LAST DAY LEARNINGS

And here it is...the last day of 2011. I want to write a blog post that is light, uplifting...a prayer for all to be embraced by the natural peace and well-being so generously provided by the Wild Earth Mother. I want to say something original...something important. But alas...I'm feeling sad and ineffective, small and weak and flooded with emotion. I'm just so sick of waiting for things to be right...the weather, the snow. the skiing. The conditions around my sister and my mother and all the mayem in their lives resulting from the escalating need for her care. Nothing is ever going to be right. That's what I think. Or maybe the pervading sense of waiting for things to be right just needs to be replaced by the possibility that things are just right in all their imperfection. Christmas was a sweet round of family branches constellated against a true blue sky. It all went beautifully. There was warmth and merriment...a sense of being blessed to have another Christmas with Mom...and yet one sister remained distant and the other was diagnosed with breast cancer. The day we left Salem, there were some tense moments exchanged and emotions spilled over the riverbanks. The situation continues to darken. I look at my sister who is shouldering most of the daily care of my Mom and I see myself...my pattern of doing too much and being so caught by details and feeling soley responsible for things that I close out the chance of receiving help. Yep. Thats me folks. Her behaviour and some of her words trigger me and I am aware of feeling like no matter what I offer it is never enough. I'm back in high school being scolded for being an underachiever and believing the guidance councellor who told me not to bother applying to any schools other than Salem or Bridgewater State. That person...the Lisa of high school...is not helpful in this senario of 2011. Apparently I say things that trigger my sister as well. And as our amygdalas are spazzing out in the juices of childhood emotion, we are making the moment even harder to deal with. I think if anyone stole Christmas this year...it was that damn amygdala. And I am determined to break the cycle because I want my sister to know I am on her team. Can I see the branch that is me or are we woven into family dynamic so tightly that I can't quite tell where her emotions begin and mine unconciously hook in? This is a case of coming undone. We are unravelling a lifelong tapestry of childhood emotional patterns...or I am anyway. And it isn't a good time. My youngest sisters cancer diagnosis isn't great  timing either. For Mom, we are all in this together and yet we each have a heaping plate of our own crapola to navigate.

This morning as we had our coffee, Stephen and I were talking about all that happened over 2011. It wasn't a year that I'd like to repeat and yet there were some fine blessings to be sifted for from the sand and ash. One was that we were even having coffee together. I said..Gee. I should pull out my journal and read what I was hoping to let go of, what I hoped to achieve and see how I measured up. Stephen said...mmmm...if your going to do that be sure to look at all that happened that wasn't planned...wasn't on your list. That comment was said with such love. He knows me. He knows how hard I can be on myself. I thought about that comment and it moved me. He's right of course. Instead of looking at my list and seeing how I fell short...I could look at the big picture and see how I rose to the occaision. If life is what happens when your busy making plans...then damn it...let me open up to it and stop waiting for the perfect moment...the perfect conditions...the end of the holidays...next spring...or when the snow comes.
If I keep looking right...for the right this or the right time or the right job or the right friendship, then I'll just keep spinning in a circle of inactivity. If I want to write, I better get going and take what time is left.

So on this last day of 2011, I have learned that if I want to accomplish something next year...I better start to include the unknown in my plans because there is me, my list...all in my head...and then there is whats happening. Maybe instead of looking at reality as a wrestling match...I could learn how to dance. And that requires me to slow down...lie in the grass and stare up at the tapestry of trees against a blue sky and wonder how it lives there like my family lives in my heart. Wishing everyone a 2012 full of Natures' blessings and the strength to roll with her storms.

CREATIVITY UNLEASHED

I believe I have been a writer all of my life. I started writing poems when I was twelve and have kept a journal since I was in high school. As tongue tied as I can become, writing appealed to me because I could always take the time I needed to find just the right word to express myself. Talking in front of people exposed my word retrieval problems...I was clumsy and easy to embarrass. Death was my first catapult into metaphor and the poem I wrote was about a lunar eclipse and the untimely death of a friend when I was 12. The poem was actually read at the funeral and although I was not present to recieve any attention for it, that quick success encouraged my efforts and began a lifelong love of metaphor and word play. As a child becoming adult, I managed to take the attitude of play out of the equation and turn writing into something motivated by duty and work. I always have a sense of being held back...held in check...held on a short leash...and pratice practice practice is an exersise in spiritual discipline. Early experiences with elementary teachers taught me to fear the open white page. Art lessons were actually lessons in following directions and doing what we were told...not in indulging our childlike creative spirits. My second grade teacher shook me till my shoulders bled and locked me in a supply closet when I put a sun on my Easter picture...then she made me walk around the room holding my picture up for all to see. She basically snuffed out the light in my little artist heart and I've spent the rest of my life trying to get that radiant spirit back. I never face a white page without anxiety and the need to encourage myself to go ahead and let it rip. When we moved to Maine and began life in a ski resort town, and I began to work on improving my skiing...I realized that I carry the same fear and anxiety to my skiing and to skiing on new terrain. I became a yellow crayon on the white trails in my imagination and writing with a gel pen resembled the sensation of skiing and I would pretend the pen was me skiing. Suddenly, my concept of creativity opened up. I've finally discovered that creativity is not just about writing or painting or music, singing or acting or performance. Creative doen't necessarily imply using art media at all really. A person can be creative by making an unusal choice on any given day...or by linking 2 unlikely things together or by using something in a new way. That openness comes from an attitude of play because play is light, happy, fun. If one sets one's mind to working at something...there is a serious adult frame that goes around the whole picture. Work is serious. Work is something that needs to get done. Work is headed toward a particular outcome. Work beats a slow path while play allows you to leap.

Sadie has been a great teacher in the effort to reclaim play in my life. Now that she is older and has learned to come when I call, I can take her on long walks in the woods where she can enjoy the freedom of unleashed exploration. I trust her to come when I call.All the practice of puppyhood has brought us to the possibility of enjoying our freedom together. Now that she knows how to heel and stay near, I can give her rein and let her explore her own sequence of choices. I talk to her aloud in the woods. Often I talk out loud to the trees and often, I see ephemeral images of ghost animals or people in the woods. I recently read an article about creative people being weird...square pegs in round holes...often doing what they do despite feelings of not belonging anywhere. The writer of the article frequently mentioned that creative people report hearing voices, seeing ghosts, communicating telepathically and having other strange perceptual experiences. I thought...how strange. I was under the impression that most people have these odd perceptual experiences and have learned to regard them as pretty normal. Reading that article made me wonder about the effort of science to explain everything and prove everything. So much of life's mystery and imaginative play is lost in the testing and lableing and explaining and proving.

When Stephen and I first got together, we had lots of conversations about the word "Weird". He'd call my thinking weird and I told him to replace the word with creative. Whenever he called me weird, he had to say the same thing only change the word to creative. I would do the same when he caught me calling him weird. It helped us both rise above what external people thought of us because we had begun to change the language we used about ourselves. The same tactic can be used with abilities/disabilities. Sometimes a single word can change the way we understand ourselves.

I need to have the wild around me...it is the hole this peg fits in. In the woods, I am at home with my nature. My spirit is unleashed. I move happily into the little hobbit holes I spot as I walk. I imagine myself at home with the chipmunks and tree gnomes and I find the time and space to be with the rocks, the trees and to listen to the shivery chatter of the brittle oak leaves knocking together in the soft wind and smell the layers of earthy decay. I've always needed the wild and I craved it from the time I was a child and we had to move to Salem after living in the more rural Beverly Farms. I need to have the possibility of a bear stealing my birdfeeder or the chance of spooking a deer in the woods. I need to hear the coyotes howl and the winds scream through the trees. I need to hear the popping trees in January and
imagine the bony tree limbs reaching out for the love of the sun. I need to listen to the music of the wild water running down through the moss covered rocks...not for anything other than it makes me happy and it gives my imagination a place to play. A space of wilderness is the empty space, the white page, the place before buildings and pavement and wires and lights...the state of grace before pollution and industrial pillage. The wilderness is the origin and the source of hope for planetary healing. So if you feel like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole...go walking in the wilderness. Perhaps you too will find a hobbit-hole awaiting your imaginary elf-self and the fit will be perfect.

MY WILD MOTHER

The second weekend of Advent has passed like water through the mossy rocks. I spent the time hunkered down with my Mom in Salem. It is always special. Because her recent memory is most challenged by the aftermath of the fall she took, she really has the most trouble remembering what she's doing right now or today or this weekend. We watched the Andrea Boccelli concert from Central Park on Friday night. I sat in my Dad's old Morris chair...the one that belonged to his Dad. My dad was a passionate fan of the Italian opera composers and especially loved the arias written by Puccini. I remember him sitting in that chair listening to the Sunday afternoon opera and weeping. When I was younger I thought it was kind of funny and didn't at that time, share my Dad's interest at all. While Mom and I listened to the concert, I found myself weeping. She didn't have dry eyes either. My dad's presence was uncanny and throughout the weekend, we spoke aloud to him. We watched that concert Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night...each time it played it was as fresh as the first time...at least for Mom. She was moved and happily surprised by the song choices as if hearing them all for a first time. She seems to be experiencing the format of the house as it was in the 70s. She stands up and heads for the back hall which before 1976, was a lavatory. But when we look at old photos taken by her father who was a photography enthusiast, she knows just whos who in the college and wedding pictures. I marvel at the human brain, amazed at the phenomenon of memory and how our experience of the present moment can be scrambled while the ancient memories are as clear as photos. All weekend I was reading a book that had as one of its many themes, the idea of genetic memory. The book is called THE WINTER SEA...and it is a historical romance set in Scotland during the first attempts to bring King James back from France. I saw my mother's grandfather's photo for the first time...a William Noble who emigrated to the USA from Glasgow Scotland. The Scottish accent furled around my ears like a sound of water flowing. There seemed to be a gathering of family energies including a cat we had as a young family. Smoky...a grey part angora cat that Mom mentioned a few times. I wonder...could all the dejas vu and familiar feelings that make a person think they may have been here before...could they actually be ancestral memories that hide in our genes? Mom kept talking about the mist and fog of early morning. I didn't experience any, mind you...but I dare not tell her what is or isn't real for who's to say her perception of Now superimposed over Back Then isn't more acurate on some level than my own. Silver fingers of scottish brogue weave through the hairs in my ears...I smell the crystal jar of orange jelly slices...I breathe and feel my father's loving essence moved by the exalted music of love. Somewhere back in time, the roots of my family tree sent forth some seeds to find fertile soil in a new place...so that a new branch of the family would find a haven to call home. The roots were fed by the wild Celtic water of ancient forests and the people farmed for their food. The cold was familiar and the winter snows were as much a part of life as the fog and mists hiding the hills. My family...Stephen, Sam and Will and I are the seeds that found new soil to sink our roots into during the 21st century. Genetics are carried by seed and perhaps the tree remembers feeding its roots in the wild Scottish soil.

When I come home from my visits with Mom in Salem, I am aware of a deep sense of gratitude for being here now...where the air is fresh and scented with evergreens all winter and the mountains greet us with white shawls under bluebird skies. I love the open space and the restful landscapes of unbroken wilderness. After going back to the city, I return home released of any residual regrets for having left. I can sleep again. The night sky is actually dark and the quiet is calming. Mom told me that when she was little, she would hang out her bedroom window and sing at the top of her lungs. She never told me that before. I was surprised and reminded her of how I used to sing Que Sera and assorted other favorite songs at the top of my lungs out the third floor windows and from the tiptop of the pine tree in the front yard. There. Another little memory bubbles up from the far long ago. Like mother, like daughter. We laugh because all my life I worked so hard to not be like my mother. Now, relaxing with her in her twilight years...it seems we are more alike than I ever dreamed. My love and appreciation for my dear Mom in the present, casts a light on my ardent love and need to comfort myself in the breast of the wild mother. The Wild Mother ...she welcomes me home. She is the wild water that feeds the roots of my family tree. She is the angel at the Christmas treetop. She is the artist who decorates with crystaline frost and whimsical cloud formations. She is a most vulnerable and confused elder and she asks for my protection. This Christmas, I give her my Present..my quiet, listening presence. Sssshhh...listen. There is music in the flow of wild water and it feeds my roots.

THE SHAPE OF CHRISTMAS

These are the dawning days of being a tribal elder. I'm a new born on the threshold of entering the teepee reserved for the circle of elders, to gather and hammer out the process of moving forward in a way that benefits the People...and having finally grasped the depth of conditioning that has shaped my passion for creating the perfect Christmas by buying into the huge machine of the American Consumer Christmas, I am finally ready to let go of all the false promises of store bought joy and mass-produced media satisfaction. I am encountering a healthy mistrust of an unhealthy society. Somewhere in my growing process, I hitched myself to a black-hole instead of a star. A black-hole sucks the life out of everything it swallows on its obsessive quest for energy. A star shines quietly, letting its light out to be appreciated and seen by anyone and everyone freely. I'm not down on myself or being overcritical here...I'm just becoming aware. I've put my faith in a place that wasn't faithful...made an honest mistake. Now I can correct it.

I don't need certain clothes, toys, material things to be happy. And I don't need to spend precious creative energy attempting to be something that I'm not. I also am not singly responsible for making Christmas come true for all the people I love. I don't need to make something for every last person I come into contact with. The pressure I place on myself to provide holiday cheer has an ironic way of taking the joy out of everything. My job is to be present...and my gift is to love.

This first weekend of Advent was filled with gifts. A gathering of friends from college..us girls were all roommates off campus at U. Maine Orono and a few special male friends joined us at a pizza place in Bangor. Sue and Michael were stateside from Wonthaggi Australia for a visit to Sue's mom who is recovering from a bad fall, like mine. Two friends had lost their Dads just this summer. But what a group of laughing, delighted souls who were happy just to bask in each others presence. "So This Is Christmas" played like a refrain in my brain. Even though Stephen had met these folks only recently, there was a feeling of ancient familiarity. What is this feeling of gathered family among people that created their first bond back in the 1970s? Why has so much time slipped by without tending to these precious connections? I went back to be present in Bangor with my old friends to realize that when I left them in 1973, I was making a huge mistake. I was following a romance that led me into a 10 year black hole that I had to crawl out of...like falling for the machinations of a Christmas machine instead of the true spirit of love and rebirth. This past weekend I laughed my way into awareness. The glorious gift of reconnection is like a weaving of thread...our stories creating a fabric and somehow our shared love for each other managed to bridge any gaps of divergent thinking. We could all differ in our political or religious approaches but what held us together in a bubble of joy at that table was our love for each other and that is the kind of weaving that holds families together. Who cares about the externals? The trappings and shiny paper that wraps things up in glittery beauty but has no thought for the killing of the trees? Who cares about that new hi-tech doodad or that 60 inch TV? I'm so grateful not to be one of those poor sad souls who bloodied someone's face for fear of not grabbing that desired item on Black Friday. I realize I have the luxury of truly letting go because my children are grown and as a family, we have been pruning our traditions for years. I hope I didn't set my boys up with impossible materialistic expectations for a joyous holiday season when what really satisfies is the small everyday miracle of making ends meet and having time to love the people who are really important in your life. I am deeply grateful for the "Festival Of Lights"...and though we didn't attend the parade or the tree lighting...we had our own ole fashioned holiday table where everyone was alight and everyone was a present and their presence was THE GIFT.  So if the photo here resembles just a bunch of friends sitting at a table eating pizza, then you are obviously just looking at the surface. What you are actually seeing is a beautiful tree burning fairy lights of love and decorated with the stories writ from the fabric of our lives. As we shared shots of tequila and hovered at the doorway to our adult lives in the 70s, we now drink red wine and hover at the threshold of our years as elders. May our laughter guide us through the portal and shape our later years with love, health and a few more precious visits...maybe even one down-under.