Random Thoughts over several days

“I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.”  Annie Dillard

At Quaker mtg today “you can chose  to be Compassionate or you can chose to be Right” Dahlai Lama

Or perhaps you can chose to be Curious? Compassionate about what IS?  Tuning into the music of What Happens to sense the next step you can take which will (hopefully) Further the Action of the Universe’s bending toward Justice?    Or  maybe just notice that there is potential in pain and loss for some growth whether or not tiny believe in evolution?   And learn and expand your compassion from the pain, not waste it.    

I feel slightly mired, more pain, less energy.  It’s easy to feel a whiff of despair , easy to want a steady upward climb in my new life.  But if I’ve learned anything from dark times I’ve lived through, it is that life loops, orbits around experiences until there is familiarity and acceptance which allows the struggle to move on to a new way of expressing itself.   Increased pain and decreased energy is the background hum of aging .    Like Dillard’s quote about living as she should, noticing, accepting. I am choosing to be present to what IS rather than focused on what I’d like or feel should be.   

Which brings me to echos of the question of purpose or mission or quest  that have been popping up in strange places of late.  I keep waiting to be tapped on the shoulder by life to go DO some valuable service as I was in my youth     But I keep coming around to noticing.  It seems my bedrock skill, character gift or flaw?     As I’ve said often to young folk “you’re always growing but you don’t know what to.  But if you pay attention you can sense when you’re “on\ the path” or “off the path”.  The point is not the content of the next right step, it’s the ability to sense what’s right or not for you?   

And I guess that’s what I’m doing now.   Moving was the next right step.   I need to wait til I sense what’s next

Appreciation

 My neighbors gave me a going away party last night.  It was an odd sensation. Off the top -of my head I think the only other time a group of people gathered to celebrate me was the baby shower when I was pregnant with Adam.  I’ve had birthday parties of course. Not sure why those felt less personal sort of obligatory.  But last night felt different  It was just the local friends that have been part of our house parties for years  and at one point the hosts asked everyone to share a Kathleen memory.  It was fascinating the things they remembered that had touched them.    

I have very ambivalent feelings about being complimented   Fear that folks are “just saying that” to be nice or feel they have to come up with something to say. Yet I feel that I am an “artist of appreciation”, am able to notice and savor aspects of people, or art or some experience that other people might either ignore or not feel meets their standards.  If I have that art to appreciate perhaps I should acknowledge that some people may indeed see who I am and what I do and value it.   

The vulnerability for me is I don’t want to need their valuing, to expect it,  to alter myself to get it.  Somehow it feels safer to avoid feeling particularly appreciated.   76 years old and still insulated from others approval.  Maybe it’s time to melt a little into the fact that some people see some of me and it truly touches them. That Quaker spark of the divine is able to be seen in everyone, even in me.  Appreciate it

Bread Crumbs

 I’ve been waiting to feel some restless desire for …..something?  Something that would lend itself to researching opportunities, taking some action.    Crickets.   But I am noticing a few odds and ends of attractions which might be bread crumbs toward  something?

I’m enjoying playing with the idea of how our stories alter our experience of reality   I’m wondering if Story Corp (I believe there is such a thing?) might be something to look into.  Though in truth it’s the psychological impact of the story frame we chose  that interests me more than the story content.

I watched a movie where a group of disparate women developed a comraderie as they took on a challenge together.  There is some attraction to that idea though my years in the public school system largely drove any of hope of that away.  Still it’s a bread crumb of interest.  Not enough to discern a route forward  but still  perhaps the beginning of a beginning?  Bread crumbs may be a dream fragment or a psychological raised eyebrow     I think I need to gather many of them before I can find a theme plot a course

Making It Work

 Everything is frictionful.   “Blah” said Toad.  I could say face to face with the second step, but it isn’t.  It feels like every step.   Like doors that won’t shut and no good place for laundry,  it feels like all the daily tasks that I did unconsciously and comfortably out at the farm, are now all friction.                                             But there’s no going back.     The farm is rented, my stuff dispersed or stowed  (another problem is stuff moved toward the end, I have no memory Where it is!)   I am here and need to make it work.   It’s a slog

So what story do I tell myself about this moment ?  I think tapping into the experience of friction and little irritating rough patches suggests the image of sanding and refitting a wood working project to work well and glow with an aesthetically pleasing functionality.  That story suggests getting down into the weeds and  making  everything Work, fixing, reworking, replacing each irritant until the smooth working and familiarity allow me to move through this space, with ease , no alert caution needed.  

Or I could just be annoyed and ask myself What was I thinking!?!     I think I’ll make it work

Disorientation

 I’ve returned from my travels and have sort of fallen thru the cracks in what I call home.  Before I left I had started daily routines, the embryos of new habits  that anchored me to a new home base.  But then I joined a family reunion on a pond in Maine that has such ancient memory resonance that it’s part of my psyche’s ABC’s. And I was there with all my sibs, talking about stories and images from when Home first became a  reality.   Then I spent more time in Hanover my home from age 4-7. Also full of old magnetic images and memories.    I feel sort of like a force field of ancient memories has distorted my barely beginning roots of this being my here and now Home.    

I like to think about my thinking, and this disorientation gives me a little vertigoish sense of seeing the backside of my own head.  It won’t last; soon I’ll become engaged  (or mired) in the here and now, which is how it should be.  But seeing my new Life in a little room above a garage in the context of all my other homes, especially the farm, gives the new Home more moment, more symbolism more story potential.   

I have dream images from our house on Spinney rd and the cabin on Otter Pond.  My first apartment in Chicago has been a powerful dreamscape.  The farm in Bell Center hasn’t appeared for years  though it’s particularly  powerful when it does.  It’s the farm that Gil and I shared a dream of and created which of course figures most current images in the back of my mind.    What stories will it take to make this new space like the inside of my head, where I shed my persona  as I come up the stairs and discover  another deeper older me  waiting to be lived?

Loving with all my intelligence

 I’m alone with Ed, my brother whom I love , who is only a shadow of himself anymore.   It’s hard.  Partly from the constant vigilance needed to catch him before he wanders.  Partly because he’s there and not really there.  In some ways it’d be easier if he was all gone and then my heart wouldn’t be caught by old Ed playfulness or occasional astute remark.

And David made a careless error with his car which is going to cost him a lot of money.   I know how shame and self anger can be so destructive .   Another man I love and cannot help with his internal struggles    It makes me eat ice cream.  Somehow I feel the need for self soothing.   I wish I could come up with healthier coping mechanisms.      How can I face my own demons and self care?   It’s easier to anguish over those I love than to love myself “with all my intelligence”

That quote is from a poem by Adrienne Rich which I read years ago. It struck me at the time because love is so often thought of as immune to rationality and thinking.   I believe that Love is tied to the stories we tell ourselves.  And we can influence and choose our stories.  Choosing to love with all my intelligence means choosing stories which offer possibility, hope,  salvation.    

I love my son  He’s 46 yrs old and struggling.  I could fit all his info into a story of addiction, mental illness and character flaws.  Or I can frame it as a hero’s journey, with obstacles and personal demons which throw him into pits of despair but which again and again he rises from and tries again.  He lubricates his efforts with a preternatural generosity of spirit which he has had since early childhood and with a kindness toward those who are struggling or in pain.   I love that Hero though I know the outcome of his journey is anything but certain. I am choosing the story I tell because I know it is a story which allows growth, change evolution.  My intelligence says  this story is a gift my love can hold him in.  And I chose to love him as much as loving him chooses me.

I love my brother who is fading into dreamlike fogginess from his Alzheimer’s    I can tell myself the story that the  real “Eddie” is gone and that once he no longer recognizes me (not yet thank God) I can write off having a relationship with him.  Or I can chose to tell myself  that he is retreating into dream worlds but that they are His dreamworlds and so still a piece of the real Him.  I can chose to play with him in those strange stories , still playing with our mutual love of language and witty repartee  his somewhat caustic humor can still annoy me but it’s part of his charm too; he definitely hasn’t lost his charm!  The story my love says about him is that we will be in relationship til he dies, (and who knows maybe even after that??)  this story keeps me engages and connected to him  even at his most frustrating.   I choose to Love because seeing the positive, the marvelous, the touching keeps my soul moist and I believe the act of seeing that “goodness” feeds it, calls it into Being in the world. Not unlike teachers who see their students positives help them rise to that good.    Using my ability to see the power of the stories I tell myself and using them to further the Love in the world is my gift.   And I’m glad for it

Becoming Sick

 It’s been creeping up on me, the chills, the sneezing, slight headache, stuffy nose.    I don’t get sick often; have never had Covid that I know of.  It’s an altered state of consciousness and I hope it passes quickly. But it IS a different perspective!  Like the difficulty walking, I try to find something interesting about the change.    But I’d rather be healthy

Something more

 I’ve caught a whiff of “there’s something more I could be doing with my life”. What it is or how I can find it is unclear. As the daily routines which have filled my life for years is starting to slough off, I’m aware that other people fill their lives differently, Traveling or buying new toys, trying to recapture old glories, they may not be what satisfies me but there is Something More that I could do this lifetime.   I need to get a better sense of what is on the menu for 76 year old ladies of questionable fitness.   I need to actively think of collecting possibilities for this menu and then start sampling

The Eldest of Five

Being with my sibs is….interesting.  We are cut from the same cloth and share the same memories mostly but we are SUCH different people.   I love them,  they’re strangers, and part of who I am.   And they can drive me up the wall!!!  I hear all these shared memories and then also hear the competition, neediness, wanting to get the most (fill in the blank) attention,, love respect, love.    As the eldest I am in the crosshairs to be taken down.  I feel appreciated and also resented.   Listening to their stories of high school in Hanover , I’m a stranger, I wasn’t there  I was off in Chicago   I wasn’t part of their gang. But I also paved the way for their flying the nest and moving to WI.  

Karen lit into me tonight, ostensively  about the sales of Pipers Nest and feeling she is not being afforded the central position in the transfer to the Bancrofts.  And my feeling her boundaries are shot and she’s going to drive them up the wall as she micromanages  everything.  And yet I’ll try to give her what she wants.      I remember wanting to move in with dad because my sibs were driving me up the wall. And yet I sewed dresses for the girls and vests for Ed and made them all advent calendars   Etc etc.  i feel my unconscious is giving me mixed messages about how I feel about them.        And I’m glad to be here

Homing Devise

I’m traveling out east tomorrow  There’ll be a family reunion and then I’ll stay with Ed while Pam gets a break.  I’ve done the prep, packed, finally vacuumed and washed the floors/, and feel kinda dazed.  It’s like I haven’t been settled Here long enough to have an anchor as I travel to somewhere Else.     Home needs to be like a felt sense homing devise.  It’s interesting how my car’s gps has figured it out with out any input from me. It now tells me how far I a from home and it means here.   I wonder when I’ll feel that in my bones        Honey’s getting it. She knows where to turn when we’re out for walks.  But when we go to the farm she disappears into her labyrinth of farm smells,  poop and carrion

What makes something home… I remember when I moved mom from her independent apartment into Assisted Living.  Her memory was gone and I was worried shed be scared and bot know where she was  but she told me that though she didn't know where she was , she know she was in the right place because she recognized her furniture and pictures.     So maybe seeing my beloveds furniture and pictures will become my gps’s homing devise

The Radio in the Back Room

I’ve always been aware of the background music of my life. I can just tune in and hear whatever music my unconscious  feels is the soundtrack at that moment.  Like the time during my divorce when I had a dream that had background music “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”.   And I’ve also been able to tune into the random thoughts and associations and memories that are way behind what the front part of my mind is engaged with.  I’m not always sure what to make of it. It’s not deep wisdom or truths I should listen to. It’s more like an auditory version of the visual after image when you’ve stared at something too long.   But sometime it surprises me and I realize perhaps there’s another reality I should take into account.  I saw an old friend at Quaker meeting the other day, and everything in the back room was saying I DON’T WANT TO reengage with her.   Nothing subtle.  But I’d have a hard time explaining why to myself.  I feel she’d like to get back into relationship and I DON’T WANT to   

The radio in the back room warned me when I first met Tom.  I was extremely uncomfortable and couldn’t figure out why. We were waiting for my friend to return from school. He wasn’t hitting on me or anything. But I was so uncomfortable that I made an excuse to get up and go around the block to kill time. When I returned she still wasn’t there and after a bit I got the same feeling.  And then I vividly remember thinking “I wonder what’s going on here? I wonder if were going to get married and there’ll be some painful thing like with dad and Enid and mom”.  No joke. That radio was onto some deep stuff.  Not that the nonsense syllables and earworm tunes reveal meaning most of the time, (at least that I can figure out at the time)  but listening to my dreams and just noticing the background thoughts  may be what reveals not only my theme music for this new era but also what the first new dance steps should be.   I’m  Listening 

Sick Dog

 Honey’s been sick since Tues night and it’s disturbing. I’m used to letting things settle but did take her into the vet on Thurs and $450 later they say she’s “all good”    But it isn’t. She’s had three days of the runs.   It’s funny I felt such release when I gave up being responsible for the chickens, yes helping out with the moving in from summer pasture but they just weren’t on my mind as much.  Honey is all I have left that I’m responsible for    Thinking back to all the animals and kids and partners and siblings that I’ve been responsible for over the decades.  To be honest I’m tired of it.    But my sick dog is mine. And tomorrow I need to call back the vet.   Sigh

The Theme music of changing Eras

 I’m looking for theme music of this new era.  I remember the music of my starting college in Chicago music, Bill Evans, Joni Mitchel, John Coltrane and Smokey Robinson ….. and my roommates Donovan. Listening to any of it takes me back to how I felt in that crazy altered state of 1967     The then there’s the music as I had kids Little White Duck and Free to Be You and Me.  And the pain of the divorce era. Meg Christian and Turning It Over.     The falling in love with Gil music was Jan Garbarek and Keith Jarret and all the disco of the 80s.     David’s prison time  Fat Freddy’s Drop  still brings tears to my eyes.  And then all the Latin music that Gil soaked me in    I still remember the arousal of Mi Tierra  and Los Van Van  the Koln concert of our wedding. During the crazy intense days toward the end of his life Cassandra Wilson’s Shelter From the Storm made me cry on repeat.  Also too weird  that song sometimes no kidding would just start playing on my computer or in the car without my putting it on or even having listened to it in weeks!!      

  After he died I sort of stopped listening to music.  Not sure why.  Some of it was I’d been so overstimulated all those years of crisis. That I wanted to fall into no sensation.    Some of it was that Gil had been my source for new music  and now that pipe line had dried up.      I listened to my old music and the Gil Memorial music  until it stopped making me tear.  And then it was silence    

Not all silence is created equal 

Now in my new space, attempting new habits    I want to find some new music that my body can associate with this new era.    I need new Theme music.   Something lyrical but with some salty sour chords  something that resolves with hopeful keys.     Something with a drive that gets into a grove  that holds    I feel a little like West Side Story with “Something’s Coming”.     Theme music can’t be prescribed it’ll have to come out of left field and grab me! Or else slip into my dreams  on repeat.    I just need to listen for it and recognize it’s resonance

Waiting fir the rebirth of Wonder

 Sydney asked me, “so what do you all day’.  And I found myself saying I’m not filling it.   I do a little of this and a little of that but I want to become a little bored, a little restless  so I can truly look around and ask myself with some appetite,. What do you want?    There’s an old saying that I like about “You can’t kill time without injuring eternity”.  

I’m fixing this, getting ideas for that but basically  I’m waiting for my eyes to become accustomed to the dark so to speak so I can start seeing feeling what’s here, what’s possible    Busyness and accomplishing may feel good but they don’t feed the Rebirth of Wonder”

Settling

 I’m settling. Moving things into new more convenient places. Figuring out novel ways to solve problems   The half fridge which is all I have room for in this ship sized room, is a pain in the neck/back to see what’s on the shelves. And everything in the back freezes   I was to old about refrigerator drawers!  Expensive but def would enable me to see what I’ve got. An elegant solution!  But I’d have to move the trash can…and the one place it might fit would only work if I trade out the “thinking chair” for the new swivel one but then…. You get the drift   The dust of the move is settling 

And my social life is starting up. I went out to eat with some old friends  kind of impulsively.  I never could do that out at the farm.  Been reaching out to old friends from my distant past as they pop into my mind   Even talking about a trip to England !  Who IS this woman!?  I’ve had a moment or two of restlessness.  I’m looking forward to more    And what I’ll do about it