Hey pals, this morning this was in one of my inbox's, from astrology.com
It's more info about Mercury Retro, and it's pretty accesible, too. For whatever it's worth, I've been following the effects of Merc Retros for about three or four years now. I myself am taking care of finaces, oil changes, debts and bills and old emailing (for example my work inbox which last night at last count had 108 unopened) over the next two days. All of these, coincidentally, have piled way up. When a planet goes retro, or backwards, the reality is it just sort of stands still. Read on, there is good explanation, and believe me I've lived it enough to have learned that preparation like what I mentioned above right now is important. Trust me, it will help things not get willynilly....
Geminis, Pisces, Virgos, Sagitarius' especially take heart:
Mercury, the planet of communication, goes retrograde for the second time this year on May 6-7 (depending upon your time zone). Mercury normally turns retrograde three times a year -- however, in 2009 Mercury turns retrograde four different times. The effects of each retrograde period differ depending on the sign in which it occurs. This time around, Mercury is turning retrograde in Gemini -- its home base. Mercury is the ruler of Gemini! Both Gemini and Mercury govern communications, the way we pick up information and process thoughts. Mercury rules thinking and perception, processing and disseminating information and all means of communication, commerce, education and transportation. Mercury retrograde gives rise to personal misunderstandings as well as flawed, disrupted or delayed communications, negotiations and trade glitches, and breakdowns with phones, computers, vehicles. This retrograde period, step back from decision-making, agreements, contracts and use this review time to your benefit. Write down the pros and cons of everything since your mind will not settle on anything one hundred percent! When Mercury turns direct on May 30, you'll have greater clarity and are more likely to make good decisions. If possible, avoid buying communication-related products such as computers and phones. Keep receipts if you do. If you are traveling, double-check your reservations and bring a good book to read and plenty of games for the kids in case you are delayed. From late in the evening of May 13 through the end of the retrograde period, Mercury will be transiting the sign of Taurus, the sign ruling money. Decisions about investments and handling of finances should also be put off during this period. Like any cosmic event, this retrograde affects each of us differently depending on how it's positioned in our personal birth charts. A Mercury retrograde period may be very prosperous for those who have retrograde Mercury, or a well-aspected Mercury, in their birth charts. While a retrograde period may be an introspective time for all of us, if Gemini is prominent in your chart, you will have more than your usual share of introspection. Gemini is a mutable sign, so if other mutable signs -- Pisces, Virgo, Sagittarius -- are prominent in your chart, you will also experience a period of intense self-examination.
May 5, 2009
May 4, 2009
The only thing one can be sure of changing....
Ughghgh. So, here's the skinny.
I'm about to drop it in a heavy honest way, too, so I surely hope there is someone out there that will benefit from this confessionalism. I am just about on my moon and dig it gals, whether or not you have found this to be true I am going to tell you what I know experientially and from the heart as a fact of the matter: whatever incessant emotional nags or swirls, rages or guilts or issues that cause stress and tiredness the week or so before your period, these are the ones that are chock full with the messages of your soul. The ones with the gifts, these are actually the invites as to how and specifically where to honor yourself and love you a little bit better. Well. Don't you know for a week or so plus (since the second half of my cycle kicked in) I have been resisting doing the "Real Work", or at least one very specific aspect of the Real Work. Which would be dealing with one very specific nag. Instead I have been trying to control said nag with the same old codependent behavior that I am working on getting to the bottom of in the first place. All busy trying to fix what's broke with what's broken and mad as a buzzing hornet's nest of on their moon mama wasps that's it's not going my mutherloving way!!
What is the Real Work? To quote as explanation from the book I am using, put on me by a mentor whom I trust with my life, in order to move through some necessary healing of old behavior in regards to self and relationships, I will define it as "...focused work. It can be intense. (ha!) What are we searching for? The darker side, the side that prevents us from loving ourselves, loving others, and letting others love us--the side that blocks us from finding the love and happiness we want and deserve.....Often, present responses are connected to our unresolved feelings from the past. To free ourselves today, we must heal from yesterday's feelings...." A page later it says "And yes, healing is possible. We can heal at as deep a level as we have been affected." It is a step by step process, a process that I know works and with which I am familiar. But ooooh my god do I feel like I am in a big pot of midway meltdown and suddenly everything has just gotten stuck. In intake, when I meet students who are like just a handful of points away from the range they need at assessment to sit for their GED, I usually tell them some version of the same thing. I steeple my two pointer fingers together like a mountain, look down over my glasses at them with big stern pointed love in my eyes and I say now look here and listen good. Here is your goal (I indicate the top of the "mountain" of my fingers) Here's you. (I indicate the top knuckle just underneath my left nail.) (Over the glasses, re-engage the eyes.) Now dig it, dig how realdeal close you are. You are SO close, but these last steps are crucial to make it to the top, and I'm just gonna level with you, they are the toughest steps there are. See how steep it is here? (Indicate knuckle again.) But you've almost made it. (By now we both are usually misty-eyed.) It's gonna take some hard, committed work. I'm talking real effort, a real commitment to yourself, for yourself. Can you do it??
Can you, Kel?
(By the way I found out today that at least 21 students from just two of my 7 Adult Ed classes are receiving diplomas and walking in a cap and gown in June!! Holy sugarnuts what I do does count!! And I dont even have the numbers for the year from my other 5!)
In traditional recovery, where I am at has been defined as the searching and fearless part. Later on, from the same book as above: "This process became experiential. I began to live (it.) Life prodded and poked me until I looked so deeply within that, as last, I could truly see me...This fearless searching, this looking within, became a forced process, imposed on me by my recovery, life, and my Higher Power. I didn't like it, but I learned to accept it, to go through it..." Man I so totally, totally get this. It has been forced upon me but force is the total wrong word, and I dont think it's quite what the writer means either, it's more like when she says how you just do it, "go deep, start with the top layer and then let the process take you deeper" and that's what happens. Once you get in there holy shit there you go and it's like a spiral down down down that just sort of happens from within your soul. And all the coincidences as you're going along--all the outside circumstances as you continue with going about living your life, they seem to magically align to help reflect back at you again and again deeper and deeper exactly what you need to see. My pal Beth from Oregon when I told her the Real Work I'd decided to take on, she was like, holy shit just hold on. I remember when she did some of it, all the pain she went through. I HATE IT. I freakin really, really do. But holy shit, hold on cuz the only way out is through...
The first three or four weeks were miraculous my god I thought oh this is it! My intimacy shit is cured. No no that's just the sparkle allure the soul uses to hook you. Now that I'm here, with the legitimate nags staring me down with pointed stern eyes straight in front of me ohhhhhhhh I dont want to look, which sucks cuz it's times like this that you really learn wherever the hell you go, well, there you are.
I dont want to be stuck here on these same old things anymore. I will do this thing damnit. No matter what. I just hate hate hate that now's the time that I really, like it says, have to look at me. And look at how (gulp) it is me, and my old beliefs, AND NO ONE ELSE, that have caused me the most harm.
Great magic of being pray for me people.
And also, in case the real work aint enough, Walsh reminded me today that Mercury Retro's on Wednesday. And we got the rest of the week, here backeast, full a rain.
Put on your wastehigh waders kids, things about to get thick...
On Mercury Retrogrades, from nightlightnews.com, used with permission from Risa (last retro ended mid Jan, we get one a season and recall that each season stimulates a new phase, and all phases are linked quite circularly if i do wax esoteric a moment myself, of inner growth):
Wednesday night (May 6th, 10:00 pm Pacific time) Mercury turns retrograde for three weeks. We prepare this week (tend to details, plans, purchases, etc.). When Mercury retrogrades the information received since Mercury’s last retrograde must be reviewed and organized for our minds have become overloaded with data. Retrogrades allow us to “houseclean”, put thoughts and ideas in order, and bring closure to previous events. We all become detailed Virgos during Mercury retrogrades.
~~
Yea. So. Be about it.
(insert picture of me rolling my eyes at me in the mirror over steepled fingers and eyes full of pointed stern big silly love)
I'm about to drop it in a heavy honest way, too, so I surely hope there is someone out there that will benefit from this confessionalism. I am just about on my moon and dig it gals, whether or not you have found this to be true I am going to tell you what I know experientially and from the heart as a fact of the matter: whatever incessant emotional nags or swirls, rages or guilts or issues that cause stress and tiredness the week or so before your period, these are the ones that are chock full with the messages of your soul. The ones with the gifts, these are actually the invites as to how and specifically where to honor yourself and love you a little bit better. Well. Don't you know for a week or so plus (since the second half of my cycle kicked in) I have been resisting doing the "Real Work", or at least one very specific aspect of the Real Work. Which would be dealing with one very specific nag. Instead I have been trying to control said nag with the same old codependent behavior that I am working on getting to the bottom of in the first place. All busy trying to fix what's broke with what's broken and mad as a buzzing hornet's nest of on their moon mama wasps that's it's not going my mutherloving way!!
What is the Real Work? To quote as explanation from the book I am using, put on me by a mentor whom I trust with my life, in order to move through some necessary healing of old behavior in regards to self and relationships, I will define it as "...focused work. It can be intense. (ha!) What are we searching for? The darker side, the side that prevents us from loving ourselves, loving others, and letting others love us--the side that blocks us from finding the love and happiness we want and deserve.....Often, present responses are connected to our unresolved feelings from the past. To free ourselves today, we must heal from yesterday's feelings...." A page later it says "And yes, healing is possible. We can heal at as deep a level as we have been affected." It is a step by step process, a process that I know works and with which I am familiar. But ooooh my god do I feel like I am in a big pot of midway meltdown and suddenly everything has just gotten stuck. In intake, when I meet students who are like just a handful of points away from the range they need at assessment to sit for their GED, I usually tell them some version of the same thing. I steeple my two pointer fingers together like a mountain, look down over my glasses at them with big stern pointed love in my eyes and I say now look here and listen good. Here is your goal (I indicate the top of the "mountain" of my fingers) Here's you. (I indicate the top knuckle just underneath my left nail.) (Over the glasses, re-engage the eyes.) Now dig it, dig how realdeal close you are. You are SO close, but these last steps are crucial to make it to the top, and I'm just gonna level with you, they are the toughest steps there are. See how steep it is here? (Indicate knuckle again.) But you've almost made it. (By now we both are usually misty-eyed.) It's gonna take some hard, committed work. I'm talking real effort, a real commitment to yourself, for yourself. Can you do it??
Can you, Kel?
(By the way I found out today that at least 21 students from just two of my 7 Adult Ed classes are receiving diplomas and walking in a cap and gown in June!! Holy sugarnuts what I do does count!! And I dont even have the numbers for the year from my other 5!)
In traditional recovery, where I am at has been defined as the searching and fearless part. Later on, from the same book as above: "This process became experiential. I began to live (it.) Life prodded and poked me until I looked so deeply within that, as last, I could truly see me...This fearless searching, this looking within, became a forced process, imposed on me by my recovery, life, and my Higher Power. I didn't like it, but I learned to accept it, to go through it..." Man I so totally, totally get this. It has been forced upon me but force is the total wrong word, and I dont think it's quite what the writer means either, it's more like when she says how you just do it, "go deep, start with the top layer and then let the process take you deeper" and that's what happens. Once you get in there holy shit there you go and it's like a spiral down down down that just sort of happens from within your soul. And all the coincidences as you're going along--all the outside circumstances as you continue with going about living your life, they seem to magically align to help reflect back at you again and again deeper and deeper exactly what you need to see. My pal Beth from Oregon when I told her the Real Work I'd decided to take on, she was like, holy shit just hold on. I remember when she did some of it, all the pain she went through. I HATE IT. I freakin really, really do. But holy shit, hold on cuz the only way out is through...
The first three or four weeks were miraculous my god I thought oh this is it! My intimacy shit is cured. No no that's just the sparkle allure the soul uses to hook you. Now that I'm here, with the legitimate nags staring me down with pointed stern eyes straight in front of me ohhhhhhhh I dont want to look, which sucks cuz it's times like this that you really learn wherever the hell you go, well, there you are.
I dont want to be stuck here on these same old things anymore. I will do this thing damnit. No matter what. I just hate hate hate that now's the time that I really, like it says, have to look at me. And look at how (gulp) it is me, and my old beliefs, AND NO ONE ELSE, that have caused me the most harm.
Great magic of being pray for me people.
And also, in case the real work aint enough, Walsh reminded me today that Mercury Retro's on Wednesday. And we got the rest of the week, here backeast, full a rain.
Put on your wastehigh waders kids, things about to get thick...
On Mercury Retrogrades, from nightlightnews.com, used with permission from Risa (last retro ended mid Jan, we get one a season and recall that each season stimulates a new phase, and all phases are linked quite circularly if i do wax esoteric a moment myself, of inner growth):
Wednesday night (May 6th, 10:00 pm Pacific time) Mercury turns retrograde for three weeks. We prepare this week (tend to details, plans, purchases, etc.). When Mercury retrogrades the information received since Mercury’s last retrograde must be reviewed and organized for our minds have become overloaded with data. Retrogrades allow us to “houseclean”, put thoughts and ideas in order, and bring closure to previous events. We all become detailed Virgos during Mercury retrogrades.
~~
Yea. So. Be about it.
(insert picture of me rolling my eyes at me in the mirror over steepled fingers and eyes full of pointed stern big silly love)
May 3, 2009
Poem
One musn't believe in war
or have to like force
for it to be so.
The storied armadas and brace
of armed stances, the piece
by piece arsenals and
A no-named faceless
weapon
The calm duty of following through.
One doesn't have to like it for
it to be so. One doesn't
even need to believe.
But, raise your sword I say
if your gonna raise your sword.
The better homeland battered now,
the indescript attack
still causes harm.
But left are the broken signals
still mindlessly blinking.
The old familiarity of
crossings rubbled,
the building blocks
of steps no longer
placed or
memorized.
Injury impersonal doesn't need
specific target for the
explosion still to go
The ground, if named once
needs no more than that
for it to be so.
or have to like force
for it to be so.
The storied armadas and brace
of armed stances, the piece
by piece arsenals and
A no-named faceless
weapon
The calm duty of following through.
One doesn't have to like it for
it to be so. One doesn't
even need to believe.
But, raise your sword I say
if your gonna raise your sword.
The better homeland battered now,
the indescript attack
still causes harm.
But left are the broken signals
still mindlessly blinking.
The old familiarity of
crossings rubbled,
the building blocks
of steps no longer
placed or
memorized.
Injury impersonal doesn't need
specific target for the
explosion still to go
The ground, if named once
needs no more than that
for it to be so.
May 2, 2009
Beltane in the Air
O Pals.
What an exciting, deepbeating time this is. Last new moon--which would have been last Friday, from around about that time until next Friday/Saturday when we peak with the full moon--well this is the pagan season of Beltane or first-bud. I have been spending so, so much time out and about with my barefeet on the ground that there simply is no denying this alluring and delighting energy that is literally growing and ready to spill over from the inside out....
Naturally, we are part of the ecosystem wherever we live. If you are eastcoast US right now, well then you know life is literally bursting all around you in the form of wiley lawns, new buds, vibrating flowers and sparkling green leaves, open CSA's. This past Friday was the traditional celebration of MayDay, or Beltane. The old agricultural myths mark this as the fecund time of the Gods and Goddesses--and the folklore is that the old myths were celebrated by all night celebrations of first love, sex, dancing, bright ribbons decorating the Maypole and more. Allowing and affirming and enjoying all the pleasure of life! Vibrant, full, alive as it is!
Try this. When you get home from work tonight, or go out to get the paper this morning, pause a moment. Breathe deep. Breathe again. Allow your skin to become aware of the air. Ground your feet, imagine long deep colors of whatever you first see in your mind's eye to be pulling you down down in to the ground like you had your own precious root system. Maybe even envision roots instead of colors. Allow all the quickness in you to flow out in to the earth. Now pull the energy from the earth up in to you. Breathe together, in and out. See if you too cant connect easily to and sense and feel what I am talking about. We move with the energy of the everchanging earth much as it moves us.
So wear a ribbon ladies, fellas sport a dash of red or some other bright color. Get outside and play. This is well the time for your own spirits seeds to begin coming in to bloom. And check out Lisa's info on next week's full moon, eastcoast time 11pm Friday http://www.astrowisdom.com/thisfullmoon.htm. This is the lunar celebration of Beltane, peak power of creation for the harvest year to come.
I plan on celebrating by going back to my roots. There is a festival, a Fairy Festival!! at Spoutwood Farm in the PA hills this weekend and since I'll be up visiting with my recovering pap(see Friday's post), it will be the perfect opportunity to go. This is in Glen Rock. Mom told me this week that I have a great grandmother on either side of mom's folks that come from the Glen Rock area. Mom, who has often side-remarked over the years little passing comments about the 6th sense on her side that her sisters, her mom, my cousin Chels and me, that intuitive sense we all seem to have, well she said this week that this must come from the Glen Rock people. So, woo hoo par-teeee!!
Anyhow, lineage or not we all are of the same soul stuff, all us people, all the animals, all those clouds, those loving flowers and that gorgeous loving stream--it's all the same subtance-stuff. Us humans were just blessed, all us humans, with the powerfull gift of Consciousness. Which merely is choice. Or as Wordsworth said, the capacity to become
"one in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition"
Holy passion, now's the time. So try it! Get outside. Breathe deep. Feel life coursing up from within. Acknowledge, give thanks, and emPower your self!
Celebrate, with me...
What an exciting, deepbeating time this is. Last new moon--which would have been last Friday, from around about that time until next Friday/Saturday when we peak with the full moon--well this is the pagan season of Beltane or first-bud. I have been spending so, so much time out and about with my barefeet on the ground that there simply is no denying this alluring and delighting energy that is literally growing and ready to spill over from the inside out....
Naturally, we are part of the ecosystem wherever we live. If you are eastcoast US right now, well then you know life is literally bursting all around you in the form of wiley lawns, new buds, vibrating flowers and sparkling green leaves, open CSA's. This past Friday was the traditional celebration of MayDay, or Beltane. The old agricultural myths mark this as the fecund time of the Gods and Goddesses--and the folklore is that the old myths were celebrated by all night celebrations of first love, sex, dancing, bright ribbons decorating the Maypole and more. Allowing and affirming and enjoying all the pleasure of life! Vibrant, full, alive as it is!
Try this. When you get home from work tonight, or go out to get the paper this morning, pause a moment. Breathe deep. Breathe again. Allow your skin to become aware of the air. Ground your feet, imagine long deep colors of whatever you first see in your mind's eye to be pulling you down down in to the ground like you had your own precious root system. Maybe even envision roots instead of colors. Allow all the quickness in you to flow out in to the earth. Now pull the energy from the earth up in to you. Breathe together, in and out. See if you too cant connect easily to and sense and feel what I am talking about. We move with the energy of the everchanging earth much as it moves us.
So wear a ribbon ladies, fellas sport a dash of red or some other bright color. Get outside and play. This is well the time for your own spirits seeds to begin coming in to bloom. And check out Lisa's info on next week's full moon, eastcoast time 11pm Friday http://www.astrowisdom.com/thisfullmoon.htm. This is the lunar celebration of Beltane, peak power of creation for the harvest year to come.
I plan on celebrating by going back to my roots. There is a festival, a Fairy Festival!! at Spoutwood Farm in the PA hills this weekend and since I'll be up visiting with my recovering pap(see Friday's post), it will be the perfect opportunity to go. This is in Glen Rock. Mom told me this week that I have a great grandmother on either side of mom's folks that come from the Glen Rock area. Mom, who has often side-remarked over the years little passing comments about the 6th sense on her side that her sisters, her mom, my cousin Chels and me, that intuitive sense we all seem to have, well she said this week that this must come from the Glen Rock people. So, woo hoo par-teeee!!
Mom's friend's Liz and Mel, energy workers and massage therapists
at Ancient Arts in Ocean City. These gals do wonders for me!
Anyhow, lineage or not we all are of the same soul stuff, all us people, all the animals, all those clouds, those loving flowers and that gorgeous loving stream--it's all the same subtance-stuff. Us humans were just blessed, all us humans, with the powerfull gift of Consciousness. Which merely is choice. Or as Wordsworth said, the capacity to become
"one in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition"
Holy passion, now's the time. So try it! Get outside. Breathe deep. Feel life coursing up from within. Acknowledge, give thanks, and emPower your self!
Celebrate, with me...
May 1, 2009
Friday Reflections: The Life That is Waiting....
It’s been a long week. The longest-shortest long week I can remember, short like cuz it goes so so fast from all the darn stuff happening so that time seems to wind in on itself like some tight-curled rubber band ball.
Tuesday I got up at 5:30 to the dark birdie-party and sounds of Teena’s sailor-guest’s feathered snoring. Showered, coffeed and was out the door. Only ten minutes quiet time. Picked up Jason at the College and had to drive to UMBC—which is a college on the other side of Bmore—for a State training. For those unfamiliar this is a hour and a halfish commute, well okay I made it in one fifteen even with a pit stop at my fave gas station where the Mideast workers are all way-out and sparkly with silly grins and together we all laugh and shine the whole time from our hearts like we each are in on a great secret that everyone seems to know but wont let on cuz that too is part of the joke, and this happens each and every time I go in there but I often forget til I’m there. So Jason and I got there to Bmore quick like that cuz I turn in to crazy I learned to drive in the city bitches and the suburbsprawlofcontinuousmetro aint no thing to me and suddenly don’t know how to not drive 80 when I cross the Bay Bridge cuz that’s just what you do with networked highways when you got to get somewhere.
Which brings me to my overview, spiritually, of the week. I read a book recently on loan from a coworker. Why is God Laughing? by Deepak Chopra. (Ok so in my head admittedly I can’t seem to not tack on the words At You? at the end. Ha ha, hilaaaaaar-eee-ous.) Anyway it’s a mini-parable and in all, it’s quite nice—very typical Chopra with the little stories or allegories either preceded by or followed with his own explanation of principled living as he sees it. A couple of things stuck out to my mind, for example: We are addicted to our old ways of being.
Well, duuh.
Case in point. Until Monday night, night before the great trip to Bmore, I’ve been on a steady diet of sunshine and herbs wildcrafted from my lawn and along the edge of Chop and also barefeet. Like I didn’t even realize it but I’ve gotten in the habit for the past many weeks of coming home and leaving my shoes in the car and barefooting it, outside, for the rest of the evening all afternoon long until the night comes and I can lay or sit out under the moon. In the morning when I wake first thing I do is head outside barefoot to greet the day and most of all get connected again to the Earth. I love to lie in bed at night and hear the miracle sound of the rain. I love to hear what the river each day has to say. I love how the sun lights gold right around 6 or so at night. I love the cocoon of love and warmth here, I love the Mama Love here, the Earth, the river and herbs and sun, I love Her, like gently and viciously and sweetly and devotedly and most of all so impassioned because she is always always there waiting so eagerly to love me, too.
So of course I get over to UMBC and there we are with all these professionals and it is sun-gorgeous out and stunning campus-green and allIwanttodo is be out and about and in my bare feet. And instead we have to go in under neon lights and (gag) air condition and pulled blinds! And do things like watch power-points and sit quietly and nod, ohhh, mmm-hmmm mmm-hmmm.
I get home that night and was so drained from a day like that so I got on my floppy sunhat and sat with the river and then on the tree swing but I was sinking low, low, low and here’s why: my grand-pop was scheduled Wednesday, the next day, for major open-heart surgery. So I just went there, let myself feel sick with the whole fear of being out of control. So much swirls of sickness and sad in my heart I didn’t know what to do. So I went inside, to my room, to my sacred spot and I sat quiet in my spot and tried to write but that didn’t work either so mostly I ended up just breathing til my breathing turned to a hum and the hum put me gently to sleep.
Wednesday morning comes with rain and mist and heavy fog and I prayed a long time and mom was right there with me in my heart her tears and fears sprung fresh as rain. I got dressed and was headed to the college for a meeting when suddenly my gut unrolled in longing that seemed to be pulling me forward on the road and next thing I called Jason and Kim and told them I think I got to go and they said yes you do and I drove straight with the rain all the way to Pennsylvania.
I got to York Hospital and it was cold and windy by now and mom was waiting out front with her kind of crazy smile. I hadn’t seen that one in a while. Grandma couldn’t come she was waiting at home for him to wake up and for the tubes to come out; once, many years ago, he had an operation and she had to see him on the breathing machine and she could never ever seem to let that most fragile of images go. So it was better for this woman, his woman of 65 years, to just stay sitting in her spot in the corner on her rose-colored chair with the afghans at home.
So mom and I in we went and I wasn’t dressed for this Pennsylvania hill weather and it was cold and my hair was flat and stuck to my face and I had the shivers, never a good way to enter the hospital. And there were mom’s sisters, Lori and Coni, the three of them, and me, first born granddaughter: Us, the women, here to make it all better.
But that’s not true that’s not what you can do, that’s not what anyone can do even for all your concern and tears, your prayers and fears in a situation like this no matter how powerful you’re soul there aint a damn thing you can do. And for us, us women from the PA hills, we are strong and we are forceful, we are irreverent to a hysterical point, and god damn it we are in control. So, teeny as we were we went up those stairs and to the ICU and they let us in to see. Us and my papaw, my big bull of up every morning at 5am to work in the shop granddad, who was so little, and yellow, and still.
And all the monitors and beeping and tubes coming out to keep his heart and lungs going.
And all I can think, amazing how powerful something other than us really is….
It was a long day and they only let you in for 15 minutes post-op then back to grandma’s again to float about the house uncomfortably eating all that good York County junkfood til finally we got to antic and anecdotes and story-telling til there was some laughter, my mom’s people laughter the sick kind til your stomach hurts with the crunchedness and you are laughing with tears. I rubbed grandma’s feet til she was quiet and napping and then I lay on the floor and slept deep awhile but also was awake the whole time. Then it was 3:30-5:30 time for BOGO at Ruby Tuesdays so off we went the five of us plus Pap’s sister Sylvia for Sysco food and more laughter. By now I was full-fledged with the half-closed wild eyes making side-mouthed jokes like mom Aunt Lori just threatened to set me on fire and jack on the rocks make mine an IV just to see Aunt Lor, the youngest one, with that shock on her face of out-of-control the second before the hysteria of laughing took her over once more.
At 7 we went back and he was still knocked out but twitching now and making faces every so often like he might cry. And then that’s when I did, just cried and cried, went in the bathroom and cried so they couldn’t hear me the hospital workers who see people like this for a living and who pretend for just a minute that it is really them somehow who have all this control.
I went back to Gram’s in time to see my cousins and hug them and catch up in hushed voices on the floor laying around like we always do and I love them so much I would fight for them or more.
It was 11:30 when I got home Wednesday night this time I didn’t drive like a crazy woman I just took it easy because I was still inside after that release from the cry.
Then, yesterday. A freaking staff meeting from 9 am to 4 pm. Seven hours!! That’s seven hours people!! A seven freakin hour meeting. That should be outlawed. Common sense should mandate against such a thing. When the fricken hell is common sense going to mandate for our mental freakin health?!? Anyhow. Yesterday was proof that grace happens: by now it was two days away from the sun and the herbs and also a lot of outside circumstances going on. And by now it’d been 6 days since I’d been to the gym. And though Wednesday night’s sleep was the best I’ve had in months, I didn’t get any time to decompress with me in my quiet spot yesterday morning. The best thing that happened was on the way to the meeting my mom called and Pap was off the vent. He made it through…
Which didn’t change the fact that there was no everloving part of me that wanted to be in the stupid meeting. It was the kind of start to the work day where I wanted my personal life to excuse me enough to be able to treat others like they are assholes for encroaching on my life. That’s why I mean there was grace. Cuz somewhere about 45 minutes in to it I kicked in to gear and was capable of being a worker among workers, bringing thoughtfulness and leadership to the meeting. Wow, now if that’s not proof of a deeper power what the hell is.
The meeting got out at 4, I worked until 6 cuz it’s towards the end of the week and I took off Wednesday and had shit to get done.
Then I got in my car and got my crazy madwoman on again and drove the hour drive over the bridge, this time to the County, Anne Arundel, where I’m from. My old friend from little-school on up just published her first book and what a joy that was, to see her, Erika Robuck used to be Erika Shepard reading from her own book at the highschool where I went and I’ve only been back once in 14 years. It was such a head trip but at the same time it was peaceful to me, and real.
Tuesday I got up at 5:30 to the dark birdie-party and sounds of Teena’s sailor-guest’s feathered snoring. Showered, coffeed and was out the door. Only ten minutes quiet time. Picked up Jason at the College and had to drive to UMBC—which is a college on the other side of Bmore—for a State training. For those unfamiliar this is a hour and a halfish commute, well okay I made it in one fifteen even with a pit stop at my fave gas station where the Mideast workers are all way-out and sparkly with silly grins and together we all laugh and shine the whole time from our hearts like we each are in on a great secret that everyone seems to know but wont let on cuz that too is part of the joke, and this happens each and every time I go in there but I often forget til I’m there. So Jason and I got there to Bmore quick like that cuz I turn in to crazy I learned to drive in the city bitches and the suburbsprawlofcontinuousmetro aint no thing to me and suddenly don’t know how to not drive 80 when I cross the Bay Bridge cuz that’s just what you do with networked highways when you got to get somewhere.
Which brings me to my overview, spiritually, of the week. I read a book recently on loan from a coworker. Why is God Laughing? by Deepak Chopra. (Ok so in my head admittedly I can’t seem to not tack on the words At You? at the end. Ha ha, hilaaaaaar-eee-ous.) Anyway it’s a mini-parable and in all, it’s quite nice—very typical Chopra with the little stories or allegories either preceded by or followed with his own explanation of principled living as he sees it. A couple of things stuck out to my mind, for example: We are addicted to our old ways of being.
Well, duuh.
Case in point. Until Monday night, night before the great trip to Bmore, I’ve been on a steady diet of sunshine and herbs wildcrafted from my lawn and along the edge of Chop and also barefeet. Like I didn’t even realize it but I’ve gotten in the habit for the past many weeks of coming home and leaving my shoes in the car and barefooting it, outside, for the rest of the evening all afternoon long until the night comes and I can lay or sit out under the moon. In the morning when I wake first thing I do is head outside barefoot to greet the day and most of all get connected again to the Earth. I love to lie in bed at night and hear the miracle sound of the rain. I love to hear what the river each day has to say. I love how the sun lights gold right around 6 or so at night. I love the cocoon of love and warmth here, I love the Mama Love here, the Earth, the river and herbs and sun, I love Her, like gently and viciously and sweetly and devotedly and most of all so impassioned because she is always always there waiting so eagerly to love me, too.
So of course I get over to UMBC and there we are with all these professionals and it is sun-gorgeous out and stunning campus-green and allIwanttodo is be out and about and in my bare feet. And instead we have to go in under neon lights and (gag) air condition and pulled blinds! And do things like watch power-points and sit quietly and nod, ohhh, mmm-hmmm mmm-hmmm.
(I have to put shoes on to go in to the house)
I get home that night and was so drained from a day like that so I got on my floppy sunhat and sat with the river and then on the tree swing but I was sinking low, low, low and here’s why: my grand-pop was scheduled Wednesday, the next day, for major open-heart surgery. So I just went there, let myself feel sick with the whole fear of being out of control. So much swirls of sickness and sad in my heart I didn’t know what to do. So I went inside, to my room, to my sacred spot and I sat quiet in my spot and tried to write but that didn’t work either so mostly I ended up just breathing til my breathing turned to a hum and the hum put me gently to sleep.
Wednesday morning comes with rain and mist and heavy fog and I prayed a long time and mom was right there with me in my heart her tears and fears sprung fresh as rain. I got dressed and was headed to the college for a meeting when suddenly my gut unrolled in longing that seemed to be pulling me forward on the road and next thing I called Jason and Kim and told them I think I got to go and they said yes you do and I drove straight with the rain all the way to Pennsylvania.
I got to York Hospital and it was cold and windy by now and mom was waiting out front with her kind of crazy smile. I hadn’t seen that one in a while. Grandma couldn’t come she was waiting at home for him to wake up and for the tubes to come out; once, many years ago, he had an operation and she had to see him on the breathing machine and she could never ever seem to let that most fragile of images go. So it was better for this woman, his woman of 65 years, to just stay sitting in her spot in the corner on her rose-colored chair with the afghans at home.
So mom and I in we went and I wasn’t dressed for this Pennsylvania hill weather and it was cold and my hair was flat and stuck to my face and I had the shivers, never a good way to enter the hospital. And there were mom’s sisters, Lori and Coni, the three of them, and me, first born granddaughter: Us, the women, here to make it all better.
But that’s not true that’s not what you can do, that’s not what anyone can do even for all your concern and tears, your prayers and fears in a situation like this no matter how powerful you’re soul there aint a damn thing you can do. And for us, us women from the PA hills, we are strong and we are forceful, we are irreverent to a hysterical point, and god damn it we are in control. So, teeny as we were we went up those stairs and to the ICU and they let us in to see. Us and my papaw, my big bull of up every morning at 5am to work in the shop granddad, who was so little, and yellow, and still.And all the monitors and beeping and tubes coming out to keep his heart and lungs going.
And all I can think, amazing how powerful something other than us really is….
It was a long day and they only let you in for 15 minutes post-op then back to grandma’s again to float about the house uncomfortably eating all that good York County junkfood til finally we got to antic and anecdotes and story-telling til there was some laughter, my mom’s people laughter the sick kind til your stomach hurts with the crunchedness and you are laughing with tears. I rubbed grandma’s feet til she was quiet and napping and then I lay on the floor and slept deep awhile but also was awake the whole time. Then it was 3:30-5:30 time for BOGO at Ruby Tuesdays so off we went the five of us plus Pap’s sister Sylvia for Sysco food and more laughter. By now I was full-fledged with the half-closed wild eyes making side-mouthed jokes like mom Aunt Lori just threatened to set me on fire and jack on the rocks make mine an IV just to see Aunt Lor, the youngest one, with that shock on her face of out-of-control the second before the hysteria of laughing took her over once more.
At 7 we went back and he was still knocked out but twitching now and making faces every so often like he might cry. And then that’s when I did, just cried and cried, went in the bathroom and cried so they couldn’t hear me the hospital workers who see people like this for a living and who pretend for just a minute that it is really them somehow who have all this control.
I went back to Gram’s in time to see my cousins and hug them and catch up in hushed voices on the floor laying around like we always do and I love them so much I would fight for them or more.
It was 11:30 when I got home Wednesday night this time I didn’t drive like a crazy woman I just took it easy because I was still inside after that release from the cry.Then, yesterday. A freaking staff meeting from 9 am to 4 pm. Seven hours!! That’s seven hours people!! A seven freakin hour meeting. That should be outlawed. Common sense should mandate against such a thing. When the fricken hell is common sense going to mandate for our mental freakin health?!? Anyhow. Yesterday was proof that grace happens: by now it was two days away from the sun and the herbs and also a lot of outside circumstances going on. And by now it’d been 6 days since I’d been to the gym. And though Wednesday night’s sleep was the best I’ve had in months, I didn’t get any time to decompress with me in my quiet spot yesterday morning. The best thing that happened was on the way to the meeting my mom called and Pap was off the vent. He made it through…
Which didn’t change the fact that there was no everloving part of me that wanted to be in the stupid meeting. It was the kind of start to the work day where I wanted my personal life to excuse me enough to be able to treat others like they are assholes for encroaching on my life. That’s why I mean there was grace. Cuz somewhere about 45 minutes in to it I kicked in to gear and was capable of being a worker among workers, bringing thoughtfulness and leadership to the meeting. Wow, now if that’s not proof of a deeper power what the hell is.
The meeting got out at 4, I worked until 6 cuz it’s towards the end of the week and I took off Wednesday and had shit to get done.
Then I got in my car and got my crazy madwoman on again and drove the hour drive over the bridge, this time to the County, Anne Arundel, where I’m from. My old friend from little-school on up just published her first book and what a joy that was, to see her, Erika Robuck used to be Erika Shepard reading from her own book at the highschool where I went and I’ve only been back once in 14 years. It was such a head trip but at the same time it was peaceful to me, and real.
I couldn’t remember living there—you dig what I’m saying? I could barely touch on who I used to be. I was a wild girl in my highschool; Catholic school girl as they used to say with the skirt hiked the thigh high socks or ripped black tights the Doc Marten MaryJanes. Cat-eyes and pink or bleached white hair. Purple almost black lips. Loving living like I was in sin. Smoking cigs and more in the parking lot. Class-partier in the yearbook. Almost kicked out a week before graduation for threatening to kill the Dean. They are changing the school a lot—whole new wings and new monies and classrooms and fields with real turf. A development up in the woods behind there, the woods where I played when I was a girl cuz my high school was only three minutes from where, as a child, I used to live. And it was all so good and pure and real—and me, I was me, not some context of who I thought on the outside, all the way back then, I needed to be. And Erika, I was so, so proud of her. She gave a great, eloquent talk and we made plans to get together next week and talk and catch up as writers and old friends. And she believes that indy book-selling same as indy-music is the wave of the times, so I’m all about that and funny how when you be good to and take care of and honor your self, when you as Joe Campbell says are willing to let go of the life you’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for you…the miracle just kinda happens.
And I’m amazed at the realness—here and there sure there are undercurrents of the autopilot life that this crazed fast-living week so temptingly tried to pull me back to, the hamsteronthewheel of who in the past I’ve been—but that life is faded, not real anymore. Just the awareness there like a soft shadow against the ground in the warm afternoon light. About to stretch long out and disappear. I wanted to come home last night and get on the internet after a long day at the almost end of a long week and space-out, but I haven’t done that in weeks and sometimes you have to make room for the miracle, you have to, as my pal Amy says, set up the conditions. Really, it’s all you can do. So I skipped the OD on the net and went up to spend quiet time with me and just breathed in my sacred spot til I was asleep. And then I got up this morning in the mist and light rain, in my blue robe and barefeet, and went out to find the herbs and the connectedness, the good loving earth and talking river and greet the day…….
And I’m amazed at the realness—here and there sure there are undercurrents of the autopilot life that this crazed fast-living week so temptingly tried to pull me back to, the hamsteronthewheel of who in the past I’ve been—but that life is faded, not real anymore. Just the awareness there like a soft shadow against the ground in the warm afternoon light. About to stretch long out and disappear. I wanted to come home last night and get on the internet after a long day at the almost end of a long week and space-out, but I haven’t done that in weeks and sometimes you have to make room for the miracle, you have to, as my pal Amy says, set up the conditions. Really, it’s all you can do. So I skipped the OD on the net and went up to spend quiet time with me and just breathed in my sacred spot til I was asleep. And then I got up this morning in the mist and light rain, in my blue robe and barefeet, and went out to find the herbs and the connectedness, the good loving earth and talking river and greet the day…….
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