Bonfire within...

Generating one's own fire is another delicate balance. In my twenties, people often told me to be careful, that I was "burning the candle at both ends." Now I'm finally learning to how to control my fire, but it isn't easy.

I have so many things I want to do, places I want to go, and experiences I've yet to imagine. I also have my daily routine life into which I set the future goals for travel, experiences, time to explore/play/race/examine/write. My life has never been about stuff. I'm completely in the camp of experiences over stuff. Except when it come to the accouterments of being able to do stuff: boats, bikes, cars, tents, sporting goods and such. Rather diving fins than diamond rings kinda gal.

I've experienced life bartering, running my own business, being a gopher, working retail, serving food, sorting fish, building boats & furniture, salvage diving, crewing boats, stocking and remaindering bookshelves, editing manuscripts, writing proposals, creating pitch letters, recommendation letters, grant proposals, newspaper articles, book reviews, course proposals, book contracts, intellectual property contracts, author/agent agreements, painted the interior and exterior of houses/apartment buildings, custom-made leather sandals from scratch, led underwater snorkeling tours in the tropics, worked as a Naturalist for Audubon both on a farm and in schools teaching kids, taught at Writer's Conference (too numerous to name), taught at Masters levels at Universities, received a MAT and BA in English, an Advanced Open Water Diving License, Teacher Mentor certificate, RETELL certificate, and sold advertising for my father's beer business. And those are just the jobs/titles I can remember.

It is the fire, tempered by love of water ~ floating, swimming, meditiating ~ that has never allowed me to become too dark. I've lost many bright friends to suicide. Stellar, straight A student's; top drawer artists; a jet-set vet; medical brainiacs; and more. Only they didn't hear the music in the fire or the cool calm waves of the water. They were so bright they didn't ask for help, nor tamp out one of the ends of the candle. I've been lucky to be surrounded by mentors who have appeared at just the right moment. And a family that welcomes me unconditionally. Many of the bright ones I've lost didn't have those opportunities or felt that they didn't.

Now I'm wanting to find the balance to develop a steady, self contained flame that will allow me to be seen by others, not singe myself and sustain me well into old age. A creative flame that will be constructive and not destructive. The balancing act of being a single mom and full-time teacher make adding the third log of writer to the bonfire a tad tricky. But I think I'm finally getting long enough in the tooth and skilled enough with the way wind, water and flames work to make  a go of it.

Good Night, Upward and Onward, G'night!

balancing illness

Late yesterday I succumbed to a stomach bug, which resulted in me spending most of my day reading, sipping or sleeping in bed. I hate staying home from work. I don't ever fully relax; I keep thinking of all the things on my to-do list that aren't done ~ at home *and* at work ~ which means it takes me half the morning just to allow myself the indulgence of staying home to get better and feeling I deserve it.

I make lousy decisions when I'm sick or run down. I think we all do. I tend to feel like I'll never be well again, even if it's just a hit-n-run stomach bug. It takes all the wind out of my carefully scheduled sails, and I feel the time slipping into the wake of my weary day with fear that it won't be recaptured or recovered.

I've always been like this. I'm not sure where it all began. When I was young I sometimes pretended to be sick for the opposite reasons. Life was overwhelming and depressing, and sometimes it was easier to be in bed or watching tv under a blanket than face the day. I think I stopped that practice after I had Mono in Jr. High. I was in bed of a month; so weak, tired and with a growing dread of reentering school with so much academic and social time missed, I vowed never to pretend again.

High School, I don't remember staying home much due to illness. Years later, I didn't miss many days of college either. I think the sickest I ever became at a job was working in NYC. I guess my psyche knew before my conscious mind was aware that my time in the city was over. My body's immune system just took a vacation. I seemed to be chronically sick. It took a while to realize that my inner life and outer life were out of balance and that was why I was so susceptible to any virus on the subway...

The other times that my body knew first that my spirit was sick, was when I decided to leave the boat and when I decided to leave my marriage. Those times I was feverish, but very clear, like my body and spirit were warring and I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Last night my kids made dinner, did dishes and batches of laundry. Today they continued the chores and my mother brought a bunch of groceries, and then played taxi for me. Those were the moments I felt guilt free and happy....I could let go and heal.

But usually, when I'm in balance, my health is in balance. Right now, I guess I'm a little overwhelmed with balancing all my work and home responsibilities. Seems there is never much down time, I could always be doing something. If I allow myself down time, I still have the checklist tapping away in the periphery of my sight lines while I'm watching something stupid on the tv.


I'm rambling, as I'm still a little warm and not fully fueled, but it is interesting to track illness to the balance of inner and outer energies. Enough, as I'm pretty sleepy again. Back to my book and sipping ginger-ale!

Good Night, G'night.

Holy Sunday...

Tonight I watched HBO's Documentary Going Clear, based on the book of the same name by Lawrence Wright. L. Ron Hubbard's Birthday is 18 March, so perhaps Scientology celebrates some sort of holiday around his birth in March and this would be an added attack to air it now.

Watching the film was like watching a bus-accident; you knew that what your were about to see was going to be horrific, painful and senseless, but you were powerless to change the outcome. How so many people could allow themselves to be sucked into such a cult and give some much of their time, dignity, and finances to such an establishment is beyond me. How they could be deemed a region by the IRS is also bizarre. What dirt, or, ironically, "auditing" did they have on top IRS representatives to keep them not recognizing Scientology as a religion?

As I was watching, I remembered that it's Palm Sunday. Yesterday was the Hindu's day of Ramanavami, ending a holy week of Ramayana which began on the 21st. The 21st was also the New Year (Naw Ruz) for the Baha'i,  (Norooz) Persians (Zoroastrian) and the Hindu. A week from yesterday, Passover will begin, as will the Therevadin New Year (for Buddhists). And in a week, Easter Sunday, although it will Palm Sunday for my Orthodox Christian friends, with them Easter (Pascha) will be on the 12th. New Year (Baisakhi) for the Sikh's on the 14th.

So the time to reflect on religion and renewal is upon us. With the advent of Spring, the Pagan's celebrated the Equinox on the 20th (Ostara, in the Northern Hemisphere; Mabon, in the Southern Hemisphere) we see nature's rebirth and ancient humans built mirrored rituals around this earthly right of passage.

All of the above religions have books that are sacred to them; accept the Pagans and Scientologists. So many of the original groups of Pagan's rites and rituals were usurped by the Christians and Catholic Church, that it's hard to know where and when, exactly they were folded into the organized religions. These are ancient acts of humans trying to make sense of the world around them and minding the order of nature by honoring it. Creation myths from the Old Testament are the foundation for the Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions. They all share the Golden Rule.

 Scientology is the opposite. It is a crass, commercial and capitalistic enterprise with the no connection to the living world. Their Creation Myth involves aliens, aircraft, and man-as-scientists creating the order of the Universe. There is no Golden Rule. Only an Iron Fist and fear.

I didn't grow up in a household where any organized religion was routinized into our family structure. We did observe Christmas and Easter, but not with any religious attachments placed upon them. I took courses in Comparative Religions in college, attended churches, mosques and temples of various orders over the course of my life and have attended Pagan and Native ceremonies, too. I enjoy experiencing the spiritual life of those I care for and for who I have a curiosity.

Scientology has no spirit, soul or sense to it. It's not a religion, it appears to be a cult, and a dangerous one; destructive to it's members, to it's special fears (big backing for Prop 8) and so on.

I'm tired, as I was sick this afternoon and lost a lot of steam because of it. But I just had to gripe here for a tetch before going to sleep. Spring is upon us, time to take new and positive steps forward and away from the cold and cruel darkness! Bravo, HBO, Bravo!

Good night, Sacred and Secular, G'night!

Saturday Night Special

Haiku #3

Saturday Special:
Pizza with Good Friends and Son;
Dessert with Daughter!


Good Night, friends and family-near and far, G'night


(I'm fighting off a virus that's left me tired and foggy headed or this would be much longer)

Hoods..

Watched Boyhood with my boy tonight. First time for him, second for me. He'd been asking to watch it for a while. The first time, I'd seen it too recently. The second time, I wasn't sure I could emotionally maneuver it while watching it together. But tonight the the tenor of our moods, the homemade spaghetti and meatballs, followed by a fundraiser chocolate bar, put us in the perfect place for viewing it together. Plus my girl was tired and did not have to be factored into the mix.

The second time around I found it more elegant than the first. My boy seemed to absorb it; all of it. The family dynamics and divorce, the questioning of magic as a youth and the existential angst of the teens, the randomness and determination that is required to grow up organically. I identified more with the mother this time around. Last time, I guess it was too painful to see how similar our lives were. This time, it was okay, and I'm not worried about my own mortality or being alone with myself ostensibly 5 years from now in an empty nest.

Roots & Wings. That's what every parent hopes to give their child. A foundation to ground themselves in and the strong & flexible flight feathers to go out and explore the world so one day they can find a tree of their own to claim. My own childhood had kind a cracked foundation in terms of divorce and several moves. My kids have the divorce, but have spent almost 13 years in this house, a clear majority of their lives in this house. SF was so far removed from my son's consciousness that I took him to see the city of his birth last April, as it bothered him that he couldn't really remember it. However, until three years ago, like the plot line of the film before we join the narrative, my wasband and I fought frequently with thick tension filling the house. That creates it's own cracks in a childhood.

Unlike the mother and boy in the film; neither of us have moved onto having boyfriend (me) or girlfriend (him). My boy is 14 and will be in High School this September. I've been single for almost three years and have yet to be really dating anyone. The father in the film took a while to emotionally let go of his wife, start dating and then start a new family. The mother started dating quickly, married and divorced several times in the span of the boys 1-12grades, and ends up alone at close of the film.

I'm sure my boy will date when he's ready. I'm sure I'll date when the fates and Fortune decide to smile on me, or I get myself out and about enough to be "found".

But this film is really about feeling, listening, watching and reflecting. All things that we do too little of as our lives keep moving forward. My son wants me to recollect my stories. I want to spend as much time with both my kids before they flap out of the nest. Taking trips with them, playing taxi, helping them present themselves to the world and getting their footing is my role now. And I'm savoring it.

As I finish this both dogs are barking. They're barking because the local Owls are having a conversation that has grown louder as they've flown out of the Arboretum and closer to my house. I wonder, are they teaching their babies to hunt, or are they hunting for their little ones still? It's spring and it's supposed to snow up to 3" in the next 24 hours. Maybe they're just stocking up on some squirrels to keep the owlets warm and full while their flight feather grow flexible and strong?!

Good Night, to boyhood/girlhood/parenthood, G'night.

Openers 101

I knew I wasn't in America anymore, as I burst into a loud rendition of Billie Holiday's Summertime, followed by Vlad throwing me down on the cobblestoned street saying, "They'll arrest you for drugs singing this loudly late at night in Beograd. You'll have no lawyer and they'll take your passport. You have the wrong last name!"

The octopus looked deep in my eyes, while I stood in hip deep water in Christiansted Harbor trying to remove it from the New York woman it thought was me, and I knew it was scared to death. It came to me slowly and I took it back to the empty engine block it called home, where we first met. I never saw it again; I like to think it moved farther out the channel to a lobstery grotto, but I'm afraid it succumbed to extreme emotional shock.

Some people see Scotties on their decks, or pirates coming over the transom. Me? I saw tankers on the tops of the mountainous waves as we rode over them hove-to for days and nights on end.

Crossing the Knife Edge was a right of passage; I first climbed Katahdin in PF Flyers when I was 6, but didn't make it across the Knife Edge until I was 12, and the last time I crossed it I was 28.

I was born one of two, later became one of eight and lastly one of fourteen; The Brady Bunch had nothing on me.

We were racing down the cellar stairs, we both coveted the last green popsicle, so I gave my sister a nudge to pass her, but instead she started to fall and then fly to the bottom of stairs landing on glass bottles full of ammonia which broke and produced large, long lasting scars on her knee for which I still feel guilty almost half a century later.

That look. Before the elevator door closed she bit her lip as her smile slid into a worried glance. The doors shut. I asked my father, why she bit her lip and looked down, as I'd be seeing my grandmother again in just six weeks. He replied, "Perhaps she's afraid she'll never see you again."
Three weeks later she permed her hair, as she thought her hair looked best three weeks after the process. Two weeks after the perm she insisted that my father know that she intended to give me a certain sum of money for my honeymoon. You see the big deal surrounding my next visit was she'd meet my fiancé. My grandmother and I were very close. She called my father again to say the amount and it was for the honeymoon. My father assured her he hadn't forgotten. My grandfather, who I also adored, had died a few years earlier, and my father as the only child fielded all such requests. The next night my grandmother had a stroke in the middle of the night, made it half way across her bedroom, where she was found and taken to the hospital, where she remained in a coma. My sister and her boyfriend, myself and my fiancé flew from SF to Maine to see her. My fiancé said hello to her in a coma. I said good-bye to her in a coma. She'd always made her wishes very clear; no heroic measures if she was going to be revived and not be herself. After she died, I had to stop mid-dial oodles of time, when I wanted to call her; to share, rant, confess or just talk. But I'll never forget that look.

I dreamt of my Nana in the hospital the night before she died.  In my dream, I kept asking the Doctors if they were sure she wasn't still alive. My dream did not include my mother, but it should have. Nana had gone in for a routine procedure. Post-op she was having some lunch, soup, in her hospital bed while my mother visited with her. Nana started to choke, Mom  went to get a nurse, they medical staff raced into Nana's room and kept Mom out. When they opened the door again, they told Mom that Nana had died. One minute she was eating soup and catching up with Mom and the next minute she was dead. No warning, no premonition; except my dream.


Now I must dream......these were just a few openers I thought I'd give a spin around the x's and o's.


Good Night, Hook/line/sinkers, G'night!

Tip of the iceberg...

I'm not a huge fan of Freud's Tip of the Iceberg theory, and I know it's been the fodder for many a literary thesis and marketing meeting PowerPoint, but I do feel that as a writer I've only shown you the tip of the iceberg what will end up being a memoir.

You see it takes awhile to let emotion be your ally. Logic, reason, narrative are all safe strands to show in a linear fashion and to have them exposed without damage or care. Emotions are the things that really drive us, our choices and ultimately even how we tell a story. I've heard so many authors say, "I couldn't write the book until I had time to process the experience." That is where thought and emotion meet and get woven into something useful, for both writer and reader.

I recently read a Harvard study on cognitive skills. We've been sold the idea that our mind ages, as a whole entity, and it looses valuable elements as we grow older. Well, it turns out, that isn't so. The mind remains plastic until we die and now they are proving something Mortimer Adler said to me in my early twenties; We don't really learn how to synthesize much of life's experiences, or how to think, until we're in our 50's!

This is the graphic that accompanied the article. When we're young our sponge like brain continues to  soak up names, dates, data, and other short term memory facts. As we grow older, middle-age, we come into our powers of making sense of all we've learned and experienced. And as we grow even older we ripen into vessels of knowledge primed to share our wisdom.

The trick is allowing myself to expose the piece of myself that would align with Freud's hunk of ice.

To access below the epidermis of one's life is a tricky feat. One must be fearless, in that deep blue water, where light plays tricks on your mind and emotions distort with being relived. It's hard to manufacture, even with journals and pictures, all of certain eras of ones life. They say if an experience makes you laugh you'll remember it forever. In my experience, when I've been hurt or scared, I've forgotten whole chunks of my childhood and marriage. My sister and I say we took turns remembering various parts of our childhood and together we have a reasonable facsimile of it. 

How much does our preverbal self inform our verbal self? How much does our processing speed affect our social understanding of others and ourselves? How much of each is really a composite of what we want to be, what we're comfortable being and what we know we are? Do we ever, really know? I think this is why old friends, siblings and written artifacts are the true treasure in ones life. There is a shared history over time that one can dive into, deep into, if you're lucky and take a solid, often scary and occasionally satisfying look at ourselves. 

Unfortunately, I've lost many touch stone friends from different eras of my life. They've primary died of AIDS, Cancer,  or Suicide. My generation, as I touched on two nights ago, was the first and last to freely and openly get into drugs and sex prior to all the consequences being known. We also were the last generation that needed to self-medicate for Depression, as anti-depressants became standardly available in our young adulthood. No longer were folks drinking like fish to numb the pain, only to wake up feeling like crap and repeating the process all over again. If we were lucky, we found help and medicine. If we weren't, we lost many people in their 20's & 30's  ('80's- 90's) to mental disease. 

Now I'm, again, rewiring and splicing my intellectual, emotional and spiritual self. It's not going to be   light and airy. There will be deep dark and well preserved sides to myself that may surprise many of you. For example, unless you've been reading this religiously, I never thought I'd live beyond 20. Given my penchant for adventure, my inability to feel content, forget about happy, for any sustained period of time and desperately wanting a love that would last forever (all divorce kids either want that or put up big walls to keep love away, so they won't get hurt), it didn't seem that I'd make it unscathed to my 20th birthday. Yet somehow, miraculously, after sailing through hurricanes, driving cars at 110mph, jumping off cliffs into unknown depths of water, taking hallucinogens of varying types, having too many one-night-stands, running in shanty towns at night,  and scuba diving before I'd ever had a lesson; I lived. Then I knew I had to start living like I was going to get OLD. And I have. 

Now to share some of how that organically (emotional self speaking to reasonable self) came to pass. 

Good Night, Unsinkable Storytellers, G'night! 

Haiku #2

Haiku # 2

Meditate each day
Close your eyes, breathe, be outside
We will find our way.


Good Night, Ganesh, G'night.

Keep on, Keepin' on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4mkRwkQRoQ


I graduated from High School in 1980, the same year FAME hit the movie theaters. Irene Cara sang the title song and this song above: Out Here On My Own. This song still finds me when I'm needing to pick myself up. It's a melancholy song and yet ultimately optimistic, much like me.

I'm very much a person of my time. My childhood was filled with assassinations, divorces, and war being broadcast live. It was also filled with a kind of independence that led to developing an imagination, being resourceful and trusting your abilities that modern youth seem to develop much later. Where as my generation had perhaps the least attentive parents, this current generation has helicopter or micro-managing parents. Both parents work, and have to do so.

The 70's was the end of the "boom", where inflation exceed the cost of living and it's never caught up. Feminism was a convenient movement; as we all had to work. Divorces became more common in the 70's. My parents were earlier, the late 60's. My daughter says she's the only one of her friends that has two generations of divorce: grandparents and parents.

This current generation has grown up with a war that surpasses Vietnam in duration (Afghanistan was 13.2 years, Vietnam 10.7), only they couldn't watch it on the nightly news, it was censored. The chess match wars of a 100 years ago, became guerrilla wars, and now they are the most fragmented of all: terrorist acts of system disruption.

My generation is supposedly the tail end of the Boomers. However, I don't feel that definition fits. We're the first generation to grow up with the pill and Roe vs Wade. The last generation to be teenagers before AIDS/HIV hit. The last generation to experiment with drugs and sex before we really we became the first generation to be dying from them in large numbers.

If anything, sex was too easy and too early when we were young and had us making adult choices young. Yet sex in the media and arts seemed to be more satirical, campy and self-conscious. Now it's violent, dangerous and random. It permeates all of society in a relentless fashion. Try buying an outfit or swim suit for a girl over the age of 6 that doesn't look trampy. It's tough. Our generation started the sex-postive movement, post AIDS and Take-Back-The-Night rallies. We tried to own it as females from a place of power and something went topsy-turvy.

We were the make-upless generation. We made fun of girls that wore make up, until Punk Rock hit and then we all (boys and girls) wore it as a form of rebellion. We were the generation that started to neutralize and de-gender our peers. We used the word "guys" to mean everyone. It was very confusing to our parents, but now it's standardly used that way. I've not gone as far as calling young girls "buddy", but the generation after me does that now.

We were the last generation to really love road trips. The romantic notion of the 50's Route 66 and Ricky & Lucy w/the Long Long Trailor, followed by the advent Travels with Charlie ala Steinbeck, and of course, the VW bus with likes of Ken Kesey. Many of  my friends and relatives went on quests, it was natural to want to get a license asap! Now kids aren't eager to jump on the road. So much fear and expense surrounds the highways and byways of modern America that it doesn't seem to them to be a rite of passage, to be an adventuresome youth who must "Go West, Young Man"! No, they are content to stay close and comfy. The searching gene that brought most of our ancestors here is fading.

I'm still on a quest. I'm a hippie-chick, mother, daughter, sister and friend who likes to explore life, the planet and its inhabitants. As I've suggested, ad nauseam, a lover to share the adventure would be ideal. But for a majority of my life I've felt the way this song still makes me feel. That I'm alone, strong, perpetually reaching for a new rising star, and it would be nice to have some one to be there for me, and me alone; but right here, right now, and most of my life: I'm Out Here On My Own.
I do think my generation may be the largest single middle-aged generation ever, yet, I feel fine, mind you. You see, in the words of U2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For......but one day I hope to find that I get what I need. 

Good Night, Keep on Trucking', G'night!








"Out Here On My Own"

Sometimes I wonder
Where I've been
Who I am, do I fit in?
Make-believing is hard alone
Out here, on my own

We're always proving
Who we are
Always reaching
For that rising star
To guide me far
And shine me home
Out here on my own

When I'm down and feeling blue
I close my eyes so I can be with you
Oh, baby, be strong for me
Baby, belong to me
Help me through
Help me need you

Until the morning sun appears
Making light of all my fears
I dry the tears I've never shown
out here on my own

But when I'm down and feeling blue
I close my eyes so I can be with you
Oh, baby, be strong for me
Baby, belong to me
Help me through
Help me need you

Sometimes I wonder
Where I've been
Who I am, do I fit in?
I may not win
But I can't be thrown
Out here on my own
Out here
On my own

No sweat or tears

Again with the abandonment dream. It has recurred more times than I care to admit. When I wake in the morning, it feels as if the dream took place over all the hours I was asleep. Yet I know it was most likely nearest to the time I woke up, as it is so vivid, that I wake up warm. As if my spirit and mind are fighting each other.

The dream usually involves me having to recount to some one I haven't seen in a long time, why it is exactly, that my marriage failed, that I'm single and my wasband is not. It's a painful process in this dream, as many people are around me, talking while we're making a meal, and I have to speak loudly to be heard over all the chopping, rinsing and clanking of pans.

I have to explain that I was left years before he physically left. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, and sexually. I have to explain that intellectually there was tension. I have to explain that compassion and trust were not words in his vocabulary. I find myself spinning in place, listening to myself as I tell the old friend how things fell apart.

That old friend knows me long enough to know that I've been abandoned before. By the last two serious relationships I had just prior to meeting my wasband. They know that each of those two people were also not respectful, nor compassionate, and that I shouldn't have trusted them.

I wonder what it takes to break a cycle or pattern of choices that leave me lonely and alone? People in the dream look at me, and then away, to their task at hand. We've had this conversation before and there is no answer....or words like trust, faith, timing, a process are bandied about.

In the dream I'm trying to wake myself up. I don't want to have this circular conversation. I don't want to dream about how unfair it feels to be the giver who gets taken for a ride. I don't want to hold, carry and deconstruct the weight of the emotions that I know will linger long after I awake.

The pillars of self-care are these: sleep, movement, being of use, whole foods and positive social contact. I can direct myself successfully with all of those pillars, except for the social contact at the romantic level. How, why, and what does it take for me to position myself mentally, physically and literally to be in the right place, at the right time, to find the right man for me?

I can feel myself fighting the covers and tossing as I pull away from the rounds of questions from the old friend my dream. I can see the confusion in their eyes, and disappointment, or is that just my mind projecting an image of shame back on myself.

This afternoon the dream haunted me while swimming in a crystalline pool. I was in a good rhythm, a zone of perfect breaths, strokes and turns. The sunlight through the ceiling bouncing off the bottom of the lane next to mine, put me in a meditative state. I was reliving flashes of the dream and thinking to myself, "No one can see you sweat or cry in the water." I wasn't in tears, but I knew if I let the images and words from last nights dream grow too bold in my mind, there would be.

Instead, I focused on the pillars I can control in my waking life. The feel of the water and sunlight. The fact that it was World Water Day and my spirit was thoroughly enjoying playing and pushing myself through the water. It was only when I paused at the end of the lane, to adjust my googles or grab a kick board, and saw couples my age being intimate with each other, that a dangerous pang briefly gripped the middle of my throat. But I shook it off and finished my mile, and enjoyed the company of my friend with whom I swim.

Good night, single swimmers and dreamers, G'night!

Road Home...

There is a road which I have run, walked, biked, driven, skied and ridden on horseback with/out a saddle. It runs from Walden Pond to my Mother's front door. The end of it used to mark the half way point to my Father's and Grandparent's house, before they all moved away.

When I was a teenager, it seemed an endless stretch of hills and tight curves, especially on a bike. Walking along it during a hot spring day to Walden was a seasonal right of passage. Later friends and boyfriends would accompany me on such walks.

I had one close friend who lived along this road. Her family was the one with the horses. We'd ride the endless conservation trails through the town and walk along the side of the road, in the fields you can see in this picture. We'd jump over the stone walls and fallen trees along the way. They were fox hunting horses, with powerful rear ends. We also tested ourselves and the horses by barrel racing, but that is another story.

Riding bikes along this road happened in every season. To other friend's houses, family, Walden, Woolworth's for some fries at the lunch counter or just to be free. When I was quitting smoking as a late teenager, I remember having dreams about driving down this road, perfectly lined with it's parallel stone walls and sugar maples. It was like being in Nature's ballroom surrounded by infinity mirrors. Only in my dream the maples were cigarettes standing on end, taunting me as I tried to make it down this stretch of road without stopping for a smoke.

In the fall, the fields would yield huge amount of vegetables and the trees along the road would turn brilliant colors. Deer would gather in the far corners of the fields and graze on the remains of the harvest, and fox would hunt the rodents going after the decaying produce.

When blizzards hit, and this town was notorious for not wanting to salt its roads, the plows took there time to get to the secondary roads. It was safe to ski from my Mother's to Walden on the road and fun to bushwhack back through the conservation trails. There is one big hill in the middle of this road that makes it rewarding to climb and fly down in each direction!

Spring was when I'd start to run on the roads, after skiing had ended and before the mud had cleared the trails in woods. When the sugar buckets appeared, as you can see they have been hung now, it was a sure sign that Spring was upon us, as sure as the Sun Rise Service was going to be held in Flint's field on Easter Morning. The first person to ever teach me how to tap a tree was Ken Olsen, founder of DEC and our neighbor  across a 5-Way intersection at the end of this road. He took great pride in tapping his trees and introducing New England traditions to the neighborhood kids.

So tonight ,when I drove the 8 miles from my house to my mother's house for dinner, and over this stretch of road, I took notice of the buckets. Not only were they hanging from almost every sugar maple lining the road, when I stopped to take this picture I could hear the sap running steadily into the buckets! Other than the birds chirping, and the Great Blue Heron's squawking, this is one of my youthful sensations of Spring.

Good Night, stretch of road, G'night!

3/20, 6:36 = Spring Snow

Spring is struggling to snap upon us, because Winter isn't ready to let go. My eyes are tired. Red from trees trying to flower, squinting from white snow and watching a weeks worth of students performing Hamlet and Julius Caesar while I check lines and stage directions.

So tonight's entry is going to be short.

Watched Top Five tonight and loved it.
Reading All the Light We Cannot See, and loving it.

Eyes drooping, dry, itchy and rimmed with the work of the day.
Nature bending under frozen water of all forms collecting for months.

Good Night, Snowy Springy serenade, G'night.

Well, it's almost spring!

I spend my days helping students to expand their vocabularies, express thoughts in written and spoken words, and different approaches to thinking about life and themselves. I've become a instant writing prompt generator, assistant problem-solver, and intuitive suggester of ideas. What I realize now, is that I've always been those things and focused on addressing the success of others over the creative success of myself. Now it's time to use my strengths for my own goals.

Especially in the intuitive arena. Being a teacher, you have to tune in to your students. Being an agent one must tune in to your writers; and by extension society. An agent is a professional gambler who is betting on knowing the tastes, trends and tenor of a culture 1-5 years from the time they take on an author.  Being a mother, you must tune and return in to your children from conception to infinity.

As a child I had a gift. Not as a writing prodigy, no. Nor a well honed, hours of practice and diligence  craft. I came to writing late, as my parents, in one of the last acts of their marriage, started an alternative school. It didn't include teaching the youngest, as most were teenagers, how to read and write. I begged to go to public school, they finally relented, and I learned late how to do both.

No, my gift was rather an unsettling talent for knowing things in advance of them actually happening. Primarily things came to me in dreams ,while I was asleep, and could happen as soon as the next day, or as far off as six months to a year later.

When I was very young they could also happen in real time. It scared my parents and other adults. Knowing who was calling on the phone, that my father was bringing me a surprise gift, what it was, and using the word for it that I could barely pronounce, yet some how knew. I could mimic voices very well, too. Another form of connectivity, I guess.

Once I learned to write, I'd write down the dreams in my journal. Sometimes I didn't if they were unpleasant or scary; someone getting injured or people fighting or dramatic appearances from unknown sources. Occasionally they'd wake me up in the middle of the night. I knew that whatever I'd just witnessed was inevitable, sometimes with names or images I'd never seen before, but knew I would.

In High School I started to turn off the waking dream side of things, as it became too much. I saw one of my best friends become injured in a skiing accident with her boyfriend. I begged them not to go away on their ski trip, but they ignored my foolish premonitions. Later that week, Carolyn would call me, shaken. She had, at the last minute, not taken the final run of the day, but Paul did. Paul had to be lifted off the mountain and was in surgery for his leg.

I told whatever gate was open to that source of information to close, as it took too big a toll on me physically and emotionally. It did during my waking hours,  except when those closest to me where/are going through seismic shifts or places I know intimately. Then the gate always opens. The last time it opened, I saw my sisters appendix cancer and didn't know what it was; orange, gelatinous and throughout the cavity of her torso. Cold sweats and scary phone calls followed.

Creativity is another source of connectivity that I've always been able to access, however not always been confident to share. Music, art, dance and design have always intrigued me and been natural languages to me. Writing has been a passion. These creative languages help me to connect to my students, children and people with whom I don't share a spoken language.

Which leads me to another odd set of talents. I can go to a foreign country, not speak the language or ever have been to the city/town/village before and get along. I'll understand people and find my way.
Not like an idiot savant, mind you, but like a respectful, observant and compassionate human. It's an odd gift, but I treasure it. I believe I've been to 28 +- countries and always felt at home...

Odd, I know. Yet, not, too. It's who I am. It sounds like swagger or bravado, but it's not. I embrace new experiences, maybe because I've had to from a young age? It's served me well. Maybe because experiences I haven't lived, but know will happen, come to me since as long as I can remember words and images? It's prepared me for imagining my life as a series of vignettes or a tryptic that needs to be framed now that I'm turning my odd gift on myself?

With it being a few hours away from a new spring, for some a new year (Iran, last week or this week?), I find that I'm diving fearlessly into my own wellspring of creativity. One that I've been told for most of my life is unusual.  Yet it is the only life I know, which makes it seem organic, natural and obvious to me. My own kids and students say they want to read stories of my life . What remains are still two unanswered questions; from when to when and what question does it need to answer to be of use?

This summer I've committed to diving deep into myself, and preparing pieces to workshop. This spring I'm still cleaning out the cobwebs of my mind and airing out the chasms of my life so far.

Good Night, to creative wellsprings and Spring itself, G'night!

Namaste...

Aham Prema is a Mantra that translates to I am love.  Yesterdays centering thought; I am here to bring love into the world. Aham Prema sustained me for 20 minutes and made my eyes sink so deeply into my head, that I had a hard time opening them after my meditation.

My lids were heavy, as if I'd swum for an hour in salt water, followed by a lengthy massage and a nap in a hammock. Every muscle in my body was relaxed and heat came out of the palms of my hands. I could hear my the pulse of my blood flowing in my ears. The soles of my feet felt the energy coming up through the floor. Love and infinity are one with the energy that forms our existence....down to the cellular level.

I truly believe that if we learned how to harness the true potential of the energy that resides within our minds, hearts and souls of all the organisms on the planet, we'd all would benefit by it. I know, I'm a dreamer, but I believe our planet is riper than ever in history to acknowledge a successful bridging between the sciences and the spiritual.

By spiritual, I mean the most self aware, intuitive, open and interconnected beings who have mastered peace and love in their daily lives.  Buddhist monks,  artists of all types, medicine men/women, teachers, adventurers, philosophers, and other people who can channel their energy successfully to others and also manage their energies within themselves successful.

If we all led our relationships, careers, experiments and travels from a place of compassion and had the power to change as we continually move forward, what a wonderful world it would be. Science can now measure how human energy flows or retreats from the body depending on our spiritual state. To ignore that basic fact is harmful to our advancement as humans and to the task of being custodians of the natural world. It is only logical that other beings made of energy and spirits share that fate. So shouldn't we all practice the spreading of love into the world?

Love and spirit, as you know from my earlier blogs are two things that I've wrestled with most of my life. I've always been deeply spiritual, not in any religious sense, but rather a human-animal connectedness sense. I feel most at home with humans and nature. I enjoy cities, but they are overstimulating without the parity I receive from the ocean, mountains, lakes or woods. They are top heavy with human energy and invention, without the balance of other life forms and evolutionary intrigues. I know cities have histories, characters and such, but it's all human based. Natures sprawl has fewer impediments to being in touch with the human core of our existence and energy, at least for me.

Love has alluded me. I'm at a tipping point in that department. Family and friends; I have and love. Romantic love is the elusive beast. Basically I feel that as I start to channel the energy and intuition that for so long I've squelched or stifled, I'll create the pathways to a lasting love. I can see glimpses of myself toiling alone on a piece of writing that will bring about the birth of a new way of looking at myself, and in so doing, a new way of people seeing me.

Basically, I am love, I am full of love, and I will bring some of that love out into the world. I believe when that has happened, I'll be successful in a meaningful way and perhaps then, a love will present itself to me. Namaste!


Good Night, Beings of love & energy, G'night!

Stormy stories....

It was a dark and stormy night,
And the wind was blowing a gale
and the Captain said to Antonio,
"Antonio tell me a tale."
Thus the tale began...

It was a dark and stormy night,
And the wind was blowing a gale
and the Captain said to Antonio,
"Antonio tell me a tale."

These were the words that would drive my parents nuts, when 5 or 6 of us kids would chant it in the back of the station wagon on a 3-5 hour car trip, depending on the traffic or destination. It became one of the many anthems of my youth.

Tonight I have my siblings voices floating and murmuring through my mind as the wind rushes through the trees and the windows of my house shift with the force of it. The word games and songs we sang and, some we made up, as kids circle in my rested mind, often.

The gusts of howling wind remind me of the rigging of various boats, at various marinas of my life, clanking the halyards left too slack by careless boat owners or by being loosened by abandoned weeks of wind.  Imagine a parking lot full of flag poles being slapped by untended lines and you'll get an idea of the irregular rhythm it makes.

Winds and lines. When you live on a boat the wind shifting will start a new set of lines slapping, creaking, twisting and pulling. Your mind will know, automatically, which sounds are okay and which sounds should alert you to wake up, Right NOW!

Growing up in houses with a revolving door of siblings, friends, extended family and frequent visitors, there were other kinds of winds and storms. As a kid, you'd learn to listen for how many bottles had been emptied, how late the music was still playing loudly, when the voices downstairs pierced the pillow covering your ears as you tried to sleep or the quiet adult conversations that leaked up and over the balconies into the wall-less bedrooms and an infected our minds with stories we weren't supposed to be hearing.

It was a dark and stormy night,
And the wind was blowing a gale
and the Captain said to Antonio,
"Antonio tell me a tale."

We became doctors, nurses, teachers, actors, musicians, and most of all storytellers. When we were still young, we were attracted to drama, adventure and riding out storms; some of our own making and others hazards of the living on the edge. Those were familiar narratives and therefore comfortable. As most, but not all, of us slowly and as late as possible, had children of our own, we turned away from drama and towards new realities. The change away from the familiar can be a storm in itself, only more of a tropical brief shower than a relentless and bitter winter.

My youngest sibling will turn 50 this coming winter. My baby brother: 50. Who'd a thunk it?!
He is in LA  and a sister in the Aleutian Islands, are the ones who have stayed the farthest away, the ones who moved out West and will never move back East. Visits in the summer, yes,  but no more than that.

Being one of 14 kids has it's benefits; the endless references of inherited and transposed knowledge, the shared history and the stages of development along the way. Only two of the 8 original sets of parents have died, and for that we are all thankful. We've evolved within our life times, contributed to each others stories and weathered many storms.

So when the wind howls, I think about how the weather on the West Coast will become our weather here in a few days. I'm wondering what events are happening in LA and Alaska that may be transported in the wind to us on the East Coast.......but I know one thing, it will go something like this:

It was a dark and stormy night,
And the wind was blowing a gale
and the Captain said to Antonio,
"Antonio tell me a tale."
Thus the tale began......

Good night, Sailors/Stormriders/Storytellers, G'night!

Om is where the heart is...

I've worn a silver Om ring for 20 months now. I wear it as a commitment to myself to meditate at least 10 minutes a day. Some days I make it as long as an hour, however most days it comes in at around 20. Today I started a 21 Day guided meditation endeavor, delivered via the internet from Deepak Chopra. He's the one that got me hooked on this daily habit in July of 2013, when I spent a weekend attending Chopra's 3-day Seminar on his book entitled "Super Brain". Lousy title, great book and weekend. That weekend I took a journal full of notes as I sat 12 feet away from Chopra as he guided us through his book, various philosophies, spiritual exercises and much more. I've carried what I learned that weekend with me ever since.

So when I received an email to take part in this 21-day event, I thought it the perfect time for a Spring tune-up and deepening of commitment to my daily practice. Today's Centering Thought was I create my success from within. Now that takes a lot of ownership on one hand and just letting yourself be on the other hand. The Sanskrit Mantra of the day was Sheevo Hum, which loosely translates to I am infinity. Now this may sound grandiose to the uninitiated, but it is really rather humbling. It mirrors a sentiment expressed in sculpture that was prominent on the quad of my High School, WE ARE, or the sort of like the opening lines to the Beatle's song "I Am the Walrus":I
I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together. 

Once you accept that you are simply here, breath for breath, and a part of all things past, present and future, then it really gets down to how to be of use, at least for me. Deepak says it's about "service" for him. For others it's compassion, loving, teaching and so on. Contributing to easing the ride of this journey we call life. Not just our own journey, with all it's potholes, set backs and curious turns of fate, but those whom we touch, encounter, seek out and hold dear. 

During my 25 minutes of meditation today, I realized that I'm fairly lucky with the path I've put myself on. I teach, which often gives me the satisfaction of feeling of use. I'm a mother, and in that capacity, again, I get to teach, serve, love and be mindful. I'm not perfect, I'm human, and there are days when my spirit or energies are low, which makes it hard to produce or be present. But I find, if I take a deep breath, in most moments, and let it go slowly, I can become one with the moment and task at hand. 

Now the path I'm trying to continue is one I've wanted to walk on since I was a girl. That of being a traveller and a writer with something to share. I find that in my capacity of teacher and mother, that I've found ways to do both (travel and write). But I can feel that the next goal is larger and may have longer lasting, or infinite, possibilities. To truly create my life in words and, perhaps later, to create fictional lives in words, is how I've imagined my connection to infinity to be. In order to be successful at that, in whatever form it takes or morphs into down the road, is another daily practice,  future goal setting and commitment to self that I need to do.

Obtaining a deeper level of not caring what others think, while learning to artfully show how I  have felt the world to be, imagine that it is  and what it could be, is a grand goal. But shouldn't our goals be large, as large as live itself, as large as all the permutations that nature has to offer, as large as infinity? I don't want to be clever, and create some new art form, but rather delve deeply into my primal past and find the form to successful release an authentic creation that connects to others on a universal level.  
 I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together.

Om is a universal mantra. Namaste is the universal greeting of acknowledging the divine in all you meet and in giving of your self to others. Sheevo Hum may be my mantra for a while, to allow me to open gates I've feared to show the world, but now realize I must in order to be one with it. 

Good Night, One & All, G'night!

Ides of March

I had a premonition that the storms of winter and the chill of the gray days were not behind us.
This weekend, the second half of my gutter fell off my roof.
Today, on the 15th of March, my dog caught a rabbit, ate half of it and brought me the tail end.
Tonight it snowed us into the history books and my furnace chose to have a piece of it go kaput!

But, tomorrow.....Oh Tomorrow; my students begin there performances and turn in their promptbooks! Calpurnia will be ignored, Portia will swallow coals, Ophelia will be misunderstood, and Gertrude will find out too much, too late!

Julius Caesar Act III-V and Hamlet Act III-V! I prime the pump with giving the students reading/grammar/vocab questions, history, and language for the first two acts. After their feet are wet and then defenses down, I make them own the last three (own: learn their scenes and teach them though performance to the others, who will take notes and ask  them questions).

Can't wait to see them in their costumes, with props, projected scenery, video clips of the play-within-the-play in Hamlet,  on the horses of the two triumvirates in a Roman civil war and Ophelia singing...

Tomorrow the Erik will come and fix my furnace with the part he has in his van, while I sit at my desk, rubrics in hand and enjoy seeing the Ides of March played out during three different periods!

Good night, Soothsayers and Gentle Women, G'night!

Pi = I/S (Infinite Stories)

Today was a historic day in regards to the number Pi, a day that only comes once every hundred years! So everyone has been honoring the mathematical equations that use the irrational number to explain various philosophies and theories. Which, of course, also coincided with it being Albert Einstein's 136th Birthday and he developed quite a few famous theories, too! Tonight Frank and I watched The Theory of Everything with Eddie Redmayne in his Oscar winning performance playing Stephen Hawking. We both thoroughly enjoyed it....

Yet my favorite piece of Pi to consume and discuss (and I don't mean Pie for that would take me to Moody's Dinner in Maine or Duarte's Tavern in California), is that of The Life of Pi! When I first read Yann Martel's book, I finished it and instantly had to read it again. That is the one and only time I've done that and I've read thousands of books. You see there was an elegant method to his madness that I  didn't get, nor was any reader supposed to get, until the end.

You see the novel, as it's written, actually contains two stories. Although for 90% of the book, you are believing that you are reading only one story. It is not until the end, when the protagonist's, Pi's, story sounds too fantastic, as explained to the two investigators, that we hear another version of the story; same sequence, different characters, narrative, choices, conflicts and resolution. Masterful piece of math in the form of prose.

Basically Yann Martel took  Pi=c/d and turned it into a story:

 On one side of the diameter line is one story with the animals and Pi, and on the opposite side is the  of the humans and Pi. There is one story, the circle, and to find Pi, you must divide the circumference (c) the whole story, by the diameter (d) or the narrative. When I teach Life of Pi to my students, I emphasize that the two halves look like two boats  ~ life boats!

Now the elegant nature of this narrative is that it can become an infinite series depending narrative....it is limited only to the rational mind, in other words the imagination is infinite as long as we can follow the narrative and the irrational nature of it.

Most people when finishing reading The Life of Pi do the just that. They choose to believe the irrational over the rational. The novel's premise is that it will "make you believe in God" once you've heard/read Pi's story. Stephen Hawking's first wife believed in God. His first history of Time gave credence to a Grand Creator. It took him proving his first theory wrong, with highly irrational leaps of narrative, backed up by elegantly written formula's to prove the theory of Time, with a before and after or a beginning and end and no Grand Creator. Einstein, too, with his Theory of Relativity, and often quoted about his theories on religion and God (google them).

Now I'm not going to go the next steps with Singularity and String Theory, and I know I've skipped over the power of Fractals  (although this is a favorite as it elegantly measures nature, coastlines, buildings in a really cool way), but I am going to say that I do think we are our choices and the stories we tell. Sometimes we're rational, sometimes we're irrational and often we're somewhere in-between.

As I stated at the start, today is also Albert Einstein's birthday. He had made a statement that isn't as often repeated as has views on God and Music. It has to do with facts and theories:

I think that is why storytelling is so appealing and why we have a new genre called Creative Nonfiction, under which Memoir now belongs and perhaps String Theory, too! We are creatures who re-member our lives and whose memories are faulty and yet we are determined to reason out why we are here and account for our time.


I'll sign off tonight with a letter from President Obama to Mr. Martel, which Obama wrote after finishing reading The Life of Pi:

Good Night, Storytellers and Scientists, G'night!

PARCC ~ n ~ PLAY

I don't want to be too political on a Friday night, after half a day of teaching and half a day of Professional Development, but I do want to recount a few salient bits of the day.

The morning was spent teaching, or rather managing, my classes, as they are all doing their Shakespearian productions this month and this was the last day of rehearsals. March is a month with no vacations, no long weekends and the teenagers hormones start running. Not only that, but my Seniors are finding our if they can afford to go to the schools they've been accepted to, or not, and my Juniors are taking the SAT's. So I keep them busy by making them act out scenes from Julius Caesar (Juniors and World Studies) and Hamlet (Women's Lit. [Seniors] through the lens of Ophelia & Gertrude). They have to produce a 10-15 page promptbook and a 10-20 performance next week and have been working on them for the last 2 weeks. It was good to see the classes I saw (only 2 out of my 5) seeming to gel this morning! However I was still worried about my two regular Junior classes and their preparedness.

We have to complete the performances next week, as the following week the MCAS (MA's state assessment test) are being administered . On top of that the PARCC test (new role out of the Common Core, state by state, to national test) will be administered for the first time during the window of 3/30-4/10. May is the season for end of year MAP testing and will, also now be the month to roll out the final new PARCC piece. June holds the final SAT's of the year.

This afternoon's Professional Development was teaching my department (ELA) the basics of PARCC;   different sections, models of sections, scoring, standards met, practice tests, and how-to and not-to mark your answers in the test packets. We were paired up to do the sample test (first three from the March/April roll out). My partner and I chose 11th grade, as we teach 11th &  12th. We found the language very complex, the time constraints too tight, the directions deceivingly simple and the writing components analytically rugged. This would be fine if the majority of our student body wasn't so verbally impoverished, unconfident with new formats, slow readers and, in some cases, incapable of accessing the material. Many accommodations on IEP's and 504 will not apply for this test. Extra time, yes, but not much else, for example. Forget about the FLEPed kids (newly English proficient).

We, the ELA teachers, are going to be administering to the 9th and 11th graders for the first three parts in the March/April window. The Math teachers are administering theirs to the 9th grade only. The tests (3 per first round, 2 in the final round in May) take longer than one class period and yet, we're to administer them in class? The total of 5 class periods, or a week, of teaching the Common Core and Curriculum Standards will be on hold. So a week of content gone, filled with testing. On top of that, in an email I receive from the MTA (Mass Teacher's Association- the Union), says that it's received word that administrators are going to be asked to sign a privacy agreement?! Geez-louise!

We were asked between now and the first window to teach our kids about the format of the test and to  give them practice tests of sorts, too. Not sure how many class periods they expect for those lessons. And I've already mapped out my lesson to April 1st, so this will undo and squeeze my already shrunk schedule with MCAS in 10 days!

However, my Shakespearian Extravaganza will not be interrupted or compromised! After the development meeting I returned to my classroom to gather up test to be graded and to tie up a few loose ends. My corridor was mostly empty as I was packing up to leave for the weekend. As I got to my door, I was met by 4 Junior boys in one of my classes. Although the day had ended for them at 10:45, here there were at 2:45 at my door. They'd come back to school, on a Friday afternoon, after half a day off, to ask me some questions about the play. These were not my Honors World Studies nor my Honors Women's Lit kids, these were my Regular English kids, a company I had worried about over the last two weeks. And here they were; shy, goofy, unconfident learners, and asking for help!

They asked if they could use my room to rehearse and look at the exemplar promptbooks again. I said I'd have to go find Dennis, the custodian, but if it was alright with him (as he'd have to clean and lock up after they left), it was alright with me! Fortunately Dennis finds kids fighting with swords in my classroom and rehearsing in the hallways fun to watch, as his own daughter is a theater kid! The kids were thrilled, I was tickled and it made me hopeful, that even when these same boys had to take the PARCC and they would most likely not score very well, that at least there are showing initiative with an interactive Shakespeare term project and that is really what it's all about!

Good night, Players and PARCCers, G'night!

Single Summer Scribbler...

Well it's done. I've signed up for my first writer's retreat. I guess I've begun to own the word: writer!

It will be during the middle of my summer vacation, during my one kidless period, a month after returning for a once-in-a-lifetime trip with my kids and a month before Frank starts High School and Lenora enters her Senior year. Seemed like the prime time to commit to practicing this craft with a master teacher.

It will, by then, be 8 months that I've been blogging. It will be my 46th summer of scribbling down my thoughts. It will be my 4th year of thinking, seriously, about how to frame various segments of my life and what might allow them to be of use to my children, students and readers down the line.

It will be the first time I'm exposing my writing to a teacher and fellow students since college, almost 30 years ago and I find that this time round, I'm seeing the constructive criticism process for what it is, a gift. Being a teacher, mentor, and agent most of these 3 decades, I now find myself eager to learn and listen to what others will have to say. In college I was cowed by my peers and put off by my teachers. They were all encouraging, yet there seemed to be an element of snark, before there was the word to describe that sentiment.

The analogy of bringing a book to life being like a pregnancy is much over used. However, I feel like I'm in the seed stages (pun intended) of coming to grips with plowing my own history, planting a nourishing crop and figuring out the best environment to harvest it. Should I dig deep and dark? Should I alternate between new plantings and established roots? Should I focus on one crop and not try to show the full diversity of my acreage? What do I want to grow, nurture, graft, prune, fertilize, propagate and ultimately pick as my unique story to bring to the reader's shelf?

I know that great memoirs answer a question and in so doing give insight into the author, while also connecting on a universal level. I've been told at many ages and stages that my choices and stories resonate with people from all walks of life and across many barriers. Now I have to focus on how to zoom in on an essential story that shows something emblematic and essential to who I am, while also being of use to others. That is the key.....what question has brought about a unique and universal answer? That's all!

So, I've set a marathon of a task for myself (had to allude to last nights post in here somewhere)! Good thing where I going to write has a huge lake to swim in and mountain trails to run! It has a big campus and I'm staying in the smallest cabin ~ a single cabin, for this single writer, to develop a singular idea and commit it to words.

So Good Night, retreaters and writers, G'night!

'Tis the Season

Triathlon and Endurance race season has just begun. We're just under a month from the Boston Marathon. Peaks to Portland filled up fast this year (6 hours instead of 6 weeks). Last month my cousin's race, Swim the Suck, sold out in 30 minutes. Tomorrow morning many people will be manning their keyboards for the Beach to Beacon (often sells out in 4 minutes).

This is my longest non-race spell in years. I usually have a race a month. The last race I ran was an obstacle course race in the the fall; Zombie Run. Swam outside until mid-October and then got sick as a dog at the end of November. So sick it landed me in hospital with my hands and feet curled in on themselves, like newly born, or dead, claws. It was terrifying. It took me until early January to get all my bones back in their proper places in my feet (lots of yoga, massage and well chosen shoes).

No sooner was realignment obtained, than the mighty snows and bitter cold were upon us. Shoveling and raking became my new sports. Dog walking and hiking became challenges to be overcome. For the last six weeks, or so, the white stuff I usually love to use for play and exercise didn't afford me any sledding or skiing; just chronic chores.

So, finally, the weather is promising to be manageable. I've run Half Marathons in single digits, so cold the cocoa at mile 10 had a skim of ice. This winter you'd have to run on black ice or in hip deep snow. To be able to run on packed snow or a cleared road will be a newly savored treat! Also, now that we're not having a snowstorm every weekend (and let me tell you it was every weekend, although they're threatening ice pellets and snow showers this weekend), I can finally join my friend at our beloved Beede Center, with it's special pool (and therapy pool). I may even do some weights with her, as this winter my maintenance of my upper body was fine (shovel, rake), but trunk and lower half need help.

I'm trying to map out some races, as I usually do. Like Writer's Workshops, the good one's sell out way in advance (February for August), so I'm having to strategically map out the pricey ones against the reasonable races. Building on milage from Spring to Fall, as always. Usually 5K-10K runs, 1 M swims in Spring, 10K to Half Runs and 2.5 Mile Swims in Summer and Half Runs and maybe 3+ this fall. I've monkeyed with that however. I've done the Half in New Bedford in March, I've done Triathlons in the Fall and Summer.

The thing that I want to get at some point is a bike (funny that was my image from last night). You see it is my weakest event, and I also don't have a proper road bike. I have a Townie bike (Elektra's version of a Dutch Granny bike before the designed the Amsterdam) and my ancient Trek mountain bike from my days in SF (which I've used for all my Tri's in MA in the last 13 yrs), but neither of them are any good for really enjoying the race or become reasonably placed in my age group (although in my first Tri, I missed being 3rd by seconds, because I make up for it in the water).

You see I am a human animal. The bike is a machine that is added to the way we move through space (and I love to move, even fly on my bikes), but it's not as pure as swimming and running. Both of those sports helped evolve as humans. If you read Born to Run  or know of  Elaine Morgan's Aquatic Ape theory (http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes?language=en) then you'll have some understand of where I'm coming from regarding the purity of swimming and running.

I guess you could argue that the bicycle is the next evolution of human movement advancement: the wheel. I've loved wheeled toys since I was a girl. I preferred Tonka trucks to baby dolls. My first wheels were a tricycle, a wagon and a push-pedal tractor! At some Triathlons, I've seen bikes that cost as much as my Honda Fit, are very close to the same amount. My iron horse has served me well, but this year (as last), I'll be trolling Craigslist for a serviceable, and cheap, Tri-bike to actually let me train and race to my potential.

Funny thing about being 52 and having been a runner now for 40 years...I can mentally run a Half without much physically preparation. I may not be fast, but I'm steady. Obstacle course races have added to the love of being outdoors with others, running, and over coming challenges along the way. Swimming is a love and passion, but only a very recent (last decade) sport. Although I did swim for gym in High School & pleasure in college, swam in the ocean all my life (and snorkeled, dove for hire), took aqua-aerobics through both pregnancies, and most bodies of water when ever they present themselves and I"m free to swim, skinny dip or float. Biking has been a mode of transport, tooling around and traveling experience. Especially in Holland. The bike roads and routes are amazing. If you don't bike in the cities, towns and village of NL while you're there, you've missed half of the experience of Holland. All season and weather biking, too, btw. Same with San Francisco!

Okay..I must go to sleep. In a little over a week I'll be going for a "dip" in Boston Harbor with some other silly selkie folk, but tonight I'll dream of running, biking and swimming in warmer and softer air!

Good night, my human animals, G'night!

biking into the sunset...

Be
Inwardly
Consciencious
You'll
Claim
Love
Eventually

Bravely
Imagine
Closeness
Yearning
Compassion
Life
Entangled

Balanced
Inner
Conflicts
Yonder
Clouds
Leaving
Enlightened

As the rain begins tonight on my skylights and I've hoisted myself back into my proverbial bike saddle, I'll leave you all with this:

"I'll Follow The Sun" by The Beatles

One day you'll look to see I've gone
For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun
Some day you'll know I was the one
But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

And now the time has come
And so my love I must go
And though I lose a friend
In the end you will know, oooh

One day you'll find that I have gone
But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

Yea, tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun
And now the time has come
And so my love I must go
And though I lose a friend
In the end you'll know, oooh

One day you'll find that I have gone
But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun