Contact Me
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Never Alone
This is not the clearest photo in the world, but it's the clearest photo I could get of this mountain bluebird that wouldn't hold still. Yeah, I'll blame it on him, not my lack of photographic skill...These little guys are colored the bluest of blues. They're sweet little flitty types. I loved their visits while I sat "alone".
I feel more alone when I'm surrounded by people than I do when no one is around. Is that weird? I never got lonely on retreat. In fact, I only came back to my "life" because it was time to come back. I wouldn't have had a ride home if I stayed any longer. Hmmmm.. what would be so bad about that???
Now that I'm here, I am really appreciating that I have so much support for the next few months (both seen and unseen) while I'll be operating one-armed. I sometimes forget how much love there is in this world. Everything is going to be fine.
Labels: bluebird, McCartney, photography, Post-retreat
posted by Carol at 9:27 AM
8 comments
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Complexities
This is some kind of plant that likes to grow in sand in the valley where I sat and watched the coyotes and myself last week.
On my last day of retreat, I was walking along a dirt road when a coyote approached me from the field next to me. When I saw him and he saw me, we both stopped in our tracks. I could see something big and dark in his mouth. I wondered what he would do, since I was right in his path. The beautiful little guy decided to make a right turn and I lost him in the growth of desert life like the plant above. I figured that he might soon come out and climb the hill in front of my cabin because I had seen a coyote go up that hill on another morning. Sure enough, there he went. The creature that was to become breakfast was in his mouth with its little black legs flopping lifelessly in the air. It was no more than a minute later that I watched what I thought were two foxes climb up the same hill and one was also carrying something in its mouth, though that piece of food was smaller than that of the coyote.
A friend told me that she thought that coyotes and foxes don't live in the same territory. I did a search and found that they can live together but they do so as competitors. Maybe the last two animals to go up the hill were just smaller coyotes than the first. I'll never know.
When I did my google search to see if coyote and fox live together, many of the sites that came up had to do with killing and hunting this beautiful nocturnal singer.
Many people hate coyotes because they kill their livestock or their pets. I started thinking about all of the killing that humankind does, and I wondered why it's perfectly acceptable to hate coyotes who kill to eat but it is virtuous to love humankind which kills all kinds of life including its own species for reasons that I don't understand. It seems insane.
But don't listen to me, because yesterday, I started going in and out of dark, stormy weather. The sun was shining outside and my little flower was still smiling, but the weather in my head turned gray. But it has been intermittent. I am fine one moment, and then suddenly, tears and wailing of "I don't want to" come gushing out. I am freaking - at least in some moments - about this surgery. Nintey-four and a half hours from now...
In this moment, I really don't want to...
Labels: coyote, photography, Post-retreat, Pre-surgery
posted by Carol at 8:45 AM
6 comments
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Who's Fussing???
A sign over the door in one of the buildings at the retreat center where I stayed last week.Fussing.
Something to think about.
How many times during the day do we speak or worry about something of which we have no control? Hillary should do such and such. I'm worried that this or that will cause Obama to lose the race. People should be more ________. Along with other assorted, and much bigger, worrisome issues.
If we don't like something, and we can do something about it, then by all means, it is good to do what we can. But we can't control the world, so sometimes I wonder what all the "predictions" and "shoulds" are all about.
Not that I'm totally exempt from these things. Just trying to observe.
I watched myself one evening as we neared the movie theater where we were excited to see a certain film. I was worried (fussing) that we were running late and we wouldn't be able to get a seat. So, instead of just trusting that it would be what it would be, I had to announce that we just might not be there in time. We might have come all that way for nothing.
After my profound announcement, I wondered why I said it. It was as if by saying it, I could somehow prepare everyone for the worst. Then, if we couldn't get seats, things wouldn't be as bad since we weren't surprised - we'd been warned by Carol the All-Knowing. Boy, I was a real big help there! (By the way, we got into the movie - with room to spare. So much for All-Knowing.)
I was raised with the belief that if you cared about someone, you worried about him or her. I can't say that I never worry about loved ones, but mostly I figure that my worrying won't change things with the other person and it will certainly make me miserable. Besides, most of the time, I don't find that I feel any more loved if someone said they were worried about me. In fact, I feel like that person has little confidence in my abilities to take care of myself.
When I remember to lay down my Carol the All-Knowing Cape by being willing to drop my stories about what "might happen", I can either take action or not, but either way, I can do it from a place of peace.
Something to think about.
How many times during the day do we speak or worry about something of which we have no control? Hillary should do such and such. I'm worried that this or that will cause Obama to lose the race. People should be more ________. Along with other assorted, and much bigger, worrisome issues.
If we don't like something, and we can do something about it, then by all means, it is good to do what we can. But we can't control the world, so sometimes I wonder what all the "predictions" and "shoulds" are all about.
Not that I'm totally exempt from these things. Just trying to observe.
I watched myself one evening as we neared the movie theater where we were excited to see a certain film. I was worried (fussing) that we were running late and we wouldn't be able to get a seat. So, instead of just trusting that it would be what it would be, I had to announce that we just might not be there in time. We might have come all that way for nothing.
After my profound announcement, I wondered why I said it. It was as if by saying it, I could somehow prepare everyone for the worst. Then, if we couldn't get seats, things wouldn't be as bad since we weren't surprised - we'd been warned by Carol the All-Knowing. Boy, I was a real big help there! (By the way, we got into the movie - with room to spare. So much for All-Knowing.)
I was raised with the belief that if you cared about someone, you worried about him or her. I can't say that I never worry about loved ones, but mostly I figure that my worrying won't change things with the other person and it will certainly make me miserable. Besides, most of the time, I don't find that I feel any more loved if someone said they were worried about me. In fact, I feel like that person has little confidence in my abilities to take care of myself.
When I remember to lay down my Carol the All-Knowing Cape by being willing to drop my stories about what "might happen", I can either take action or not, but either way, I can do it from a place of peace.
Labels: Fussing, photography, Post-retreat
posted by Carol at 8:03 AM
5 comments
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Giving Myself Away
As snow melted off the roof of my cabin, it kerplunked down onto a bed of ice below."Today our special is a cool drop of water served on a bed of ice."
A quote: "We have to choose between risk and risk. We run the risk of sleeping through life, of never waking up at all or else we wakefully rise to the risk of life, facing the challenge of life, of love."
In this book, Steindl-Rast spoke of how often we use the word "take" as opposed to "give". Take an exam, take a vacation, take a nap. But we really are giving ourselves to these things. We will try to take a nap until we realize that we won't fall asleep until we GIVE ourselves to the nap.
We all know that feeling. The feeling of giving ourselves fully to sleep. Giving ourselves to whatever we are doing. I also know the feeling of doing what I'm doing while holding a big part of myself back. I think I have done that a lot in my life. Not fully committing because I'm scared, because I'm not sure that what I'm doing is what I want to be doing, because I'm embarrassed to admit that this is who I am. It's like I'm trying to skate through life between the risk of sleeping through it and the risk of living. Staying in the "safe" zone (that doesn't really exist). What a joke, though. We're either the snow on the roof or the drop as it freely falls. The drop can't hold on to the shingles and safety. Once you're a drop, you gotta do what drops do.
When I prepared for my first vision quest, I wasn't afraid of being alone in the desert. I was afraid of sleeping with no tent to give me a sense of protection. The thought of sleeping out there where any animal could just come upon me was unnerving.
But when as our group arrived at the desert, one of the quest leaders - a woman - stated: "This is the place where I feel the safest in the world." For some reason, I believed her. I believed that it was safe out there, so having no tent was no longer a problem. And I gave myself to the desert. I did a free-fall into it and reaped the joy of it.
Birds make great sky-circles
Of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling,
They're given wings.
- Rumi
Of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling,
They're given wings.
- Rumi
Labels: Brother David Steindl-Rast, photography, Post-retreat, Rumi
posted by Carol at 11:40 PM
2 comments
In My Element
I am in my element in the desert and I love the mountains. This past week, I lived in sand and sage near 14,000 foot mountains. I thrive in such places. I'm home. I also love being alone a lot. And I was. I think that I can bring that slow-ness, that silence, that one-ness with me wherever I am. It's in my bones and no one can take it away.My arms don't allow me to sleep well which can be a blessing. Because of them, I was awake a lot and I could listen to the coyotes sing their song off and on through the nights.
From my journal:
3/9/08
In the darkness
A lone coyote speaks his language.
So close
He must be right outside the window
Open blinds don't allow
him to be seen.
But darkness creates
no room for shadow
Later
A symphony.
An entire orchestra
tunes up
and music
cuts through the night.
I was sick on a Christmas day when I was young, so my dad and I stayed with one of my grandmothers while my mom and brother visited all the rest of our relatives (We had a lot of family who lived in a small town near us).
My grandmother had a painting of a coyote or wolf on a snow-covered hill that hung above her couch. I stared at the painting for years, but now it has been such a long time that I only remember its essence, no details.
I do remember that I was in and out of sleep on the couch that Christmas day, and at one point, my grandmother told me stories about the coyote/wolf in the painting. I loved my grandmother so much... She died 35 years ago, but she lives inside me always.
Now, after listening to coyote song each night and watching coyote move across the ridge in front of my cabin, now that I am getting nearer to the age that my grandmother would've been when she taught me about coyote/wolf, I realize how much that painting meant to her. Long ago, Grandmother had lived in the hills of Oklahoma and she wrote beautifully of the love she had for that land. She saw friendship in the rough hills that most people would pass by because of the rough, craggy loneliness there.
Either my grandmother taught me to love the land and its creatures through her stories and her being or else her blood runs through my body and I have no choice but to feel it pulsating with familiarity when I am in "my element". Or maybe it's both. It doesn't matter. It is.
Labels: coyote, grandmother, photography, Post-retreat
posted by Carol at 9:01 AM
10 comments
Friday, March 14, 2008
Part of Me is Back
The rest of me appears to be gradually returning.
I would have been fine if, for some reason, I was forced to stay there for a very long time.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
I would have been fine if, for some reason, I was forced to stay there for a very long time.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
Labels: photography, Post-retreat
posted by Carol at 11:00 AM
10 comments