SUNSET OVER THE BLOG MACHINE

I've been thinking a lot about this blog. I began as a way to keep those at a distance informed about what was happening in my heart of hearts. I have always written and I will always write. I seem to discover myself in the process...gain clarity on how I feel about things and realize where I am in my world and with myself. I love it.  I love words and puns and double entendre. I love writing about all the myriad blessings of my life and the challenges as they occur. I don't seem to have a point. I mean...it is not a blog about food or gardens or life in the western Maine mountains. It is more a blog about me. At various times I've burned inside to get something written. I try to make my focus deeply personal because I believe that the more personal we are in what we share with the world, the more widespread the empathy of others. The personal leads strait into the transpersonal. Lately, I find that keeping this blog is connected to my feelings about the computer and internet in general. Originally, I had thought...gee. I keep a journal and write e-mails. Why not open up to others with my process? And so I did that. Over time, I've discovered that I am not going anywhere with this blog. I am not going anywhere with my journals either but they, being private and an integral part of me continue to pile up in my closet and may serve some purpose I am yet unaware of. Being 60 is asking me to make some significant changes in my life. I find myself more drawn to silence and birdsong...breezes in the leaves...Earthly beauty. Words wear me out. And until I discover where my writer self is headed and what exactly she wants to write about, I am leaving this blog behind. Thank you everyone who has stopped by to check in on my ruminations!
I'll be back in some changed form...perhaps a new medium altogether. But in the mean time...keep creating. This is your life and it is meaningful as you attribute meaning to it. Any process that emulates the creative process will only result in added beauty for the world...so no matter what you are creating...keep at it and trust the process. As you create...so you become.

LOVING LIMITS

Time is a fast moving stream and an ever changing dream. And yet...when you are broken, everything slows to a crawl and it is tempting to believe that you will forever be limited by the limitations of Today. I peruse Facebook statuses like I used to read the newspaper headlines. Some things catch my eye and others go by without notice. I enjoy the connection with friends and family near and far but so much of what is posted is repetitive. Sometimes I feel inspired by the slogans and quotes about the limitless self capable of creating miracles...that nothing holds you back but your mind and you can create your own reality and if you can't you must harbor limiting beliefs about yourself. As I chew on these leaves...a slow moving caterpillar eating everything that looks apetizing, I ruminate about my physical capabilites. Having broken my shoulder, I am consumed with the need to take care of my healing self. Notions of limitless ability are ridiculous. No matter how unlimited I am in my mind, my body is just not able to perform at it's usual level. Woven into my current reality is the need to romance the notion of being sixty years old. Time is a passing and I am becoming something I've never been before...a tribal elder. How do I learn to embrace this crone-self? This grey haired lady with saggy boobs and a weak left side that requires checking in with multiple times a day...for signals of overuse...for rest...for letting go of the frustration that is a part of not being able to do what one has always done. How do I let go of all my to do lists and productive agendas so that I can quietly and patiently stretch my recouperating muscles. How do I allow myself to not do? I am discovering what a goal oriented product loving achiever that I really am. Perhaps I let my inner grower go wild...demanding my time and attention for weeding the plantings...watering and mulching and tending and picking and then putting it all up. My garden, for years has been teaching me that YES...I can always do more than I think. I push on and push through...a tired back can wait till I finish the next row. My aching arms can rest as soon as I finish shoveling shit. I have become stronger. I have a strong work ethic and if I plant a seed, I commit to it...for I am responsible for cherishing the life I have begun and for savoring the life that feeds me. Waste is not OK. Killing chemicals are not OK. Somethings have to be planted just for the bugs and the woodchucks. In the process, I can't help but believe I have become overall...stronger and more of my natural self. At the end of last summer, I was defeated by the bugs and funguses and especially the weeds. I still managed to reap a bountiful harvest...but not without the guilt of knowing I could have done a better job creating a fertile environment for the lives I sewed. Lucky for me, I managed to get myself to the University for further education in making a garden. The more I learn about the science of pests and pathogens, the more miraculous it seems that I have had as much of a harvest from my garden as I have. I had to miss many classes due to my accident. In the whole mix, my Mom experienced a compression fracture of her vertebrae and today...she is coming home from rehab. Her bones are frail and she teeters on the threshold of her life on planet Earth. I worry. How will she do on the stairs. How will my sister do with her increased limitations? I feel fear. I feel guilt. I worry and wish I could be in two places at once...but I have only one shoulder to offer...only one side that can offer support or a hand. The harder I force myself to look at the positive, the more the negative seems to kick my ass. There is a split inside me. What if I refuse to separate everything into positive and negative...feeling smug with easy labels and classifications? What if I take everything...accident, pain, physical therapy, limits, watching Mom becoming more and more fragile as "POSITIVE"?

For one, I can no longer indulge that browbeating inner critic to seeing it  (the accident) as a punishment for vague undefined failures. Mmmm. That frees up some energy. Suddenly I'm not a bad person. Maybe just clumsy. And then all the self judgements kind of fold up on themselves and become meaningless. Now the bad shoulder means I am not allowed to overdo yard work or moving heavy things. It's not about the self judgement of laziness. My whole 60 years of selftalk flashes in front of my eyes. Yep...its all bullshit. ALL of it.  I don't believe one word. And instantly, I am free. Free of the anger and frustration of letting myself down...free of the high expectations, I am allowed to breathe. And freed of the low expectations...and I am free to soar. Yes. Limits can be frustrating. But when you slow down...take stock and love those limits...they can be the door to freedom's flight. And suddenly...the caterpillar emerges into a reality as strange and wonderful as science fiction. Reframed...it begins a whole new life...as a butterfly.

MINDING MY INNER CATERPILLAR

Wow. I haven't posted since the poetry reading with Richard Blanco in February. I had a little accident come upon me from out of left field and for the past three weeks I've been majoring in Couch Potato 101. Yup...I was just soaring along and making my approach for 3...count em...3 days of free skiing in the best conditions March has seen in several years. It was Monday morning...the sky bluebird and miles of fresh corduroy opened ahead of me lit with a lovely shine. With one eye on the beauty...I was carrying all my stuff...skis on my right shoulder, poles in my left hand and my backpack full of ski boots and helmet on my back when I tripped over the ski rack I was about to unburden myself against, staggered 3 giant steps and fell face first into the snow. My backpack slammed down and skiis hit me in the back of the head...a clumsy yardsale...front row center. Dislocated my shoulder and broke the tuberosity of my humerous bone.(No...not my humorous bone). And it wasn't funny. Suddenly in the time it takes to take a step...my whole life stopped. Pain took over...drew me into my center...took away my left side activity and set me in my cage with my wing clipped.

I'm often amazed by the gyrations of the mind. The pain of course was shattering...my fragility exposed and in my vulnerability, I became BULLSHIT! Angry. Pain is the fast track into yourself as primal animal. Once there it seems my first order of business is to growl and bare my teeth at all well meaning humans. When the first order of business is will I pay up front for treatment I go into my favorite rant about the health care system in Maine and in our country. I'm in shock...i make no sense but moan like a bear giving birth...have no compunction to be nice...tell the ski patrol to stop small talking...get me out of the snow please after 30 minutes of jibjab. How do I tell her nicely that I hurt too much to chat about the weather. I pant through xrays and paperwork...a cold sweat... faint with thirst that they won't quench "in case I need surgery"...I stutter and weep and bitch and moan. Finally a woman says she's going to relocate my shoulder. Ever so gently she eases my arm back into place and I am so relieved I cry and hold her like my long lost mother. I'm sent home.

Relegated to endless hours on the couch...I begin that useless activity of trying to figure out WHY I hurt myself. My first effort is to ask myself what I did wrong...why am I being punished? Am I not grateful enough for my health? Have I not put forth good energy? Am I doing something wrong? Did I hurt somebody? Am i seeking attention from somebody? God damn...who and what is to blame? I must deserve this. And yet the more I ponder these questions...the clearer it becomes. The screw up fairy kicked my ass. Some early lepracaun pranked me. The answers I come up with are far more ridiculous than the questions themselves. Ultimately...I did this to myself. Bottom line. There is no one to blame.

The torturous quality of my mind and my thought process are my own doing. Tripping over a ski rack was my own inner clutz taking center stage...perhaps just a reminder that there are parts of me and myself that remain unconcious. Now I get to sit on the couch with that clumsy, off beat part of myself that probably has tried to get my attention in other ways but finally just HAD to make herself known. Now I get to hang out with her day after day...feeding her books and movies like a caterpillar eats leaves. I am deepened by my pain. I can sit here hating her...blaming and punishing her and relegating her back to my darkest corners. Or...I can open my arms to her. This too...is my choice.

That wormy part of me...come here. Sit beside me. Tell me what you need to tell me. I am listening.

I just wanted to tell you to stop ...stop turning a cold shoulder to your self. Get that angry chip off your shoulder and treat yourself with more tenderness. You are crippling yourself with your negative thinking...go ahead. Shirk your aching shoulder to the wind. Let the fresh coming air lift your spirits and begin to heal...again.

So I surrender. And when I do...both physical and mental pain are gone. Beneath the whole event...the fall...the healing...the stillness...the aloneness...the dependency...the temporary inconvenience...under it all...my heart still beats in peace. Now...believe.

Believe in a caterpillars transformation. That hungry wingless worm stuck in a room by herself will eventually emerge...a butterfly.

Cupids Dart...or Discovering Richard Blanco

There is a hard edge...a chilling touch that winter brings to my being...it feels so different from the way it looks. Today the snow is soft, falling silent in large fluffy flakes. There is no wind. Just the steady soft falling of large flaky snow...softening the branches of trees, erasing any dirt...grit...dog mess...making the whole landscape clean and awaiting its potential. The whole landscape is a sheet of white paper begging for me to make my tracks. Last night Stephen and I went to listen to Innaugural Poet Richard Blanco, read from his work. We sat high up in the balcony where there were many empty seats. Looking down into the auditorium showed a large crowd gathered to listen to his poetry. I could relate to so much of what he expresses. No. I am not an immigrant to this country but as a child, I always did feel that I landed amoungst a family of folks living in a city that I struggled to relate to. I felt like I spoke another language...suffered from a severe sense of being misunderstood. I listened to his loving portraits of family who couldn't provide him with what he needed. And yet...he provided what he needed for himself. After all...as a poet, he has been heard and appreciated and called by the President to speak his heart into the mainstream...and the mainstream recieves him with love. A community celebrates him and his success...lending his purpose credibility...affirmation...and a soil fertile for further development.
I applaud his tender honesty and feel myself looking within myself with an eye that has a slightly shifted perspective. After the reading and the chorus of Happy Birthday sung by the audience at the end of his questions and answers...I left the auditorium with an arrow piercing my heart with sadness.
I see myself scribbling poems and hiding them amoung the hundreds of pages of writing that fills my journals. I remember the hopeful self that sent out poems for publication...and the rejected self bravely tacking up rejection notices and pretending not to be affected. I remember the angry self that sang choruses of "I don't care". I remember the sarcastic self that feathered her edges with bright scathing comments and critisms of herself and others who couldn't understand the need to put feelings into word pictures...revealing a vulnerability that I feared would cause my heart to stop beating altogether. One year...it nearly did stop beating...and since then, I have veered away from poetry...like a captive bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage, I eventually gave up. Feeling like my efforts were in vain, I became the silence...the soft dusting of snow...trying for something deeper...I look out the window to where the swing sits beneath the birch tree. I think of Robert Frost and the Swinger of Birches...and being in a heartspace of no language, I wonder at the beating of my heart...the new obsession to create felted birds out of soft wool roving...and I think back about the poet Elise who has enjoyed a small amount of success with certain poems. A cardinal lands in the birch...and it's sweet notes pierce the silence like a bright watercolor painting. I loved listening to Richard...reveled in his success as America's Inaugural Poet...and in doing so, I managed to find a tenderness inside myself for the poet that is me. So what is this aching in my heart? This pierce of a dart to my bleeding heart? This discovery of Richard Blanco? It seems to be the wild voice of my own soul...realizing the need to sing for the sake of song...and if someone hears and understands...so much for the miracle of communication. A wholeness is born. A seed is planted. A cardinal lands in the birch tree. And a hand claps in the wilderness. Singing Happy Birthday to Richard awakens the birth of my inner poet...a wild thing with feathers and a song.

BIRDLOVE

I've been a bird lover all my life. How can I describe how they thrill me with their cheerful winter songs, their friendly calls between individuals...the chickadee with it's undaunted cheerfulness and persistence during all manner of weathers...the bold Goldfinches that inspire me to wear my black and yellow jacket on the mountain where I practice my flight. Skiing is about as close to flight as I'll ever get...given I prefer to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Once we moved to Maine, I became aquainted with the beautiful Rose Breasted Grosbeak. They head south for the winter and with the hummingbirds, leave a great void when they go. For such small packages, their presence and personality are huge. Since last winter when I spent every other weekend sitting with my Mom, I have learned to needle felt. At first I began with two dimensional squares with pictures of birds. I started with a chickadee kit that I recieved as a gift from my dear friend April last Christmas. I had never heard of felting before that. But once I got my kit and began my friendship with the craft, I did some research online and discovered felting was one of the original folk arts of the Bronze Age and that once the nature of wool was discovered by runners who put wool fluff between their feet and their sandals to ease skin breakdown, women began felting small pictures of animals to decorate and protect their homes. Early on, a picture of a bird or animal was believed to carry the same qualities as the bird or animal. Like the pictographs drawn on skins and tents or cave walls, the small felted pictures helped to invite in the good energies while staving off the negative ones. Over the course of the winter, I made about 14 small pictures of various songbirds that frequent my feeder here in Maine. The last bird I felted was a small Northern Sawwhet Owl. Maybe it was the long hours sitting with my Mom...or the practice of the craft...or maybe just something deep inside was touched by the portrait of the owl. I found it to be my favorite picture and before I knew it, I was needle felting baby Sawwhet owls in little 3 inch sculptures. I made about 10 of them before winter yielded completely to spring and the need to be outside out grew the need to needle felt in front of the fire. Naturally, I expanded my repertoire to include Goldfinches, Chickadees, Cardinals and Bluebirds and this Christmas, I felted some birds for my tree. More and more, I find myself less and less attracted to the shine and shimmer of metalic bling on my Christmas Tree. I've taken to putting up the tree and leaving it naked for several days just to appreciate and welcome it's natural state...then I do the tiny colored lights. I like to leave it that way for a while before I put up the ornaments. I like the slow approach and find myself drawn more to the natural outdoorsyness of the tree than to my nostalgia for the ornaments. Funny how time changes what is important in the quiet recesses of the human heart. I love the feeling of putting the felted birds on the tree. They look real...small but natural. And I imagine myself the handmaid of Mother Nature herself...restoring the birds to their beloved conifer trees during the winter when so many are gone from the feeders. The birds are my friends. Their coming and going affects my spirits and they often arrive in my life at moments of syncronicity. One of the first and most obvious moments like that was years ago...in 1977 when my Grandmother had a stroke and was admitted to Salem Hospital where I was working in Mental health at the time. I was en route to visiting her in her hospital room as I made my way through an indoor tunnel that had great plate glass windows into an atrium garden area. I walked through that tunnel every day on my way to supper but on this particular day, my attention was grabbed by the presence of a dead Cedar Waxwing that had apparently hit the window hard enough to kill itself. At the very moment I spied the bird...I knew my grandmother was dying. Four days later she passed quietly in the night. Birds fly into my awareness and always bring a message of hope or affirmation that what is happening is part of nature. They sing like angels and make me want to sing. They live a life of faith using only what they need to birth their young and fledge them...to make flights of fancy on shapely winds...they spread seeds and joy wherever they go. What inspiration. I would like to do anything the way a bird sings...simply because they must. Since February is Heart month and Rose Breasted Grosbeaks have a habit of wearing their hearts on their breasts...I am celebrating the beauty and wild presence of the birds in my life this month. I heart birds. And now...on a breeze that lifts my spirits...the felted bird sculpures are finding their way to people and it is good good medicine for my heart. They are selling here and there and there is a deep satisfaction of soul...hopes that my hand made felt birds bring protective energies and joys to those who claim them. There is nothing quite like earning a wage from doing something you love and from sharing that love...especially when it is wild love that wants simply to be itself.

FROST ON WINDOWS

Where has January gone? I know it has been here. Temperatures have been below zero and the snow squeaks. On those rare mornings when we can have coffee in bed, we play the game of what do you see in the frost pictures that form on the windows. Yesterday...it was the profile of an Indian or maybe a Pharoah. And I awoke to the smell of freshly baking bread...the aroma of my Grandmother who baked rolls to sell during the depression prior to World War 2. I'm fascinated by the smells of things that aren't there...at least not to anyone else. Where do they come from? I laid in the warmth of my bed and breathed in the heavenly smell that had to be coming from "the other side" because no bread was baking in my oven. Why today? Why baking bread? What might my grandmother have to say to me? Is it like the frost pictures on the window? Some certain clash of temperatures on a window that opens between worlds? Is that window like a membrane between realities? And does it thin out like like a cervix ready to bring a life into the world? Does it become thin when a soul is getting ready to leave the world? My Mom had a bout with pneumonia recently and she is currently having a stay at a rehab hospital. She is coming around well and she is such a good sport although the transitions into the hospital, then transfer to the rehab and the not being in her own familiar surroundings has a confusing effect on her. She has certainly learned to go with the flow during her years as an octogenarian. There is no evidence that she is hovering on the threshold as yet. But the smell of baking bread announcing my Grandmother's nearness made me wonder...and feel some anxiety about my mother's state of health. It happened the same morning as my owl dream. I dreamed...prior to the smell memory/presence...that I was hunting for my binoculars because right out in front of my house, a Great Grey Owl was performing flight acrobatics and I was all excited...in a downright tizzy. There is an old Indian belief that hearing an owl or seeing an owl can indicate the loss of one you hold dear. Owl feathers were not used as prayer feathers because they were associated with death and the mysteries of darkness. So...there is a sense that invisible reality is knock knock knocking at my window and trying to tell me something...something that has no evidence in this 3 dimensional reality. I sense and feel the messages. I hush myself to better listen. My brain insists that I'm hallucinating or making farfetched connections because there is no logic behind what I sense and feel. I am aware that I have spent my entire life shushing up my sensory perceptions that don't find validation from my current reality or from other people...but look how all the components worked together to create a state of alert in my heart. I am now hyper vigilant to Mom's health status and anticipate a trip to Salem soon...even if just to bring her my aroma...so that she knows I am nearby like Gram was to me today. I need to go peak at her through the window...and then hug her with the fragrance of my love for her. I hope I smell like snow on Balsalms...or she can see me like frost pictures on the windows.

SNOWDAY

Today there was a locals challenge race. I was scared because of fresh snow falling fast which means poor visibility and uneven amounts of accumulation. When I say scared...I mean scared shitless. I notice that I am encountering more of these moments as I get older and find my body limits going through changes. I can no longer recklessly disregard my fears. Sometimes it is very wise to listen to them and allow them to have some say in the discussions that go on in my head. Sometimes they are wise and actually an attempt to take care of me. It's not always easy to know when to listen and when to say...shush...your just my fears and I CAN do this. My very first race was my first encounter with shutting up the fearsong and dropping into the course anyway. I had built up such a reservoir of emotion that when I crossed the finish line, I bent over forward and burst into tears. It was a HUGE DRAMATIC moment for me. For everyoneelse...it was a normal everyday race day. Today I had the same experience...but it wasn't the very first. I stood in the starting gate with what felt like the norovirus in my stomach. The fearsong was banging away in my head but I also had a new song softly playing in the background...the you can do it just go slow and stay in control song...the I don't care what I look like, I'm gonna cross that finish line song...the yes you've always wimped out during snowdays but today you are gonna do it song. I hear myself laughing and joking with my teammates but deep inside, I know I am pretending. I am not feeling powerful or capable or strong or brave. I am feeling like I want to shrivel up and hide. So today...I raced. I crossed the finish line whole. I did it even though I was afraid. I did it. And with that little feather in my cap...I came home and headed out into the woods with Sadie on snowshoes. The snow was softly falling. The woods were absolute silence and there were no tracks but ours as a few inches made everything fresh and new. The silence was absolute...i could hear my thumping heart and an occaisional caw of a raven. Making fresh tracks...watching the pines being frosted...imagining the snort of a deer or the presence of other wildlife in the woods...enjoying watching Sadie leap and run like a little jack rabbit...I laughed out loud. Pushing across the border of my comfort zone...that is why I came to Maine. I moved away from all I knew to begin a life here where there is still wilderness and unbroken stretches of wild landscape to soothe my easily tangled brain. I can't even begin to explain how it is that my heart responds to the wild landscape like there is space opening up inside me. I have held back from so much living because of fear...because I've talked myself out of doing things that pushed a fear button rather than speaking up to my fear and saying shhhshhhshhh...be quiet fear...I'm just gonna do this scarey thing anyway. So..in the silence of a snow day, I heard something chirp in my heart. It was the sound of courage and it came from within myself. This is what it means to fly...it means not to be weighted down by fear but instead...to listen to the voice of encouragement and to BELIEVE.

HELLO NEW YEAR

I have to admit...it takes more than the good snowmaking at Sunday River to get me out on the hill. November is against my nature and unless Mother Nature contributes to the snow deposit, I tend to wait until after the Christmas Week to get out on the mountain. This year Mother Nature went above and beyond in her generosity and she deposited about 18 inches of wonderful snow packed by the groomers and because the temps have remained cold, the snow is hard but not icy. This year, January 1st  was my first day on skis. The wind blew hard and the wind chill was ...well,  chilling. Stephen and I skied for the morning but were happy to head in out of the bluster for the afternoon. I just got my legs under myself. And on January 2, the Locals Challenge race program got underway. Though the thermometer read 5 at 8:00 AM, the wind had waned and it was a cold day in January...just perfect for letting the wild child out for fun and frolic. I got tingles when I rode my first chair up to take my first race run and noticed I was riding alone on chair 13. Thirteen is one of my lucky numbers since I reprogrammed myself.

 Relaxing and feeling lucky are two of the zen practices that come with ski racing for me. The other practice is "letting go". The god Janus, for whom January is named sports 2 heads...one looking forward and one backward...one face to the future, the other face to the past. I have noted that 2012 was, for me a year of letting go, and everything I ever learned went into the challenges asked of me. I've always had trouble with letting go. I resisted joining the ski race challenge for years because I cared too much about how I would look to the real racers. Come to find out, all that mattered was how I looked to myself and no one else was even looking. And of course, not being able to see myself, it was clearly about how it felt...not what it looked like. I stood at the gate...I sweated. I felt nausea...I thought I might poop my pants. I got all screwed up in my head worrying about layers and layers of what ifs. And every wednesday, I would stand at the race gates looking down at the course...tell my head to shut up...and I would just do it. Forget the speed, the competition, the other people who had much more interesting things to focus on than how I performed my race...forget the results and the what ifs. For two years, ski racing with the Locals Challenge became my therapy for letting go. So that is Janus looking backward. This year Janus looks ahead and there is a feeling of anticipation...the Zen of skiing continues to educate me on the workings of my mind...and body. With the whole chair to myself, I became a swinger on Chair 13. I felt a deep relax spread through my whole body and I was filled with a sense of being soooo lucky. I thought it would bode well for my run. But I took the steep way down to the race and my legs got used to resistance. When I set out on the course, I was still working too hard. I had carried the muscle memory of my run to the course through the course. So for my second run, I approached from a different trail. I skied down Cascades and let out all the stops. Consequently, my second run was a significant improvement. And given my second day on skis...Ill take it. Racing for me is not about winning or speed or who I beat. Racing for me is resisting the exaggerated fears of aging...trusting myself and my every race goal is simply to cross the finish line with all parts intact. Yes. I'm sixty and I know it. But that doesn't mean I should deprive myself of frolic and fun. Am I taking risks? Yes. But dammit...I am a decent skier. My body knows how to do it. I love the feeling of flight on the silent snow....the wind in my face and the beauty of snow covered pines and mountaintops. I feel revitalized. Refreshed and alive. And when I cross the finish line...I feel exhilarated. I've shown up...done my team duty...skied my best even if it isn't pretty...and when I fall I get up and finish. The creative awarenesses that catch me while I'm skiing are priceless. I realize at this late age that I am a kinesthetic learner and in order to access my best self, I need to allow my whole body to report in to Head-quarters. I need to do and then assess...rather than listen to my ongoing assessment before even the first step is taken. And feeling good lets me in to the bigger braver happier person that has been kept at bay for years. So 2013...let me welcome you with my feelings...relaxed...lucky...and may skiing continue to teach me about my happy healthy self. I believe in myself. I believe my reprogramming. The wild zen of skiing is a master if I just listen.