Random Howls

“… for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.” – Doreene Valiente

Sometimes what we find within is a wound, a need… something that needs to be addressed… something that needs to change so that we can grow and thrive on our journey.

It’s not all about me, or you… it’s about what we choose to do for others that gives meaning to our lives… One of the many things I’ve learned in my time on this earth is the act of giving… As a child it seems counter intuitive when we hear the old saying “It’s better to give than to receive” but it’s true…  in the myriad small things we do for others there is real satisfaction… For me, it’s as simple as making sure that all within my gates and under my welcome are cared for before I rest… hounds, horses and humans…  and if we are favored with friends and family in our home then, even though it requires more effort,  the satisfaction that comes from making sure everyone is fed and sheltered is a greater gift… Not that I am some sort of paragon of virtue or selflessness but doing little things like keeping my home in order so as to be welcoming or preparing a meal for those I care about makes me feel good… Funny thing is, I can’t cook for people I don’t like… Since among other things I am a kitchen witch, there is more to my culinary efforts than just following a recipe… I tend to add my feelings and intentions with the spices… I give a part of me to those who I share it with… the sublime satisfaction of  seeing my gift consumed with joy makes every effort in the preparation worth while… and not just for the humans in my life… there is a wonderful peace in standing next to my horses as they contentedly graze on their hay… arm draped over a back or neck, fingers tangled in their manes… listening and feeling the rhythmic chewing and smelling the heady aroma of horse and hay… nothing beats it… seeing the joy of the hounds at a full dish of food and the sigh of contentment when sated, they circle around thrice before  happily plopping down next to me… Checking on the ponies, and making sure all is neat and secure in my small corner of the world at the end of the day makes it easier for me to rest each night…  In Maslow’s hierarchy, food and shelter, security so to speak, are a large part of the foundation for a self actualized life…  If, while under my roof, I can provide this simple gift to others than for me it is indeed better to give because of the good things I receive…

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana…

In order to be part of a strong relationship each person needs to be strong… that means taking care to ensure our needs are met… only then can we meet the needs of the other in the partnership… if we are not involved with those that help us grow and nurture us as individuals we are destroying ourselves… Love has nothing to do with it… Period. You can love someone with all your heart but if they are not meeting your basic needs then that relationship will destroy you… I am a fairly strong person but my strength was hard won many years ago and I will not let myself be beaten down to become a pathetic cog in a broken machine…  Steel is malleable, it can be bent and with an effort re-straightened… however,  bend it enough in the same place and it will break…

Growing old is optional… Growing up is not.  I would like to think that I am still growing up… reaching for my dreams and although my body is aging, my spirit is as young as ever… I may be getting long in the tooth but I have found that because I can now look further back I see clearer into the future…  I know less than I once thought I did because I understand that there is so much more to learn… I don’t have all the answers and I’m not always right and it’s good to ask others and to truly listen to their reply… I am not perfect … and that’s O.K.

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” – D.H. Lawrence

Drumbeats

The problem with marching to the beat of your own drum is that it may be, and in my case generally is, different from the drum most march to… Fortunately my mate hears the same drum… Granted, my hearing is more acute than his when the drum sounds and so others may believe that it is mine alone but happily he hears it too… So, the question then is this… why are so many people unable to simply accept our choice of where to live? Ever since we began telling family and friends of our decision to move we have been besieged by those who “know what’s best” for us… Either through outright statements about how ridiculous it is or through the pointing out of the supposed “flaws” in our chosen local… although they sincerely believe that they have our best interests at heart all it does is cause us to want to draw away and it doesn’t change our plans… When my daughter and her husband got married and announced their intentions to move 2000 miles away I didn’t like it but after telling them that I was concerned because they were so very far away from family and friends we sent them off with our blessing because, like it or not, it’s not my life… I don’t get to decide what is right for anyone else… that’s in spite of the fact that I’m the self-proclaimed  ”Queen of the Universe”…  I get very tired of all the hand-wringing about how “sorry” people are about us selling our house… Why is everyone else so upset? It’s our house after all…  When I ask why they are so “sorry” everyone says something about how hard we worked and how “nice” it is and “oh woe is you”… Yes we did work hard, and yes, it is pretty nice but guess what… It’s going on the market and all that hard work will translate into dollars giving us the ability for us to do what WE want to do… not what everyone else wants…  I know that most of the time these comments are meant in love but it makes me so much more grateful to those in our lives that express support for us and our decision… those who encourage us to not just march, but even dance to the beat of our own drum… you know who you are, those most precious ones who respect that we are marching in the direction that is best for us…   Tolkien wrote “not all who wander are lost…” and for those of us who choose the road “less traveled” sometimes the journey is a bit circuitous… Don’t worry, we’ll let you know when we get there…

Carpe Diem

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear… And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear is gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert

My mate rode his Harley to work for the first time yesterday… leaving in the dark before dawn… in a thickening fog.  Almost 2 years ago a co-worker of mine was killed as he rode his Harley to work… someone crossed the white line into his lane and it was all over for him.  Knowing this I couldn’t help but feel a little worm of fear trying to work it’s way into my psyche… stomach clinching, muscles tensing… and then I remembered the quote from Herbert’s novel ‘Dune” about the “little-death”…  As I drank my first cup of coffee and prepared for work I thought about that quote and how true it is… I know so many people who have made statements about how they “wouldn’t allow” their mate to ride, or how their mate “wouldn’t allow” them to own a bike, or jet-ski, or muscle car or… you get the picture… but life is NOT to be lived in a bubble… to live is to meet fear head on, to seize the opportunity to do the things we love or try new adventures. As I was running these thoughts through my mind it occurred to me that my favorite passion is seen as crazy to many – I ride mustangs – and  to me it is as natural and necessary as breathing… yes, they are large animals and yes, they could easily kill me and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone is afraid of them. Same goes for the Harley… it is part and parcel of the man I love and for me to refuse to acknowledge that, to let my fear cause him anguish, would be the killing of something integral to who he is… and so we ride, he iron horses and me wild horses… we both share in each others passions but each of us is a little more cautious when engaging in them… and that’s O.K.  It would be so much worse to let fear circumscribe our lives. Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet  desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”  What symphonies lie buried in the earth from fear? The opus of a life extinguished… passions forced to the back of the mind… moldering in the corners of the heart… brought out and examined only when no one else is around…  a tragedy that becomes a travesty of a life. Not for me. I choose to sing… to raise my song not because there is never fear but in spite of it! I will sing and I will encourage others to sing… to step outside of the safe boundaries of family and society in pursuit of their passion… to be part of the great chorus or those that choose to face their fears and live… I am blessed that I have a mate that understands as well… who helps me sing when I meet my fear so that I may seize not just the day… but life itself.

Turning Seasons

The winter solstice has passed… almost imperceptibly we feel the days lengthening… and yet, even as the light lingers the grip of winter seems to tighten… This is why, I suppose that the calender shows the solstice as the “first day of winter” instead of what it truly is… the Mid-Point of winter, the zenith of winter, the longest night of the year.   We are all familiar with the fact that the temperature is lowest just as the sun begins to  rise and we all know the saying “it’s darkest just before the dawn” so why would the seasons be any different? Perhaps it is our culturally conditioned need to be in control that led us to make a specific pronouncement on the day winter “officially” begins… Who knows? I only know that it makes absolutely no sense to me… After all, isn’t it logical that winter would begin earlier in more northerly climes? Here in central Texas we have virtually no winter… a couple of chilly weeks and that’s about it whereas in North Dakota the snow and cold come much earlier and stay much later… the only consistent part of these very different winters is that they both pivot around the shortest day of the year… Conversely,  our summer comes early, stays late and generally refuses to go quietly…  like winter, it is centered around a specific point… the summer solstice. I simply put this out here for thought… If you are like me you will “know” when autumn comes or winter or any other season… for me it is a change in the air… I can’t describe it but the air will taste and feel different and I will find that my mind shifts with it… as the daylight hours increase my soul becomes restless…. like the seeds beneath the earth I feel the need to stretch myself and expand outward… at the opposite end of the spectrum as days become shorter I feel the need to retreat into myself… gathering close to the hearth… nurturing the fire of life… And I do… as I grow older I give myself more to the turning of the seasons, the marking of time to the song of mother earth and in doing so I find more peace and harmony in my life.

Winter Wolves

Boreas! Boreas! Release the wolves of winter,

Send them coursing down the long night…

Ice fanged, frost furred,

eyes diamond sharp… bringing cold death to the soft days…

Spilling the hot blood of summer

Rivers of red gouting down from wind tossed limbs…

pooling on the earth in slowly decaying piles that rustle

a tale of greener days…

Boreas! Boreas! Let the wolves run…

Howling down from the north…

the conquerors song

whining around eves and windows

They come on silent paws…

tracks drifting around fence and door,

nipping at heels through unseen cracks…

Boreas! Boreas! Send now the wolves,

Leashed through all the swelling days of light

Lean and hungry the pack will hunt

Devouring the last vestiges of exposed flesh

until sated they rest…

gnawing contentedly on summers bones

Fool’s Gold?

If you were to take a piece of gold ore and a piece of iron pyrites, place them side by side and ask random people to select the most valuable stone, the majority would most likely choose the pyrites – also know as Fool’s Gold… And why not? After all, it’s shiny and has a glitter that true gold can not match in its raw form… yet it has virtually no value. True gold has a dull luster and only becomes bright after being put through flame to have the impurities burned out and then polished. It’s not much different with people … I am always amazed by how impressed most folks are with “glitter” and those individuals that are coated in it… In a conversation this morning I was told to extend credit to an individual without the requisite credit check simply because “…he’s been here forever.”  My response was to observe that shysters and con men have to live somewhere… To judge an individuals’ worth by their social status in this extremely small, pompous community leads to a very narrow view of what is really important in life… I have lived in many small towns and this one seems to embody many of the negative traits of such places.  It’s not all bad though… there are good people here as well… Sometimes it’s harder to see them because they aren’t as “shiny”…  I’m glad I was raised to value the “man” and not the “money”…   We were taught that no job is without honor if it’s done well… if you are a ditch digger and you do your job to the best of your ability then you and your craft are to be as esteemed as the jewel merchant or any other businessman… I guess that it’s because of this I’ve never cared about how much money someone might have or what their family did… what have they done?… how do they treat others? To me those traits are what determines a persons’ value…  One of my favorite lines from Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ is “All that is gold does not glitter…”   I hope I can always discern the difference.

Thanksgiving

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” – Melodie Beattie   I ran across this quote some time ago and it is now one of my favorite… I think it is particularly apt at this holiday of thanksgiving especially in light of the fact that  the holiday seems to have moved so far away from what is was originally about… I see very few people taking the time to reflect on all that they have and to be thankful. Most people seem to celebrate the holiday as an excuse to overindulge, watch football,  shop or have a family gathering which frequently degenerates into an adult version of show and tell… As most of you know, I enjoy all the aforementioned “vices” as much or more than anyone but not necessarily as the focus of the holiday. We have so very much to be thankful for in this time and country and yet I almost never hear anyone acknowledge all that they have… Our consumer culture is always holding a newer, shinier, faster bauble out in front of us in order to distract us and create a false sense of need… If we fall prey to this scam we run the risk of being never satisfied… never able to see how much we do have, how richly we have been blessed… Sadly, I see this on a very regular basis… People who only count their wealth by the possessions that they have accumulated and the experiences they can buy… counting their friends and social circle by their presumed net worth… While there is nothing inherently wrong with money or “stuff” if it becomes the central tenet of your existence, how you define your self worth and place in this world then it impoverishes your soul… After all, “he who dies with the most “toys” is still dead.”  It doesn’t have to be this way… it’s a choice… We can choose gratitude and all the joy it brings or we can choose the malnourished existence of want…  my mate and I will make a time, and a space on this holiday to be thankful, to express our gratitude for all we have.