Play or Struggle

Brown Bear Cubs
Photographer: Steve Hillebrand
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

A friend said that this picture reminded her of her two sons.

When you click on this picture so that you can see it larger, notice the eye contact between the two and the way their paws are gentle enough not to snag fur! Perhaps I should have titled this post: "Rapport."

Blossoms and Tears

Lotus. Photographer: Elise Smith. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Ms. Smith has conveyed something so very beautiful. This lotus reminds me of a daffodil and also of a butterfly. It's good to reflect on a breathtaking image such as this.

I have spent the better part of the past week on a new listserv with a spiritual theme. It is energizing but it also, at a deep level, saddens me. It seems that I will never find a permanent spiritual home. Is it that my standards are so high? Or am I just too much of a hybrid? I don't know. But it hurts. Hence: blossoms and tears, my title.

If you find yourself reading this and there is one person in your life who loves you, indeed you are lucky. And if you have a spiritual home, cherish it.

Treading Water

Black Duck. Photographer: Glen Smart. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Happy Birthday to my dear sister in another state.

My son and I have been working on a satire of a new children's program. Matt Groening: Move over. Actually, Matt has broken ground for all of us given to zany humor with a message...Sorry we can't provide excerpts here, at this time...But who knows, maybe we will start our own blog.

I had posted two pictures of myself and received zero response. Either no one is reading or no one had the heart to say anything. I took them down and hence this segment looks a bit vacant now.

Back to Nature

Black-tailed Prairie Dog. Photographer: Gary Stolz. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Before I go to sleep, I had to restore this site to its pictorial source of inspiration: nature. If you have not done so, don't forget to click on the pictures, to see them BIGGER. It's worth the extra second. In some cases, the birds become lifesize, with a click. I hope this compensates for my impressionistic writing.

Generic Ranting

American Avocet. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

It's a shorebird. I don't have the equanimity of this bird today. This year I set my personal record for written and published letters to the editor. I sent four and three were published, each in a different paper. I saw something today that made me want to jump out of my chair and shout (not that I am an expert in journalism). But sometimes the holes in a story are so obvious.

"Oh no," someone close to me said. "Don't tell me you are becoming one of those people who writes letters to the editor!"

Since I set my personal record for published letters this year...there's no chance I'll get another one in any of the three papers. But I'll have to figure out an indirect way to get to the subject here...

Seeking Refuge

Upper Mississippi River. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

I first titled this post: "Finding Refuge." There were times in my life I knew precisely where to go to recharge. On the swing under the ancient oak tree in my yard. By the fountains near the office where I once worked. In the basement where I could play with dolls and friends. Well, I can't quite find refuge at this phase of my life--which probably coincides with the point at which some folks think: "If you don't have refuge in your heart, where and when will you find it?" Disquiet is a good word for uneasiness. I did steal away yesterday to a place that had a pond, and I saw some yellow water lilies there. This picture of the Missississipi had the closest match I could find. The flowers I saw yesterday were budding, not open. The ones here are exuberant in their petal-celebration of sun. I have learned my share of deep breathing and visualization techniques in life. I think that these, too, can be used for effective living or as escape. Sometimes the mind spins and spins like a disk drive with nothing in it. (Soon that technology will be obsolete--if it isn't already.) If your eyes light on this, I wish you momentary refuge (wherever you may find it) from the struggles of your life.

In and Out of Shells

Loggerhead Sea Turtle Hatching Photographer: Donna A. Dewhurst. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

I have a turtle collection. Many media: coconut shell, coal, gemstone, ceramic, glass, wood, crystal, cloth. You name it: I might have it. Turtles became my totem many years ago. I had a pet turtle in childhood, Phyllis. And I loved her and showed my love by powdering her (as she felt wet, being in water most of the day). Then, I would put her in dark places (typically, one of my dad's shoes). Buy one turtle totem, buy a hundred...before one knows it, they have proliferated all over the house.

An expression I disliked passionately when my grade school teachers used it: "We would like to bring her out of her shell." How many times in life have I, or anyone, ventured out of the shell...and then wished there was a way back in? But the shell is gone. Turtles have a distinct advantage in that the shell travels along. Imagine having that flexibility...to stretch out, check out the place, pull limbs and head back in. A person can reinvent himself/herself only so often. Many places on earth, there really is nowhere to hide.

A Colorful Post

Ursus maritimus (polar bear). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

I have chosen these playful yellowish-white creatures with amazing midnight eyes to punctuate my post on color. This evening, laying down to try to forget pain, I began fall course planning in my head. Yesterday, I think the theme of color might have begun to incubate because the door fell off my closet. Again. (It's not the heat, it's the humidity. Cabinets stick, doors fall off.) Like any sensible person, I figured I had better do a better job of organizing my clothes lest anyone look into the closet while fixing the door. (If there had been a way to hide all the clothes into another closet, I would have done so--but I could only stash the summer dresses there.) I spent ninety minutes sorting my clothes in approximate, inverse-rainbow colors. (Starting with pink and violet, to navy, to green...with blacks and greys interpolated...and red at extreme right, as I rarely wear it). This type of compulsive behavior while battling shoulder pain is a very bad idea.

Today, from wherever such thoughts come from, I found myself with the idea of an ice-breaker exercise to be done early in the semester. Students might write about a rainbow with hues of their own choosing, their own rationale, and in any order. The truly adventurous could illustrate it, but that would be optional. For example, I could put pink in my rainbow somewhere because of my former love of the color; I would include something like cranberry or maroon because I like the drama of it; I would include copper, silver, and gold because they are awe-inspiring even when achieved through crayons, which is how I came to love them. I might include earth brown and new-growth green, which stretch endlessly on the freeway in spring and remind me that winter does pass...

Well, before I knew it, my mind leaped into remembered childhood colors...I moved from my former pink bedroom to shiny red tiles and countertops in the kitchen to our yellow attic...if you ever do this exercise, caution! It may trigger nostalgia or other pains. Color carries powerful potential to evoke memory. If I think hard (or soft) enough, I can recall my childhood dog's golden fur (not only the color but the texture and the scent) and the beautiful white dot at the center of what I called her forehead.

Are such memories powerful because they were encoded in childhood? Or is it because--pulling them once more from the musty trunk of one's mind--one knows for sure that the times are gone, for good?

Yes, one can defy the rules of optics with imagined rainbows. But color-recollection allows one to leap through time and space anyway. As I remember those I loved, I recall my dog Happy...who ate crayons no matter how well I hid them (she was part retriever). Perhaps crayons evoked memories of carrots, radishes, green pepper...or were easier to access than the bone hidden outside. Upon finding the chewed-up remains of crayon-label, I would be angry. But Happy looked so guilty: she could not help herself. And if I could bring her back, I'd buy her a whole box.

I scribbled at a very young age--with crayons--on our dining room wall. It was long before I could write. It was more than a compulsion; nothing and no one could stop me. My mom, at her wits' end, asked a neighbor what she should do. The response: "Buy her a blackboard."

Singing and Trust

Banding a Yellow Warbler, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (top)
Hooded Warbler, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (top left)
Kentucky Warbler, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (right)

A friend across the seas has suggested I modify this list to password protected. I'm assuming this would mean it would then not be accessible by the worldwide web or to anyone outside a known circle. He probably is wise in his suggestion. But I have had a few situations in life in which I thought things were secure and -- wham -- they were not. The feeling of trust betrayed, even accidentally, is overwhelming. Is there safety in openness? Not necessarily. So, like the birds, I retreat to my nest, maintain my balance, hope that no gust of wind topples me. And hope that if someone must track me, no harm is meant. Take a look at the top bird: a picture of equanimity.

Sunrise, Sunset

African Sunset. Photographer: Gary Stolz. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Is there anything in words that can match this sunset? I don't think so.

Thank you, Mr. Stolz, and the incredible photographers that do work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

I am in a physical pain flare-up. I won't stop writing but such times really do make one reconsider everything. There is so much I thought was will-power or power of the mind in my youth -- that was probably a surplus of feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain. I had challenges but not this kind of challenge.

There is some pretty good research out there about optimism and pessimism that takes into account one's state of health. Of course we all know healthy people who are unhappy and unhealthy people that are happy, that float above their pain. I can't float at the moment but I can reflect on one beautiful experience.

A friend of my son's had his Bar Mitzvah this past weekend. As I know this young man fairly well, it was awesome to hear him and see him in a sacred context. Not that carpooling and overhearing what boys talk about is not also sacred...Some day, he wants to explore space...and he has that certitude of achieving his plans, as I have observed in people sometimes. My son's violin teacher knew at the age of three, seeing a violin in a shop window, that he wanted that...though he had never had experience of the instrument before...awesome.

I was in a hospital waiting room when the Shuttle went up this past week. I heard people engaging in an informal debate on the value of such exploration. I said: "We may not know the value until several more decades to come." I was thinking of what my son's generation may uncover.

Styles of Listening

Blackbuck Antelope. Photographer: Dick Mitchell. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

There is nothing passive about active listening. I was reminded of this while reflecting on the work of William Stafford, the poet. He was said to have had a "fierce neutrality" in listening to the work of student writers. (I wish I could attribute the quotation.) He did not wish to lead them astray from tapping into and expressing their inner voices with his too-apparent affirmation or with cutting criticism. I was also reminded of watching video of Carl Rogers with a client last semester, in one of my counseling classes. The stereotype of a therapist who reframes and restates as an automaton is not only potentially infuriating (in practice) but also decidedly not in the tradition of Rogers. Excuse my italics. Rogers, as I observed him on tape, was an incredibly active listener. I was reminded of palpable movement of the heart and/or of the inner spirit that can happen when with such a person.

Is it obvious that I chose this picture because the antelope is in rapt attention? In this hectic era, there is often little time or inclination to listen to one's self--or to anyone else.