4.1.16 Fall over friday

4.1.16 Path's end

     We were off early, this rainy day, to get the pup up and out and run, so the guy at the house could go off with the car. I drove by the arroyo , casts across more farmers fields ,right by the Coolidge Bridge, as it stretches itself over The Connecticut. 

     Before you knew it, we were up on top, and off like a firecracker , him racing down amongst the groundhog dens and coyote tracks and deer smells, and me chugging along as I pushed from what-kind-of-walk-is-that? to a small but quite respectable jog.

     It was my favorite kind of day, except for the warm air (61•), the night rains having wet all things and turned then lustrous hues.
     We chugged along and I threw the ball and not long after, we came up alongside The Connecticut.

     

Our very own magnificent river, flowing slate blue in the overcast morning.
     

The ground was nice and thawed and becoming very green, pliant beneath your feet. 

The wind blew steadily with that feel of Oceanside to it.
As the pup played and swam in the dark waters down below.
As I stood by the large Maple at paths end, fluttering in the whispering winds.

3.31.16 What lies within

     Years ago, when i was working in my practice, I'd often go on vacation, return, and put words and pictures all over the wall, the story of my time away. Of going to a cabin in the woods, where the night sky shifted in the overhead window all night long, and the morning meal was made on the porch with a camp stove, after wandering down the pine covered path to the most-beautiful-outhouse-in-the-world. Or small moments from hikes, from small experiences at the ocean or off in the woods.

     I'd put things all over the wall, and all these wonderful people who filled my practice from all those years would come in for their appointments, with themselves or their partners or their babies or kids or adolescents or dogs or cats or ducks or chickens or older parents or best friends.

     And they'd be all excited that there was something new. Sometimes people would say, when I'd taken the stuff down, 'Can you put up something new soon?'

And then they would tell me their own adventures, while we figured out supplements and conditions, or I worked on them, on the table.

     Kids would tell me their stories while they and their parents and siblings sat on the floor, next to the toy bookshelf, with all kinds of things strewn all across the floor, so that the next client had to step around stuff, and I"d sweep it aside with my foot, as i laughed, and welcomed them on in.

     Teenagers would smile as they excluded their parents from the office, then tell me all kinds of things, about how they felt inadequate or were figuring things out, or funny things they had been going and doing, and we'd laugh and laugh.

Old people would tell me what was so hard and heartbreaking and lonely, and then tell me wonderful things they once did, or the place they and their kid went to eat last week, that was really so nice.

     One woman rode horses around the Pyramids at dawn.

Others climbed mountains and figured out bookkeeping marvels and told off huge elks in Washington State and quietly swam with otters.I never knew what would come my way that had been in theirs.

     I'd learn so many stories of so many lives, that have all all stayed with me. I never even had time to imagine all that would come to a close. But it did. Things in our lives do. Come to a close.

     And what we learn about is what remains.

If you think about it, you can have so much mean hateful suspicious stuff that remains with you forever.

     Or you can have the vestiges of wonderful experiences that you have had, or shared with others. That enrich your every day onward.

     I think most of us are pretty human, pretty well intentioned much of the time, and pretty imperfect, struggling along, learning to be the best person we can be.

In that way, it's all kind of perfect. What we chose. How we were in the world, no matter others being more true and kind or less.

     We end up with the life we crafted, with the materials and the ability we have had.

And all that remains all within us and without us.

3.31.16 Being ok

    I remember realizing that if I hung out with one of my kids, when they were all kinds of miserable, and just listened to them, and didn't go on and on about how it would all be alright and didn't get all uncomfortable about them being unhappy, but just sat there with them in their great difficulty or heartbrokenness or exclusion or humiliation or feelings of anger or worthlessness, that they'd spew it all out, and then stand up, cleared and kind of centered, and go off and figure out their own best solution.

    Oh, I'd forget over and over, and begin trying to make it ok, or tell them really what they needed to do....til I'd stop, and remember, and hush up, and listen.

    There was a trust conveyed in this way, that is tough to buck up to do. Because it feels ever so much better to fill our own needs of anxiety and distress at someone else's distress, than to find a comfortable-as-possible way of sitting with them, and it.

     Turns out, there is no magic way, for them or us. Not then, not today. But there is a start.

    And there is something irreplaceable and lasting in having someone else just sit, fully present, with you, in your hopelessness , or your misery. Even when there are very real very concrete things about to come down the pike.

I have a brother who does this. I can be talking or very distressed, and he will just listen. He won't try to fix it or comfort me or tell me everything will be ok. He just sits there in love and presence. Sometimes when I'm through, he'll share a few thoughts. But the end result is that by doing this, we confirm that the distressed person is capable. That we see their ability to grow up to this challenge.

    Soon enough, when we express ourselves and people swoop in...to stop us, to hush us up. to try to 'fix' it, to advise us on what to do, all that is somehow of no help at all.

    And we end up feeling like maybe, just maybe, if they are inadvertently to be believed, that maybe we are not so able, after all.

    I have found, over the years, that I can let someone know that I so appreciate them not trying to find solutions for me, and to just listen. That I'm glad they see that this is what helps me most. Oftentimes, then, they will see if they can shift like that. Instead of jumping about, defending me against someone, trying to make it all better.

    And so we learn to do the same thing, to be present, for ourselves.

When things feel so tough and impossible and pending and lousy. Really. And we feel roiled by the uncertainty.

    The very best way to care for ourselves remains to be present, aware that that right there is a thought. And that? That is a feeling. That each thought and feeling is wisely requesting permission to come on up. That they have a beginning and an end, right now. With more, maybe, to follow, certainly.

We learn that the reams of stuff coming up and out do not constitute who we are, or what our life is.

    Instead, they are us, doing some emotional housecleaning,

clearing the way for the next remarkable stretch of growth.

3.31.16 The late March winds

Today the late March winds pummeled through the woods alongside the surging river, and swirled far up in the sky, sending so many layers of clouds streaming 

this way and that. 

 There were countless Eagles and Broadwing Hawks and Redtail Hawks and mating pairs of Seagulls chasing off Hawks, and then the five young Crows from my neighborhood, all grown up but still hanging together, playing in the updrafts til the Eagles show up, and they wisely go hide in the trees. 

The road was dry and firm enough for balls to bounce high and far, and we had two new ones, so Dante was in dog heaven, hurtling after one and then the other . 

I picked up my pace running down the dirtroads, listening to song birds that filled the trees, calling out to each other. 

Across the river, the winds whipped up the topsoil into small dust storms , as overhead so many large and small avians cruised at high speed through the air, tumbling, playing, racing about on yet another bright beautiful day.