clarity of thought and creativity.

But there’s no cheating, in life.
There’s only cheating in our minds.
And the only one getting fooled is ourselves.

I’ll be the first one to recount years and years of imagining that I could, with someone else’s help, be guided past my own mine fields , pop on over to the other side of them, and enjoy the same benefits I would if I had carefully approached each and every one, figured out how to deconstruct them, heal the distress that created them, do the all the emotional work, until the field was free and clear.

Sometimes it takes a long long time to become brave enough to face reality.
To get that we might as well hunker down and do the work.
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That the benefits which will result are actually some of the most meaningful things we have ever wanted in our lives.
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And instead of keeping on our blinders, and making believe we can pop over our stuck places and still grow the same way we would if we did all the work, 

sometimes we decide to face ourselves. To use our common sense.
To find our courage.
And then go ahead, and do what works.

1.2.19 Ready Set

Been a couple of not-so-easy days, with a few more to follow. But I get how and why and the wherefore and all. Sleeping well, somehow staggering in to work out a bit, but not every day like usual. Eating well ,and then adding the Not well crap food . Ugh.

But time passes ,and if we stay focused, we get through the hard processing too. 

And in the middle of it all, with the microphone on my phone, while driving, I just started writing the novel I began maybe five years ago, and had to let go of in all the stupid hubbub.

Funny, there they all are, the characters and their situations and the places, same as before , but with their own new entrance, and their own new slant.

I just keep hearing them talk when I drive , and turn on my phone , and talk down the action , and follow it best I can. Funny how that works.

It’s like you can be doing well or not well, or mostly well with some tough stuff come up for air , and all of a sudden , it all lines up somewhere inside of you, without you
and knocks on your door
and says ‘Ok, we’re here. Get cracking.’