spring adventure

I just had to share these gorgeous blossoms and this equally gorgeous quotation from Rebecca Solnit's Faraway Nearby about her mother:

"After she was gone, I felt more strongly the presence of the dark-haired, yearning, thwarted young woman before I existed and the mother I must have clung to as a tiny child. The middle-aged woman who had so confounded me for decades became just one figure among many, and I missed the ancient, gentle, far-gone person who brought up the rear of the parade."

Love that! And here are some golf clubs someone left by the recycling bins at my Park & Ride. Their humble beauty caught my eye.

documenting adventure

Happy Spring! I'm so glad that it is officially here. And every year I get confused about when the flowers bloom, so I thought this year I would document the progress of the season. Right now the hyacinths by our back steps are just coming up and smelling heavenly and the forsythias are just starting to hit their stride. For some reason I thought they bloomed before the daffodils, but now I'm remembering they come after. In whichever order they arrive, I'm delighted to see them! As well as the blue sky today, when they'd predicted clouds and cold. Along with reading The Red Book for my active imagination class and reading The Faraway Nearby for fun this morning, I'm having a delightful Sunday. I hope you are, too!

meandering adventure

I should have more to report, but I find that even with one class, once I pour my truth into a post for the discussion board, I'm feeling pretty spent. I'm sure to work out the kinks, I mean, at least I'm here and there's a photo and I'll post a couple more below, so you have a trio of daffodil photos. What I can say, because I simply cannot stop talking about her to anyone fool enough to start listening, is that I LOVE Rebecca Solnit! More and more with each page I read it turns out. How can I not love someone who says this:

I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small, and I feel that we’ve lost if we don’t practice and celebrate them now, instead of waiting for some ’60s never-neverland of after-the-revolution. And we’ve lost the revolution if we relinquish our full possibilities and powers.

You can read the whole interview in The Believer, by clicking here. I warn you, I predict it will make you want to read everything she's written...

In the meanwhile, Happy Spring!!

imaginary adventure

Just when I thought winter was behind us, we had a crazy ice storm last night that thankfully mostly went north of us, but still kept me home from work today. As you can see, our bird friends were very grateful for the seed Rodg put out and I will be very grateful for the sun coming out tomorrow. In the meanwhile, here are some things I've been enjoying lately:

My active imagination class! I love my dream life. I tend to have pretty vivid dreams and it feels like there's a whole geography to this other world. I notice that I'll have a series of dreams that feel like they're all taking place sort of in the same area or years later I'll come back to a familiar place that I only know in dreams. One night years ago I was trying to fall asleep and thought if I remembered a dream it might put me in a sleepy frame of mind. Instead I remembered dream after dream after dream and could see how they were connected to different places in my dream world, as if it all spread out before my mind like a huge map of years of dreams. So you would know I'd love a class about dreams and a method Jung developed for working with dreams in a conscious and engaged way - active imagination. In active imagination I can have a dialogue with a dream figure or go back into an interrupted dream to continue the action. We're reading great stuff for this class, such as Robert Johnson's Inner Work and the founder of Pacifica, Stephen Aizenstat's Dream Tending. Yum, yum!!

Rebecca Solnit is still blowing my mind. I finished A Field Guide to Getting Lost and highly recommend it! Now I'm reading River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, which is also amazing and takes me back to my California roots. I feel like this book should be paired with Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man for a complete picture of the Gold Rush! Still, it isn't as personal as A Field Guide and to be honest I will probably put it down as soon as her newest book, The Faraway Nearby, is ready for me at the library. Described as a "personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy," The Faraway Nearby sounds like just my kind of thing!

And it is so much fun! Now that I'm just taking one class at a time I can watch movies again! Hallelujah! I've seen some great stuff streaming on Netflix lately and my top two picks, no, wait, make that three for those of us who love to watch paint dry, are: The Guilt Trip (all-around fun, feel-good movie), Unfinished Song (heartwarming and SAD), and This is Martin Bonner (slow and nothing happens and everything happens). Enjoy!

returning adventure

And I'm back! Again. I'm hoping not to have to be away so long anytime soon. I just had to simplify for a while there. Things have been intense and while I've tried to enjoy it all, some of it has been really hard. The hardest part was that for a while my dear dad was in hospice care, but the good thing is that he seems to be doing a lot better. I am definitely enjoying that news! I finished up my last full-time quarter at school and am very excited to just be able to focus on one class at a time from here on out. And to be able to focus on some other things than just school and work! This week that has included reading Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which is rocking my world with possibilities! I am really discovering through my school projects how much I love writing and the structure of Solnit's essays excites me in the same way books of quilt patterns used to. Now to figure out how to build in time for a writing practice... I know it can be done.

So here's what I've been learning about enjoying so far. Even in the hardest parts of this winter, there have always been things I'm enjoying and it has been good to recognize them. They may be small, but seeing them reminds me that life is a rich mixture of good and bad, happy and sad. And enjoying is really about being open to the whole catastrophe, to quote Jon Kabat-Zinn and Zorba the Greek. There is enjoying in loving someone so fiercely that you don't want them to go and in realizing how your love for them extends way beyond their physical form, that your love for them extends even into everyone around you. In fact, where isn't it?

enjoying adventure

The second half of December was hard. One morning as I was driving to the bus I hit a deer and two days later a lovely young woman I knew was killed while crossing the street near the library. These brushes with mortality really rattled me. I tried to find my footing by seeking some sense of security, but that didn't work. What has helped more than anything has been acknowledging the kindness and connection all around me, which is there even in the simplest moments such as a smile from a stranger or a friendly greeting from a co-worker. So humble, but this has been emotional gold for me. When things are hard everything feels more raw and my inclination was to try to put on more armor, but it is clear that the real power is in the connection that comes out of feeling so deeply. Everything touches me, the good and the bad. And there's a fierce beauty to it all. When I think about how fleeting life is and wonder what I really want to accomplish it all just seems to come down to love and being present. A satisfying life is one where I love my life just as it is and the people around me just as they are and I'm awake to all of it. That feels like riches to me these days.

Along those lines, it is the time of year for choosing a new word. TRUE was my word for 2013 and I feel like I lived it completely. My compass was at my True North all year and I had so much fun! I traveled all over the place and spent meaningful time with so many of my favorite people. I realized I needed to bring formal learning back into my life. I had a ton of adventures. And as usual, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, so to speak, and I'm wanting to pull back a little. That's what I'm hoping for 2014. I'd love to really enjoy my life, to rest and to play and to savor and to be here now. So my word for 2014 is ENJOYING. I like to think that this more active form of the word will help me live it in the present. I'll keep you posted...

Happy new year, dear reader! May all your dreams and wishes come true in 2014.

delinquent adventure

Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you if you'd thought I'd closed up shop. The lights have been out for a while, haven't they? And there was even Thanksgiving break in there - no excuse. This leaf is long gone. We've had ice and snow and we're in the gray days leading up to the solstice. I've been lost in the world of images and collaboration and going to work and coming home and fixing dinner and going to bed. It hasn't been a bad world to be lost in at all, actually. I've gotten back into Joy Harjo - can't stop listening to her Native Joy for Real album. I read her memoir Crazy Brave and it wrecked me. So raw and honest and, let's just admit it, kind of weird in that way that says Kindred Spirit to me. I also got way into the notion of prison hospice, thanks to my dear, amazing sister. If you're looking to explore grace and redemption, here are a couple of videos for you: Opening the Door and Serving Life.

I'm making some changes. I put in a formal request to go to school part-time, which would mean one class per quarter starting in February, which feels right on so many levels. Mostly I want to be able to be more present in the lives of those I love and more present in my own life. I've been studying astrology via tele-class with Debra Silverman - amazing! - and I can see how that Virgo moon takes over and it all becomes about making lists and getting things done and being productive. Very, very seductive. When I get pushed against the wall, which I'm guessing has become something of a self-created cycle for me, this is my response. But when I'm able to get clear on what I'm really here to do, either because I'm pushed so hard that I know I need to find another way, or in those sweet moments of pure relaxation, it isn't about those lists. It's about being present and really appreciating the beautiful life I have, with all of its fierce beauty and highs and lows. It's about enjoying and loving. Really, my friend, what else is there?