Mallard Pair at the Creek |
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Wild Ducks, Wild Life
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Fifteen Years Ago
Christmas Eve. Our train speeds through the countryside north from Marseilles toward Paris. I sit by the window, my husband on the aisle, our daughters behind us with their books and music, their innocent laughter. Outside is a bucolic scene, a vast uncluttered landscape, the occasional cottage and garden, low stone wall, trees, all covered in a thick, gauzy snow-like frost. I cannot take my eyes from the beauty of it, the stillness, the repose, mile after mile as far as the eye can see. Nor can I look from the face reflected in the glass, the one superimposed over the sparkling winter white, the one filled with endless sadness as it watches me watching the world go by.
Paris overflows with Christmas. We have dinner, climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, float down the Seine in cold so brutal it forces me back inside the boat. We walk along the river, past the closed booksellers stands. Later we happen upon Notre Dame and enter the vestibule of the packed cathedral, filled with warmth and candlelight and hymns to the glory of God. After, in our hotel, gifts exchanged, I lie awake, waiting not for Santa, but for resolution, for absolution, knowing that here, in the City of Lights, in the most romantic place in the world, in the wet, the gray, the cold, the charm, the beauty, the history, the love, the last vestiges of an already crumbling marriage have finally been swept away.
Written to a prompt in a group I'm part of. Limit 250 words about a celebration, any kind.
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Oh Holy Week
Here we are at my favorite week of the year. More favorite even than my birthday week which is saying a lot. It's not because it is the week before Christmas, though that plays a part. The true roots of this love predate the church; they grow from the ground of the earth herself, for this is Winter Solstice week. Where I live this is when the cold really arrives, and with it, rain, if we are lucky, and thick fog that blankets the ground, makes ghosts of trees, brings a quiet stillness that is as palpable as it is profound. This year has also brought sunny, baby blue mornings covered in frost and ice.
I walk the earth as if I have awakened in wonderland and am swept away at its marvelous beauty; the world swaddled like a newborn; the way tiny ice crystals lay on the ground, on dead leaves, on fence tops, on the bowed heads of spent roses. How it sparkles in the sun as though it is actual snow while mist rises up like the thinning veil between the worlds—beckoning. This week is alive, it is melancholy, it is dark, it is joyous, it is precious. I want nothing more than to go out early, revel in it, capture it, and then to hunker down to a fire, a lit candle, my dog on my lap, a soulful book, Loreena McKennitt's A Winter Garden playing on a never-ending loop.
Then I want to freeze time right here. Hold close this feeling of holiness that saturates everything, this tender hand of reverence, this wanting to bow down in devotion, like the roses; a devotee, a disciple, a spellbound lover. This waking dream that holds the gift of darkness, the cherished time of rest, of burrowing and nesting, of inception and incubation, of magic and miracles. Both journey and destination. Where time goes is always the question, always a mystery, but never more so than now, with age plus the pandemic, time has warped itself into an unknown and unrecognizable stranger; its shadow in constant pursuit. In a whisper November becomes December and now here we are, tomorrow is the Solstice.
Walk through the veil. Embrace it as you would a dearest loved one. Right here, right now in your own heart of hearts; don't miss a moment. Let its loveliness sweep you away, its crystalline elegance; fall headlong into its mystery, its breathless poetry, those late mornings and early nights. Fill yourself, sweet one, for the dark is never long enough; always finite; tomorrow light and darkness meet; light will prevail.
Happy Winter Solstice.
~💗~
Sunday, December 11, 2022
The Magic of the Sycamore Tree
The sycamore awakens the feminine energies of intuition,
beauty and nourishment all around us. It can open us to
the energies of love and Nature and all their magnificent
aspects. The sycamore will augment all connections to
Nature, and its appearance in our life encourages us to
draw upon the realm of Nature for health, abundance
and inspiration.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
The Magic of Midwinter
Female California Quail |
Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.
~Virginia Woolf
Monday, November 21, 2022
Going Forward
Monday Thanksgiving week. Outside these sweet Bonica roses are still blooming prolifically, looking better now than they did in high summer when the hot sun bleaches them almost to white. More robust even than spring, when they are so eager to grow and bloom that their blossoms are small and too many, unwieldy, needing corralling with stakes and string. Right now they are perfect.
This image was taken with the Lensbaby Sweet 50. I've rediscovered my Lensbaby lenses. They've sat collecting dust since mid-spring when I had this idea that they weren't good enough for a certain project I had in mind. But with fall leaves begging to be more artfully captured, I dusted them off and here we are. They are amazing lenses. And their motto, See In A New Way. I love the way they turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, the way they expose things we cannot see with the naked eye, cannot even imagine, the unpredictability of the blur and bokeh, the way they either work or do not. How they represent life that way.
I've also left this space languishing. Another misguided idea that it had to be left behind in order to do something bigger, something "better." It's been over a year now since I left, though I've popped in occasionally. Then I logged on a few days ago, and immediately, habitually, fingers moved on the keyboard of themselves; a little housekeeping here, some updating there, a wee bit of editing on my last post. Before I knew it I was deep in creating a new banner (I know, it's blurry... trying to figure that out). The feeling of coming home swept over me; energy and enthusiasm filled me. How I've missed this space, that uses my creative energy in a wholly unique way.
In this year away I've written almost 50,000 words. A small book I am told. Not that it matters. The writing is all over the place. Lacking coherency or theme, and something more that I cannot put my finger on. Likely many things more. It's true that I have been learning to write in a whole new way. Like Lensbaby's See In A New Way. That learning, I am also told, and now know intimately, is not like climbing a hill, but more like scaling a near vertical mountain. The same as when I bought my new camera equipment and day after day, month after month I failed again and again. But then one day~
It is safe to say that I am as confused about writing as ever. And also, that I love what I have been learning. And so love the writers I have found that have helped me on this path, with their glorious words, their amazing journeys. It has been a great challenge that has also felt invigorating, sometimes quite satisfying, once or twice euphoric. But unlike my camera, it is a much longer process. Unlike with photography, which mostly bypasses the mind, I don't know quite what exactly is wanting to be created. Though what I do know is that it was a mistake to leave this space behind. I need the energy that it brings me in order to keep going, learning, experimenting on the other.
It's shocking to write that this is Thanksgiving week. I have tried to put it out of my mind. My favorite holiday of the year. Not because of its origins, which are shameful, but because it is a warm, cozy day with few expectations other than gathering together with loved ones. But those bucolic days ended with my older daughter's chronic illness and then doubled down with covid. We stay home alone, she and I, partly because she is unable, but mostly because the world is no longer a safe place for her. The same on Christmas day. Christmas on Zoom with my beloved five-year-old granddaughter whom I am over the moon for is just not the same. I know that we are not alone in lives disrupted, in aloneness. Sadness is not mitigated because others suffer too. It grows it larger; where it morphs, one hopes, to compassion, both inner and outer; to empathy.
Though this year there is a little kernel of joy hidden within this season. My younger daughter is expecting another baby right around summer solstice. The coming year will be one of dreams, of imagining, of possibilities. She is clear that she wants me there. I am clear I want to be there. But how to get to them, almost three hours away in the mountains, when the baby is born. And after, regularly so new Baby and I can bond in the way that my granddaughter and I have. How to continue to care for my older daughter, who is homebound, always at risk of severe setbacks. How to keep us safe from covid. How to not have to abandon one daughter for the other. Again and again. How to not fall into the deep, familiar, dark well of sorrow, of stress, of fear.
I have been shocked at how quickly shifts have happened. The way overnight these conundrums went from seemingly impossible to there must be a way, we will find a way, I will be there. Internal movement that will pave the way for the external. It is not so different really than photography and from writing. It is one exposure, one word and sentence, one moment and day at a time, one foot after the other. I had no idea how I would learn to take better photos anymore than I have any idea how I will continue to learn the craft of writing in a way that I dream of. Or how to know exactly how it will all work out that I will be there, in June, to meet this new, already precious family member, currently the size of a prune, but a baby shaped prune, arms, legs, feet no longer webbed; facial features recognizable, organs beginning to develop. And be with my granddaughter as she, as we all navigate the beautiful and challenging changes that will rock her little world.
This morning when I opened my curtains to the dark, pre-dawn sky there was the tiny crescent moon rising, a sliver of glowing light curving upwards as though in a tender, benevolent smile. I surprised myself by smiling back. It was involuntary; I can't help myself when it comes to the moon. There is nothing to do but move forward. Cleave a path that is both unseen and unknown, follow the heart's longings and knowings. Already ideas are arriving, thoughts, epiphanies, gifts from some unknown source showing up. Bits of light. Some blur coming into focus. Already there is seeing in a new way, gentle discussions begun, love assured all around; a peace and calm that I honestly didn't know I was capable of in this sometimes torturous, emotion-laden landscape.
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
On Turning Seventy
Thank you, Mary Oliver.
Seventy!
💗
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Alchemy
Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
~Cat Stevens
Morning breaks so tenderly. One minute I look out the window into the deep night, in the next, subtle light appears low in the east. As though a single lamp has been lit miles and miles away, sending its soft glow upward, creating the barest hint of twilight at the edges of the world. Shapes of trees are exposed like apparitions—a child's profile in silhouette—no distinction of detail, of individual branches, pink blossoms, sweet new green leaves. As the sun's rays bend themselves around our spinning planet, illumination slips silently, mysteriously through the long river of darkness.
Suddenly the sky appears as though it had been misplaced; trees now sit in relief, pinned to its vast wall. A flush of peach appears, a hint of blue. Minutes tick by. Soon, the horizon is stained tangerine while upwards the entirety of the sky has turned a shade of blue that words cannot touch, unique to twilight, a singular hue that is both dark and pale, and unexpectedly fluorescent. Trees are revealed, behind them, rooftops and chimneys. A serene still life in oil painted one brush stroke at a time. Soon the sun's face will slip fully above the horizon. When it does the scene will be bathed in golden light. A singular bird will be heard, then one by one they call, until their song fills the air on fire with color. Each morning the same, each morning wholly unique, a fingerprint unto itself.
I cannot get enough of this everyday miracle.
In therapy it feels as though I have been under water for the duration, the almost four years that my current therapist and I have been working together. Though lately I have sensed a subtle shift. Even as our faces and our voices stream to each other over the internet, something is deepening, safety is being built, along with trust, from which intimacy grows long taproots. Like a fine lace being woven together one fragile strand at a time. A slow process when there is complex PTSD; a frazzled nervous system and broken heart, all needing time and the right conditions to begin to know they are no longer alone, that unbearable pain no longer needs to be experienced in isolation. The centerpiece of the trauma healing modality that my therapist is trained and experienced in.
I think of alchemy. The ancient mystery school, a mystical process of transmutation and metamorphosis, the attempt by alchemists—the earliest chemists—to turn base metals into gold. Carl Jung understood the alchemical process as a symbol, a metaphor, a philosophy of the psychological process through which we individuate, heal, and become whole; in which we are transformed. Alchemy seeks to free the light, the divine spark hidden in matter, while the inner alchemy of psychotherapy seeks to liberate our own natural but far too often occluded light. Our own souls are laid bare, and at the same time, the soul of the world, the sacred Anima Mundi, comes alive in us, the divine essence that is the life force of the entirety of the universe. “Alchemy flows beneath the surface of Western civilization like a river of gold…” Anne Baring writes, “a rainbow bridge between the human and the divine, the seen and unseen dimensions of reality, between matter and spirit.”
This week after therapy this word alchemy emerges from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind. What had been a simple mental construct is suddenly alive with meaning, a beam of morning light, a ray of sunshine illuminating a sense of knowing, the understanding that this, the alchemical process, is what is happening in therapy. We, she and I, slog through the work. It is slow, methodical, deliberate, demanding, grueling, and often so painful that some days it feels like more than I can bear; except that she is trained to recognize that and keep me within a safe window of tolerance. Week in and week out, and sometimes in between, we work and let go, work and let go, over and over; and when we are not working, when we are not even looking, change is happening deep in the dark mysterious realms. Silent, invisible, autonomic, alchemy is happening; a presence sensed walking beside me, at work within me, applying just the right amount of gentle pressure. In our session, my therapist moves closer until the entire screen is only her face, kindest brown eyes, curly salt and pepper hair. I am here, she says. I am here, she says again. I am right here with you, you are not alone; you are no longer ever alone.
I can but imagine the alchemy happening deep inside, unseen, when I hear these words, when deep in my cells for the first time ever I have the direct experience~ I am not alone. When I see and feel such tenderness and compassion, such deep caring from her~ I am seen. I am being cared for. Though invisible something inside hears, something knows. I can but imagine that my cells themselves are vibrating in new ways, are being transformed, renewed, regenerated. That pathways are altering, the brain rewiring itself as we now know that it can. It is hidden, for now, deep in the mystery, not unlike morning arriving, the way light dawns ever so slowly from darkness, the inner world, too, is lighting, awakening. I know these things are happening, I know it in my bones, just like I know that my heart, that beautiful deep red organ, like a door, is cracking open even ever so slightly and into it, in wave after wave, pours the world, in all of its beauty, in all of its despair.
~Excerpted from a work in progress.