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Archive for the ‘Psycho-Bubbles’ Category

In Search of…

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged on January 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Dysphonia has me today, and yesterday, and maybe tomorrow.

Slightly less interesting to say, “oh, my voice sounds weird because I have laryngitis.”

Like every other loss, whether it is your voice or the pink lucky rabbit’s foot on a keychain you got at the Fair when you were ten, you don’t really feel for it until it is gone.

The human voice is actually pretty amazing, like teeth and fingerprints, it is one of those things that is uniquely you. No one else will ever sound like you because no one else, whether they are related or not, will ever be you – with your nose, spine, vocal organs or bones.

So when your voice is absent from the world, regardless of your vocal ability, it is a pretty big deal. It means the singular expression that is you, the entirety of the grand experience nature invested in you…is missing.

Once lost, voices are notoriously hard to find. No class, no three-day workshop, not even a GPS will help you then. Lives are scattered, lives are lost, along the path to “hell and back,” the “Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey” and “the road less traveled.” All can be considered quests for embodied voice. Success, at any level, is never guaranteed. Funny thing too, once you’ve lost your voice, by the time you do find it again, it always sounds different than it did before, which is usually not a bad thing.

And odder still is where your voice might turn up. Unconfined by vocal cords, voice can show up in a good (or bad) relationship, artwork, a favorite pursuit, your child’s eyes, sometimes even when you are all alone, with just some high clouds and a starry night for company.

Bogs…I mean..blogs, are an excellent place to look for voice, to consider other people’s voices and to find resonance with your own. Now, if I could just find that rabbit’s foot…

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Yes, “Bog, not “Blog”

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on January 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

You might notice the tagline of this page reads “a bog from life’s dusty crossroads.” It is no mistake, but the result of a fortuitous slip of a finger made while describing this space via email to a list of lovely women that I have the pleasure to know.

My first encounter with a bog was when Dixie Rose beckoned to me to see an interesting plant. Forever seeking the most direct route, I accidentally plunged neck-deep into a spongy, stinking mess. I recall rather vociferously proclaiming my displeasure.

Okay, so it may only have been knee-deep. I was four, Dixie, an avid naturalist, birder, photographer and writer, was about 104, with thick glasses and the kind of dusty, stacked library that would cause a bibliophile to swoon. Her husband, Ed, seemed about 110 to me, a tall man whose battle with cancer had left him with an electronic voice box. Ed was straight-out and as gracious as the petals of his last name.

Since then, I have had a predilection for mire. My last encounter spanned almost twenty years, and is currently working itself out in the form of  divorce. If there is muck in my general vicinity, I will most likely, sooner or later, find myself face down in it.

But let’s not be hasty. Bogs can be interesting places. Pretty rugged things live in bogs, things that don’t need a lot of nutrients, things that can live in acidic environments. No chaff here.

Bogs also fix, or hold, about one-quarter of the carbon outputs harbored on land – another one of those “sinks.” So that crummy stuff we don’t want to breathe, that we don’t want in our environment, is happy to find a home in a bog.

And better still, as a wetland, a bog is a process. In the proper inhospitable conditions it takes in the strange, the stinky and the scorched and, over a great deal of time, can eventually produce good stuff – nutrient rich stuff – that feeds the things we grow and makes a pretty nice fire.

Plus, you never know what you might find in a bog. Those acidic, nasty conditions can preserve things quite well. Dating from 3,000 BC, the Ceide Fields in North Mayo, Ireland, were preserved under a peat bog, a Neolithic treasure for modern man. I think bogs preserve a lot of that old stuff, maybe not always Neolithic – maybe just thirty-or-so odd years back – slowly being turned into energy, and worth uncovering from time to time – especially if you happen to find yourself face down in it.

So you see, a bog can be a special place, hence my tagline. Dixie Rose is long gone, Ed passed on before she did. Dixie could stand the muck, she found the most beautiful things in it. I do my best. Here’s to you Dixie.

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