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Archive for the ‘Reflections on the everyday’ Category

In the trees

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday on January 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

On New Year’s Eve my children and I were on late night walkabout.  No snow, a breeze, lit homes and a last show of Christmas lights along roof lines, lamp posts, and in the trees.

Up the street, the pin oaks were whispering louder than usual.  We stopped to note the conversation.  White pines said little and the deciduous trees were downright silent.

Rounding home, our Norway spruce stands over 20 feet now, festooned with lights, pine cones for ornaments.  It caught my attention as my children ran in the house.

Deep, brilliant, dark, with majestic green leader pointing toward a waxing moon half hidden by clouds.  The tree spoke of  shifting years, of mystery and invitation to the unknowable – an eternal, ephemeral moment.  How far can flesh and blood go into that beckoning?  How far can a cellular creature blend and survive?  Never has the question, or the invitation, been more concrete.

I wonder.

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Stop and start

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on January 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Early morning neighborhood drive  last week.  A school bus pulled even going the opposite direction, its lights began to flash, signalling  pick up of precious cargo bound for the elementary.  I stopped.

Throughout that mildly grey day, stop signs at corners, in parking lots.  I stopped for each, and started again.

Within each stop is a start.  And who is to say which is first?  Beginnings get all the press, but endings do most the work.   Even the universe was doing something before the Big Bang.

They say change is constant, I believe it.   Human equations, fluid equilibrium, stop and start.

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Shed my skin

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on January 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

All that is old is new again.  The shedding of skin, the work, exhaustion – the gift – of emergence.  Tis’ the season.  Happy New Year one and all.

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And all good wishes…

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on December 25, 2011| 2 Comments »

On this Christmas a silent wish – carried in these letters you read.  Peace, health, love, happiness – may they sink long into your life, and the lives of those that love you.

Each year is like no other and this one has been exceptional for me – in its challenges, and its discoveries.  Thank you so very much for your presence in this little bog, and in my life.

The winter festivals – light in the darkness – Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas.   Blessings to you and yours.

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In Your Eyes

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday on December 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Made stew yesterday.  Had the strangest feeling I had worked with meat and plants many times – for millennia.  And I have.

Washed a pot today, same feeling,  a thousand years of wash-up, store, reuse.  Not the realm of deja vu, but of Being, once and again.

For all their diversity and unique individual nature, humans are collective creatures.  Experience, pain, action, inaction, curiosity and so much more.  Cellular, physiologic, emotional, and spiritual inheritance.  We flow – through day, lifetime, epoch – despite incessant belief in bodily punctuation.

The fundamentals,  food, shelter  – the needs of you, of me, of those that walked before,  and those that will walk after.  Witness, live, and relive the coarse rich necessity of our species.  Energy passing through skin, bones, blood, inhabiting new lives, seeing with old eyes.  Storied.

I have lived for a thousand years.

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Good Words

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on December 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A good and dear friend forwarded me the following opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities.  I pass them on here, with a comment on their appropriateness for this day, this age – for so many.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period….

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Can I Just Say…

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on December 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Tis the season – eggnog, holiday feasts – the latest toys.  Last year I was taken aback by Video Barbie.  She of platinum blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, and lens disguised as  pendant around her svelte neck.  Only word I could muster was creepy.

But lo, this year my eyes have fallen upon a toy better deserving.  Monster High Dolls.  Check out Frankie Stein, suitably pallid, with scar – and according to the Mattel website, a cool ghoul with killer design details.

As a longtime student of  folklore surrounding the supernatural – phantasms, banshees, and vampires, I understand the lure of Beyond.  Hans Holzer could not have found a more dedicated admirer when I was not yet a teen.  And there is always a literary vampire lurking somewhere – before Stephanie Meyer was Ann Rice, long predated by Bram Stoker… ah, Renfield.

Before and after those – there will always be the friend, parent, or stranger draining away life energy that does not belong to them.  The real undead, the vampires among us.

And now ghoul dolls, sold to young girls to strut and style long black and grey hair.  Video Barbie gave evidence of one disturbing cultural preoccupation, Monster Dolls, yet another.   Outside of folklore, rotting flesh is not a domain of immortality nor of entertainment.  Death is not cool, dead dolls even less so.

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Sign of the times

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on December 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

They gave out small books and stickers instead of candy at Halloween one year.  At Christmas, their outside decorations always brought a smile – they did it up right.

There was no For Sale sign.  Just a rusted red metal bin with the words Cheap Dumpsters parked in their drive two days ago.  Full of yard toys, household things.

Today as I walked by, occupants of three trucks providing Mortgage Field Services carted out a bed frame, a couple of boxes.  Whoever left –  took only what they needed.

There are a number of houses for sale in this neighborhood.  A realtor with a young couple looked over a foreclosure on the corner down the street.  Sale pending across the street from that one – owners maybe got lucky.  Moving on does not mean moving up around here.  Sign of the times.

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All dressed up…

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged on December 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Barbecue grills covered, Christmas decor up and lit around the burg,  road potholes patched pending incumbent weather.  City Works fellas out today pounding wooden stakes to mark road edge for snow plows – and there are no significant winter storms forecast.

Ready and waiting.  Sometimes life is like that.

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Up on the roof

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged on November 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Tis the season.  I had the Christmas lights up on the roof before Halloween this year.  Beat the holiday rush – and inclement weather.

Nice view from the roof.  Birds-eye, tree tops instead of roots, where things are going – results, not beginnings. Repaired a few things.  Laid flat for a spell,  watching clouds.  Private.  Very few passerby look up.

Fear of those heights crippled me on the roof a few years back.   Used the cell phone to call the Neighbor to talk me down.   Thanks again Neighbor.

Now two stories up and on the edge, fear gets no truck with me.  Job needs to get done.  Emotion a luxury in the face of things – like shingles – that need repair.

Thanksgiving saw the lights turned on, pretty nice.  Tis the season.

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