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Beginnings and Ends

November 28, 2016 //
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My coffee is still too hot to drink. The alarm clock seemed very loud when it woke me. I feel a bit as if I am moving especially slowly this morning; the clock corrects my very subjective perception of time. It’s a Monday after a long weekend. As if on cue, my brain launches a salvo of small anxiety-provoking attacks about this or that detail at work; I quash them with a minute or two of mindfulness, breathing deeply, present in this moment here. Work can at least wait until I actually get to the office! 🙂

Summer is definitely over. Autumn nearly over, too. Thanksgiving is done. The holiday season – my idea of holiday season, I mean – has begun. It is a beginning I wait for, plan for, and cherish each year. I have my own traditions, built on my values, refined over an adult lifetime, added to by one partnership, then another, over the years. The specifics are less meaningful or shareworthy, I think, than that I do have my own, chosen with care, selected from the celebratory traditions of my childhood, and then made my own, quite willfully. I like the way I do the holidays. It is rare for me to be overcome by ennui or despair during (or over, or about) the holidays, and I’ve tended to attribute that to doing them my own way… though, I don’t have any cite-able proof of that; it is my subject experience, only. For me, that’s enough, at least on the topic of holidays. 🙂

As days go, today doesn’t stand out in any obvious way. The beginning of a new work week. The beginning of the holiday season. I like beginnings, although they usually follow endings, which I often tend to think I dislike (compared to beginnings), but again, I have no clear evidence of that impression, and find myself wondering if the words truly reflect my thinking, or only some moment in my thinking that will quickly dissipate when my attention turns to other things? Change is. Whether an ending, a beginning, or some transitional point on a spectrum between those moments, change is part of the scenery on life’s journey.

I think of my Traveling Partner and smile. We have different approaches to living life in the moment; I prefer to plan, and to maintain a high level of readiness for many likely outcomes, and to cultivate a benevolent tolerance of circumstances that fall outside my planning, with frequent “rest breaks” from the hectic pace of life when I can retreat to a quiet corner of the world to take it all in, before returning to the busy-ness of life’s default settings. He has the boldness required to freely take life utterly as it comes, seemingly fearlessly and without anxiety; embracing change with a spontaneity that awes me, and often leaves me feeling unsettled.  We handle our emotional lives quite differently, too, both very human, both capable of great depths of emotion, both embracing intimacy and connection, and yet such different people day-to-day, in spite of shared values, shared experiences, and sharing (to this day) our journey in life over years. He finds too much planning constricting, and expresses feeling pressured. I find too little planning chaotic, and feel… pressured. lol We are more similar than we are different. This is likely true of each and all of us; more similar than different. Any human being’s most basic needs are likely to be pretty much the same from one person to the next. So many arguments between human beings are about meeting the same basic need in different ways, informed by prejudices, filtered through individual experience, limited by individual perspective, and individual understandings of definitions of terms. We’re still more similar than we are different – right down to not listening very well when another one of what we are is talking to us about their own experience. 😉

Taking time for simple pleasures matters, too.

Taking time for simple pleasures matters.

My coffee is not so hot now. I drink it down and consider a second one… there is time for that. I look across the table, the holiday tablecloth, placemats, and centerpiece are happy reminders of the weekend spent immersed in a wonderland of holiday memories, colorful trinkets, and tiny lights. The entire room is transformed. The tree stands in the far corner, and canisters of freshly baked cookies beyond that, on the bookshelf in that corner. Everywhere some Yule detail catches my eye. I smile. The soft glow of the room feels like it sources from within me. Sure, I’ll have a second coffee. Today is a good day to take time to enjoy simple pleasures. I’ll go do that. 🙂

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

More Today Than Yesterday

November 27, 2016 //
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I woke too early this morning, and by “too early” I mean that I definitely wanted to sleep later, certainly had the time for sleeping later, and just could not convince my brain that sleeping later was the thing to do this morning. I finally got up at 5 am, after tossing and turning, meditating, fussing, and daydreaming for about two hours. I feel well-rested, I just didn’t “feel like” getting up so early. I’m definitely awake, though.

Yesterday was spent quietly; easily achieved without having the temptation of television lurking nearby all the time. I don’t miss the TV. I’m getting by, computer-wise, on my work laptop, although it is not truly a substitute. I can at least write, much more easily than if I had to use my phone each morning. I’m content with things as they are. I have what I need, and that’s enough.

Yule is on my mind this weekend, as I set up the holiday tree, and decorate the house for the holiday season. Each year when I open the box of ornaments, it is as if I am holding precious memories in my hands. I decorate the tree, and remember things. Each ornament is a story, from a place and time before now. Each year I add one or two more ornaments, significant in some way, and they add to this strange memory box that only gets opened once a year – but always does get opened, yearly. Each year I consider who I am in the context of a lifetime. Each year I emotionally gorge on an intense assortment of recollections, until, by New Year’s Day, it is both timely and necessary that it all be put away for another year. Each year I hold in my hands small fragile reminders of good times and bad, of past versions of the woman in the mirror, of old pain, old sorrow, old joy, and old delight.

When I was much younger, the ornaments were selected with less care, more randomly, more about “ooh, shiny!” sorts of moments and impulses, and much less about what story they could tell, later. In recent years, new ornaments have been selected with great care, and the ornaments themselves become part of the story of who I am, told (mostly) in glass… and glitter, sequins, ceramic, paper, and twinkly lights. There is a gap in these memories (my own memories as well, it’s just placed differently in time); when my first marriage ended, I took only my “personal effects”, and my artwork, leaving everything else behind – including 13 years of Yule celebrations, 6 of those in Germany (the lovely ornaments purchased at the Augsburg Christkindlesmarkt we visited each year – all gone).  In their place, the worn cardboard box of small glass ornaments, 18 balls in assorted colors, that were the first ornaments I bought (at the local discount store next to the apartment complex I moved into) to begin rebuilding Yule after my marriage ended (they’re now more than 20 years old). I had visited my Granny that year over the holidays. In a wily Machiavellian act of master manipulation, she engineered a reconciliation between my parents and I, ending an estrangement that had lasted longer than my first marriage had, itself. I returned home with ornaments from childhood, a gift from my mother. She later sent me others. They remind me of childhood Yule celebrations, and more subtle things.

I’ll finish the weekend by finishing the decorating, savoring the moments revealed one by one as I hang the ornaments on the tree. Finally getting to the ornaments I made in that last holiday before I chose to live alone; it was a peculiarly awkward, sometimes rather grim holiday, that year. I celebrated mostly alone, in a shared household. The ornaments I made are lasting reminders that love can’t be forced or negotiated with, and once lost it is gone. They also remind me how much of my experience is chosen, and that even in the difficult moments in life, happy memories can be made, cherished, savored – and can become the lasting recollection of a trying time in life. I’m still working on that; there are verbs involved. 🙂

I sip my coffee and look across the dining table, still covered with ornament boxes of a variety of sizes. I’m only half-finished. It’s a time-consuming process for me to set up the tree alone; I pause for memories rather a lot. Some years I cry rivers of tears, too. This year hasn’t been that way; I celebrate with a quiet joy, and reflect more on what is, than on what isn’t. It’s not a process I rush. I have time – all weekend. Hell, I have a lifetime to unpack what memories I have, to cherish them, to savor them, to return them to their tidy boxes when the moment is done. Time enough to ask myself “why is this one significant?”, and “still?”, and “even now?”, and remind myself it is okay to set down some baggage this year (every year) and go forward a bit more the woman I most want to be.

The story of life's climate, and the emotional weather are told in so many ways; memories, however real they seem, are not moments. :-)

Memories and moments, today will be filled with both. 🙂

Today is a good day for a cup of coffee and a handful of memories. I smile and think of my Traveling Partner, and the memories we have made together, and this strange wonderful somewhat unconventional choice to be both quite partnered and quite solitary. I sip my coffee contentedly. Isn’t contentment enough? Ah, but what about changing the world? Let’s not forget to do that, too. 🙂 I get up to make a second coffee… as with most things, including changing the world, there are verbs involved. 😉

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Building on a Good Beginning

November 26, 2016 //
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Thanksgiving is over, and the holiday season has begun. Black Friday is a memory.

Thanksgiving was simple, quiet, intimate and amazing – unscripted, and as it turned out, entirely unplanned. We’d made dinner reservations to go out. It seemed the better choice at the time we made our plans; I have a very small kitchen, and although more than a year has now passed since I moved into my own place, my kitchen efficiency is still somewhat limited by the loss of some favored gadgets and appliances that I have not yet replaced… like my Kitchen Aid mixer, which I miss greatly.

I’d had my mixer for decades; it was a wedding gift left from my first marriage. It had become redundant when I moved in to the big house “with everyone”, and the newer mixer on hand won out. Mine became someone else’s cherished favored kitchen appliance (I no longer remember who). It was a painful moment to move out with the hurt and anger of the break-up flavored by the poignant loss of an appliance I’d never have given up except – love. It’s strange to me that the intense feelings over the break up have diminished, but the irritation over allowing myself to be so short-sighted as to be persuaded to give up my mixer, when there was ample room to store it more or less forever, somehow persists, particularly as this kitchen, now, is so small that there is neither space to store it, nor space to use it. lol Silly primates, emotions lack substance. Better to let such lingering ire just go; it serves no purpose now save to remind me that I do want to replace that mixer – which, I am well aware of, without the emotional reinforcement.

My Traveling Partner and I planned to be spending the afternoon and evening together. At some early point in the day, we agreed neither of us was particularly enthusiastic about our dinner plans, although the restaurant is one we both enjoy. I canceled the reservations. Hell, frozen waffles and powdered hot cocoa shared with my traveling partner in a tent in the dead of winter, wrapped in love and enjoying each other’s good company would still be a Thanksgiving to cherish; it isn’t about the venue or the menu. I looked over the pantry, committed to using what I had on hand. The drenching rain that had fallen all night, and continued through the morning was ample discouragement from any grocery shopping, and most places were closed. Could I pull off an unplanned Thanksgiving dinner for two? Neither of us had any specific expectations beyond sharing the time together and enjoying each other. I would do  my best. My best would be enough.

It was a simple meal. Chicken breasts baked in foil, seasoned with sage, onions, and chives from my container garden. Steamed baby Nero di Toscana kale, and savory baked heirloom carrots, from my autumn vegetable garden. Canned corn and box stuffing; durable staples always on hand from my pantry. I even had a solitary can of cranberry sauce left from… whenever. It was a lovely meal. We had a great evening. Around the time that our friends next door returned home from dinners with family, we were also settling in to relax and we all gathered together over music and friendly conversation. It was appropriately festive and joyful. It never needed to be elaborate.

I slept in Friday morning, and woke to my Traveling Partner awake ahead of me, working on his set list for a gig later in the day. We had coffee together. A bite of lunch a little later. When the time came he packed up his gear and I played roadie helping load it into the car. Then he was gone and quiet filled my solitary space, along with happy daydreams of love, and good intentions about housekeeping that never quite came to fruition. 🙂

I did my traditional Black Friday thing, which is to say, I stayed home and did not participate in the retail frenzy that exploits so many workers on a day of the year when they might like to be at home with their loved ones. (Go ahead and take a moment to reflect on how few potential four-day weekends exist for most “entry level”, retail, restaurant, or service industry employees, and then reflect on how much you have valued and needed that precious limited down time in your own life…I’ll wait.Do you suppose you really needed that discount on a crock pot more?) I’m okay with paying a reasonable price for goods and services, and I’m more than okay with doing my part to refraining from adding to the literal Black Friday body count that seems unique to American greed.  It is my tradition to spend Thanksgiving weekend setting up the holiday tree, lights, baking holiday treats… it is a long weekend, suitable for all those things. I didn’t do any of that yesterday, I just relaxed in the happy glow of being well-loved, reading, meditating, daydreaming about the future, and just generally enjoying myself quietly and in a state of great contentment. It was lovely. It was enough.

Misty mornings seem to offer the potential to remake the world, differently.

Misty mornings seem to offer the potential to remake the world, differently.

This morning I woke from a night of peculiarly interrupted sleep, and feeling rested, in spite of that. I gazed out over the misty meadow, considering where to the put holiday tree, sipping my coffee, watching the Canada geese stepping through the meadow, feasting on whatever it is they pull up from the mud along their way. My squirrel visitor returned, too, and enjoyed breakfast while I had my coffee. The Northern Flicker who comes by regularly joined us, taking a few moments to enjoy the seed bell and the suet feeder before departing. A flock of red-wing blackbirds took his place. There is nothing spectacular about this gentle morning, nothing to exclaim about, nothing I am inclined to change. I am content. As it turns out, contentment is quite every bit of “enough”, and far more easily reached than “happily ever after”.  I smile, and sip my coffee; it has grown cold in the morning chill of the room. I pause my writing to consider lighting a fire… later, perhaps. A lovely long walk on a misty morning, first, sounds like just the ideal thing to precede a hot shower, a mug of cocoa, and a crackling fire in the fireplace. 🙂

As with most things, even "enough" is a matter of perspective.

As with most things, even “enough” is a matter of perspective…

...What is "within reach" depends, too, on our perceptions, and our tools...

…what is “within reach” depends, too, on our perceptions, and our tools…

...We are each having our own experience.

…We are each having our own experience.

I’m still sitting around in comfy clothes, sipping my now-cold coffee, smiling out over the meadow whenever I glance out at the world. This feels good. I feel safe. Content. Loved. I have enough to get by on – and not that “oh fuck what now, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, we’ll all get through this, just breathe” level of “enough” that requires real commitment to staying present in this moment. (We all have those moments, eventually, it’s part of the human experience.) This morning it is the “oh hey, nothing to fear, nothing to want for, it’s all good my friends, can I pour you a coffee?” level of enough, and those times can feel so delicate, so precious and rare… I think because it has taken me so long to understand that they must be enjoyed with the same deep commitment to savoring them, lingering in that headspace, and revisiting the recollection again and again, as one might do for some grave challenge or anxiety-provoking moment, otherwise they seems to slip away. So, this morning, I’m here, enjoying now, enjoying me, and even enjoying my cold coffee in this chilly room, before I do something different – just to be sure I don’t forget how awesome this moment here also is. 🙂 Today, this is enough.

Merry Everything, everyone, and Happy All-of-whatever-the-fuck-this-is-right-here! May your day be merry and bright; it’s not holiday-dependent. Enjoy this moment, too. 😉

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Morning Comes Gently

November 20, 2016 //
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It’s relatively new for me to bounce back from trauma “so easily”. “Easy” isn’t a fair descriptor, really; I’ve worked hard to get here, practiced a lot of practices, and taken careful thought-out researched steps supported by the latest cognitive science and neuroscience on the topic of implicit memory, PTSD, cognition, learned helplessness, and behavior. I read a lot. Still… it feels so much easier. Considering how much of our experience is entirely and completely subjective (to the point of being largely made-up shit we’ve crafted internally), this is good enough to be “real”. In this instance, enough is quite literally enough; building lasting contentment through awareness and acceptance of sufficiency has become a remarkable way to maintain a state of relative joy and happiness much of the time. I bounce back. I am resilient.

What is “real”, though? Good question. Let’s not do that, today. 😀

This morning I woke, and still stumbling around groggily and sort of careening around the place lacking any obvious coordination, I found myself unexpectedly cleaning the faint smudge of soot from the tile around the fireplace. What the hell, though? I wasn’t even awake yet. lol I purposefully set that aside (admittedly, once it was finished), and made coffee. I stepped onto the patio, inhaling the fresh morning air, and gazing out across the meadow into the autumn treetops beyond. No hint of fear or anxiety. Nice. I refreshed the dish I’ve been using as a squirrel feeder, after emptying it of the rainwater it had collected. I sat down with my coffee, just inside the open patio door, letting the fresh air fill the apartment, and breathing deeply the scents of autumn. It’ll be a nice day for a fire in the fireplace, later perhaps.

I was hoping I’d see birds at the feeder, and have a visiting squirrel stop by. The patio was empty. I sipped my coffee contentedly, and picked up my phone and began to shop computer parts, thinking perhaps instead of replacing my laptop, I’d build a new desktop computer; I rarely actually take my laptop anywhere, or even move it off my desk. I like it where it is, docked, ready, and reliably always right there where I expect it to be. I am probably not the person for whom laptops were invented. 🙂 After some minutes of exploring the options in cases, hard drives, motherboards, power supplies, CPUs, cooling fans, and whatnot, I looked up and noticed that quite a few meadow birds had arrived for brunch, and a squirrel visitor had also stopped by.

Sunday brunch

Sunday brunch, no reservations

I switched my phone from shopping device to camera, and enjoyed getting a couple pictures of my visitors, before setting it aside and just chilling, sipping my coffee, and watching the busy brunch unfold on the patio. It’s a popular spot; the birds come and go, competing for their moment to grab some fast food. The smaller birds wait in the nearby pine for their turn, rather than compete with the flicker who is clearly much larger than the size of the suet feeder is intended to support. She playfully spins it around again and again, which drives away some of the red wing blackbirds who don’t hesitate to take a space quite near her. The chickadees and tiny sparrows prefer to pick at what falls into the nearby flower pots, patiently.

She's a regular

She’s a regular

The squirrel who has been coming around has a couple characteristic scars from surviving life in a busy apartment community full of cats, and is a recognizable regular visitor. Her ears are tiny, crumpled, and folded against her head – I don’t know if she is a different sort of squirrel, or if this is an individual characteristic. She watches me as I watch her, and no longer darts away for safety if I approach the screen door. Some mornings, I sit quite close on my meditation cushion, and sip my coffee while she nibbles at the corn and peanuts I’ve left out for her. If I say something aloud, she gives it some thought, listening to me, cocking her head and watching me more closely as she eats. Shared curiosity. One morning recently, before I left for work, and while I was airing out the apartment for the day, I’d forgotten to check the dish on the patio; it was empty. She came to the screen door that morning and got my attention with a loud squeak or call of some sort, and ran away. I looked out and noticed the empty dish, and refilled it before locking up and leaving for the day. I returned to an empty dish that evening. We have communicated successfully. This delights me.

We are each living thinking creatures, each having our own experience.

We are each living thinking creatures, each having our own experience.

The rainy chilly morning continues. I close the patio door, and sit down at my very borrowed feeling work laptop to write. It’s quite an ordinary Sunday. I’ll do some laundry. I’ll get some housekeeping done. I’ll read, write, practice with my guitar, meditate, take a decently long walk (probably after the laundry is done). I have my own way with these things. This is my life. This apartment mostly doesn’t feel comfortably “like home” anymore, and even that is okay; it tends to keep me focused on a future place, a future home. For now, I enjoy what is, more than I grieve what isn’t, and take time to relax and enjoy each moment on its own merits. Good enough.

Enough. Yeah… enough is a good place to be, and it doesn’t generally require as much emotional heavy lifting as chasing more, better, and happily ever after. There’s less frustrated yearning in “enough”. There’s less disappointment, by far. Getting to “enough” wasn’t achievable until I learned to let go of my attachment to what I thought I “should” have, or be, or get, or achieve… That persistent need to be “right”, that had to go, too. The sense that someone else’s “more” had anything at all to do with my perceived “less”, yep, right into the waste bin with that as well.  It’s been a complicated challenge learning to truly take life at my own pace, to really walk my own path without comparing my journey to life’s other travelers,  and to stop behaving as though my own experience is in conflict or competition with the experiences of others.

I sip my coffee and smile. It’s quite an ordinary Sunday. I’m quite an ordinary woman of middle-aged years and generally quiet living. None of this is sleight of hand, or illusion. Whether I’ve had less, or had more, I’ve generally had “enough” – the choice to be aware of it has been mine all along. How I treat myself in the face of trauma or change, that’s been mine, too. It isn’t always as obvious as it seems this morning, on a quiet Sunday, sharing the moment with meadow birds, and a squirrel. I’m grateful for the moment of awareness. I’m appreciative of feeling content on an ordinary Sunday.

Today is a good day to enjoy what is. Today is a good day to embrace sufficiency. Today is a good day to find joy in contentment, and appreciate having enough.

 

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Later Sort of Morning

November 19, 2016 //
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I’m sipping my second coffee. The first disappeared quickly as I sifted through invoices, receipts, and purchase records looking for all the details the insurance company needs. It is a subtly de-humanizing process, this requirement to prove that I life the life I do, have the things I have accumulated over a life-time. It is very telling of the sort of creatures we human beings are that it is a necessary thing to require such detailed documentation; we’ll lie for money. I’m not pointing fingers, and it’s not “about me”, so I am not taking it personally…but, damn, what ugly caricatures of our own potential for greatness we tend to be. I’m not angry… more disappointed.

It is a quiet morning. I slept well and deeply, going to bed far later than usual and waking very much at a ‘sleeping in’ time of morning. That’s often what it takes for me to get enough rest. I don’t stop to wonder why. I take time to enjoy feeling rested.  I still don’t feel “safe” here, and I catch myself repeating the narrative as though it was the break-in that created that change in how this space feels, in some abrupt distinct very defined way – was it really? Not if I’m being entirely frank with myself; the process of letting go my attachment to this place, to ease the process of moving on, is certainly a more likely beginning – but those tentative first steps in the letting go direction surely made me far more vulnerable to that moment when my sense of safety was undermined so dramatically. Was I ever as safe as I felt? No more so than I am as unsafe as I feel now. Perspective. Still a thing.

When I exist engaged in this moment, here, now, present, awake, aware, there is little clear sense of “more than”, “less than”, or a need to set a threshold and maintain or monitor the outcome. It feels good to be. Content in the moment, because this moment is safe… or feels so. I suppose if I lived under siege, and had to dash to a remaining grocer through a hail of sniper fire, or gaze warily into the sky for unseen drones, or wait, breathless with terror, between bombings, or sleep lightly for fear of the knock on the door, no one moment would be any safer than another, either. Perspective.

I’ve survived some things in life. It has cost me dearly more than once to be able to stand here, in a quiet space, and say so. The price was worth paying. I’m here, in this quiet moment. It is enough. A moment of terror, a moment of trauma, a moment of abuse; we all survive some terrible moments, and our own pain is pretty nearly always the worst we can imagine. Without perspective, we might wander about continuing to allow ourselves to think that is the true truth of it. It is not; right now, somewhere, someone else isn’t sure they will get out alive, while I have a very different moment. I breathe. Sip my coffee. I find room to really savor how good this moment is.

Today is a good day to be mindful how little it takes to be okay right now, safe in this one moment. Today is a good day to embrace sufficiency, and to treat myself well and with great kindness. Today is a good day to remember we are each having our own experience – and some of those suck for some of us, maybe even right now. Today is a good day to listen, to care, and to make amends for the wrongs we’ve done – not because any one of us is more deserving than any other, but because we choose to be better than the human being we were, yesterday.

It’s time to walk on. 🙂

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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