A hawk sits
at the edge of sunrise,
a desolate perch against the growing blue,
swollen feathers braced against the frigid morning as
I run by on
this February morning,
disappointed with my life yet
still moving forward, running on old, skinny legs,
hoping,
clueless,
fragile.
A hawk sits
at the edge of sunrise,
her silhouette black against the growing light,
at the edge of the lake where I
run by on
this February morning.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Jade Man Doody Turns Ten!
One of our Greyhounds had his 10th birthday yesterday. For a Greyhound, he is getting ancient and it is so important to keep loving him and to cherish every day with him. Don't get me wrong, he is a big Diva-man. However, he is the most gentle dog who has ever called me theirs and he still cracks me up that he is so very serious.
We celebrated by singing Happy Birthday to our Jade man and he and Omi got some turkey in their food too. Yucky meat for a vegetarian and so it is that Jade was treated like his royal self. I am one of his minions and gladly so! I love those big Greyhound guys and he weighs almost as much as I do!
Happy Birthday Jade-no one wears a hat quite like you do.
We celebrated by singing Happy Birthday to our Jade man and he and Omi got some turkey in their food too. Yucky meat for a vegetarian and so it is that Jade was treated like his royal self. I am one of his minions and gladly so! I love those big Greyhound guys and he weighs almost as much as I do!
Happy Birthday Jade-no one wears a hat quite like you do.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
A Grief Shared & The Past Comes Knocking
An old friend and I had lunch on Saturday at a pseudo trendy place in our town. As the entree was being served, my friend's story of her mother's recent death spilled across the table between us. I listened full tilt forward and left my fork where it lay. My friend began to cry and I saw that sharp pain in her green eyes blaze, something I had seldom seen in those eyes over our many years as friends. I watched and listened riveted to my chair.
Her story was much about her shock which is still seated in her heart and the cascade of words about the lack of a last will and testament, her cousin's deception and betrayal in a matter of days, the changed locks to her mother's house and an archaic law that tries to tell my friend that she is not her mother's daughter.
For my friend, there is still time to catch her grief and she will. For me, I was haunted by her story which led me to the vivid memory of my mother's face and her body the night she died. For me, I was right back there the day after lunch with my friend, hollow and raw with the vision of my mother's slackened face and half closed eyelids shockingly still. I was right there by her bedside.
I began to cry driving to work only to realize as I drove that my friend's grief is a shared one and still so very sharp for me. I was surprised at myself and yet knew that the past can always come knocking and it does again and again, sometimes without a proper introduction.
Her story was much about her shock which is still seated in her heart and the cascade of words about the lack of a last will and testament, her cousin's deception and betrayal in a matter of days, the changed locks to her mother's house and an archaic law that tries to tell my friend that she is not her mother's daughter.
For my friend, there is still time to catch her grief and she will. For me, I was haunted by her story which led me to the vivid memory of my mother's face and her body the night she died. For me, I was right back there the day after lunch with my friend, hollow and raw with the vision of my mother's slackened face and half closed eyelids shockingly still. I was right there by her bedside.
I began to cry driving to work only to realize as I drove that my friend's grief is a shared one and still so very sharp for me. I was surprised at myself and yet knew that the past can always come knocking and it does again and again, sometimes without a proper introduction.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
The Museum Of Failure
Today, I was off from my temporary and changing status at the nursery to take a test. It was a test that had been scheduled before my current, albeit, temporarily engaged semi-employed status. So, I used the early morning to get some running in-I was tired and the run was very slow. I met two amazing dogs that were bully breeds and yet all wiggly and snotty and loving with me. They are so much happier than our solemn Greyhound duo that it rocked my thoughts and made me realize how much I miss having a dog that is happy. I miss Rosie. She broke the Greyhound mold.
My partner and I both accepted the invite to test for jobs with The City of Santa Rosa today. So we both went to sit with almost 60 others in a freezing auditorium for two and a half hours, more than 150 complex questions and enough tense energy to be a witness to being unemployed in Sonoma County. Over 400 humans applied for two jobs and a chance to be put "on the list" for future openings. Almost 300 tested.
I must say, this is my second experience of City tests that attempt to hone the numbers of applicants to the top 5%. This test was a butt kicker and I felt exhausted near the end trying to find answers in my head for all those questions. For me, I was not attached to the outcome yet there for the experience and an I-have-no-idea-where-this-will-lead-me afternoon.
Before I ever sat down though, I went to stand with the other seemingly depressed and silent humans in the lobby. I stood near the back wall and a very tall, well built blond woman smiled at me and asked me how I was doing. Unusual I thought. Most people look down not wanting to make eye contact with the competition. We chatted and right away I thought she was funny, unpretentious and downright bawdy. She seemed fun and I wished her a perfect 98% so she could get to the "oral boards" that are promised by a top score.
I thought, as I sat down at my table with the scantron and two pencils, that maybe she was a divine placement. My idea of "God" constantly gets challenged by life, insecurity and other humans. After I left the test of which I must have blown part of simply due to the fact that I had no idea how to work those word problems, I was exhausted and headed for Goodwill to find some warm clothes for work.
"The Museum of failure" is a chapter in the book which I am finishing called "The Antidote, Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" by Oliver Burkeman. I have loved this book though I have not read it rapidly. The message is tough getting through to me though I sought it out. The museum of failure, for me, can be the cruelest message of my thoughts when I feel lost to find a good job with promise.
It seems that all of us are trying to find security and the more we try, the more unhappy we are inclined to become so says Mr. Burkeman.
For me, for today, I am glad to go back to work and do my best, probably in the rain, with people I love in the great outdoors. The future still exists though I am working on being less attached to calling the end result happiness.
http://www.oliverburkeman.com/
My partner and I both accepted the invite to test for jobs with The City of Santa Rosa today. So we both went to sit with almost 60 others in a freezing auditorium for two and a half hours, more than 150 complex questions and enough tense energy to be a witness to being unemployed in Sonoma County. Over 400 humans applied for two jobs and a chance to be put "on the list" for future openings. Almost 300 tested.
I must say, this is my second experience of City tests that attempt to hone the numbers of applicants to the top 5%. This test was a butt kicker and I felt exhausted near the end trying to find answers in my head for all those questions. For me, I was not attached to the outcome yet there for the experience and an I-have-no-idea-where-this-will-lead-me afternoon.
Before I ever sat down though, I went to stand with the other seemingly depressed and silent humans in the lobby. I stood near the back wall and a very tall, well built blond woman smiled at me and asked me how I was doing. Unusual I thought. Most people look down not wanting to make eye contact with the competition. We chatted and right away I thought she was funny, unpretentious and downright bawdy. She seemed fun and I wished her a perfect 98% so she could get to the "oral boards" that are promised by a top score.
I thought, as I sat down at my table with the scantron and two pencils, that maybe she was a divine placement. My idea of "God" constantly gets challenged by life, insecurity and other humans. After I left the test of which I must have blown part of simply due to the fact that I had no idea how to work those word problems, I was exhausted and headed for Goodwill to find some warm clothes for work.
"The Museum of failure" is a chapter in the book which I am finishing called "The Antidote, Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" by Oliver Burkeman. I have loved this book though I have not read it rapidly. The message is tough getting through to me though I sought it out. The museum of failure, for me, can be the cruelest message of my thoughts when I feel lost to find a good job with promise.
It seems that all of us are trying to find security and the more we try, the more unhappy we are inclined to become so says Mr. Burkeman.
For me, for today, I am glad to go back to work and do my best, probably in the rain, with people I love in the great outdoors. The future still exists though I am working on being less attached to calling the end result happiness.
http://www.oliverburkeman.com/
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Beautiful Faces Of Wednesday Morning
I have been working, temporarily at my favorite nursery. Coming back after four months has been as if taking a very long drink after walking for miles without hope. Coming back has been like walking into the arms of someone who loves me after a near miss. Coming back has been like watching the amazing sunrise and sunset in this January after losing hope of finding work. Coming back has been like rejoining those I have come to admire and to love as coworkers and as friends at a very busy corner, in an open location where cars zoom past a healing place for me.
Today, like the past five, it was frosty and cold as the sun crept towards us. We have been pruning, tagging, staking and burying bare root roses in the beds made by my stalwart coworkers. We have been doing this together as the kind of team one hopes to find with one another. We are all very different and yet, an award winning combo come together. In many ways, we are the kind of people who needed a second chance. Together we make magic.
I unlatched the back gate after driving one of our ancient electric carts to the back for some soil. There, twenty feet beyond me stood three handsome bucks, solid, now motionless, horns aloft, dark eyes upon me. I greeted them. They watched me cautiously come in the gate. They began to move towards the fence once I scooted the cart along the access road. Big, beautiful faces pausing on a crystal clear blue sky freezing morning in January where I came to work, a second chance tiny woman feeling free and oh-so-lucky to have been welcomed back by Prickett's Nursery and welcomed by the beautiful faces of the buck trio creekside.
Today, like the past five, it was frosty and cold as the sun crept towards us. We have been pruning, tagging, staking and burying bare root roses in the beds made by my stalwart coworkers. We have been doing this together as the kind of team one hopes to find with one another. We are all very different and yet, an award winning combo come together. In many ways, we are the kind of people who needed a second chance. Together we make magic.
I unlatched the back gate after driving one of our ancient electric carts to the back for some soil. There, twenty feet beyond me stood three handsome bucks, solid, now motionless, horns aloft, dark eyes upon me. I greeted them. They watched me cautiously come in the gate. They began to move towards the fence once I scooted the cart along the access road. Big, beautiful faces pausing on a crystal clear blue sky freezing morning in January where I came to work, a second chance tiny woman feeling free and oh-so-lucky to have been welcomed back by Prickett's Nursery and welcomed by the beautiful faces of the buck trio creekside.
Monday, January 7, 2013
The Grand Canyon's Holodeck
This morning, during my Monday morning run, as my feet hit the cold, muddy ground, I began to imagine myself transported to The Grand Canyon. I began to pack the biggest suitcase that I own full of high tech camping equipment-compact, high priced REI stuff that could become a campsite. Dream on girlie. There is a small stove, sleep pad, camping pots and pans, freeze-dried food and my wishes.
I ran on and pictured the plane touch down in Vegas and our rental car pulling out towards the road to The Grand Canyon. Jettisoned by my thoughts, bearing down on my tired legs from a 10 mile hike yesterday up Mt. St. Helena, I began to see the canyon walls as we walked down the Kaibab trail towards the bottom. Another planet, another time and place, I keep having these thoughts every day.
Get me out of here. I want out of this life right here. I ran up to the top of the dam where I can turn and see the front of the Mayacama's ridge where I always make a wish for a better life, a fuller life and imagine my idea of "God" sitting there and nodding at me. I imagined the peaks of the canyon, red and orange and mysterious. The history of our planet, the history of life hidden there and exposed like a jewel that beckons us downward just to catch the light and feel inconsequential. We are just that.
At some point in my run, I was there and not here in cold, northern California where real estate values are stalled along with good jobs. Things are stretched tight as we pay the bills with money at the beginning of the month hoping it will last until the end. Today, the horse barn where I volunteer said they might be looking for someone for two hours a week with pay to muck stalls, feed the horses, clean up regardless of weather. I said yes even though I thought it would only pay for dog food. Just the same, I know the people and I know the horses. Say yes to something I tell myself. Say yest and maybe my luck will change.
If there were a Grand Canyon Holodeck I would have been long gone by now and it wouldn't even take a suitcase. Beam me up Scotty, I need a geographic.
I ran on and pictured the plane touch down in Vegas and our rental car pulling out towards the road to The Grand Canyon. Jettisoned by my thoughts, bearing down on my tired legs from a 10 mile hike yesterday up Mt. St. Helena, I began to see the canyon walls as we walked down the Kaibab trail towards the bottom. Another planet, another time and place, I keep having these thoughts every day.
Get me out of here. I want out of this life right here. I ran up to the top of the dam where I can turn and see the front of the Mayacama's ridge where I always make a wish for a better life, a fuller life and imagine my idea of "God" sitting there and nodding at me. I imagined the peaks of the canyon, red and orange and mysterious. The history of our planet, the history of life hidden there and exposed like a jewel that beckons us downward just to catch the light and feel inconsequential. We are just that.
At some point in my run, I was there and not here in cold, northern California where real estate values are stalled along with good jobs. Things are stretched tight as we pay the bills with money at the beginning of the month hoping it will last until the end. Today, the horse barn where I volunteer said they might be looking for someone for two hours a week with pay to muck stalls, feed the horses, clean up regardless of weather. I said yes even though I thought it would only pay for dog food. Just the same, I know the people and I know the horses. Say yes to something I tell myself. Say yest and maybe my luck will change.
If there were a Grand Canyon Holodeck I would have been long gone by now and it wouldn't even take a suitcase. Beam me up Scotty, I need a geographic.
Monday, December 31, 2012
A Magic Trick Awaits Us
I met a young woman today at our wee local art store who told me, as I was buying a few things for our New Year's Eve "vision map" collage project, that she had been unemployed for over a year and only recently came to work at the store. She told me that she worked on an organic farm in Tomales for a season before, after a year, the art store called her. She understands what we are going through in our house.
I ran around the lake, today with the addition of my gloves because it is so cold here this winter. I ran because it makes me feel connected to the earth and to life. I am running for my life you see. It is the last day of a turbulent year and I am "honoring the end" with hopes for a dramatic appearance somewhere in 2013 that will include a good, well earned paycheck.
We both have made our vision collages of the things we hope and wish for ourselves. Something needs to change in a big way and like all years, there were good times and low times. I am fortunate, unlike the man I met who parks on our street at night in his RV, to have a home. Likewise, I have a partner who loves me and understands well what makes me tick. I have a few people who know me and know that I care deeply about the earth, excellent writing, dogs, cookies, an honest day's work and truth.
May 2013 include all of the above and a road trip to The Grand Canyon and Monument Valley or Hawaii and not necessarily in that order. Be well and be strong.
Happy New Year!
I ran around the lake, today with the addition of my gloves because it is so cold here this winter. I ran because it makes me feel connected to the earth and to life. I am running for my life you see. It is the last day of a turbulent year and I am "honoring the end" with hopes for a dramatic appearance somewhere in 2013 that will include a good, well earned paycheck.
We both have made our vision collages of the things we hope and wish for ourselves. Something needs to change in a big way and like all years, there were good times and low times. I am fortunate, unlike the man I met who parks on our street at night in his RV, to have a home. Likewise, I have a partner who loves me and understands well what makes me tick. I have a few people who know me and know that I care deeply about the earth, excellent writing, dogs, cookies, an honest day's work and truth.
May 2013 include all of the above and a road trip to The Grand Canyon and Monument Valley or Hawaii and not necessarily in that order. Be well and be strong.
Happy New Year!
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