Today, the solstice, I got up early and took the dogs for their morning walk, It was raining, as it has done a fair amount so far this season, and we all put on our fleece lined raincoats. It has become our ritual, and being unemployed, I do so gladly for them and for me.
When we came back, shed our wet coats and mopped up the floor, I donned my running gear and headed off for my Friday run. It was still raining and very sharply crisp. I seemed to be the only runner today, with a few stalwart walkers trekking around Lake Ralphine and Spring Lake. As I trucked up the second dam, the wind bit into me hard enough to slow my pace, sharp and cold. My view across the lake was dark and brown and I felt a little crazy, a little slow and a little old.
I run because it gives me a purpose and I run because I feel good doing so. I am not a fast runner but doing well for someone in my age range. Finding employment in my age range is much, much harder and that is even more of a reason to run. Cold, raining and windy. Kinda like my job search!
As I came into the home stretch, now soaked but feeling good, I gazed across Lake Ralphine as I always do to spot birds or a lone, red canoe anchored. My sights fell upon a lone, yellow slicker of a fisherman on the bank far across the lake. Another crazy human, like me, losing their blues by being outside in the cold, windy and raining solstice of this December. I am so glad to see that I am not alone.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Monday, December 17, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Hard Candy Christmas
I was scooting down the Avenue we
use to get to and from the heart of town, having mailed packages from our wee
community P.O. to my family in Texas, found an extra cookie sheet at the store and then sought vegan chocolate-not
so easy for Santa!-and on came that Dolly Parton song that I love so much. I
turned it up with my window down on this cold, clear day nearing to Christmas.
How did Dolly know so much back
then? Her voice is crystal clear as she sings about a difficult holiday that
she is finding things to be grateful for, though very bittersweet. OK, so I
started crying and I do mean streaming down my face and wondering why. At first thinking I am crazy and then,
realizing that this is how I show up for life, my life, I remembered the wish I had
almost 27 years ago on Christmas in 1985, that I would get sober and find my feelings.
For 2013,I wish to find new friendships that are truthful and loving, new employment that fuels my search to serve others and be seen for who I am instead of who I could pretend to be in the interview, a great job for my partner who was laid off unceremoniously and continues to hunt for something better just like me, a spring garden and a truckload of fresh mulch for another season and a trip to the desert. I want to see the sunrise over Monument Valley and hike down into the Grand Canyon again. I yearn for it.
I want to find a bagpipes teacher and begin to learn to play the pipes. I want to travel to Hawaii and snorkel again in those healing waters. I want to see more of the people I love and keep them close in my thoughts as we traverse 2013. I want to learn to do stained glass. I want to be more present, meditate much more. I want to stop judging others, including my broken self, and just love them.
There is some hard candy for this Christmas with tears, and joy and gratitude for life and everyone who has helped me this year. Thank you and bless you all.
I realized that I have said goodbye
to many things this year and it is just all that catching up to me, in the
Mini, on the way home on a clear, blue, cold day here. This is our first
Christmas without Ginger and we are all still feeling the emptiness of the
third dog bed. I think Omi is affected
the most as she continues to vocalize, mournfully, about her sadness each
day. We each find the loss of Ginger still ever present. How could it be any other way?
I have said goodbye to many things this year including a
difficult friendship, job offers and jobs in particular, my beloved Prickett's Nursery, Friends
House as a benevolent campus, a trip to Austin that I hoped would change our lives and a spiritual community that I
had thought held me dear. Loss is part of
the fabric of life and I know that in a very sharp way. Hard candy.
I have much to say greetings to for the new year. For 2013,I wish to find new friendships that are truthful and loving, new employment that fuels my search to serve others and be seen for who I am instead of who I could pretend to be in the interview, a great job for my partner who was laid off unceremoniously and continues to hunt for something better just like me, a spring garden and a truckload of fresh mulch for another season and a trip to the desert. I want to see the sunrise over Monument Valley and hike down into the Grand Canyon again. I yearn for it.
I want to find a bagpipes teacher and begin to learn to play the pipes. I want to travel to Hawaii and snorkel again in those healing waters. I want to see more of the people I love and keep them close in my thoughts as we traverse 2013. I want to learn to do stained glass. I want to be more present, meditate much more. I want to stop judging others, including my broken self, and just love them.
There is some hard candy for this Christmas with tears, and joy and gratitude for life and everyone who has helped me this year. Thank you and bless you all.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
A Hummingbird In Winter
The wee Hummingbird who has lived off our nectar producing plants is still with us and I see him from sunrise into sunset trying to find new blossoms to get him through another chilly day. He is so tiny and I have taken to supplementing him with some sugar water that he no longer has to share with the bees and yellow jackets, now gone.
He is living off of the salvia and abutilon blooms that persevere through winter.
He seems undaunted, eating to survive and surviving to eat. I don't see him sitting on some bird couch, looking out the window and wondering where he is headed in life. He knows somehow. As for me, I apply for jobs, working hard on the cover letter to set myself apart and listen to the silence of my resume hitting the black hole at lightening speed. Me and everyone else. Well, not everyone else but there are still so many of us.
Recently, I applied for a job at the City of Santa Rosa and was invited to sit for the exam. When I entered the lobby of the auditorium, there were many people there, checking their devices or looking nonchalant or trying to appear relaxed. I dressed the part thinking it might boost my spirits. I must say, it was a weird exam and I did alright. However, as I did not score in the top five %, I did not get the interview. I have been working on finding meaningful work for two years. Whew, I almost had to buy a new suit.
Even more recently, I have applied for whatever seemed remotely interesting with the same deafening silence. As there are two of us in our house looking for jobs, it is good to just vent about it with someone. It does feel as if nothing is going to change but, like the Hummingbird, we must persist and try our best, sometimes hungry and a bit broken, and sometimes more neutral.
Just the same, to be a Hummingbird in winter means that each blossom holds the promise of a meal and each sunrise holds the hope of a job that can sustain us through the new year.
He is living off of the salvia and abutilon blooms that persevere through winter.
He seems undaunted, eating to survive and surviving to eat. I don't see him sitting on some bird couch, looking out the window and wondering where he is headed in life. He knows somehow. As for me, I apply for jobs, working hard on the cover letter to set myself apart and listen to the silence of my resume hitting the black hole at lightening speed. Me and everyone else. Well, not everyone else but there are still so many of us.
Recently, I applied for a job at the City of Santa Rosa and was invited to sit for the exam. When I entered the lobby of the auditorium, there were many people there, checking their devices or looking nonchalant or trying to appear relaxed. I dressed the part thinking it might boost my spirits. I must say, it was a weird exam and I did alright. However, as I did not score in the top five %, I did not get the interview. I have been working on finding meaningful work for two years. Whew, I almost had to buy a new suit.
Even more recently, I have applied for whatever seemed remotely interesting with the same deafening silence. As there are two of us in our house looking for jobs, it is good to just vent about it with someone. It does feel as if nothing is going to change but, like the Hummingbird, we must persist and try our best, sometimes hungry and a bit broken, and sometimes more neutral.
Just the same, to be a Hummingbird in winter means that each blossom holds the promise of a meal and each sunrise holds the hope of a job that can sustain us through the new year.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
The Cardinal At The Window
We are home now from our Thanksgiving trip to be with family in Austin, Texas. Apparently the flight was smooth though I was comatose upright in seat 14C with my mouth hanging open. Ah, my traveling companion Xanax. Without a tranquilizer for air travel, I am a quaking, terrified mess. With it, I am outta there yet capable of flying the unfriendly skies thanks to my understanding physician. I am very grateful to her.
Home this morning in our northern California abode, I went outside with one of the Greyhounds to a cold backyard, clear blue skies and the wee hummingbird who sat on the bare branch of our patio tree. He was within three feet of us and I marveled at his squat self with a iridescent ruby throat. Tiny, like me, here in my tiny, simple life, hanging onto a bare branch in winter, hoping for my next meal.
I was comparing that feeling of the miracle of this beautiful morning in the life I left seven days ago which needs a radical overhaul with the persistent pecking of the glorious, though mad, Cardinal who woke us every morning in Austin. We would wake to the constant peck at the window of a red Cardinal at the window who is sure that his reflection is another bird there to do harm. Such is the story line in my mind. The Cardinal at the window.
Though I am in great need of a job, a direction, decisions for my life, friends and change, I also can see that the pecking and fearful thoughts of my monkey mind are a reflection of my fears that I try to avoid. Peace does not come at a hidden cost. Peace is seeing the reflection of one's adversary and knowing that we are one in the same. Breathe, stay, breathe.
No flying at the window is going to change what is. The Cardinal at the window, this morning, is a great reminder that I can stay and breathe and still not know all the answers today.
Home this morning in our northern California abode, I went outside with one of the Greyhounds to a cold backyard, clear blue skies and the wee hummingbird who sat on the bare branch of our patio tree. He was within three feet of us and I marveled at his squat self with a iridescent ruby throat. Tiny, like me, here in my tiny, simple life, hanging onto a bare branch in winter, hoping for my next meal.
I was comparing that feeling of the miracle of this beautiful morning in the life I left seven days ago which needs a radical overhaul with the persistent pecking of the glorious, though mad, Cardinal who woke us every morning in Austin. We would wake to the constant peck at the window of a red Cardinal at the window who is sure that his reflection is another bird there to do harm. Such is the story line in my mind. The Cardinal at the window.
Though I am in great need of a job, a direction, decisions for my life, friends and change, I also can see that the pecking and fearful thoughts of my monkey mind are a reflection of my fears that I try to avoid. Peace does not come at a hidden cost. Peace is seeing the reflection of one's adversary and knowing that we are one in the same. Breathe, stay, breathe.
No flying at the window is going to change what is. The Cardinal at the window, this morning, is a great reminder that I can stay and breathe and still not know all the answers today.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Gearing Up For Pushback
We are getting ready to fly the unfriendly skies on Monday to Austin, TX to spend the holiday with family.We feel very fortunate to be invited and to be loved. For the past several years, we both have felt that our local "spiritual community" has been so in name only. We failed to be included in many gatherings where our peers gathered for food and frivolity with one another. Somehow we did not make the A list, nor the B list. Not cool enough or simply not spiritual in the right way enough.
In the past, we have trucked off to the coast to avoid naming our grief and to pretend we were not alone on the first of the holidays in winter. We have, quite literally, been left alone here at the corner with the dogs and our version of a vegetarian dinner. Yes, we could have invited the homeless over and pretended that our grief was another chance to do for others what was not done for us. Underneath, there is always that loneliness however. The adult children go off and find other families and our friends were not really friends it seems.
This year, we threw caution to the wind and drained our savings of some moolah for very overpriced airline tickets to be near the people we love and who love us without reservation. Wanted and loved, it is that simple. To me, it is important to stop knocking on the doors that open to nothingness as much as doing something scary instead. Flying is definitely scary for me. Terrifying actually.
The dogs will have an excellent caretaker and they will be doing much of what they have been doing this week-sleeping. They are wanted and loved and we are glad to do it for them as Greyhounds still need our help desperately.
We shall get through the flight to Austin, find my wee sister waiting for us at the bottom of the escalator and join our family whom we want and love and share a holiday that hopes to be the first of a long line of traditions that stretch us and beckon us from our self imposed wasteland.
Austin, here we come!
In the past, we have trucked off to the coast to avoid naming our grief and to pretend we were not alone on the first of the holidays in winter. We have, quite literally, been left alone here at the corner with the dogs and our version of a vegetarian dinner. Yes, we could have invited the homeless over and pretended that our grief was another chance to do for others what was not done for us. Underneath, there is always that loneliness however. The adult children go off and find other families and our friends were not really friends it seems.
This year, we threw caution to the wind and drained our savings of some moolah for very overpriced airline tickets to be near the people we love and who love us without reservation. Wanted and loved, it is that simple. To me, it is important to stop knocking on the doors that open to nothingness as much as doing something scary instead. Flying is definitely scary for me. Terrifying actually.
The dogs will have an excellent caretaker and they will be doing much of what they have been doing this week-sleeping. They are wanted and loved and we are glad to do it for them as Greyhounds still need our help desperately.
We shall get through the flight to Austin, find my wee sister waiting for us at the bottom of the escalator and join our family whom we want and love and share a holiday that hopes to be the first of a long line of traditions that stretch us and beckon us from our self imposed wasteland.
Austin, here we come!
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