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Sight, Sound, Scent, Taste

October 19, 2023 //
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I’m sipping an iced cold brew coffee, and nibbling a breakfast sandwich from the local baker on a foggy Autumn morning. The sounds of the city seemed muffled as I crossed the park from my parked car to the office. The fog wraps the high-rise condos and office buildings in a peculiar disappearing act, and as they rise into the fog they disappear, with only a few lights still twinkling through the mist. The ice in my coffee clinks when I lift the cup and the coffee is bitter and icy, each sip simultaneously refreshing and just a bit perplexing; I am used to drinking hot coffee in the morning, and I have no idea why the change this morning (I just “went with it”). The sandwich is savory, well-made of fresh bread and warm, freshly scrambled eggs. The crunch of the toasted bread is a nice complement to the warmth and softness of the eggs. The hint of salty flavor from the olive tapenade used as a condiment delights me. It’s a very pleasant morning, and it lets me forget for awhile what a fucking trainwreck the world seems to be right now.

…Will humanity even survive itself?…

I smile quietly to myself, feeling incredibly grateful to have a Traveling Partner who understands enough of my trauma history to “get” why it’s a terrible idea for me to read the news (or get tempted into doomscrolling a news feed). He filters the news for me very considerately, finding reliable sources that are very factual and less inclined toward click-bait or emotional provocation, and does a lot to keep “war porn” away from my eyes (and consciousness). I don’t do well if I get mired in despair over faraway battlefields I can’t do anything about, but would still obsess over. I have looked directly into the eyes of War and I have seen too much, too clearly. I have ties to people and places that seem chronically in conflict. I just… can’t. I care too much, and have little influence or power to make real change. All I can do is raise my voice (and vote, with my ballot and my money) and do my own best not to be part of the problem. I send heartfelt kisses his way and hope that he is sleeping deeply and dreaming of wonderful things.

A murder of crows flies past the window and settles into the trees below. Autumn. The sky is beginning to lighten with the arrival of the new day, but it’s a gray and featureless sky this morning, and not very exciting. I still find myself inspired by the fog, the city lights, the towering high-rise condos reaching into the mist… the artist within looks over the analyst’s shoulders; I should paint this weekend. 🙂

I’ve started reading Lord of the Rings. I never have. I once started The Hobbit, but I struggled so much with the author’s writing style I just set it aside and never went back. I’m just a bit embarrassed by that, but… Proust is also waiting for my attention. I’ll get there. lol So far I’m well-into the first book of the trilogy, and enjoying it quite a lot. I smile a silent thank you to my partner again; his fondness for these books is certainly a large part of why I decided to give it another try.

…So… A misty Autumn morning and a new day unfolding ahead of me. Somehow it’s already time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, War and News of War

Autumn Leaves, Raindrops, and Once Upon a Time

October 16, 2023 //
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I’m sipping lukewarm too-strong less than ideally good office coffee and looking out the windows onto a rainy day, in Autumn, in “the city”. It could be any city. There are trees along the sidewalks, green summer foliage has begun turning to shades of gold, amber, and red. The soggy gray sky obscures the distant hills and creates silvery featureless reflections on office buildings beyond the windows. I’m thinking about life – and how fortunate I am – and how peculiar it is to be so contented, generally, when my actual life is so very different than what I once thought I wanted from it. Very strange.

A rainy autumn day suitable for thinking thoughts.

The day begins rather slowly for a Monday. It’ll be busier as the day progresses. I use the time to get my thoughts sorted out, and my week planned. There’s much to do, but a significant portion of the doing rests on good planning, and awareness of projects already in progress; rushing through the “thought work” has proven to be a poor choice on more than one occasion. I take my time with it. I think things through. I take notes, and review other notes. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I drink my coffee.

Past tense. Autumn colors. Memories like fallen leaves.

Funny how what we think we want doesn’t always turn out to be what we actually wanted, at all. Funny how things that are in the past become something more than mere memories, over time, taking on stature far beyond whatever humble object or event they represent. I find myself thinking about the past, and wondering how I got from there to here… “Here” isn’t where I expected to be, honestly.

…There are conversations I wish I could have with my Dad, my Mom, with Granny…

I sip my coffee contentedly. The day and week stretch ahead of me. My Traveling Partner is at home, working. I’m in the office, working. I’m thinking about life and love, and smiling at the raindrops spattering the grand windows that seem display the city for my view alone in this quiet space. It’s enough. I guess I’m just puzzled about how this can feel so good, so safe, so satisfying… and still find myself vulnerable to the chaos and damage that still linger, and sometimes take me by surprise. I’m fortunate to have come so far. It’s taken time and a lot of verbs and considerable effort and the will to just keep at it… again and again, failure after failure, frustration after frustration… but I am here. This is now. I’m okay with it. More than that… I may even be… happy. At least in this moment. That’s enough.

Eventually, I’ll have to begin again. For now, I’ll just enjoy this moment, right here. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, turning 60

Coffee Time

October 9, 2023 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about green tomato pickles. It’s not a random thought; I’ve got a lot of green tomatoes in the garden, and the season is quickly ending. Rather than waste that bounty, I have been thinking about what to do with those green tomatoes. Pickles? A relish? Sliced and fried? I’ve got options.

…Live is rich with options…

Last night my Traveling Partner and I closed out a lovely day with continued conversation about various household options, most particularly what he’s going to do about/with his work & gaming space. He is very much one of those folks who will regularly change things up with the decor, the arrangements, the utility of a given space. I’m one of the other sorts; I like to “figure it out” and have things as I like them, and then simply live with that more or less indefinitely until something forces me to consider a change. I find myself less likely to “become lost” in the middle of the night as though I’ve awakened in an unfamiliar place, if my place remains familiar. LOL No criticism of my partner’s approach, it’s just one of many variations on the theme of being human. Some people also drink tea, instead of coffee. Just saying – there are options.

…We both drink coffee…

…Okay, he also drinks quite a bit of iced tea, and I enjoy the occasional cup of hot tea on a chilly day, or in the afternoon. lol Options.

I spent yesterday afternoon in the garden. It was lovely time, well-spent. I didn’t get as far with things as I might have liked. I decided to let a few more tomatoes ripen on the vines, while there are still warm afternoons for them to do so. My original intent had been to cut the vines down and strip the green tomatoes from them and then… do something with those. I’ll still have that opportunity, it just won’t be this weekend. More time to decide on pickles or relish or some kind of delicious sauce for a chicken dish, or perhaps just fried up and served with scrambled eggs and toast some morning. 😀 I ache today, although whether it’s due to the work yesterday or the likelihood of rain today, I don’t know. It’s among the many things that don’t really matter, I suppose.

…Some things definitely matter more than other things…

I’m listening to the rain already, on a video. Considering all the many options for “content” that I could consume, it may seem strange that I so often choose this… but I find it both relaxing and also suitable for masking other sounds in the background. I enjoy it. I’m definitely a fan of choosing the options I most enjoy, when I’m able to do so. I’m fortunate that at this point in my life I am in no way prone to taking that inclination to hedonistic extremes; it can go very wrong for some people.

I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. Last day of a long weekend, for me. Work day for my Traveling Partner. I’ll likely find something to do at some point and do that… whether here or elsewhere is as yet unknown. I think about self-care practices, and I think about creative endeavors, and I think about the spaces in my life where those things collide…

…My Traveling Partner sticks his head in my studio and points out that I’ve got a good opportunity to have a soak before it starts raining today. It’s tempting… very. He points out that I am reliably in a better mood and feel better after a good soak. He’s right about that. So…

…Some time later, after a lovely soak on a not-yet-rainy-but-already-misty morning, I return to my writing and my now-cold coffee with a profound feeling of contentment, and a handful of homemade chocolate chip cookies. 😀 Options!

I’ve no idea what the rest of the day holds… I know I have options. Choices. Undetermined potential in the hours ahead… it’s a nice feeling. I munch a cookie and sip my coffee feeling as if “all is right with the world” – though I know that truly that is not the case in any global real-world way. Individual self-care requires me to care for this individual that I am, with my whole attention and will, and legitimate authentic consideration for myself and this fragile vessel. In this limited sense, “the world can wait” – these individual moments of contentment and joy have real value. Perhaps if more of us were focused on delivering, enabling, creating, and sharing moments of joy there’d be less will for bombing innocent civilians (or, frankly, anyone at all) into remnants of flesh and memories? Suffice it to say I am not unaware of the horrors of war, nor what is going on in the world beyond my little suburban home in the countryside – I just also definitely need to (and will) take care of myself. I’ve learned that lesson over a painful lifetime. “Put your own oxygen mask on first.” It’s good advice. In the event that oxygen masks deploy, whether for real or metaphorically, it definitely makes good sense to mask up before you start trying to put masks on other people. 😉

You’ve got options. Consider them. Take a minute and do it with intention and deliberation. Choose wisely. You are the architect of your own experience. You are your own cartographer on life’s journey. Choose your path and walk it. If you find that you’ve strayed…? Begin again.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, turning 60, War and News of War

Bolero

October 7, 2023 //
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Let me share an interesting story of coincidence, love, and – just maybe – one of life’s mysterious details. It begins (and, mostly, ends) with an ear worm on a long drive. I was driving home from my camping trip, with a snippet of music stuck in my head. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time… like a piece of music I’d surely heard at some point, but can’t say I’m particularly familiar with, don’t listen to really at all, hadn’t heard recently anywhere… nonetheless, I kept humming it, kept trying to “figure it out” with da-da-dah’s, and dum-dee-dums… could not place it, at all. Kept humming it, kept trying to sing it, kept driving…

I finally arrived home, and soon after I made a point of mentioning the song stuck in my head to my Traveling Partner, and how mysterious it was to have this unfamiliar (and, I suspected, possibly “classical”) music stuck in my head (still). He rather matter-of-factly asked me to sing it for him – a request that in many years past I would have been purely unable to accommodate for anyone, and would have frozen me completely with dread and anxiety (I promise you, I’m no singer). Still, with love and trust in my heart, I went for it… carefully trying to capture the phrasing of the tune, and hopefully not be too terribly off key… it began quite slowly with a soft prolonged note… then a cascade of notes with a very distinctive cadence. It was what I could recall, and as I’d been singing it to myself for literal hours, that bit was pretty firmly fixed in my recollection. I was inclined to simply repeat it many times, though I felt certain there was “more to it than that…”, and said so. My partner had a most peculiar look on his face, and muttered something about how unlikely…

…He turned to his keyboard, and pulled up a piece of music… “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “Is this it?” he asked almost at the same time. He told me he’d been listening to it that very day… and we compared the time and timing… I was “listening to it” at the same time he’d been listening to it… though he’d never shared it with me, or said anything about it. Classical music isn’t really “my thing” generally… Bolero. Huh. Now when I hear it (and I’ve listened to several versions since that day), I entirely associate it with him, with us, and with this love we share. How strange is love? How strange is this odd coincidence?

I’ll say now that I tend to be a rather practically minded woman, day-to-day, largely because without the secure “guardrails” of rational thought, I could easily stray into the surreal, the unfounded, the ridiculous, and even the conspiratorial…but… I don’t know everything. None of us know “everything”. There’s a lot out there yet to be known, by anyone at all. There are mysteries still unsolved, unexplained. I put pretty much everything “ESP” or “psychically” connected into that category. No proof, really, so… I just don’t know. I refuse to stake a claim to knowledge or adopt an attitude of certainty. I recognize a coincidence when I experience one. I’m familiar with the bizarre and unusual. Like I said, there’s much I don’t know. I’m okay with uncertainty and with not knowing.

…I do know that I now love the music of Bolero, and this human being who listened to it on the day it was stuck in my head, when we were separated by distance and connected by love…

Does it need to be anything more than what it is? Does it need an explanation at all? I don’t think so. It’s enough just as it is. Mysterious and fond. Like love. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, autumn, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being

Then The Rain Came

September 23, 2023 //
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When the rain began to fall, so close to the forecasted time it may as well have been a plan, rather than a weather forecast, I was long gone. Already home. Already showered. Already astonished to feel the bone-deep fatigue that had set in once I got home. My Traveling Partner seems glad to see me. We both get something out of these opportunities to miss each other.

Site 146, C Loop

I had originally planned to be camping Wednesday through Sunday, home on Sunday afternoon. Instead, I got started a day later (bills to pay, frankly, and needed the work hours), and then called it “done” a day early, when the weather forecast became pretty insistent on the chance of rain going from “possible” to “probable” to “count on it”. I am decently well-equipped, even for camping in the rain, but… I didn’t bring the extra overhead cover I’d need to make cooking outdoors comfortable in a downpour, and didn’t look forward to breaking down my camp in a rainstorm, either. I woke this morning having already coordinated with my Traveling Partner, who seemed more eager to see me than inconvenienced by my early return. The sky threatened rain before day break, but the forecast stayed true; no rain fell. I had coffee and a bite of breakfast, tidied up, and got started packing up.

Looking like rain.

I got in some good walks. Got some good pictures. Got some solo time thinking my own thoughts and being master of my time, my intentions, and my effort from the moment I woke each day until sleep took me down each night. I meditated. I watched the fire grow cold on a chilly evening alone with the woman in the mirror. I picked up my sketchbook to sketch or paint, and put it down without doing anything with it at all. I picked up a book to read, and put that down, too. Turns out, this trip was me, with my thoughts, and little more than that. I cooked. I tended the fire. I listened to my inner voice, and reflected on my experience.

…It was an amazing time to spend with myself…

“hearing myself think”

I don’t want to mischaracterize my camping trip; I was in a colossal managed state park that has some 400+ individual sites, arranged in loops A through H. This place is huge – and popular. Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park is on the Oregon Dunes. It’s an amazing place, with several activities available, including ATVs on the dunes, kayaking or paddle boating on either of two lakes, fishing, swimming, hiking, biking, or joining the merry oldsters in the Welcome Center to work on the latest jigsaw puzzle. Popular + activities = crowded. I wasn’t surprised that most of the sites seemed full, even on a Thursday. This fucking place looks like an outdoor gear convention. It was hard to “be alone” surrounded by people – I got most of what I needed fireside in the evening, or out on the trail during the day. It’s a friendly place. And noisy. So noisy. I can’t even go hard enough on this point; it’s fucking noisy. ATV’s. Packs of shrieking kids. Wailing babies. Adults who should know better yelling to each other across multiple sites worth of distance. Loud trucks and loud talkers. It’s fucking noisy. It’s not a great choice for camping if quiet is what you’re looking for, is what I’m saying. I was regularly approached in camp by strangers asking questions about my solar panels, or the fridge, or some other piece of gear or something else that caught their eye. Like I said; a friendly place.

…I’m not really “approachably friendly” with strangers, though, so this tested my ability to be polite and gracious, which are skills worth cultivating…

I’m glad to be home. I slept poorly. There were too many “feral children” running about loose without supervision in small packs of “new best friends”. There were too many dogs on leashes (and a few that weren’t, which was worse) and many of them barked. Like, a lot. People camping in family groups taking several sites were common… and loud. Very loud. “Rambunctious” seems like a good word for it. In spite of all of that, I had a good time, and got a lot of what I needed out of the time spent more or less alone. Worth it.

…The drive was lovely, both directions, and felt very much as if I were the only car on the road at all. It was quite wonderful.

Anyway. I’m home. There’s more to say about it, more to process. Pictures to look over. Anecdotes to share when the context and timing are right. I sit here listening to the rain fall (on a video, as rain falls outside), happy to be home. Happy to be.

A frown crosses my thoughts briefly…some bad news shared by a friend taking the form of a facial expression as I recall it. I breathe, exhale, and let that go for the moment. I’ll come back to it, later.

It’s a metaphor.

I sit here with my feet up, feeling grateful, contented, and loved. It’s enough. More than enough. It’s a firm foundation for all the many new beginnings to come. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, turning 60
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