Time

I sit and look out the window.

I am preoccupied with what to say here. Willing some words to rise to the surface of my mind.

I went to the doctor today, she talked to me about menopause.

I feel so young, not quite grown.

I wanted to catch that word and throw it away.

I want to grab back time.

There is so much of it I did not use to the fullest. I get scared or can't see it all, can't always see myself.

Regret and resentment grow there.

It was not always my fault. Sometimes it is though.

I think that as I sit at this keyboard looking out a window lost for words.

Grief is not just for the dead.

Many things have been lost along the way.

Parts and pieces of a life still being lived.

But sometimes in that feeling of not knowing what to do now or next, that can feel so wasteful, something happens.

I look out the window struggling with all this, panic rising at the time rushing away, the word menopause, no words of my own, my kids grown, getting old, all the things left undone...

In the very moment that my heart breaks, two dazzling bluebirds land on the bare winter tree just outside.

Perfect and beautiful.

Sunrise

The sunrise today told me a story, sang me a song.

It used peach hued clouds, opening to a buttercup yellow and robins egg sky, to tell me about rebirth, make a melody about peace.

I heard the wise sky as my cheeks flushed with cold and the ice crackled under my feet.

I thought about all the trouble and pain, the violence happening today in this world.

That sky said, yes, that is so, and I am also real.

Skin

I want in this life to not withdraw or withhold.

I want to get close to all of it. Skin on skin.

I want to know the smooth parts and the rough, the blemishes, the scars, the wrinkles, the hollow, the full.

I want to put my ear against the bare chest of life and hear the deep drum of its heart.

I want to ride the waves of its breath.

I want to know all the ways it laughs.

And all the ways it cries.

I want to know its movement and its stillness.

I want to wrap my arms around it and tell it I love it over and over again.

Empty

I do not have a word for where I am internally.

I am grateful. I have so much. I am lucky and blessed beyond measure.

I try to be the best person I can be.

I do this in opposition to parts of me that are not "good".

There is an emptiness. There is deep sadness. There is rage.

If I am aiming for truth here, it is true that it takes a great amount of will and strength for me to stay upstanding.

To remain upright.

That empty has gravity. It has force.

If a galaxy lives in me, it is my black hole.

My kids do not know the depth of that hole. They have glimpsed it in moments of utter fatigue from keeping it closed.

That is my one great success.

The way I have stood between my empty and them.

Thaw

The rain is full force today, driving, as though it carries deep intention. I consider rain as sentient, as people once did, and some still do believe. A purposeful rain. I think it is true.

I know it is transforming the river from half frozen to fully thawed.

I imagine her flowing, dancing, fierce, uncompromising.

The rain pours into her and she receives it and everything becomes what it is meant to be in this moment, in these conditions.

How to live like that?

To be frozen and still when it is called for, to move with full throttle, no holds barred power when it is time.

How to know?

We have been numbed and extracted from instinct I think.

How to get back our wild?

Deep in my body I know it is still alive, my wildness.

Human Nature.

Seeing

I go out to the same few acres of woods and down to the same point along a river nearly every day now.

This is worlds apart from the last five years of expat living and exotic travel.

We can be lured into thinking that all the most wonderful, mysterious, astounding, and beautiful things are in far away places.

And they are.

But they are also here, wherever here is for you, me, or anyone.

To continue to experience awe and delight, in what to us in our everyday experience becomes mundane and dull, is a skill.

Perhaps it is not what surrounds us that has dulled, but our vision, our way of seeing or not seeing what is there.

Perhaps we have lost some capacity to wonder.

I went out today and greeted the trees. They are bare and mostly clothed in brown. But each day I am captivated by how the light is landing on them, the moss, fungus, shades and textures of bark, their uniqueness, their scars.

If I look with eyes of wonder, awake to mystery, eyes that are tuned to discover the rich depth of each day, I know what joy in life is. Joy in life is not shallow, nor is it hidden. It is revealed when we soften to know it.

Sleep

I waited too long to write today.

It is 6:30 pm.

I have cooked and fed my family.

Dogs fed and walked.

I hit the wall now.

I do not sleep well at night.

That is when anxiety strikes. Shaking me awake at 2 or 3 am. Sends me tossing and turning on waves of vague untouchable worry.

I sometimes get conscious enough to apply breathing technique and mantra.

Other times the grip of anxiety blocks all reason, the only thing kept asleep under its tightly wrapped night sweat blanket.

This is the way anxiety often manifests for me, but not only, and not always. There are many other ways for many other people.

To all of us who live with experiences of anxiety, we deserve to take good care of ourselves in whatever way we need to. We do not have to explain or defend our needs.

We may need meds, naps, therapy, nature, exercise, couch time, routines, rituals, hot bathes, cold showers, ice cream at midnight, or any other thing. There are so many among us who can't claim, are unsupported, or do not have access to what would soothe or alleviate.

I wish to make a village of us. So at the very least we no longer feel alone.

Photos

I take photos.

It is an art.

It is a medicine.

I take photos of things that evoke or touch something in me.

I see something of myself in the light or shadow, the forms, the shapes, the deep felt sense that goes beyond all that.

Something elemental, beyond form is perceived. Things of heart, bone, cell, and soul.

I take photos of the world and in them I am seeing, knowing, offering myself.

That is what I give, what I receive.

Forward

Moving forward sometimes most needs standing still.

An easy thing for me to state.

An exceedingly difficult thing for me to do.

A constant hum of agitation, compulsion to action, there in the background.

The buzz of busy.

Civilized.

If I reach back before all that, education and domestication. There is something so real.

I could sit in the slow field all day. A little wild child.

The only buzzing was the bees

That was the most still and known I have ever been.

Frozen

This part of the world is frozen today.

I went down to the river and saw how much of it was thick, only small pools still flowed.

Some large boot prints floated on top.

I paused at those man sized remnants.

Should I be afraid?

I shrugged it off.

Fuck fear.

Instead, thank you big footed boot wearer for letting me know I can go out on the ice.Take a walk on water.

I went out to the middle and stood there considering it all. Water that will soon flow, but for now was willing to hold me.

I noticed how still and quiet it was. The air was calm and windless. The cold bit at my face and fingers. A familiar loneliness, a sublime solitude, out here in the presence of a frozen for now place. It seemed as if the river and trees knew me, what I came with.

Out in the not far distance I could hear the intermittent work of a woodpecker echoing among the stoic trees. It struck me as eerie, haunting, beautiful.

I stayed there, in the middle of the river, a part of it for awhile.

Bright

We took the tree down yesterday. We removed all the ornaments and packed them into their boxes. The lights got pulled down and bundled. Stephen sawed the tree into pieces to make it easier to remove from the house. We gave the tree back to the forest.

When it was gone I felt the empty space, a shadow where there was, just minutes ago, bright light. I felt it within myself as well.

The guests all gone home. The quiet returning.

It was so cold outside, and I was heavy with this emptying, a dullness, an ache. I forgot to go out to greet the full moon and give her the reverence she inspires in me.

This morning we went out to walk the dogs. I turned my head to the left as we made our way to the right, and there she was, dangling down from heaven, incredibly large, floating among the trees, an angel.

My, how bright her light was shining.

And sparked in me a brightening too.

New

It is a new year today.

It is pushed upon us to be looking ahead, brightly, hopefully, and to set visions, plans, and intentions, resolute and serious, of doing and being better.

I sit here now and what rises from my depths is a resounding no.

That no belongs to me. I alone claim it.

Maybe you have a no rising as you read this.

My no tells me I do not have to do more, prove anything, or start out sprinting into this year towards a phantom finish line. I can be here in this day and claim my enoughness.

I do not need to be more or better than I am right now.

When I fully claim that, what rises from my depths is a resounding yes.

Rest

Sometimes it is vital to let one thing rest to fully engage in another.

My family has arrived to celebrate the holiday season.

So I am setting everything else down for these next days, to be fully in that.

The art of relationship.

The craft of being fully in an experience.

The skill of sitting in all the delight and tension of being in family.

Healing

When I let go of the notion that healing is about being fixed, restored to an unblemished state, scarless and pure, unbroken, then I feel that true healing is possible and available.

I have come to see how constructs of purity exist all around me, and around all of us, and how harmful and oppressive they are.

We are not pure, it is unobtainable. We can strive to be and do better, but purity is a ploy. It is a lie. Worst of all it is used to degrade ourselves and others. It tears us apart as individuals and collectives. It is a form of violence.

Purity dogmas are ruthless and unforgiving. They offer no redemption, only judgment, and punishment.

I embrace the path of being broken open, of being a wounded healer, the way of compassion, integrity, and love.

I welcome anyone to join me here. We all are included. We all are worthy.

Return

I know one thing about light. It returns.

Today is the darkest day of the year.

I notice how I have followed the season. Embracing the dark. The way it leads me deeper in, to places worth knowing.

Darkness then becomes a welcoming. I do not transform it, it transforms me. It shows me what it really is. A place to land, not to escape from.

I can be here, and honor it, what it offers.

The light will return slowly, steadily. I welcome it too.

Beauty

I see beauty. Intentionally.

I make a spiritual practice of it.

I adjust my eyes for it.

It is my faith.

It keeps me afloat.

It fills me with wonder.

To be here living in this beauty.

I am a part of it.

You are too.

Clean

Getting clean.

That means a lot of different things.

Today I did laundry, vacuumed, mopped.
Tomorrow, more laundry and bathrooms.

I am getting my house extra clean for holiday guests. As much as I rail against it, I care what people think.

Coming clean. Owning all that I am, quite often a set of contradictions. I am coming to terms with that.

I am trying to do writing that comes clean.

I am an addict. I use various things. Addiction is not about the thing I am using it is about what I am numbing, what I am escaping.

That is step one in getting clean.

Risk

My daughter stands at the cooktop carefully considering the frozen dumplings she is cooking.

She lamented that she is not old enough to cook. I disagreed. 12 is old enough to do so many things. I let her use the gas stove. Fire.

I think about how scary it is actually to let them become grown, independent, self reliant.

My son comes home from college tomorrow. I will breathe easier when he is here back under my roof and I can try to assess his state of being. Not that I think I can undo anything he may have chosen out there on his own. I know that, but it does worry me, it stirs my fear.

We want to keep our kids safe, but we can't if we want them to know freedom.

Freedom is not safe. Freedom is risky. Freedom is dangerous.

It is reasonable to steer them away from recklessness, but I even wonder about that.

When does our pursuit of safety become oppression?

Where is that line?

I say I want freedom. Am I willing to give it as well?

Happiness

I realize that my writing these days may come across as bleak, a downer, brooding. It may even bring to mind a descriptor I truly dislike, "pity party".

I am finally at a place in my life where I can say, maybe it is, so fucking what.

I am going through a cavernous depression. I use the word cavernous because it closely describes the feeling for me. Hollowed out, cold, lonely, pulled away, withdrawing.

It is not that I am devoid of happiness, or contentment, or gratitude, but right now other things are prevalent, needing my attention.

Sadness, grief, uncertainty, loss, transition. These bring me to the cavern, the dug out place, a temple of heartache.

This temple is not unholy, quite the opposite. It offers great and sacred riches. But we can't unearth them when no one will come help tend the fire. It is too painful to stay the vigil alone.

I am not suggesting we languish there.

I am suggesting we do not defile or defame these states of being and run away never looking back, or even looking at all.

Take the time to look. To be curious. To be there. To know that place. Light a fire, gather your people and tell the stories that live there. Write your name on her wall. Give her some respect.

It isn't that I don't want to talk about happiness. It is that I do not want to make happiness into cheap fodder, the bland currency of life, the common, basic, drivel.

Happiness, and not just happiness, but joy, ecstacy, jubilation, along with sorrow, grief, despair, all the depth and nuance of human experience, deserves better than that.

Real

What is real?

I am deep in daily inquiry around that question.

I look around and witness people living in different realities, seemingly different worlds. They engage in fierce battles over "what is real". I participate sometimes.

I fight within myself over what is real.
Every. Single. Day.

I confront fear, anxiety, depression, all the dark corner phantoms. They insist on their power, their realness. I tell them they are not real. Sometimes I win, and they retreat at those words, a banishing incantation.

They come back.

Are things that we can't catch hold of real or unreal? Truth or untruth?

I go out in the woods and down to the river. That is the realest real there is. The dirt, the water, the trees, the sky. The wordless depths of nature. Life, death. The pure struck note of beingness.

When I am back in civilization and all the questions come flooding back. I try to remember that right now the trees are there, the river is flowing, things are living and dying, coming and going, and that pure note is being struck.

I am here, and someday I will be gone.

That is real.