Archives for category: women

Investing the Best

January 20, 2016 //

There was a time in my life when I was pretty certain that I was so entirely broken, in some fashion or another, that any contribution I could possibly make in my relationships would be a material one – or sex. That was the limit of what I thought I had to offer the world, or a partner; if I couldn’t buy it, or provide the manual labor, or do the sex thing, what else was there, really? Well, art. There was art. I am hopeful that I don’t have to point out what an incredibly limiting – and self-fulfilling – perspective that was.

Be love.

I say “be love” as though what I mean is obvious. Perhaps it isn’t, and maybe a gentle morning over a good coffee is a nice time to clarify? It isn’t as if “be love” is something I came up with – because, if it were…first, what a tragic state for the world to discover love so late, and second… well, damn, what about all those love songs? So, yeah, not my original thoughts, and surely there are other people who have written more better words with greater clarity on the subject of love, generally. So…if you’re after more better words with great clarity about love, I suggest Thich Nhat Hanh, Leo Buscaglia, or, if you’re ‘not there yet’ any of a number of books on loving the person in the mirror, which does have to come first, as it turns out, to love another with any real skill…have you checked out my reading list? 😉

The love thing is a big deal. It drives a lot of marketing, and therefore a great deal of profit-making goes on associated with love (I’m looking your way Valentine’s Day!). It’s clearly something human primates favor. Are you ‘getting your share’? Are you still thinking of it in those terms? I spent a lot of years stuck on the idea that if love were ‘real’ – and I wasn’t convinced it might be until well past 30, and couldn’t seem to figure out ‘how to have it’ until I was well past 40 – if love were real at all, why wasn’t I ‘getting my share’?? Ouch. Well, in fairness, there’s so much media pressure on us all regarding love we easily succumb to the visions of love we see in advertising, on television and in movies – how can what we see at home compete or compare? We are each so human – and no one is providing us handy re-writes of our script; our best moments are at risk of going unnoticed because we are so busy looking for something very different. How suck is that? You see where this is headed, right?

Mindful love. Yep. I couldn’t fathom it for a while. Mindfulness… check. Meditation… check. Awareness… check. Present in the moment… check. Treating myself well… check. Each concept falling into place, building on each other, and more than once I returned to my therapists office with this question “how does mindful love work?” It sounds like a simple enough question, and I couldn’t quite answer it in words – however many books I read. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t the part about mindfulness that I wasn’t fully grasping… it was love. 🙂

Now we’re getting somewhere! Is this the hot sexy part? With the tips for pleasing a lover? W00t!! Go sex!!

Oh… wait… nope. Sex is sex. Love is…

Love.

By moving into my own place, while also maintaining a romantic loving relationship with my traveling partner, I did something wonderful for me; I opened my eyes to some experiences about love that I hadn’t been able to understand so simply before. Some of the lessons have been complicated. Some of them have been so simple that they tripped me up while I sought to understand them as something more complicated than they were. Love matters so much that I figured I’d share some of the things I am learning – I expect that as with really first-rate self-care, learning to love well is likely a lifetime of practice, and similarly many of the practices themselves are so simple they mislead one into thinking they are also effortless – nope, in loving too there are verbs involved. Here come some verbs now…

Invest the best in your relationships that you have to offer. This is so simple and fundamental on the surface, but it is a rich deep practice that has kept me on my toes for months now, and until this past weekend, I didn’t have simple words to describe what I might mean by it. So here it is – invest the best in love. Kindness, a welcoming approach, listening deeply, and ensuring that the assumptions in my day-to-day thinking regarding my loving relationships are positive ones have nothing at all to do with money, with sex, or with material goods – without these things, though, no amount of money will buy me love.

An easy example, and common, if I am short-tempered with a loved one in a brief moment, surely it can be understood as part of being human, and an appropriate apology and making it right allows everyone to move on. If, however, my short-temperedness is a character trait that is recognizably ‘who I am’ it will likely undermine love over time. Other things work that way too; sarcasm, mockery, meanness, and cruelty have no role to play in love – defending their use by saying “it’s just who I am”, or by calling it a joke, may not be enough to stop love’s erosion over time, particularly if the user of such behaviors is unaware of the hurtful effect. (If the user is entirely aware of the hurtful effect of such things, and uses them for amusement or in anger without regard to the hurt they cause – that’s not love.)

This weekend, I mused with regret at some point that I don’t have money laying about in capital amounts with which to support my traveling partners endeavors – how wonderful it would be to be able to invest heavily in a solid business proposal, see it get off the ground, and watch his success and independence grow! I felt, ever so briefly, that I ‘don’t have enough to offer’. In material terms, that may be true (it also may not be true; ‘enough’ is a slippery concept). I realized as we talked through that particular conversation that what love asks of me has nothing whatever to do with money, and it’s never been money that was the strength of this relationship; emotions don’t work that way. Love is an emotion. Suddenly, I felt unsteady in my understanding of the world – I awoke to the vast riches I have to offer my relationships (and they are vast indeed).

If love isn’t looking for a cash investment, what is it looking for that I do have plentifully? How about – are you ready for this, because we’re all a lot wealthier than we realize, if we choose to be so – kindness. Yep. Day-to-day kindness and gentle words. Patience. Deep listening – really put myself on pause to hear what my partner is saying without ‘waiting for my turn to talk’. Hearing – really hearing my partner, the words, the intent, the meaning, the emotion – really ‘getting it’, because they matter, and it doesn’t cost a thing besides my good intentions, and a verb or two. Isn’t the basic willingness to do these things sort of implied when I say “I love you”? Making room in my experience to share the journey with another – graciously, generously, merrily – and making the good moments of greater value by savoring them, sharing them, exploring them, and giving them more of my precious mortal time, than I spend ruminating over some momentary misunderstanding, or hurt feelings over thoughtless words. How about vulnerability, too? Sharing life from the perspective that we are each very human, and being open to sharing our selves and experience in a raw and honest way – still being kind, still speaking gently, still listening deeply… it sounds easy. It’s worth practicing. It takes practice – invested, willful, engaged practice. And more of that, again and again.

Yelling, irritability, contentious disagreeable conversation, argument, fussing, insults, anger – not a bit of this is love. The love is in the quiet spaces in between, and in the laughter – and if we don’t invest the best we have to offer in the love we wish to enjoy, the love will slowly be squeezed out by thoughtlessness, negativity, anger, attachment to expectations, and disappointment when our assumption that love ‘should’ overlook our nastiness and bullshit doesn’t turn out to be true. Love isn’t a tantrum; it’s the long-term investment in what is best within ourselves.

Before we go too far, I want to be clear about one small detail – I don’t know of any way to actually ‘fake love’. This isn’t a ‘fake it until you make it’ sort of area of life, and a saccharine smile and a terse insincere “I’m fine” when that is clearly not the case isn’t love, either; it’s a lie. It is possible to speak honestly and sincerely – and also gently. (Listening helps with that.) Seriously. It is. Try it out sometime. It’s quite a lovely experience, I find. Yep. It does take practice. 🙂

Love is in the small things – strange for such a big deal.

Today is a good day to be love. Today is a good day to invest the best of what I have to offer in the relationships that matter most to me. Today is a good day to practice loving well. I’ll start with the woman in the mirror. Love can change the world.

Tags be love, be the change, do you think that's love?, emotional self sufficiency, listening deeply, love, love and lovers, mindful love, p.s. I love you, perspective, practices take practice, practicing kindness, practicing the practices, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of love, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Valentine's Day, what are you perfecting?, what matters most?

Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

Quiet Delight

January 19, 2016 //

I am sipping a cup of tea and enjoying a quiet morning. My traveling partner sleeps just beyond the closed bedroom door for another few minutes. The weekend was nothing like plans made in advance at all, and somehow still quite delightfully restful, and unexpectedly romantically magical. Definitely a weekend to savor and hold in my memory. 🙂

Although my traveling partner’s own unexpected changes of plan were driven by the chaos and upheaval quite commonly associated with [an other partner’s] mental illness, the outcome in my own experience this weekend has been pleasant and in no way regrettable. The day running errands, the evening hanging out, a lovely home-cooked meal together, and that rarest of delights; sharing the night, sleeping harmoniously, and waking again to this calm gentle space knowing that in some moments, I will share the morning with my love before I head to the office to begin the work week, and he heads off to… places. Seeing people, doing things… A season of travel and adventure, perhaps?

The path isn’t always obvious, nor the intended lesson always clear – the journey is very much worth traveling eyes wide with wonder.

There were some points here and there, yesterday, when I found myself a tad taken by surprise by the luxury of such unlimited time together, and feeling vaguely unsettled and uncertain, as though this man and I don’t reliably combine like ham and eggs whenever we’re together. lol I smile at the woman in the mirror with some understanding; he captivates me, and his presence takes hold of my heart, and I would sit contentedly for hours in his good company while the household decayed into chaos around me, probably. It was good practice for practicing good practices while also in his good company. 🙂 Over the day, I hit all the health care and self-care basics: hygiene, meditation, medication, calories, exercise – there were so many opportunities to miss some important detail, considering he arrived within minutes of my waking yesterday, and is here even now. 🙂 Yeah – lots of smiles this morning.

Today the apartment manager will inspect my unit – a wise step before moving into a newly remodeled one, I think. I face that without concern; I live gently and in a state of day-to-day order resulting in no need for panic, or frantic cleaning. Nothing of the sort. I made a point of vacuuming and taking out the trash; it was a holiday Monday before a work week, and I’d have done so regardless. I’m excited, though, because the inspection is a next step toward a unit that is different in one very important respect; my traveling partner will be at less risk of his allergies flaring up when he visits, because the carpet will never have had pets on it. 🙂 For me, that alone is worth the increase in rent – the knowledge that my partner will be sufficiently comfortable to spend more time at my place is a big deal.

Today is a beautiful day for an adventure. Today is a good day to savor every precious moment. Today is a good day to put love first, and to take care of me; turns out I can do both at the same time. 🙂

Tags are you going my way?, be love, be present for the journey, be the change, come home to love, love and lovers, making yourself welcome, my home my rules my way, OPD, perspective, room for you right here, Take care of you, travel safely, welcome to my home

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

Making Fire

January 12, 2016 //

Sipping my coffee on a quiet comfortable morning, and I am musing at lessons learned on other days, in other moments. I am thinking about the crackling fire in the fireplace that kept me smiling much of the weekend. I am thinking about a camping trip last March in which I experienced a real moment of dread and anxiety – because I wasn’t easily able to make a fire. I am thinking about the distance I have traveled between those events, and what it has taken to grow from one to the other.

I wasn’t as prepared as I felt.

In March, I had planned a camping trip of 4 days to gear-test new gear, and find out whether I was up to colder weather camping (newsflash: it’s not my preference to camp if low temperatures are below 45 – it’s an important planning detail). I headed for the trees thinking I had everything I needed. Truthfully, the lack of coffee was what kicked my ass emotionally (I’d also overlooked tea), and looking back it was a huge opportunity to overcome that limitation, but the headache spoke louder than reason. I had also not packed my bee sting kit, thinking that the weather was not yet ‘bee weather’. Being wrong about that was a safety issue, and that was the deciding factor to ‘call it’ only two days in and return home. My traveling partner retrieved me from the forest, and although he genially teased me just a bit about my lack of readiness, we both knew that was why I went out there for that particular trip; I’m planning much longer ones, solo, more remote – and on those occasions, it’s pretty urgent that obvious mistakes not be the mistakes I am making when I am too far from home to call for a ride. But this is simply some context on the experience; the lack of coffee may not have kicked my ass if I had been easily able to make fire from on-hand resources, no cheats.

Light without heat won’t boil water.

I camp fairly light, and I make sure I have flint and emergency fire-starting gear, but generally rely on Esbits for quick fuel to boil water. Doing so let’s me travel fairly light, and doesn’t place a requirement on me to actually build a fire and burn wood traveling through forests, or in places where a fire is a bad idea. It had been so long since I actually made a wood fire I had entirely lost those skills – and was wandering around in the world unaware of that (far more important than the loss of skill was the fact that I was unaware of the short-coming). It was an embarrassing discovery. I had brought along an alcohol stove, another common hiker/camper favorite, but one I wasn’t so familiar with using and didn’t have a lifetime (any time) of personal experience; my use of fuel was inefficient, even wasteful, and I didn’t bring enough fuel to account for that. I used up my fuel figuring things out (and setting my cook pot handle on fire – don’t ask). To prevent myself from ‘falling back on favorites’ on this particular trip I hadn’t packed as many Esbits – and I “knew” I had enough alcohol. (I was wrong.) These sorts of things add up to potentially life-threatening fails under extreme circumstances, and it was wrecking my nerves even after I returned home. (I thought I could count on myself for fire for crying out loud!) I had some work to do. There would be verbs involved.

No skill required – yet.

Over the winter holidays, I enjoyed a number of fires in the fireplace, and have continued to do so. Each new fire in the fireplace became an adventure, a learning experience, and part of a progression – the first one was just a Duraflame log, lit and enjoyed for a couple of hours (and an opportunity figure out the flue with confidence). Each successive fire has been more reliant on skill, until this past weekend I started a lovely warm fire without cheating it at all – lit with a lighter meant for lighting fires, but aside from that nothing made it effortless, and success was not assured. I learn from each stumble, each mistake, each new transition toward being more fully reliant on the basics (wood, oxygen, and spark or flame to begin it). This weekend I explored a variety of tweaks on placement of wood on the grate, size of kindling, timing of putting heavier wood on the fire, and had quite a lot of fun with the experience, and ending each day with a bed of coals banked and ready to begin again.

The cozy warmth of a fire built with purpose and skill.

In between my March camping, and my lovely warm fire this past weekend there has been quite a lot of study, and some practice (with more practice yet to come – because a fire in the fireplace is not 100% analogous to making a fire in the cold, or the rain, or the wind, and there is much more to learn about fire, about readiness, and about self-sufficiency and interdependence). I’ll probably continue to hike and camp relying on what works best (and most reliably) for me, and what feels most comfortable, but I’ll be heading to the trees far more prepared to take care of me when circumstances don’t allow for what feels most comfortable, and more aware of what I may really need to enjoy the experience.

Taking care of me has a lot of verbs… and some nice perks. 🙂

Today is a good day to be a student of life and love, open to new understanding. Today is a good day to put aside assumptions, and ask clarifying questions. Today is a good day to look suffering in the face with a mind open to understanding what my needs really are. It’s a journey worth taking. 🙂

Tags be prepared, be the change, being and becoming, check your gear before you go, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, it's a metaphor, light versus illumination, making fire, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, practicing the practices, ptsd, solo camping, solo hiking, taking care of me, TBI, walking my own path, Where There's Smoke

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

Saying Good-Bye

January 11, 2016 //

I find it strange to be grieving. David Bowie died yesterday, I found out this morning. I am crying – weeping quite openly, unashamed. It strikes me strange because I’ve never met David Bowie, or spoken with him on the phone, and his life never directly touched mine. Admittedly, his music is heavily featured in the soundtrack of my life from around 1972 until… much later, say sometime around… later still. Because it is primarily his music that has touched me, and we live in a digital age, there is no way in which the practical matter of the end of his mortal life is specifically relevant to me. He will be literally ‘always with me’ in the fashion he has been ‘with me’ previously – which, while being kind of cool, makes it feel very strange to be grieving him. News of his death caught me by surprise – I have become distracted from making coffee for nearly 30 minutes, crying, reading…and grieving something that isn’t lost to me. How strange.

Some solutions are practical, more than practices.

I am sipping my coffee now, and having replaced my kettle with an electric one, the burner is most definitely not left on. It was strange to see that fairly unsafe habit develop basically ‘out of nowhere’, over days. I am grateful for a solution that doesn’t require more drastic measures to ensure I live safely. The first couple coffees I made using the new kettle were not very good. It has taken some practice to figure out the temperature differences, and how that changes my timing. Like anything else, mindful awareness makes a huge difference; when my mind wanders I am no longer committed to making coffee, and the motions of my hands are no longer being directed by my whole self, awake and aware. If I want a really exceptional cup of coffee, being there to make it definitely matters.

Being present, aware, and committed to a practice, or process, gets a better result.

I find grieving to benefit from mindfulness, too; wholly grieving, without shame, without avoidance, open to the recollection what is lost, embracing the loss, the awareness of what was – to celebrate what was with my whole awareness, a moment to ‘say good-bye’ with honest tears, it feels very different from stifling the feelings, distancing myself from my heart, turning away from the pain, and denying myself my feelings – and it doesn’t seem to linger quite as long, or be so…miserable, to grieve wholly, fearlessly. It’s a ‘beautiful sadness’, and a thank you in parting.

How much hotter does love burn with romantic passion and desire, than for a favorite song?

There is perspective here, too. For one moment, I pause to consider 30 minutes of heartfelt grieving the loss of a superstar who music I have loved over a lifetime… magnitude, scale, perspective… how much more devastating might my grief be if I were to lose my traveling partner? For one brief instant, my mind is fearlessly open and I glimpse that frightening truth out on the edge of my awareness, and hope very much it is never part of my reality…then I am caught on the awareness that if it never becomes part of my experience, it must therefore become part of his. Wow. I sit back, shaken and emotional, and feeling very aware of the fleeting nature of this mortal experience, and how much of its wonder and complexity I likely never face at all, because the limitations of mind don’t allow it…

Today is a good day to take care of me; there is more to learn.

Today I will be kind – why not? It’s free, and doesn’t inconvenience me at all. Today I’ll be patient – with myself, too – and remember that we are each so very human. Today I will love with my whole heart, and without concern whether it is ‘deserved’; I have plenty, why be stingy? Today I will be grateful to share as much of the journey as I do with such amazing beings, and to come home at the end of the day to the woman in the mirror.

Tags be love, David Bowie, grief, I am a student, life's curriculum, loss, love and lovers, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, perspective, ptsd, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, what are you perfecting?, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, women, Words

Sweet of You to Say So

January 9, 2016 //

I finally gave in to sleep a little earlier than usual last night. I set my alarm for a couple of hours later than usual, ensuring that I would be up early enough for plans, and also able to fully relax and just sleep until I woke, knowing there was an alarm set. I didn’t expect to wake to the alarm – it would amount to 10 hours of sleep! lol

Then…night.

…The beeping of the alarm continued for sometime until I realized it was a real, actual, ongoing sound reaching me. I woke slowly, and without stress – or any particularly grogginess – and feeling very restored. (Go sleep!!) My first moments today have been quite delightful. I greeted myself in the mirror this morning with a rather astonishing spontaneous moment of contentment and calm joy. I found myself gazing upon this relaxed, beautiful, curvaceous woman – clearly adult, wearing it well, smiling softly, plump with sensuous curves – an odalisque, a goddess, a warrior, a sage, a woman. Damn. 🙂 A lovely moment of recognition, acknowledgement, and enjoyment – all from within – is an excellent way to begin a day and I strongly recommend it (your experience, and your results, may vary). I stretched, smiled at my reflection, and ran my hands over curves that defied a lifetime of dieting before I finally yielded to the inevitability of being beautifully curvy, and discovered the wonders of beauty’s variety and splendor – beautiful curves don’t stop strong lean athletic angles from being beautiful, too. As with art – there are many sorts of beauty, all quite beautiful to someone.

I am sipping my coffee and enjoying being comfortable for the moment – whether I am actually having a rare pain-free day (or moment) or merely in a position in which my pain is eased is irrelevant right now; I am relaxed and feeling comfortable, and letting it be what it is. Seems worth enjoying for as long as it lasts. Enjoying what feels good is an excellent practice – simple, and of course, there are verbs involved. 🙂

A really first-rate practice I picked up a couple of years ago, and continue with even now, because it just matters that much day-to-day, is taking the time to genuinely enjoy the best moments life offers, however, humble, complicated, or fleeting. The ‘negative bias’ human primates are equipped with tends to color our implicit memory far beyond what we’re aware of – and that colors our entire experience. I don’t need to practice dwelling on some awkward or uncomfortable moment, I don’t have to practice going over a troubling bit of conversation in my mind a hundred times, or practice obsessing over some detail of mistreatment in the course of a lifetime; my primate brain will make sure I do these things without any prompting or practice by me. On the other side of things, so often the best bits are glossed over – they have much less ‘survival improvement potential’ to be gleaned from further review… but… when we rush past the wonders of life, the excitement of a romantic moment, or even a fleeting moment of self-approval reflected in the mirror, we continue to build and enhance only the negative bias in our implicit memory. The practice I learned to practice is to specifically and willfully take the time to savor and reflect on beautiful moments, great emotional experiences, wonders, joys, things of beauty, gratitude – all manner of pleasant, joyful, delightful things honestly. All of them. I take real time out of my day to focus on the good stuff, to relish it, to enjoy the thought and memory of it, to share it out loud as a storyteller – building on the positive in my implicit memory has been a large component of slowly shifting my background ‘ambient experience’ away from one heavily weighted toward stressful vigilance, fear, and frustration, and the avoidance and prevention of those experiences. (As it turns out, they are far easier to prevent when I’m not so focused on them as commonplace, too.) Try it – take a moment for you, and think over something wonderful that happened recently – big or small, doesn’t matter – and really recall it in detail, feel the good feelings, and imagine they are soaking through you as you consider this lovely moment. You probably won’t notice anything much except that it’s nice to think about something pleasant, and emotionally nurturing to appreciate our experience. It’s a practice; incremental change over time is a real outcome. 😉 I will observe that this is one of my most favorite practices, feels great to do, and… well… I am not very like the woman I was 3 years ago, and this practice is one of the more profound (if simple) changes I have made in that time.

Let me be clear for a moment, really frank with you; I’m not promoting any practice I practice, or treatment method, or means of [emotionally] getting ahead in life for my own financial gain. (Not yet, anyway… lol) Most of these practices are not of my own creation. My reading list (see up there at the top, or in the ‘menu’ drop down?) has the source for most of them. In this particular case, several sources recommend savoring pleasant moments in some form or another – I practice it as a practice. You can find it, and many other great practices, more clearly explained and with references cited (yep, there’s science on this stuff), in The Happiness Trap, Tiny Buddha, Hardwiring Happiness, or Get Some Headspace. All fantastic starting points for improving one’s outlook on life or self. I’m not pushing you – I’m just saying, I think you’re [probably] awesome [definitely human!] and I am eager for you to enjoy everything about living your life. (Almost exactly what I said to the woman in the mirror, more than 3 years ago – a lot more than three years, really – it took awhile to get to this morning, and a wonderful moment with the woman in the mirror.)

🙂

My coffee this morning is tasty, well-made by a woman who really cares about me, and whose company and turn-of-mind (and phrase) I genuinely enjoy. The day seems to unfold ahead of me pleasantly, without anxiety, or pressure, well-planned and comfortable; learning not to over-commit myself has been another good way of taking care of me.

Distractions and obstacles take a lot of forms… I’m fortunate when the path is obvious. 🙂

Today is a good day to practice practices that have taken me so far – so far. Today is a good day to smile at strangers – aren’t they people, too? Today is a good day to be patient with myself, and with my companions on this strange projectile hurtling through time and space. Today is a good day to enjoy the journey, and stay on the path. 🙂

Tags a very good day, be love, begin again, Buddha's Brain, get some headspace, Hardwiring Happiness, healing through mindfulness, I am my own cartographer, kindness is a free service, mindfulness for beginners, my home my rules my way, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5 is for you too, the happiness trap, the map is not the world, the primate brain, the value of the golden rule, the woman in the mirror, tiny buddha, walking my own path

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Turning 50, weight loss secrets, winter, women, Words

Investing the Best

Share this:

Quiet Delight

Share this:

Making Fire

Share this:

Saying Good-Bye

Share this:

Sweet of You to Say So

Share this:

Archives