Sunday, January 23, 2011
Info about essays
One of my intents for this blog is to use it as a space to play with one of my passions, the creation of essays. No matter how long I work with an essay, it feels like a "work in progress." This could be from my lack of self-confidence about writing. It could be because each essay is part and parcel of my life, my thoughts, my wanderings and wonderings and the experiences that are my reality. My approach to essay writing reflects my philosophy about life/living. For me, existence is not a closed loop that ever reaches an end, but more of a spiral looping that may pause for a while, then continue in an endless flow of energy.
So, I would love for anyone who reads an essay and feels the urge to respond, to please do so. To write in a vacuum with no outside input is, by definition, limiting, so, any thought, feeling, idea or different way of expressing the concepts will be appreciated. I am particularly interested in feelings that arise as you read the essays. Words are so very powerful. They hold such a variety of meanings, depending on the worldview of the person reading and because of that wonderful ambiguity, I hope to expand my understandings of the world around me by exploring it through your eyes. Namaste.
So, I would love for anyone who reads an essay and feels the urge to respond, to please do so. To write in a vacuum with no outside input is, by definition, limiting, so, any thought, feeling, idea or different way of expressing the concepts will be appreciated. I am particularly interested in feelings that arise as you read the essays. Words are so very powerful. They hold such a variety of meanings, depending on the worldview of the person reading and because of that wonderful ambiguity, I hope to expand my understandings of the world around me by exploring it through your eyes. Namaste.
Snowy day: an essay
The weatherman said it wouldn’t be a significant snow event, just a 30% chance of a light early morning dusting. I hope he doesn’t loose his job.
It is a wet Arkansas snow, the temperature 34 degrees, just cold enough and humid enough for the snow to make it to the ground. It is piling up on fence tops, crawling over the edge of the patio, blanketing the grass, and bending supple young pines into obeisance. A baker’s dozen of small gray, brown, and black birds are bustling, busily snarfing up birdseed scattered on the concrete patio, barely out of reach of the snow. They are moving with the intensity of survival, their small round bodies poofed to roundness to insulate them from the cold.
Suddenly, every one is still. As if flash frozen, heads turned this way and that, not a feather, not a beak moves. Like the children’s game of Swing the Statue, each bird is captured in a pause frame of non-movement. I am captured by their pause and immediately aware of my own breath. I too, freeze my physical movements, but my mind is on full alert and busy with questions.
“A predator?”
“No, they’d fly.”
“Dead? Somehow poisoned?”
“No, they would fall over.”
“A moment of hibernation to conserve their small ball of feathered energy?”
“I don’t know.”
Why? Why is every one of them absolutely still? We are in suspended animation, the birds and I, suspended in a momentary flow of non-movement, a moment of being, doing, being for what seems like a very long time in bird time- a minute or so in human time.
A sparrow on the small white table finally moves and, with a very slow, deliberate peck, picks up a seed. She seems to be in a trance.
Stillness again.
No one else moves. The bird world is stalled, standing completely still.
After a few more moments, one on the concrete bobs its head, but slowly, as if the action feels foreign, new and unusual or maybe it is returning from an altered state of bird consciousness. Could they be awakening from a collective dream of sunny and warm breezes and abundant food? Or maybe they are participating in a collective dream so fearful it paralyzes the whole gathering?
Stillness again.
One by one, the birds begin to move, a head turned, a tentative step sideways. Slowly, an unseen force seems to seep through the group and, as its momentum increases, each bird is eventually affected. Within a few seconds of gaining group movement, they all lift away from the patio in one swoop and I am left with only the questions.
It is a wet Arkansas snow, the temperature 34 degrees, just cold enough and humid enough for the snow to make it to the ground. It is piling up on fence tops, crawling over the edge of the patio, blanketing the grass, and bending supple young pines into obeisance. A baker’s dozen of small gray, brown, and black birds are bustling, busily snarfing up birdseed scattered on the concrete patio, barely out of reach of the snow. They are moving with the intensity of survival, their small round bodies poofed to roundness to insulate them from the cold.
Suddenly, every one is still. As if flash frozen, heads turned this way and that, not a feather, not a beak moves. Like the children’s game of Swing the Statue, each bird is captured in a pause frame of non-movement. I am captured by their pause and immediately aware of my own breath. I too, freeze my physical movements, but my mind is on full alert and busy with questions.
“A predator?”
“No, they’d fly.”
“Dead? Somehow poisoned?”
“No, they would fall over.”
“A moment of hibernation to conserve their small ball of feathered energy?”
“I don’t know.”
Why? Why is every one of them absolutely still? We are in suspended animation, the birds and I, suspended in a momentary flow of non-movement, a moment of being, doing, being for what seems like a very long time in bird time- a minute or so in human time.
A sparrow on the small white table finally moves and, with a very slow, deliberate peck, picks up a seed. She seems to be in a trance.
Stillness again.
No one else moves. The bird world is stalled, standing completely still.
After a few more moments, one on the concrete bobs its head, but slowly, as if the action feels foreign, new and unusual or maybe it is returning from an altered state of bird consciousness. Could they be awakening from a collective dream of sunny and warm breezes and abundant food? Or maybe they are participating in a collective dream so fearful it paralyzes the whole gathering?
Stillness again.
One by one, the birds begin to move, a head turned, a tentative step sideways. Slowly, an unseen force seems to seep through the group and, as its momentum increases, each bird is eventually affected. Within a few seconds of gaining group movement, they all lift away from the patio in one swoop and I am left with only the questions.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The only thing constant is change
As life so often does, duties and responsibilities change. My mom-in-law is experiencing some challenges that are influencing the way we who love her are spending our time. She has fallen a number of times in the last few months and is having memory/cognitive challenges too. It seems that the dementia contributes to the falls and the falls, in turn, affect the dementia. So, from my journal:
January 18, 2011 Tuesday Mildred’s (Night five)
She is sure she can dress herself, except when she tries, she can’t. I suppose if there were no one to help, she would eventually get something on her body. She tries to walk with a coffee cup and it slops and drips across the floor as she totters and sways to a chair, reaches to set the cup down and it wobbles, coffee sloshing against and up the sides of the cup, sometimes managing to crawl out. She begins a turn to sit down and doesn’t quite rotate enough to align her bottom with the bottom of the chair, drops heavily onto a corner and tries to right herself by pulling on the walker, if she happens to have it close.
I can do this. The assorted feelings that arise are surprising me. I feel as if I am wasting my time, yet, I felt somewhat at loose ends before she became such a time consuming part of my life. For several weeks I came twice a day, mid-morning to help her dress and have breakfast and late afternoon to help with supper. In between I went on with the things I love to do, yet they were just different versions of what I am doing now. I slept until about 8 because many nights Mark works late and I don’t want to be up earlier and awaken him. Coffee and a book or the computer until he stirs or until midmorning; by then I am dressed and head out to the post office and other business errands.
Here I am up about 8, make coffee and stay quiet until I hear her walker move, then hover until she makes it to the bathroom and back to bed or to the lift chair in the den. Once she is settled in the chair, I take her a cup of coffee that is so weak the bottom of the cup shows. She drinks the coffee colored water and sleeps for a couple hours before she is ready to make the trip back down the hall to the bathroom and to her bedroom to dress. This is not a quick trip. It takes a while to accomplish. Then she baby steps back to her chair for her preferred breakfast, a cookie or a piece of deli cake. Some mornings she feels like coming to the table for breakfast, mostly she stays in her chair and I serve breakfast on the lap tray Gaye brought down. Yesterday, breakfast was bacon, apple sauce, and a deli cookie. She told me last night, after she’d eaten half a bologna sandwich, egg custard pie, lemon cake and a coke that she was eating a lot because “everyone told her to eat a lot so she could regain her strength.” I offered veggies and or fruit, but she didn’t want any of “that.” After she ate, she was miserable because of reflux. If you make it to 85, I suppose you should eat what you want no matter how Innutritious it is or isn’t.
January 18, 2011 Tuesday Mildred’s (Night five)
She is sure she can dress herself, except when she tries, she can’t. I suppose if there were no one to help, she would eventually get something on her body. She tries to walk with a coffee cup and it slops and drips across the floor as she totters and sways to a chair, reaches to set the cup down and it wobbles, coffee sloshing against and up the sides of the cup, sometimes managing to crawl out. She begins a turn to sit down and doesn’t quite rotate enough to align her bottom with the bottom of the chair, drops heavily onto a corner and tries to right herself by pulling on the walker, if she happens to have it close.
I can do this. The assorted feelings that arise are surprising me. I feel as if I am wasting my time, yet, I felt somewhat at loose ends before she became such a time consuming part of my life. For several weeks I came twice a day, mid-morning to help her dress and have breakfast and late afternoon to help with supper. In between I went on with the things I love to do, yet they were just different versions of what I am doing now. I slept until about 8 because many nights Mark works late and I don’t want to be up earlier and awaken him. Coffee and a book or the computer until he stirs or until midmorning; by then I am dressed and head out to the post office and other business errands.
Here I am up about 8, make coffee and stay quiet until I hear her walker move, then hover until she makes it to the bathroom and back to bed or to the lift chair in the den. Once she is settled in the chair, I take her a cup of coffee that is so weak the bottom of the cup shows. She drinks the coffee colored water and sleeps for a couple hours before she is ready to make the trip back down the hall to the bathroom and to her bedroom to dress. This is not a quick trip. It takes a while to accomplish. Then she baby steps back to her chair for her preferred breakfast, a cookie or a piece of deli cake. Some mornings she feels like coming to the table for breakfast, mostly she stays in her chair and I serve breakfast on the lap tray Gaye brought down. Yesterday, breakfast was bacon, apple sauce, and a deli cookie. She told me last night, after she’d eaten half a bologna sandwich, egg custard pie, lemon cake and a coke that she was eating a lot because “everyone told her to eat a lot so she could regain her strength.” I offered veggies and or fruit, but she didn’t want any of “that.” After she ate, she was miserable because of reflux. If you make it to 85, I suppose you should eat what you want no matter how Innutritious it is or isn’t.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Try again
Steel grey light wraps the trees and stretches across the lake to the low hills dimmed by twilight and outlined by a band of snow along the shoreline. A few small birds are cleaning up the last seeds I scattered early this morning and one of the resident squirrels is examining the ground to see if there is at least one more sunflower seed. Cold is the guiding word for the day. The thermometer didn’t make it past 32F and will go even lower later this evening, so what is left of the snow will linger a while.
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