Category Archives: About my blog

Away and Back Again (23)

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On and off all day today I feel like I want to cry. Each time, the small rush of feeling wells up, pushes behind my eyes and stops. No tears. And no real reason, either, for wanting to cry. Unless it is because I am being mean to myself, some subtle, silent conversation going on inside me. I have tried so hard this week to stay grounded in the wake of hectic work. By Tuesday I had already failed. Even Sable’s endless moanings at me weren’t enough to pierce my intense distraction, my other-where-ness. (He is such a good barometer for me. How did I miss that?) Today I lose most of the morning and part of the afternoon. At 2:22 I get to a stopping point with work, and inspired by the numbers I vow to not return to it until 4:44. It is my newest “plan,” to try to fully step away long enough to recover myself. I practice my yoga in the courtyard. After, lying in chavasana, I do cry for a moment, knowing I am being unkind. Real change takes time. I need to be patient, find my way in this. But I don’t want to sacrifice being present with my life for my work. And there are other things. I want to recognize and trust my intuition. I want to know when my tree needs water. I want more red blood cells, a happy thyroid. Lying on my yoga mat beneath the tree, I tell myself I am making good effort. I am growing and healing. But I want it all now, even though I know it all takes time. When I stand up again, I am okay. I am back. Now it’s 3:22. I still have an hour and 22 minutes that are my own. I make watermelon juice and drink it on the patio. I eat a handful of roasted walnuts, read another chapter of Natalie Goldberg’s book. (I am back to Thunder and Lightening.) When she feels “broken or splintered,” she tells us, she returns again and again to Silko’s Ceremony. “I let the ritual of the book,” she says, “make me feel whole again. I’m never ashamed to read a book twice or as many times as I want. We never expect to drink a glass of water just once in our lives. A book can be that essential, too.” It is this last sentence that makes me cry again. I have books like this, books that feed me, mend me, make me whole. But I think I cry because it is such a gift to have this, to know how essential a book can be. Like water. Like air. And I think I cry because of how it speaks to me, the intimacy, the sense of being seen, and a secret longing to be part of offering that, too. Now I am all the way back. I write the first draft of this week’s blog post. I drink more watermelon juice and sit in the courtyard breathing.

Comfort and Conundrum (1)

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I am determined to stay current with my blog this year, so I will post today no matter what. Even if what I post is terrible. Natalie Goldberg does tell us we need to be willing to write the worst crap in the United States, yes? Or in the universe. Though I don’t believe she means we need to be willing to publish the worst crap in the world. Only that we need to not be afraid to write badly. We need to not be afraid of our thoughts, afraid of ourselves. We need to be willing to put everything down on the page—no holds barred. Still, after the act of writing we get to choose. Do I really want Uncle Horace to know this about me? What about the people I work with? Do I really want to publish this even though it seems clunky and unpolished? Am I really willing to be that honest, show that much of myself to the world? It is a choice we face again and again, like deciding not to light that cigarette, not to cheat on our husbands. But unlike failing at quitting smoking, unlike making that decision to light up, choosing to edit out parts of our story doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Right? Each time we send something we’ve written out into the world, we decide how much we want to risk, how vulnerable we want to make ourselves. We get to keep ourselves safe. And I think that’s a good thing. (I can hear the clamor of this controversy even as I write.) Is it without its own dangers? No. We might end up not being willing to take risks in our writing. We might keep ourselves too safe. But knowing it is our choice what to reveal, when to reveal it—that’s a comfort to me (if also a conundrum). Thank you, writing gods. Thank you for that. And here’s to being willing to risk. Here’s to trusting we can still be safe.

Forgive this Flurry? (48)

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I am inclined to ask for your forgiveness in advance for this flurry of posts as I work toward 56 posts while I’m still 56. I have a handful of days left, and two handfuls of posts remaining. But even as I want to apologize for flooding your email with new posts, a different voice tells me its okay. I think maybe even if you don’t have time to read them, you won’t mind seeing them in your inbox. Does that mean I don’t need to assure you that once I’m 57 things will slow down again? But I do want to keep them coming, one each week, five weeks with two posts. Every year I wonder how long I might keep this up. If I am still doing this when I’m 88, then 36 weeks of the year will need to have two posts. When I started I was 52, so it was the perfect fit. I don’t aspire to being 104 and still blogging, but you never know. I let go of this blog so completely last summer, I wasn’t sure I’d ever reach 56 posts. But I didn’t like giving up on it, so here I am. Tonight I am sick but still typing. I am debating what to name next year’s blog. I’m pretty sure the 57 will rhyme with heaven. What photo will I choose? A shot of clouds on our mountains might work, but I don’t have a good one. I have to make that always wrenching decision, too, about whether or not to pick a theme this year or leave things open again. But tonight I just need to finish this one post and trust the rest will unfold as it may. And tonight, too, I feel glad for you, my readers, and for knowing you will not only forgive me for this flurry of posts—you may even embrace them. So, thank you for that. I can’t tell you how good it feels to think that may be true.

Wild Things (24)

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My kitchen sink is angled in a corner, so when I stand before it to do my healing “toning” with the CD, the voices come to me from behind, engulf me, and my own meets them in the space between me and the corner, echoing, blending. Today I am toning my weakest note, the C, my birth note. I run the scrubbie inside a dirty glass and hit the note. “Jah,” I hold for eight counts, then “pah,” for eight counts more. I still run out of breath. My voice cracks and wavers, wobbly as I work to heal. But already I can feel the difference. Ideas for my blog flit through my head as I stand there, a series, maybe, about my health things, my German healers. The toning vibrates me. The dishes pile up clean and soapy in the left side of the sink. I think again about the power of belief, and just then the birds outside the window at my back bolt in a sudden racket of wings. I look over my shoulder, and the hawk swoops past and lands on the fence. I stand still, my fingers full of soapsuds, so I won’t startle him away. He moves to the other fence, and I turn around and bend my knees to see him through the window. When he flies off, I wish him well, send up a prayer. “May he have a full belly,” I whisper, “a little more often than he needs.” May he have a mate, offspring, a happy life. May he not go hungry. And then I cry, squatting on the kitchen floor, taken by that odd mix of gratitude and grief and love, aching for the small, beautiful, wild things of our world.

The Archaeologist (13)

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New moon day, and I want to return to practicing my writer’s craft. I’ve missed it, this relationship with myself, with my imagined readers, known and unknown. I’ve missed the weight of my notebook propped against my thighs, the whisper of my hand inching across it, squiggly lines that harbor meaning etched in black upon the soft white page. I hope I am really returning to my writing now, but I tell myself even only an entry or two for my blog will be a victory. Still, I am hoping for more. I want it back, a part of my days. I can’t say exactly what has kept me away. It is not lack of time, I know, though for a few months I did have less of it. More, if I would guess, it is an unwillingness to meet myself here. But I miss my writer self. And I don’t want this to be my reason, to not want to look or to dig, to refuse to unearth. I want to be willing to scrape away the layers of dirt again, pour water like rain, the hidden made clean, resurrected. I want to thrive again among the new-washed relics.

Your Patience with Me

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Hi everyone. I just wanted to thank you for your patience with me. I can’t believe I fell so far behind again so early in this new year of blogging! I am hoping to get caught up soon, so I will thank you in advance for your patience as I (hopefully!) pepper you with posts. ;-)

Seven More to Go (49)

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This is my 49th post since I turned 55. Before I become 56, I have seven more to go. After falling so incredibly behind in my tumultuous year, I didn’t know if I’d be able to catch up. But now I can believe I’ll reach my goal. Forty-nine and seven, all those magical seven numbers. And I’ll become eight sevens soon. I’ve been trying to decide whether or not I want to have a theme for my 56 posts while I’m 56, or if I want to leave it wide open again for a second year in a row. So far I’ve alternated each year, chafing when I “narrow” things to a theme, floundering when I have no theme at all, no scaffolding. I know one year I want to build my year of posts from sleeping dreams, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I consider returning to my first blog, to nudging myself again to have new experiences and report on them here. Or I could write about the topic that’s grabbing me now, El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Or pilgrimages as a whole. Or walking and noticing, being present and connected to the world. (These last three are all of a piece in my mind these days.) So I could write this coming year about the walks I take, or the walks I research or the walks I read about. Or maybe I can allow myself to let this next year be one juicy messy mish mash, be all of the above, even flash fiction added to the mix. And mix rhymes with 56, so maybe there’s a fun title alive in there somewhere waiting to emerge. I’m tossing it around now as I write this, cooked dinner in a bowl. No choices made yet, no drizzling of olive oil or sprinkling of cayenne. No nutritional yeast, no curry. Only the bright green of the bell pepper, dark brown of the mushroom, the tofu stark in contrast, resting against the blue sides of the big ceramic bowl.