Monthly Archives: October 2016

LISTENING – Day 81 in a year of….

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Day 81, October 13, 2016 @11:17 am

qcui7938Day 81 finds me here with my snack bowl, watching Martha Beck live on Facebook.  She asks, Do you feel like sh*t right now?  As a matter of fact, I do, Martha.  How astute you are!  My blood sugar is low.  Therefore, my feeling like sh*t.  I’m grumpy as a bear.  All my aches and pain are magnified.  So are Sheba’s barks.  I’m giving her sh*t and she won’t shut up.  I stand up to see what the H was bugging her.

It is a beautiful big blue jay on the lower branches of the spruce tree.  Thanks, Sheba!  I would have missed it.  I know I don’t listen to you enough.  Most of the time I think you’re troublesome, barking for nothing.  I’m wrong.  You are trying to say something but I didn’t listen.

Today marks the day I will listen more – to Sheba, what my body and everything else is saying to me.  Everybody and everything are talking.  They all have something to say.  It is up to me to pay attention and LISTEN.  Some people and some things are more important than others.  It is up to me to weed out the rubble and keep the pearls.

 

 

PICKING IT UP – Day 80 in a year of….

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Day 80, October 11, 2016 @9:51 am

I abandoned ship yesterday.  It was a tough day physically.  When you are tired and achy, everything is tough and of a different colour.  I gave myself a break. It was an appropriate day being World Mental Health Day.  We have to take care of our mental as well as physical health.  Rest is good for body and soul. Rest for me is stepping a little away from introspection. That was my doing different yesterday.

img_8008I’m here, now – with my hot chocolate and two marshmallows on top.  I’m picking up where I left off.  I’m trying for a sweet and warm start.  My desk is not any more organized or tidy but I’m not letting that stop me.  Getting organized does not work for me. It’s a myth and a procrastination tactic and trap.

ebop1684My doing different today is not to fall back to my old ways, old feelings, old habits, old attitudes.  Yes, I’m grumpy and unpleasant inside.  I recognize that.  My feelings are real but it is not anybody’s fault. My different is acceptance and finding ways to re-frame what/how I see and feel. Recognition gives me that pause to reset that button in my brain before I act.

GIVING THANKS – Day 79 in a year of…

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Day 79, October 9, 2016 @10:26 am

wewb3750Thanksgiving.  Here I am with my cup of tea and the dog.  There’s much to be thankful for.  Each morning is an opportunity  to do different, to do better. The decision lies in me and no one else in how and what direction I will travel. I am responsible for the results and consequences of my actions.  At least they are from my conscious decisions.  I’m not letting life happen to me.

It’s Sunday, ‘a day of rest’.  I shall sit and linger awhile, sipping all the good stuff that is in my life.  I shall contemplate and muse upon synchronicity – all those whispers that come to me when I am quiet and still.  When I am willing and ready to listen and hear.  I know there is much that I need/want to change.  There’s much I need to question with:  Is that really true?  I recognize those moments that I need to ask.  I recognize those times I’m fighting them.  There’s a stubbornness and a twist in my heart.  No, I don’t want to!  It’s a big signal to ask:  Is that really true?

Recognition is a gift to be thankful for.  If I don’t recognize myself, how can I go forward?  How can I be/do anything?  On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for this poem by Derek Walcott.  It says everything that is in my heart at this moment.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

STAYING WITH IT – DAY 78 in a year of..

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Day 78, October 8, 2016 @9:24 am

xgtj2464Staying with things is not my forte.  When things get tough/unpleasant, I like to jump ship and abandon.  I have a trail of unread books, unfinished projects and unresolved relationships.  Who doesn’t, though?  I’m proud to say that I have toughed it out and finished reading The Crime Writer – a novel about Patricia Highsmith.  She is described in the Guardian:

“She seduced a string of women, bred snails, suffered from severe depression, became an emotionally avoidant alcoholic and was variously viewed as kind, witty, and a nightmare.”

Nothing pleasant in the psychologic study of this woman or her life. It left me feeling as I had after watching the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley.  But I stayed immersed in the unpleasant, dark and sinister possibilities of our humanness – what our thoughts can lead us to do. Not everything is life is pleasant. Everything is plausible.

I’m hoping this exercise of staying with the unpleasant/difficult can strengthen my fortitude and not run for the escape hatchet tout suite.  I wonder how many opportunities I have missed because I left/gave up too soon.

It’s tough showing up here every day even though I love the tap, tap of my keyboard.  But consistency makes it easier.  It’s becoming a habit.  Habits do make life easier but I still have to make a conscious effort.

What ship have you left lately?  I’m off to search for a pleasant read. It is Saturday, a day to sooth the self.

 

MORNING PAGES – Day 77 in a year of…

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Day 77, October 7, 2016 @7:05

photo-on-2016-10-07-at-7-02-amI’m feeling a little grainy and ruffled this morning, not wanting to start at all. The morning is still dark.  It would be darker if not for the snow.  I feel weighed down with the heaviness of winter – snow, boots, hats, scarves, mitts… Winter!  It’s only October 7th. Maybe I will feel better after the effects of shovelling wears off.  Maybe it will warm up and autumn can resume for another couple of months.  Maybe.  Maybe.  Maybe.

There!  I have ventilated, letting out my heaviness.  Not exactly long enough to fit in with Julie Cameron’s Morning Pages.  It’s not 3 pages, not even 3 paragraphs of ranting.  I’m getting better, improving, not so long winded before I get going. Now I can concentrate on my glass half full.

Have you ranted?  Give it a try.  Do it any way that works for you.  No one has to know.

UNDER THE TREE, BY THE POND

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It’s Wednesday and snowing big times here in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It’s a good day for storytelling.  What better venue than the Friday Fictioneers. We like to tell stories of 100 words to a photo prompt.  We are hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields of Addicted to Purple.  Here is my story.

PHOTO PROMPT © CEAyr

PHOTO PROMPT © CEAyr

I sat at the base of the tree, cradled by two roots. I gazed across the pond. Right out there in the middle was where my brother and I got stuck. We were chasing the water buffalo with sticks. We didn’t get very far before we couldn’t go at all. We had to be rescued. Boy, did mother give it to us after! We were soaked and caked in mud.

Those were the good memories. What haunted me still was the memory of my grandmother being publicly humiliated and persecuted by the village under this very tree many years ago.

WHO I AM – Day 75 in a year of…

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Day 75, October 5, 2016 @1:14 pm

img_4891Lunch is over.  The dishes not quite put away.  I always feel overcome after lunch, unable to think or do anything.  So I come here to my space with my cup of tea to muse and tap on the keyboard.  I feel comforted and not so melancholy, surrounded by light from windows.

Please don’t get me wrong.  I am not unhappy or sad.  I am not in any dire straits. I am a muse.  I am by nature whimsical, sometimes melancholic.  I sigh, heave my chest, sip and tap.  That is how I am.  I poke along at a snail’s pace.  By chance I am reading a book about Patricia Highsmith who raises snails.  She takes them in her purse with some lettuce to events. The book, The Crime Writer, is a novel.  But Highsmith and snippets about her and her life are real.

Highsmith loved cats, and she bred about three hundred snails in her garden at home in Suffolk, England.[17] Highsmith once attended a London cocktail party with a “gigantic handbag” that “contained a head of lettuce and a hundred snails” which she said were her “companions for the evening”.[17]   – from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith

img_7928I hope I’m not like Highsmith, though I have been called eccentric.  But I am meandering, straying.  Blame it on the weather.  Blame it on the snow.  It is only October the 5th.  It is snowing and still snowing.  I am prepared if not quite ready for it.  I am not fighting it.  It is a good day to sip tea, have a cookie or two, muse, read about snails……

What are you doing today?  Is it snowing where you are?

A DIFFERENT STORY – Day 74 in a year of…

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Day 74, October 4, 2016 @10:00 am

img_7918Mornings are still dark at 7 am.  I’m slow at rising.  I’m slow at putting on my morning face and coming to the keyboard.  I diddle and daddle.  Finally I put on makeup, earrings.  I put on a pink sweater I haven’t worn in a coon’s age and some reasonable pants. Why do I wear the same ratty old clothes day in and day out when my closet is brimming with stuff?  Why don’t I wear a smile more often?  The answers could be as simple as habit and laziness.  It takes more energy to make choices than to go on auto pilot.  My habit has been to grab and don.

Habits and feelings have a habit of seeping back.  This morning I am quite aware of it.  I’m squirming with the discomfort of it all.  I pace, picking up a Kleenex and a napkin left here and there.  I gather some laundry to take downstairs to do. Remembering I haven’t checked the clutter in the basement for a few day, I cleared and discarded a few items.  When I can’t do big, I do little has become my mantra.

img_1628I’m finally here though, tapping on my keyboard.  The click, click beneath my fingertips are rhythmic and soothing.  Thoughts come and feelings come.  I’m pushing through the gloom and the mundane of this morning.  I see my glass/day full instead of empty.  I’m romancing myself with each tap, tap of the keyboard. I’m creating new thoughts, new habits and new views.  I’m telling a different story. What stories are you telling?

ROMANCING MYSELF – Day 73 in the year of…

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Day 73, October 3, 2016 @7:53 am

img_1592Here I am, showing up for another day.  It’s almost two and a half months into my yearly challenge of doing different.  But who’s counting, eh?  The good thing about me is that I am easily motivated.  Give me a suggestion and I’m off.  You don’t have to fire that gun at the starting line.  The trouble with me is – I’m easily bored.  I don’t have staying power.  I fall off that proverbial wagon constantly. Hence, I have many unfinished projects – sweaters, cross-stitches, petite points, want-to-be books, wanna ambitions….

So how do I stay motivated and get to the Promised Land?  The destination is still far off beyond the horizon.  How not to live half-assed?  How do I romance myself?  It’s  the core of this yearly challenge. I have to leave it here and finish my tea.  How are you romancing yourself?