Rant

 

I have had this goddamn cold or whatever since Wednesday of last week.  I start to feel a little better and then wham bang thank you Mam and I feel icky again.

Today I came in to work with a client and to cover the office for a while so I’m in the kitchen setting up a new pot of coffee and this lady comes in.

She’s probably my age perhaps younger, tall thin and with a German accent.  She’s asks how I am and really without thinking (I usually say “Fine, you?”), I share my frustration about not feeling well.

She says (and I quote “I never get sick.  I’ve never had the flu” and continues to regale me with her unbelievable health and well being the result no doubt due to her German heritage and “right living”.

I am thinking “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on”, and “go back to Germany you supercilious Kraut” and other not PC things.

Then, as she left she said “Oh (afterthought), I hope you feel better.”  You weak, sniveling, little runt.

At that moment I felt the unpardonable—pure unfiltered hate, and because I am no longer Catholic  I can no longer go to confession and have my sins forgiven.

So now I have the cold that will not end and a black mortal/venial sin on my soul. Now I really feel shitty.

Dog Poop and the Common Good

Took Izzie and Nutball (Murphy) to the beach.  Sun out intermittently, windy and cool.  We met Tito and Dizzy and another dog whose name I can’t pull in.

I had to look for the dog cops as we now have a leash law on this Island meaning that all dogs no matter how small or well-behaved have to be on leashes.  Even three legged dogs, I wonder?  Even dogs on their last legs, I wonder?

Yes and Yes.  All dogs.  We all have to be well-behaved on this Island. This Island used to be comfortable for anarchists and free spirits.  We all now need to toe the line.

What line you’re probably wondering.  Come on–you know the line.  The line of good citizenship for all.  I do understand.  People need to be able to walk around without fear of getting knocked over or mauled.  Folks don’t want other dogs mauling their dogs.  I get that.

I just don’t like being nickle and dimed to death.  However, I do appreciate a bit of political correctness, comity between men,  the common good.

How do we balance this? I want what I want when I want it and I also want other people to want what I want.  Sorry—no lock step here.

This is the antithesis of “the West”.  I guess if you have hundreds of acres, you can let your dogs run free and not have to pick up their poop.  But any suburban or urban environment needs rules for the greater good.

So if I want to let my dog run, I will have to move to Wyoming.  Living here, we all have to mind our manners.  And our dogs.

 

 

 

Oh sweet mystery of life

 

We can’t excuse ourselves.  We can’t just say “Look the world is way too much for me—famines, strikes, bombs, hatred, bigotry, so on and so forth.  I think I’ll sit this one out.” We are in the world, we are of the world.

What a mess the world is.  It has always been this way.  The forces of good and evil. It seems as though evil and chaos will win and other times, like when Pope Francis is in Mexico bringing his message of love, it seems as though perhaps, divine light and reason will out.

What I do know is that the universe is a messy violent place.  Birth comes from violence. Even seeds need to bust out of their seed coats.  A little violence for sure, but life is assertive and frequently downright aggressive.

The thing is, I want to wrap my seed coat around me, hug it tight, stay in.

This little dude above has slipped off his seedcoat.  He has busted out and is stretching for all he’s worth.  Sun, sun, sun, air and room. New growth delights me.

Little does he know that there’s a big old brogue just waiting to clomp down on him, or a rabbit (perhaps Peter) wanting to nibble on those sweet greens, or a slug–ugh, a slug, or a fucking drought, or a war.  See what I mean?  You can turn this bit of hope into a nightmare.

And yet, and yet, those first bits of Spring, that first day where the air goes kind of balmy, and the sun and rain compete for equal time and the new growth peeps out, is cause for joy.

Why?  Because it’s all we have.  Because it’s comfort in a storm, because life will out.

So get involved as you can, and insulate yourself if you must, but remember, life will out.

 

Blow Hole

http://nyti.ms/1o6JL4Q–check out this video.

Great article in the Times about the gravitational waves created when two black holes collided billions of years ago.  They had a dandy little meme that looked like a colon in space having peristaltic contractions.  On one end it’s expanding whoosh whoosh whoosh with waves coming toward us, and on the other end it’s contracting as the black holes implode.

Energy, out, matter, in.  I think that’s what it means.

Is this not cool?

The universe digests itself and creates energy.  Just like us.

Wascally Wabbits

 

Now these are wascally wabbits.  Who could even dream of bad bunnies?Militant bunnies?  Bunny terrorists?

We did once have a bunny, Chloe, who snarled and snapped and ate my shirt.  But I could have just reached out, wrung her neck and cooked her in a pot.

Not these fellows.  I bet they were carnivores too.

Beware the power of the Bun.

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Tuk at the top of the World

Found this picture in the Times today.  The Canadian government is building a road from Inuvik to Tuk through this magical area along the ancient caribou paths over the Artic Ocean.

These are reindeer.  And the old sliver moon.

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Rob and I watched a movie last night (Man Up).  Funny, delightful, bit of nothing really.  The scenes at the end of a big family and friends party celebrating the couples fortieth anniversary made me sad.

Rob and I talked about it or rather I talked to him and said “I want that, I want friends, I want a group of friends.”

So I’ve started thinking about this.  I have a really close friend and I have family members who are close friends.  So what is it that I want?

In Brooklyn, we had a group of great friends.  I had a couple of really close friends there.  In New York, I had a very close friend.  Looking back on my life, I have had close intense relationships with friends.  But these friendships have tended to be one on one rather than a big group.

So what is it I want?  Do I just want a big boisterous group of people so I can say I have a big boisterous group of people?  Is this another bucket list item?  Is this the result of watching Friends?

I told Rob that what happened to us here on this Island changed me.  I withdrew from people and they withdrew from me.  Not the important people; the friends you have parties with and laugh with and carry on.

But maybe I have always been this way.  I can be as lonely in a group of friends as I would be if I were all alone.  Loneliness is something that we all live with and I have been aware of this oneness since I was a little girl.

So as I have gotten older, I became more truly myself, hardening off into something more basic and truer to who I am. Or the world moved on and I can’t, won’t, don’t want to catch up.  I learned to live within myself. I like my nest in the tree.

Or maybe I just became an asshole.

I want to make new friends but it is as if I don’t know how anymore.  I want my life back before it hit the fan.  But I was the same me before the shit went down.  (What a great title for a book “Before the Shit Went Down”).

I love my writing time, my solitude.

I have become used to being alone.

Or maybe I been down so long it looks like up to me.  Speaking of up, the picture at the top is about as up as you can get.

 

So here I am after I’ve had my fill of trees that talk and hearts that bleed (Jesus).

I am so connected to pain in others.  That seems like an odd thing to say, doesn’t it?  But there it is and I think it’s true.  It is why I am a good therapist.  I am able to find that rich vein of suffering and mine it.

Am I a pain whore?  I hope not.  I don’t feel like I am because I am also open to joy.  I’ll mine whatever I’m offered.

It is so interesting that in this age of CBT and DBT, I have remained thoroughly in the camp of talk therapy.  I think DBT and CBT are helpful dealing with symptoms, but understanding, exposing your shit to the light, draining the abscess, takes a lot more than behavioral interventions.

The stories we tell ourselves about what happened to us, become our truths.  These truths can determine how we proceed and more importantly, if we proceed.  I mean we all get older.  There is no remedy for that.  But without examination,  we may not move forward.  **************************

 

Here’s the deal.  Be wary how you walk in other’s people’s lives.  Be careful.  Go slow.  Let them lead.  Do not push too hard.  Secrets that have been kept for years have a way of exploding.  Easy as you go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listening…

 

I was listening to a podcast last night about Voyager 1 and 2.  They’ve been travelling through space I think (although I better check), since 1977.  They are unmanned, simply observing our universe, it’s look and sounds and temperature.Initially, it could see our universe but it’s photographic abilities were turned off to save energy and prolong it’s efficacy.

So now these little spacecraft are simply feeling and hearing. The Voyagers have now traveled to the edge  of our galaxy. They have experienced and recorded powerful solar winds that sweep through space like air into a balloon, defining the edges of our universe.

Voyager has touched the edges of our universe, what one scientist referred to as the frayed edges of an enormous skirt, and then has moved beyond these edges into a band of quiet and peace. A place of nothing.  I don’t know if there is any resistance there.  What would it even mean to have no resistance?

No one knows how long Voyager will remain in this quiet zone.  It might be hours or days or centuries.  Seems that this brave little spacecraft has earned a rest.

As I lay in bed listening in the dark to the podcast, it was as if I were in a space ship using my ears to travel hundreds of thousands of miles away from my warm bed  through the stars and the solar winds, past the frayed skirt of the universe and on into eternity.  Each of us of course is a universe–that’s what universe means.

 

My roots are showing

 

 

 

I just looked over my last two blogs.  Wow!  How catholic am I?  And I don’t mean in a churchy way.  What do I mean.  I’m a bit of a transcendentalist.  Me and Emerson and Thoreau.  Who knew?

And here is Ralph Waldo himself.  What a lovely face.

Trees and roots and wiggly worms

I was reading in the NY Times Book Review or maybe it was in the science section about a German writer and former Forest Ranger.  In his years as a Forest Ranger he discovered that the trees communicate with one another.  There is an enormous underground network by which the trees talk.  I love this idea.  It makes me laugh, but not funny ha-ha but funny yeah, I understand.  I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Yesterday I was hiking in the woods with my friend Sue and as I walked along I imagined that the roots of the trees beneath my feet were communing much in the same way that Sue and I were talking up above.  For an instant I felt that wonderful sense of connection, connection to everything and everyone.  I could almost feel my synapses stretched like  fine gauge wire across great distances, around the world, through the earth, down the road and in the forest—everything connected.  What joy it gave me.

Today, I had a bad headache (from all that stretching), and snuggled up on the couch with some ibuprofen and a podcast “On Being” with David Steindl-Rast talking with Krista Tippett.  They were talking about mysticism, gratitude, and spirituality. Mysticism is allowing yourself to be grasped by something.

Right smack dab in the middle of that talk, David talked about mysticism not being about isolation but being in a community,  a community across time and space.  The “I” and the “You”.  I thought about trees again.  Birch trees and pine trees, Sequoia and Hemlock,  Madrona and Aspen.

I know I’m not doing a very good job of describing this talk but it was so fucking profound. I will listen to it again. He talked about gratitude, gratefulness and thanksgiving.

I thought about the wonderful glorious trees and how grateful I am and I give thanks for the fact that I live on this big beautiful earth surrounded by beings, sentient and otherwise. I thought of beings that talk with their roots.

There is more to this world than meets the ear.