Laura Young Photography

Mesmerizing

That's the best way to describe it, the light that falls on the hostas in my woods through the branches in the late afternoon.

I planted those hostas...a decade ago?...and am just now discovering how magical they are in this perfect location.

Why?

More on "A Small Life"

I was starting to answer Peter and Erin's comments on this post and realized my comment was becoming another post.  Here's it is:

Okay, your mutual point is well taken. Small isn't insignificant (even if it is accurate). I guess I'm just looking out at those people who are working full time, or who are raising kids, or are driving somewhere every day, or who have been diving into experiences like travelling and buying all kinds of new technonology (while I, ipod-less, listen to cassettes in my 11 year old car) or who are going to movies and restaurants and cultural events of various sorts, and some people are doing all those things simultaneously and I find myself in awe.

Barbara Barrows and I were laughing about it, how we can't multitask at all anymore and how lame our days can sound to people who are living a more externally active existence. She said telling someone, in answer to a question about what she's been up to that "I'm changing my world view. Oh, and I wrote a poem about a chicken" just doesn't seem to get conversations moving. Of course, depends on who you say it to, but still, I could relate.

We talked about her snapping turtle poem and how the big event of that day was seeing a dead turtle on the road when for most people the drive to work is actually the incidental activity of the day, a mere bridge between the legitimate activities one engages in.

That being said, to your points, and in fairness, there are people who completely understand that sometimes the drive is the thing (life is a journey, etc etc), and who appreciate the poet's sensitivities (and sensibilities). And then again, a lot of people are just trying to manage basic life activities like getting groceries and planning a work presentation and trying to cut the lawn before the neighbors start picketing and helping their kid with ADD finish their math homework and maybe they see living a life in which the big event of the day is cleaning a closet and writing 3 pages as "nothing". Or, if not exactly "nothing" then at least kind of "soft". (My farmer uncle has very clearly indicated that he thinks I live in an "airy fairy" world and will some day have a rude awakening when I have to face the "real" world. He said this while I was caring for my dying father, so I'm not sure what he thought I was avoiding in life, but still, he thinks my life is ridiculous.)

And it isn't that I feel my life is insignificant or too soft or small, or that I feel defensive about it (even when I'm talking to my uncle, whose perspective I certainly appreciate). My life is how I created it. Kids never would have fit into this life for me. Living in an urban environment would not have fit. Playing video games doesn't fit. Nor does drinking pop or buying a new car when the old one still runs. Being a caregiver did fit. Having an acre of barely tamed yard fits. Thinking over a poem while washing dishes fits. Listening to Ram Dass tapes while ironing does too.

I think a lot of people would find my life extremely boring, honestly. On the other hand, I saw two mallards walking down the middle of my street this morning (having walked up my driveway from the marsh) so maybe there are some people who would love to be able to say the same and look wistfully toward my existence. In the end, it's nothing to judge. It's just that I know my life would drive some people as crazy as their lives would drive me, so I want people to know I'm not recommending my life to them.

For those who felt my life was in more alignment with theirs in the past, I just wanted to acknowledge that it may not be anymore and may never be again. Back when I was more 'monkey with a gun' like, I think people watched to see what crazy thing was being cooked up when I would have an online hiatus because I always came back with some big burst of something. This is different. It's not a hiatus, it really is a shift to a different kind of life.

Maybe what I do want to advocate for people is alignment. The more into alignment I bring my life with what I value and who I am and what I am sensitive to and fed by and what brings out the best in me, the better I feel and the better able I am to meet the world in a positive, open way. I meet it less often, but the quality is higher. That's good for everyone. Somedays my big trip is to the post office, but I love my post office clerks and it's become like a social thing for me when I go there. I like having a life where my post office feels like the set of Cheers. I know that most people don't have that kind of relationship with their post office (if they even go in to the post office anymore, since you can do it all online these days).

So, I feel a bit like I'm going against the flow of society. It's like Kay Ryan's Backward Miracle. I feel like most of the world is at this huge buffet and sampling so many wonderful foods while I have a piece of toast with olive oil and salt on it for breakfast (which I do, with tomato if I can find a good one). The thing is, I see people eating while driving and they may eat more variety in a week, or even a day, than I do, but I know I taste that toast and I don't know if that's true of the guy eating the breakfast burrito on the highway.

So, the acts and external scope of my life are small but the awareness is big. When I let life creep up in scope, I have a hard time sustaining the awareness and appreciation so I keep scaling back.

Who wrote about the monastery and how their downfall was having too many cereal choices in the morning? I can't remember who wrote about that, but I had to laugh because it's so true. Sometimes I think I may have set myself up to have very little money just to avoid that very problem.

Bernie Siegel talks about what permissions diseases grant people, like being able to say no, take better care of themselves, or take more time for 'the little things'. I feel really grateful that it didn't take a disease to give me that permission. Just a few deaths and a career that fizzled out on me. (lol)

Since it wasn't a disease that lead to my lifestyle changes I faced a bit of a dilemma this past year. I think you can use "well, I'm a cancer survivor" longer than you can use "my Dad died" and certainly longer than "my good friend who was suffering for a few decades died" if you find yourself in need of permissions like that to choose a new way of living. So, with this sense of an expiration date on my permissions (like I had a temporary visa to visit "Airy Fairy Land" but didn't qualify for a green card), I was feeling a little pressure to get back in the saddle after my deeper grieving was waning.

I just couldn't remember which horse I was supposed to put the saddle on.

And none of the horses seemed to want to be saddled so they kind of kept their heads busy with sniffing alfalfa, pretending not to notice me.

So I sat in the field watching them and took some photos and started to write.

And strangely enough, in that field there is not a gun or a monkey to be seen.

 

For Those Who Wonder Whatever Happened...

to me after I left Facebook and who sometimes send emails saying they will come here to the blog to catch up, I offer this humble update.

I'm well. I guess that's the first thing to say. My life has changed so much in the past couple years and the changes have taken me far away from the online presence I used to have. In fact, believe it or not, this is my only blog now and I haven't missed Facebook even for a second.

So, what have I been doing with all those hours gained? It's going to sound like a ridiculously small life to some of you but it's amazing to me how much depth I feel it has.

All Is Well.

The whole weekend felt right.

We met the new owners of my childhood home and they could not be a better match. The very first thing they did was set up a meditation room (seems they knew EXACTLY what to use that odd raised "room" where Dad's hot tub used to be, unlike everyone else who had seen the house). They are Buddhists, love jazz, can't wait to fill the home with plants and would rather hold a conversation with a wasp while escorting it out than kill it. It was a little odd to be in the house, but not nearly as odd as I had expected. They are just so thrilled that it made the visit a pure pleasure. They say they talk to Dad all the time. They put on Sinatra and he'll never leave!

There was one dramatic moment when their city-raised Shih Tzu decided to launch himself, without hesitation, into one of the garden ponds and immediately sank like a stone. I jumped in to retrieve him and gave him a bath in the kitchen sink. He took it like a trooper. Penny was amazingly tolerant of him (with the brief exception of the time he decided to attack her in the same post-bath frenzy my own Shih Tzu always launched himself into).  I will bring a change of clothes next visit (we were enthusiastically invited to return), just in case Romeo decides on more adventures.

It was beautiful to feel so complete as we drove home. In fact, it was really nice to drive home the same day. It's been a few years since we've done that since I was either taking care of Dad or we were taking care of the house after he passed, both of which required overnight stays. Felt like the world had been taken off my shoulders.

I'm still getting used to that feeling.

And then came time for the first public reading of my writing, an excerpt from my book in progress. I was the final reader in the lineup for Waterline Writers held at Water Street Studio in Batavia) on Sunday night.

I've spoken publicly many times.  I've done a number of staged readings for a local playwright. I've spoken spontaneously in interviews in which I am notorious for rambling and talking way too fast. But this was different. This was me, talking about my life to strangers, in words very unlike those I would use in casual conversation. And this was not just any part of my life but a very significant chapter told in words that, at first, were just between me and myself as I processed these unparalleled losses in my life.

If you've known me for a while, you might be suprised a bit, since I have so freely blogged about painful times in my life in the past. Trust me when I tell you this is coming from a place that feels a thousand light years from the woman who wrote those blog posts. The whole voice, the whole tone...the maturity of this emerging voice is one that I have respect for. This book writing isn't a process I want to rush. This isn't a "post" I'm whipping out in the hope I'll whip out some pain from my psyche in the process. It certainly is not some convoluted way for me to try to do therapy on myself.

No, this is me telling the story that is as much your story as mine. I'm not in it, in the ego sense, as much as I was there for every moment of it.  It happened, all these endings. I survived, even with my eyes wide open (maybe because they were). The living do survive. Now I'm reflecting on what that means and I'm so grateful for the space in my life that allows me to do that. I'm feeling like I can actually do this justice.

I wasn't sure how the reading would go. I think my goal was two-fold: don't start crying, don't talk too fast.

I didn't cry. I didn't rush. It felt like it just unfolded. The audience was wonderful.

It may have been the first time in my life that I went away from something I had done without finding myself listing all the things I did wrong, or wish I would have done differently.

The book...oh, it's quite a long way from being an actual book. I have a lot of content but the editing process is a slow one.

I expected that process to be painful as well...a hassle...a necessary evil.

But it isn't. I'm finding it to be almost meditative. There is something in the process that is so good for me, to be able to go back two years, even more, into scenes I wrote about and to be able to visit them again, with my full attention. It's a slow immersion in moments that are deeply, profoundly, precious to me. Events that shaped me and gave me this new voice, this whole new sense of what it even means to be here at all. It's such a beautiful opportunity to revisit now, with no distraction, and in a state of greater peace, these events, some of which were extraordinarily painful at the time. 

Someone had expressed to me that she hoped the reading helped with my healing and that is when it dawned on me: It is quite the opposite for me. 

It's the healing that is enabling the writing. The healing came first. And THAT is the difference. And if you have had the experience of hearing readings done by those who are using their reading for healing, you know this difference is critical.

This isn't my catharsis.

It is simply my story.

(If you want to come to hear me read in the future, I'll be reading more excerpts on Father's Day at the same location. I'll keep you updated as it gets closer.)

Todo se Pasa

Everything passes.

It's the name I had given to the photograph featured in the last post.

What you may not know is the reference for the title. It is St. Teresa of Avila's prayer.

Nada te turbe. Todo se pasa.

Let nothing disturb you. Everything passes.

I have a card with this prayer stuck in the frame of a mirror in my office. I brought it back from Avila when Scott, Erin and I visited St. Teresa's birthplace a few years ago.

The morning before leaving for the gallery, I sat in that same office and looked at the photos spread around me, realizing how much work I had left to do on them before I could leave for the gallery. As I settled in my chair, my morning meditation and reflections took me to some readings on the Law of Attraction that I have from a gift my dear Kate gave me.

And I realized that I hadn't really been ready to let my lotus photos go, for as much as I have have shown them locally and for as much as I have hoped to pass out of the starving end of the artist continuum. I knew in my heart that my energies were not fully lined up behind these particular photos as they should be if I am truly ready to have them pass into other hands.

But this gallery, the upcoming public sharing of my more serious writing, public readings I'll be doing...all of this is a huge threshhold for me. Even leaving Facebook has been part of this transition.

So, I felt myself shift and I realized that I'm ready now. I spent the morning with my first gallery-destined photos and I polished the frames, placed my stickers, tied my price tags to them (even my price tags were specially made for them, lovely mini-Moo cards with my fern on them), and then I decided to create a packet for each, with an artist's statement, a beautiful business card (Moo again, the Luxe cards, really gorgeous) and a gift of a greeting card just as a little treat. And I tied each packet to the back of the prints, like little adoption papers and it all felt wonderful to do. I hope whoever finds these prints and ultimately buys them just falls in love with them and knows, from the little touches I added that I love them, too. I remember the days I took the photos. They were special times for me.

It was a peaceful morning but busy, and I worked right to the minute we had to leave getting everything just as I wanted it. We arrived and the incomparable Scotty J had the wall up lickety split.

The first photo he hung was Everything Passes.

And as he was hanging photos I heard church bells. I love that sound so deeply and thought again how perfect this gallery feels to me.

No sooner was the last photo hung than I received a call from my mother.

My Dad's house closing has moved up...five weeks. We close April 9th. If you have been following along in recent weeks, you know this could not be happening at a busier time. Not only did it add logistical challenges as we have to have the house cleared out for the new occupants but I had hoped to have an opportunity or two in the next five weeks to spend some quality time there saying goodbye to my childhood home.

Suddenly I'm thrust in the middle of having to answer questions about whether the 9th is okay and when can I get to Indiana, etc etc. I'm going to need a truck. Scott has to block some days. It's all a tidal wave of details.

The next solid hour was a flurry of texts and calls with my sibs and my Mom as I tried to absorb not just the craziness of this happening in the middle of all of my events but the fact that the house really did sell. In three weeks we won't have it any more. Those lotuses, which actually were photographed in my Dad's garden...I won't see them bloom again.

Texting and medicinal marguerita complete, Scott and I walked around the neighborhood so I could further decompress and see who my gallery neighbors are. It's a wonderful, vibrant, hip area with loads of restaurants, shops of all kinds, tons of foot traffic and, right across the street, on the opposite corner from the gallery there is a church.

The Church of St. Teresa of Avila.

 

 

I've Never Been a Social Butterfly...

and at nearly 50, I don't see that changing. And so, after much thought and unprecidented levels of personal honesty, I have decided to take the simple, logical step and bring my chapter as a Facebooker to a close.

I could fill a long post with explanations of why but I don't think that is even necessary. It just 'isn't me'. The online interactions bear no resemblance at all to how I really am in life and how I interact with people and the more disparate those states become, the more "dishonest" my online life feels. Maybe 'artificial' is a better word. And it isn't that I'm posting dishonest things, but it's not accurate for me to feel like I'm actually having relationships, at least the kind I want to have, in that format. I peek at you, you peek at me, we think we know something about each other, or maybe we share a chuckle with a funny joke passed around, or a good song travels the circuit...it's kind of fun but I can't honestly say it's ever very satisfying for me.

Look at it this way, I would never suggest to a friend that we go hang out at the Mall of America. Swimming through ads at FB to find you feels that way to me. Even trying to catch up with everyone there takes some work to do and it's not work that comes naturally to me (the very word "work" should be a tipoff). I don't like going to parties with lots of people. Never in my life did I do that. I can count on one hand the number of high school parties I went to (actually I can't remember ANY right now).  And as someone who tends toward the hermit end of the continuum, giving me an excuse to pretend I'm engaging with friends when I'm really not...well, it's actually helping my social skills deteriorate, not improving them.

You Can't Get There From Here

It couldn’t have been a simpler trip, just two streets once I got to the first major intersection out of my neighborhood. Head west on Rt. 64 to the post office. Head north on 25 to the thrift store and then meet a friend for lunch. A simple “L”, just like the first letter in my name.

I made it to the post office just fine and granted, Rt. 25 does jog a few times as you head up the river, but  that still doesn’t explain how I ended up in Schaumburg (point C on the map).

 

Did I have a stroke while driving? Did a Kansas-style tornado come and lift my car and fling me several suburbs off my intended course?

No. It wasn’t anything that simple.

I just called my mother from the post office. That is all.  Like a magnet held to my internal compass, she got me spinning. Stephen King is considering doing a sequel to Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut based on us.

If I wasn’t so fascinated by how far off course I got, I would have been angry at one, if not both, of us. Her for making me crazy, me for bringing up topics that I knew darn well at the time were going to set us into the dance we cannot avoid doing together. That’s what was so amazing. I KNEW, as I was bringing up certain issues, exactly what she would say, and what I would say, and what she would say in return. There was nothing new in what happened.

And I still ended up in Schaumburg.

Before you jump to conclusions, I don’t hate my mother and it’s not a hostile relationship.  It doesn’t even matter that it was my mother who had this effect on me. The reason I bring this up at all is because I would bet a dollar that you have a person or two in your life who has the same effect on you.

It calls to mind my favorite Elvis Costello line, “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.”

The good news is that I no longer have to try to be amused. I actually did laugh, even while trying to find my way back to my original destination.  

There was a time I would have come home from an adventure like that and said to my husband, “Well, you’ll never guess what my mother said today…” and vented for a half hour or so about how my crazy road trip was all her fault. But that “You’ll never guess” part would have been wrong. Just like I could have written the conversation before I even called my mother, my husband could have done the same thing.

And I’ll bet another dollar you also have someone in your life that has watched the dance between you and your crazy making magnet, and listened to all your moaning about it, who sees this stuff coming a mile away just like my husband does.

But not only was I laughing about it, I was actually grateful it happened.

“Grateful?”, you ask.

Yes, because it was a wonderful lesson for me.

As I have gotten older, I’ve done a lot of thinking about whether I am truly the person I want to be. I’ve thought a great deal about the values I say I have, the choices I make in how I actually live my life and whether they match up. Some days I feel such wonderful alignment, and I’m proud of the results of all my hard work. Other days, like Doc Holliday in Tombstone, I shake my head to myself and say, “It seems my hypocrisy knows no bounds.”

 I want to be a peaceful, understanding, patient person. I want to be calm and centered. I meditate every morning. I meditated the day I took this trip. God only knows where I would have driven to if I hadn’t, but still, hardly the route of a centered, peaceful woman.

So, in the end, this magnet in the form of my mother was simply a test of my own internal compass, the compass that points in the direction of that ideal self I hope to live in the imitation of.

 It was a test I didn’t pass, but I didn’t flunk out. I’m still in the course. And if you’ve missed a few passing grades yourself, don’t worry. As long as we are alive, we still have opportunities to strengthen our commitments to the values we have. I’m finding the big commitments aren’t hard to make. I don’t hit people or throw things. I don’t yell curses at people. For me, it’s the little commitments I have to work on, the ones that in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle ways, can get me entirely off track when I’m not paying attention. I’m learning how important those tiny choices are, like the choice of which sentences to leave out of conversations and resisting the persistent urge to get in the last word when I “know” I’m right. 

No one helps me work on those parts of myself like my mother. So, for all my griping I am grateful to have her. It’s a good thing, too, because she says I have to keep her.

From Neutral to New Trail

Just a couple weeks ago or so I said I was feeling a little "eh" about life...neutral...could take it or leave it.

That's not true any more.

I know it seems like a fast change, but that's only because I haven't been blogging very regularly. It's a change that has been months in the making, I think, as the entire experience of being with Michael in life and seeing him through his death is being incorporated into my psyche.

And as I noted in my last post, I'm in a new life now. A life that I am finding I DO have enthusiasm for, and not only when people have enthusiasm for me (though that surely does delight me when it happens).

I had to do a fair amount of pushing to get myself going with my new venture against the grief-induced inertia of the past year and more. I have certainly learned a great deal in the process (about grief and photography both). I've learned much in regard to the technical aspects of what I do, but even more importantly I've become aware that there is no such thing as going back to some prior state of "normalcy" after you lose someone as significant as Michael was to me. And you don't get over that loss, either. At least that is my experience. The impact of that relationship is becoming incorporated, an inherent part of my own makeup now.

In an odd way, I feeling more like 'me' than I've ever felt before...a truer version of me, a more authentically expressed version, a freer version.

Things I've wanted to do forever, like being disciplined about my daily contemplative practices, are now happening without much effort. And while I don't feel much the effort of discipline, I do feel the import of holding close to my values and living them, in a devoted and conscious fashion.

Sounds really heavy, or maybe just esoteric when I say it like that, but it's a lot more simple than that. There isn't anything cumbersome or dramatic about it. I just promised myself that I would put my centering time first, without compromise and without a quick check on my phone for messages and emails when starting my morning. I've gone back to drinking tea after drinking coffee in the morning most of this past year. I light a candle. I sit and wait for my mind to stop urging me to quickly check my messages and when I'm a little bit more settled in my chair I do some centering readings.

You'd be amazed at what a difference reading a single page of inspiration and guidance can do for a day. Or maybe you wouldn't. I am though. I know what I was like without that one simple action and I know what I am like with it. It's a practice Michael himself kept to. He used to tell me to cling to my practices as though my life depended on it. For the first time I'm really feeling why.

It took Michael not being here for me to get to this point.

I used to think he was superhuman in his discipline. Actually, he was, but only because what he was doing worked so well. I can't imagine starting a day any other way now, simply for all of the cold hard evidence I am amassing that it is making me a better person just for dedicating those 15 or 20 minutes of focus.

When he was here, I admit I used Michael as a spiritual crutch. I would race around like a nut all week and he would fix me every Friday just by his very presence. I felt, many times, as though my cells were actually being rearranged in his presence. I'd feel myself let go in ways I didn't even know I had been holding on.

And then he left and I had to face the fact that I wasn't nearly as good as I was trying to lead everyone to believe. Before you knew it, I was snapping at people, irritable, isolating, and sad sad sad. I was deeply grieving and even saw that as a failure because I could not have been more prepared for the loss of him.

Now I still cry, but I no longer see it as a failure. There are times when I deeply miss the man. I loved him in a way that I don't think I'll ever find the words to express.

But there are also times that I don't miss him.

In fact, there are times when I am grateful he is no longer here. That is not the same as being glad he is not here. Not by a long shot.

I keep recalling Ram Dass saying he became closer to his teacher after his teacher died.

I'm learning more and more these days in ways I can tell you with certainty I would not be learning if Michael were still here. The day to day concerns of his life, and all my focus on that, were keeping me locked in to a certain vantage point. Without that, I can see more than I did before.

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.

So, that last post, about being in a new life where people don't know Michael, or know about him...there is a level where that isn't true at all. I am an expression of everything I have experienced in this life and the influence of the last many years is so interwoven I see evidence of it everywhere I turn.

He's gone, but not really.

Michael was so complete when he left that it's impossible for me to wish for his return, even for a second. His suffering was so great but to say I'm glad for his suffering to be over is too simplistic. He was 100% ready to go. What I saw in him spiritually in his final months was so astounding...to be with someone who was complete in that sense and full in the knowledge that he had done what he came here to do...I'm hard pressed to find words to describe it. It simply isn't necessary for him to be here anymore.

And despite my missing his earthly companionship, I do feel like Ram Dass in that earlier comment. That sounds so crazy but it's true. I understand more about Michael and how he achieved that sense of completion that I did when he was here, in no small part because he isn't here any more. And I also have a very strong feeling that I'm only at the early stages of this deeper understanding. Michael said when I am in a wheelchair someday (since so many people do end up that way in old age), that I would learn even more. He, himself, knew that he would be teaching me long after his earthly existence was done. His surety and confidence in that was another aspect of this completion I saw him reach. He just didn't see his body as too necessary to his work any more. It sounds so wrong to say that I agree with him because we are supposed to want people we love to be with us forever and ever. Nonetheless, I can't deny what I'm learning to be true. His passing has put me at a different vantage point, out of the day to day worrying about him and into that curious space of my own life without him, or my father, as the focus of my daily activities. I'm evolving past where I could have otherwise. Or maybe it's more accurate to say I'm evolving through...not past.

That "now what?" period of neutrality I was in for quite a while was fascinating. Of course, there was a level where it wasn't hard...the level of "okay, I'll start working on my photography". But there was an entirely different level that was much less anchored. I was learning so much from both Michael and through my caregiving experience with my father that when they ended it just felt like there was nothing else to do. I just didn't see the point.

It wasn't that I was suicidal or didn't want to live. It was simply that, for someone who is so enamored of what life is teaching her, having all the apparent lessons being over made me wonder what the point was of life...kind of like graduating from college but finding yourself still living in the dorm. It just didn't make any sense.

Just hanging around being alive didn't seem too interesting to me. I could make dinner, do the laundry, see to the needs of my delicate canine companion, hang out with my loving husband, take in a hockey game or a concert, have lunch with friends...and there is nothing wrong with that in the least. It's a very nice life, actually. But it just didn't seem to be growing me. I didn't want to just be here comfortable and entertained.

Getting involved in my photography helped, but it still didn't feel like it had the juice for me. One one hand, I've now had the satisfaction of seeing my work in print and I feel complete with that. However, there are a few shots that...well, they haunt me. Summer's End is one of them.

I've had stirrings that told me there was more to the story...that this wasn't about being done and finding pleasant ways to fill my time until my heart gives out and I breathe my last breath. There IS more. It's just that for the first time my head isn't in charge of it.

Very new territory for me.

And even as I feel the grief continue I can also tell you, and Michael told me this would happen for me, that there has been tremendous grace in his leaving. It's not bad to lose a crutch. Losing Michael was painful. Losing the crutch he provided has started to change my life in ways that would not be happening if he were still here. And the ways I see myself deepening are ways that I know are necessary. I thought I was the best person I could be while he was here and that I'd be less than that with him gone. I was wrong. All of those parts of me that I saw emerging with him, and while caring for my father, are still there and still developing. And without them here for me to focus my energies on those parts of me are finding themselves extending in new directions. I'm still evolving. There's something reassuring in that.

This is why I keep poets around...

I've had some more thoughts brewing but I haven't slept through the night in a few weeks now and with the holidays and hot flashes and a cold and tons of travel I'm feeling a little low key. But still I've got that urge to write and to nestle in with thoughts of the New Year's pending arrival.

I've been in a funny relationship with Life for the last year and a half. I just don't seem to be able to find the words to describe it in a way that is as nuanced as it feels. I feel a little "eh" about Life. A little "I could take it or leave it" about it. I just don't have much of a spark but I'm not really feeling depressed either. Just kind of neutral and I've been wondering if that should concern me.

But it's not always that way, and this is where it gets hard to understand. We were at friends' for the holidays and I had a blast on the karaoke stage. I used to be TERRIFIED of karaoke. Now I just belt out whatever they throw at me, with whoever wants me to join them. I'll sing anytime, anywhere now.

And it's kind of because I don't care.

And that's kind of awesome. But it also feels weird to not care. An odd mix of freedom and apathy. I could sing or not sing for hours.

And I noticed over the holidays that I really enjoyed everyone. I enjoyed everyone so much that little things that used to make me crazy didn't even register with me anymore. It isn't important that you know what used to bug me...every family has it's stuff, so just imagine a pet peeve that always hooks you and has done so for years no matter what your Higher Self tried to do about it. And now imagine that *poof* you just stopped caring about it and it got completely...completely...deactivated.

I used to get so passionately annoyed. And passion is passion and feels like zest for living even when it's negatively induced. And that's the thing that is so weird.  I feel oddly passionless but I'm somehow enjoying myself. I'm like happy tofu. You want to mix me with teriyaki vegetables I'll fall in line. You want to hide me in a cheesecake, no problem.

Does that mean I really don't care what I do?

Not really. I mean, there are some things I definitely don't want to do, like go to a football game, learn how to play the tuba or go to check out post holiday sales at a shopping mall. I'm still selective.

It might be more fair to say that the 'not caring' is really an uncoupling of me from any particular investment in the outcome of a lot of things I used to care about...like what people thought about me, or how much money I was making, or...well...everything I want to write here is some version of caring what people thing about me, or my brain, or my face, or my voice, or my figure, or my apparent success, or my wit, or my whatever.

And that passion I had was usually about me trying to protect some part of me or, perhaps even more importantly, trying to assert some part of me that I thought simply must be seen, or acknowledged, or admired or desired by some one or some group out there.

And because I feel like I've had a really good life...already complete...well, I just don't feel like I have anything else I need to prove.

And it's weird to be 49 and feel that way because, um, what am I supposed to do now? 

And it isn't that I don't have things I want to do. I just don't care if I do them. I've never felt like that before....this complete lack of investment.

I know I will still take out my camera because of what my camera does for ME. I will still write. Still garden. Still do a lot of things. But that part of me that thinks about what I will do with it past that...I've really let go of feeling overly concerned about that.  I DO want to do some photo exhibits with some very specific pieces, for specific reasons, but I won't feel incomplete if I don't get to for some reason.

Maybe it's that I've already got the PRIMARY experience of being the one to take the photo. It's as though the dive is all there is for me. Almost like the revelation of whatever I am learning, or finding revealed, is so personal and so intimate and so compelling that all those little annoyances that used to get me riled have become entirely inconsequential to me. Sharing with you guys is secondary to me. And it isn't that I don't care about you and don't want to share. It's just that I've shifted from this focus of feeling like I am supposed to be teaching you something (an honest fallout from 20 years of being a helping professional), to being much more interested in being a student. It's the learning, not the teaching, that is calling to me now.

And that is kind of cool.

I remember after we buried Michael's father. He was cremated and his urn was buried over his wife's coffin. The sod was laid over the hole, but being an urn it only measured maybe 10x18 inches, that patch of grass...maybe less.

And I would sit there and look at that little postage stamp of grass and think about those 93 years he lived and all he did, the house he built, the family he raised, the work he did...all funneled into a postage stamp sized nook in the ground.

I have been trying to make sense of it all ever since.

Some of my Dad is in a Hobby Lobby urn waiting to be disbursed. Some of him already has been.

Right before the holiday his best friend from 1st grade was buried. I looked at this man in his coffin, whom I've known my entire life...the remaining friends from "Back of the Yards" who came to pay their respects. I'm watching a generation leave bit by bit.

And maybe what feels like a lack of passion is simply perspective. It's just that it seems to be happening from the inside out and usually I've been one to decide on a course of action so that my head could be in charge. That was my comfort zone.

So I'm not in my comfort zone...have changed up my modus operandi and yet I'm not uncomfortable, just oddly altered.

So the poet part...I read David Whyte's most recent newsletter and while he can sometimes seem to work a little to hard to be poet-y in his missives for my taste he did say somethings that resonated with me. There was this:

"Having lived with and understood the privilege and gift of the art, I would write and read and even recite poetry out loud to myself whether I had a single reader or even listener in the world, I would follow the discipline and its attendant triumphs and humiliations whether my name was known or not in any circle large or small, and I would write in the cold of an unheated room and in poor rags just to warm myself by the hearth of revelation and to re-clothe myself in the beauty of self understanding."

And despite my rather lackluster feeling about Life in general, I could very much relate to what he said. I will always read poetry. Will always want the company of spiritual mentors. Will always want my camera with me when I find a dead butterfly on a beach. Will always return to the cemetery for reasons I'll never be able to put into words for you. Can never leave it until I've heard the chiming of the bells before they close the gates.

I'm very much here. And like David says, I could be in a cold room in poor rags but my focus would be the same. Maybe that's it. I used to care about the room more. Used to care about the rags.

David ends his letter thus:

"In the end, we all come to live in the very humble abode of our own making, and in the end everything has to be given away so that what is real can return. This letter, I realize, is an attempt give away the many manifest gifts that have been given to me over the years, not least by you, a reader and perhaps a listener, to clear the ground for a new season and to have what is real in the work returned again, in a yet to be imagined summer, out of the pale hard ground of this winter's day."

I've been giving things away left and right with so many physical items falling my way after the deaths of recent years. Clearing space was all I wanted to do...clear...cleanse...bring in space and breathing room to my life. It seems as I've been disbursing the physical, some of the psychological bags I was carrying fell away as well. And it does feel very much as David said, that a new season is coming, when what is real will return again, unencumbered and more pure. I'm looking forward to that. I can feel it already close upon me.

And that feeling is exciting...or it would be if it wasn't so subtle. It's good. It's deeply, deeply, good. It's just not passionate. It's not a fire in my belly. It's like a spring bulb growing fat within me under the subtle warmth of the winter sun. It's a feeling that we don't have a word for in English, I'm sure of that.

And THAT is why I keep poets around.

 

Life After Fear

If you would have asked me, I would have insisted I was goal-oriented. No bar was too high. No task couldn't be 'multi-ed". There wasn't any ideal I thought I could not reach with just a little more effort, better time management and sheer will power. I remember when I first read that humans are believed to have an obtainable lifespan of 120 years. That immediately became my goal.

And it was going to take at least that long for me to accomplish everything I wanted to do with this life. I wanted to learn so many things, and by "learning" I really think I expected mastery. I took classes continually...Latin ballroom dance, American Sign Language, massage, martial arts, cooking, wine tasting...I planted 28 separate garden plots in a condo we were renting. Most of those plants I started from seed. I wanted to grow every kind of basil I could find and when I went into the woods and picked wild berries I learned to make jelly, and that led to canning tomatoes, and that brought me back to my basil. And then basil and wild black raspberries brought me to infused balsamic vinegar. And that brought me to making my own hand stamped labels. 

Pick any path I ventured on and the same thing happened. My husband once said that living with me was like living with a monkey with a gun.

And while I often enjoyed what I was doing, I usually felt guilty that I wasn't giving my newfound skills, talents and knowledge enough attention. I was so busy canning tomatoes that I wasn't taking out my camera. While I was biking I wasn't giving massages or dancing the tango. I hated being " one of those" martial artists who got her black belt (or two) and then quit. And when to fit in reading all those books when I was busy training to be a yoga instructor?  And, of course, there were the blue bird boxes I was monitoring for the Audubon Society and the monthly parties at our house.

Those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. Monkey with a machine gun.

I was so intent on living life to it's fullest. I thought it was passion that drove me.

I'm thinking now that it might have been fear.

I just didn't want to fail at this life. I didn't want to be less than I could have been. Didn't want to do less than I could have done. Didn't want to fail in my appreciation of every day and all the myriad ways one could spend it.

I'm not afraid any more.

If I never grow another basil plant from seed, it's okay with me. I can't remember the tango steps and I've given away boxes of books I never did open up. Seasons of wild berries have ripened and fallen to the ground without me to catch them. Living to 120 isn't even relevant to me any more. However long I have left, its going to go fast. That's all I need to know.

I used to respond to my sense of time speeding up by trying to outrace it. Multitasking, shaving a couple hours off of my night's sleep so I could fit in meditation and predawn walks in the woods or journalling or reading...I responded to feeling like I had less time with more activity, more attempts to manage my time, more ways to trick it into expanding for me.

It didn't work.

Time has only sped up.

I had a professor once say that he thought the sense of time speeding up as we age was a phenomenon due to the decreasing percent of our lives that each day represents.  For a one day old baby, the second day is a full half of her life. That's a big chunk. Half a life time can feel like forever.  A day to a one year old is 1/365th of his life.  I just turned 49. A day for me is getting close to being an impossibly tiny fraction at 1/17,885 (I didn't count leap years). That's a blink of an eye and it feels like it, especially in the winter when the days are shorter anyway.

I used to wonder how I could fit in 25 things in a 24 hour day (26 if I decided to count sleep). Now I'm more interested in how I can limit what I do to maybe 3 things because even as I type this there is a squirrel who is defying several laws of physics and common sense in its attempt to break into yet another bird feeder and it's too good a show to miss. I need space for those moments without feeling like that squirrel is coming between me and my goals for the day.  

I have to laugh as I type this, and Erin can attest to this...my animals have always been slow, very deliberate. I have no idea why.  My cat, Luigi, could take a good ten minutes to decide just where to put his paw to begin the process of laying down in just the right spot. The actual laying down process was drawn out from there in such a way as to almost require time lapse photography to discern it. Penny can turn herself 17 times in one direction before deciding she really needs to spin 12 times in the other direction to make her nest just right. Sometimes by turn 11 she abandons the notion all together and starts over in a new spot. Laying down properly has always been a task of some significance to my animal friends. Eating is approached in much the same fashion.

So, it is "Quad Time" or Dad Time, Luigi Time, or Penny Time I have been learning to live in? Maybe I've actually had an entire team of teachers sent to get me to realize that the way to make time slow down is to make each moment count, not in the way it is crammed full, but in the way it is savored.

With each pet, I have become more patient. I can stand with Penny for as long as her twitching nose wants us to stand, staring into the dark woods at night. I can tell by her stance that she is reading novels in the dark. I can't see a thing but the Moon. The only sound I can hear is the owl in the distance.

Where else on earth would I need to be?