Hey Harry, are we live?

 This is just a test... Time to revamp my website and it has been a while since I did anything on it, so I will be learning this all over again! Good thing I love an adventure!

The goal is to make it a place where my books can be introduced and sold and i can have a relationship of communication with my readers, as well as with other authors and anyone who loves a good dialog about life, the universe and.... well, you know... everything. 

today I am just posting this to see where it goes from here (Blogger) 

it is November, and I choose to do a family cookbook, which I am excited to do, but which doesn't have the same built-in motivation to write that a good story and intriguing characters do. maybe it should?! Hmmmm

The Universe in my Mind

 My heart says

    free the children

let them be, who they will be

my heart says

they're the answer

they will teach us, to be free

my heart says

all the people

past and present, are but one

my heart longs for

connection, inspiration, fun

to remember all of my parts

to honor their sacrifice, 

their visions, and their courage

my heart thinks that would be nice

my heart says come together

listen now, and

be made whole

my heart says drop

my defenses

rest, love, let go 

the illusion of control

when I listen to my heart

my whole world is aligned

and I inhabit peaceful planets

in the universe in my mind

I have a little defect

I see you have it too

or, maybe it's a fun gift

just to see what we will do

life's all a matter of perspective

its just framing, and narrative

how I choose to use mine

sets my intention

of how I want to live

so I will try, friend

to remember

to treat you like the gift you are

another part of me

another piece

a fragment

of the same bright star 

 

Before I came here

I was everywhere else

I was all of us

I was wholly myself

but we, when we live here

take on so much other

we forget who we are

by all else, we are smothered

it takes so much focus

such presence of mind

to burst free from beneath,

our true nature to find

but my friend I do urge you

take sure steps to be free

find the child deep inside you

she'll know who you should be

trebuchet

first off let me just say, I began by choosing a font 

this time not for what it might look like, but for the name of it

let's see if it fits!

last year, I was set to be an author full time

I had a handful of stories and poems I was working on

I had done the November 50,000 word challenge

I had the rough draft of my next book

I had just published my first children's book

and then...

I was once again asked to run for office in our county as Public Administrator

and I won

(is a slingshot a trebuchet?)

because of that, I now work more than full-time at a fairly intense job

and write... almost never

no time, no brain power left at the end of a day

this past November I made a few attempts

but I could never keep a story going between calls from facilities and wards and support staff

still, I have things to say, stories to tell

I just don't want to chuck them at you willy nilly with no precision

ah, trebuchet, there it is!

I want to share

sharing is best in close proximity

the thing I am finding difficult is the very thing I used to do with ease

draw you in, close, evoke emotion

It's the difference between handing off a lovely pie, and chucking pumpkins!

which, by the way, is an excellent use of a trebuchet!

 

Trees I’ve known

When I find myself struggling with the chaos in my mind, my favorite place to go is a time where I lived in trees. (Also, a time where I was in constant relationships with horses and dogs. But that is another story)

I close my eyes and breath deep and place myself somewhere in the house I grew up in. I might take the time to dress myself and put on my favorite sneakers and grab a couple carrots and an apple. Often these days, my need to find myself is too great and I just assume all of that is in place already,  and head right out the door onto the concrete patio. I pull the sliding door shut silently because often I was leaving while others in the house were still asleep. I take in a breath and taste the early morning air. The musk of rotting leaves mixed with the fresh scent of evergreen lay at the base, with high notes of stars. I can smell the brick of the house front and the cedar shingles of the roof ledge over my head before I step out into the moonlight.

From this point there are two ways to go. Only as I am telling you this do I wonder which I did most often. To the right off the patio was a pebbled walk that led to the fence around our portion of the farmland our house was built on one corner of. To the left was a creek and across the creek another fence and a pond. But if I veer left after crossing the creek , I can follow a path first used by rabbits and deer, made more distinctive by years of my own bare feet running along it. If I follow that path along the creek, it puts me below my mother’s grooming shop in a mess of small trees and bushes. Grape vines as big as my arm snake up around a cluster of four or five trees creating a sturdy nest where I can climb up  and sit nearly level with the back windows of the shop. My mother and her assistants are unaware of my presence and I feel quite covert and powerful braced in my wild nest, listening to their radio and their conversations.

Tonight as I lie here trying to settle my thoughts and my heart to get to sleep, I chose the path to the right.

Even now, I  can feel the rough surface of the concrete slab my father built our house in the woods on. There is a big crack across one side and I avoid it in the dark by memory, knowing the length of stride to miss catching a toe in the crack and to hit the right stones in the path for the smoothest steps. I can still smell the black charred rubbish in the burn barrel as I pass. In one move I stick my right leg through the fence between rows of barbed wire, tucking my back down as I squat and glide through, one foot on the stone path, the other now on the soft crushed grass and weeds on the other side.

And there it is. My tree. My Swiss Family Robinson’s Home-Away-From-Home.

Side note: I am only now at sixty, coming back to the level of knowing and awareness I lived in effortlessly as a child. Of course, as a child, I did not know how effortlessly I moved through life, or that I just knew myself and my power. If I analyzed it, I am sure I could pinpoint the era, or even perhaps the moment where I turned a corner into darkness and lost sight of me. But what would be the point in that?

My darling husband, when I am struggling to choose a path or project, always asks me the same thing, “what will give you the most energy?”   He is right to put it so. It takes enormous energy to life a life that is out of sync with your soul. Anything you expend energy on which does not reciprocate, robs you of your youthful elasticity. It makes you old.

So, I am older. Maybe I am tired to the bone some days from the weight of life. That is only because on those days, I am not awake. I am unconscious, lost in thought. (An interesting phrase when you consider it, ‘lost in thought.’ I mean, that is precisely the condition most of us spend our entire life in, right? We have stories we have made up about who we are, what rolls we play in life, and what things mean. Those become a never-ending narrative that loops in our subconscious uninterrupted unless we intentionally look for a way out!) In that state, I am not choosing. And to be stuck in that loop is such an energy drain. For me it has often been similar to the dream where you are stuck in quicksand trying to run. I know what it is like to be young and free and energetic, so when my thoughts are heavy, when the chemicals my body is creating in response to stress make every move a chore, I know I am not awake. To correct this, I take the necessary moments to escape to my waking dream. I go back to my tree.

My tree was (it still pains me to use that verb) an enormous oak. It had limbs that nearly touched the ground, though they began seven or eight feet up the trunk. I could barely get my arms around the trunk and the limbs where bigger than my torso. Two of them began a foot or so apart and swooped down parallel, one nearly to the ground, the other creating the perfect guiderail so I could jump upon the one and walk up to the trunk where they began, using the other to balance. From there I would climb up one or two limbs higher, depending on which way I wanted to be facing. I can still feel the bark on the palms of my hands, the souls of my feet and the backs of my thighs or on my knees, rough and yet each segment flat and smooth.

I went there to get away from other people and so to be alone, but I was never alone there. Various bugs, a squirrel or two, and any number of small birds would often eventually accept or forget my presence as I settled into whatever I was there to do. Often, I would bring a notebook and pencil to write poems and songs or small stories. Sometimes I would simply sit and listen to the neighborhood. Other times I needed to sing. I took snacks and drinks sometimes and spent hours there, coming down to wander in the field, returning to rest.

The thing about a tree, the thing I knew instinctually but never had to think about, was that they live. They use and create energy. They are connected to all that is via their very cells. They breathe and clean the air. They use and replace nutrients to the soil, and they are home to creatures great and small. This one was home to me and I felt a sense of kinship with all trees though my constant contact with this one.

When I sat for hours in my tree, I often came there with emotions I did not know what to do with. Like every family, mine had some unhealthy dynamics none of us had the capacity to deal with. We were trapped by the mind patterns we each had running, playing off of one another. And so, though we loved each other deeply, we caused one another pain and frustration. So, I ran to my tree, my safe harbor.

My tree, I believe, knew me, sensed my pain, and offered me healing.

I think of that tree often. Years ago, on a trip home to visit my mother, my sister and I drove around to see the places we frequented as children. She warned me that a lot had changed, and though I was sad to see the condition of the house our father had built, I was mortified to see the new owners of the farmland had cut off the bottom limbs of my tree so they could plant the field closer to it. I wanted to bolt from the car, run through the field and throw my arms around it’s trunk in my sorrow. But at that time, I was too proper, too restrained to trust and follow my instincts. Instead, I sat in the back seat of her Jeep with my nose pressed to the window and cried. Today, when I think of it, I feel ashamed. That tree had always been there for me, and there I was, so close, and I was too tangled up in my lack of personal awareness to overcome the imagined awkwardness of my true self. I believe the tree knew I was there.

There are always important side notes to any story. Here is the perfect example.

That farm, that field, that tree… they were never mine. They belonged to Eldon. Eldon was the spirit of that tree. Indeed, of all the land for acres around it. Eldon, and his wife and their home, where my mother’s safe haven, her ‘Swiss Family Robinson’s Home-Away-From-Home Tree house’, when she was a young girl. I was the one to inherit that blessing.

Eldon created a life in that neck of the woods that brought health and happiness and healing and hope to all who were brought there. He was quiet and strong and wise, like that oak tree. He held us and challenged us to grow strong as well.

When I was a young mother, after many a hardship, setback, and trial, I came home to visit. Eldon had cancer and he was in the hospital, so I went to visit him there. I don’t know why I felt so timid and afraid when I stepped into his room. Here was a man who had loved me since I was born, taught me some of life’s most important lessons, and fed me some of the best food for my whole childhood, and I was afraid to go to him when he was suffering.

Perhaps that is what I was afraid of, suffering.

Suffering is negative energy. When it is yours, it surrounds and traps you in. When it is other’s, it reaches out it’s ugly arms to pull you in. It takes a strong man and makes him appear weak.

There are at least a handful of things I regret, that I would not hesitate to go back and undo or re-do if I could.

Most prominent in my heart these days, I would take an interest in my little sister and give her the love and affection she needed. I would include her in my life more and let her come with me to my tree. I would worry less about what other people thought I should do or believe and more about what my daughter’s needed from me personally. And I would go into Eldon’s room there at the hospital, get down on my knees before him where he sat in his chair under the cold window, and thank him. I would brush his soft silver hair back from his eyes, clean his glasses, hold his soft, cool wrinkly hands, and tell him how much he meant to my life.

I can only hope there will be trees in my future with which I can build relationships. I have moved around a lot and often had to live in lifeless places without the luxury of my own trees. I did manage to get back to the country years ago though, and we still have a handful of trees in our little yard, but the two big elms had already been butchered before I arrived. I pat them when I pass and thank them for their sturdy presence and apologize for the treatment they have endured.

There will be no other Eldon for me. But I have been intentionally, persistently, developing myself into the sort of person who can be to someone like I was as a girl, what he was to me. I look to build the sort of relationships that heal and offer stability and hope. More and more I am able to remain awake, aware, intentional. And that gives me energy.

I got that from Eldon and his tree.