Compression socks

I just got my first pair of compression stockings to wear on the airplane.  This is what I know:

1.  If they’re called compression stockings they are tight.
2.   They are tight all the way down to the toes.
3.   My feet are moving away from my body apparently like tectonic plates.
4.   If something is tight (socks) and far away (my feet) the chances of snagging my feet with the sock is quite dim.

I finally got the sock over my big toe and was able, then, to wiggle the others into line and into the sock.  I developed a cramp in my midsection from squishing myself.  After the cramp subsided, I pulled them all the way up.

I will have to sleep with the sock on my left foot until we get on the plane.

So, to summarize.  To prevent a blood clot from forming, travelling up my leg into my body and thence to my heart or wherever, I bought compression socks.

Putting the socks on causes very painful midsection cramps, sweating and stress which could result in a blood clot forming, travelling etc., etc.

Death by air pressure, death by socks.  You choose.

 

I can see clearly now

I have fiddled around with this image until I’m blue in the face because I wanted to show you this little tiny apple that came off my tree this morning.  I just love this little apple.  Then I realized that you will never know how teeny it it unless you see it in comparison.

If I put it by itself it looks like a regular apple as in the above left.  If I put it next to a small model of a corvette, or a tin soldier, or a tiny dog playing a violin, it looks small.  If I put it next to the Empire State Building it would look minuscule, you’d hardly even notice it. Perception is tricky.

Perception relies on perspective.  Perspective is relational. Things in relationship to other things.  If you see something in isolation;  it is what it is.   When you see that same thing in relation to something else, it changes your perspective of the original object.

In our heads we have this ability to blow things up or shrink things down.  This is sometimes not an ability but a liability. We do this with our eyes, our ears, and our judgments.  We distort.  We conflate.  We minimize.  We enlarge.

I used to work with little kids who had trouble controlling themselves.  I would tell my coworkers, “they can’t think when their hair’s on fire.”  Overwhelming feelings trump our ability to see or hear or think accurately.

What’s all this got to do with that little apple?

Perspective, dearly beloved, perspective.  Take some time to separate what you see from what you think you see.

Aunt Fran says ” What you on about?    I could a told you that with a lot less razzmatazz.  Why don’t you get yourself a real job?”

She’s right, of course.

 

 

Slicing oranges

My mother sliced oranges

thin

in full circles

then half

and then half again.

Perfect little bites for small mouths

on the cutting board pulled out from underneath

our old tile counter.

Lichen

I am now obsessed by lichen.  i am delighted by the fact that, as my sister Jane says, there are still new and exciting discoveries to be made in the natural world.  Just because we’ve been looking for millennia, doesn’t mean we’re seeing.

So what did we miss?  Yeast.  Yeast of all things.  That fungus that grows in us and on us, that makes our bread rise and our crotches itch.

I don’t think we know yet or maybe the scientists know, but I don’t, what mechanism yeast plays in the interaction between a single fungus and it’s photosynthetic partner( a bacterium) resulting in lichen.  Jane and I decided that the yeast is the Holy Ghost, breathing life into a symbiotic relationship that needed a little boost.

There is some talk that the yeast allowed the movement of plant life from the seas onto land.  The yeast is on the skin of the lichen and perhaps it has a protective function.

These are the early evolving yeasty beasties.  Aren’t they beautiful?

So it takes two to tango, but it takes three to lichen.

 

Scuffs and stuff

I’m out in the garden this morning.  We had a deluge in the night and I went out to see if my roses were pounded into oblivion.

I was dressed in my gardening outfit which is my nightgown with a sweatshirt pulled over it and my favorite slip-on gardening scuffs.

I would like to share my recipe for perfect gardening scuffs.  Take one pair of beaten down and ugly size 12 tennis shoes.  Break the backs by stepping on them repeatedly until they are just right.  Leave them by the back door in all weather until they are filled with seeds from the bird feeders, and bits of grass and moss and pebbly bits.

Slip them on as you leave the house, and begin to dig, root around, tear out plants past their prime and just create an unholy mess in a couple of hours.

Wait until either the landlord or the UPS gal or guy shows up.  Emerge from the shrubs slowly like an old lumbering bear, and greet them.  Hilarity ensues.

 

Friends

 

I’m thinking about friendship this morning because it is my friend, Sue’s, birthday.  A long time ago, Sue and I decided that we would build a friendship without rules and without guilt; a healthy relationship built on trust and honesty.  Most of the time this works.

She is my most cherished friend.  I don’t have to be anything in particular to be with Sue.

Rules and guilt however have a place in every relationship.  I sometimes think that if I didn’t have some guilt I would sink into a sticky morass of self-indulgence, laziness and just general toadiness.  And speaking of toadiness, here are my two favorite characters.

 

But really, toadiness is what I must embrace in all it’s glorious mess.  We need and I need to be loved for who I am and that is what my friend Sue does for me and right back at her.

A friend is someone who meets us anywhere, rights us when we are off kilter and  joins in the fun no matter what.

Here’s to friends and one friend in particular.  Here’s to Sue on her 61st birthday!!!

Consider the Carrot

This is mycelium.  Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae.  Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil.

D52RCW Branching threads of fungus mycelium in organic soil

You’re going to say “so what?” aren’t you?

You’re thinking with all the shit the going on, Trump, wars, black lives matter, Syrian refugees, global warming, Trump again, why is this even relevant?

I’ll tell you why.  Because I’m interested in it, that’s why.  Because it is fucking unbelievable that trees and plants of all kinds can figure out how to help a brother out and we can’t.

If celery can do it, why can’t we?  Come on, a long slim fibrous piece of vegetation can talk to his/her neighbors and we can’t.

Consider the carrot.

I have seen this threadlike venous system in the woods as I walk and poke around.  It looks remarkably like our own venous system and what it says to me is that a tree alone, a tree in isolation is an oxymoron.  Trees are community.  In the woods, without human tampering, trees are the outward visible sign of a buried intelligence that connects them all.

I know sometimes my outlandish ideas outrun me, but bear with me.  The “wood wide web”* , unseen, misunderstood, is an advanced intelligence (and it’s fact based ladies and gentlemen) communicating without words, responsive to changing conditions, doing what needs to be done to ensure the survival of it’s brethren.

I’m after something, some idea that is eluding me.  Something spiritual, something soulful.  Nature shows us what is possible.  That is all.

Why can’t we be more like the trees?

*Last night,  8/10/2016, I wasn’t feeling well and was in bed listening to an episode of Radiolab and the woman was discussing trees and she started talking about the “wood wide web”.  So this is a borrowed phrase from somewhere but not from that podcast because I hadn’t listened to it yet.  It must have come in through my mycelium.