The Monarch

On a walk yesterday I saw a shadow of a butterfly near me. I couldn't spot exactly where it was. Then as I continued to walk along, it came into my vision. It sat on a plant, flapping its wings. One seemed battered and broken. With my spirits downtrodden lately, I could relate to its battered wing. Then the butterfly took off, flying fast in front of me. I caught up to it as it sucked nectar out of another plant. On close inspection I could see that on one wing, the bottom wing was missing. That didn't stop the butterfly from flying, even with a damaged wing. I took inspiration from that. If the butterfly could keep flying fast and free than so could I.

Things can come up Peaches

I have a certain childhood memory - the go to memory when I want to feel indignant about my upbringing. This one will always make me mad, feel uncared for and burn into me. What is it? It's the one where my father and brother went into my bedroom when I think I was in kindergarten and threw out my "stuff". I am person who can get attached to things, especially my creative projects. I scrawl pictures and writings on paper when I get ideas and they lay in piles. To the outsider, this can look like an unorganized mess. That is what, I guess, how it looked to my father and brother. All I remembered was that my piles of paper were gone... and my sense of security hurt badly. How could they have thrown aways things so dear to me? I remember feeling hurt but I don't recall saying anything at the time. Still, they don't know how badly that act hurt me. To them, these pieces of paper created a mess. To me, my precious things gone, tossed as if they didn't matter was unequivical proof of how missunderstood I was. (I think if I were to delve a little deeper, why I really hold onto this memory is that I felt badly for my propensity to creative messes. Why else would they have gone and thrown things away? I felt condemned for behavior for being a "slob".... but shouldn't they have known what those papers were for... why didn't they ask me...???)

So unloved, me... I replayed this memory again, getting indignant, mad at my dad when another memory sprang up. I thought about the peach pit ring. My father is not a crafts person. He spent most of my childhood wrapped in legal briefs as he is a lawyer by trade. Yet, for a reason unbeknownst to me, he made me a ring out of a peach pit. He wittled the peach pit down, drilled a hole and varnished it. I don't know how long it took him to make it but no matter how long or short it took, I always cherished it because he made it especially for me. I thought about him taking the time to do this and I realized that rather than me going to proof of when the times I felt misunderstood, to appreciate what I did get. I know my father loves me and we can't always control how people love us. It would be great if in every relationship we have, we have a guide book to say, "this is how not to hurt this person..." But we don't. We do the best we can with the information we have at hand.

As a child, the ring was a bit bulky to wear, and certainly doesn't fit my adult hand. It's been sitting in my jewelry box for years. But I won't throw it away so I decided to repurpose it, into a necklace using beads I've also kept from my childhood. My dad took the time to make me a ring and in that creative act, we have a bond. And using my creativity, I can repurpose my childhood memories to remember the good.

Creative Deceivers

It takes a lot of creative thought and activity to be a crook - or a crook that doesn't get caught. This thought occurred to me as I've been obsessively watching the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (starring the delectable Jeremy Brett). In order to catch the criminal, Holmes has to open his mind to all the possibilities of the criminal's intents and actions. He has to think outside the box, just like the criminal mind. And the successful criminal has to stay two steps in front of "the law". You have to be quick on your feet and cool under pressure in order to deceive. To come up these criminal scams also takes creative thought and energy.

I don't know why criminals do what they do; why they feel the need to live life this way. I wonder what they could do with their clever minds for good... What if they created something positive? Rather than a scam, an actual business? These compentant criminals could be great managers, captains of Industry. Yet maybe they are already, tucked away in financial institutions, or someone skimming off their companies profits. Is it the rest of us as do-gooders that don't see the criminal before us - or does it reside in all of us? Haven't we all tried at one point to get 'away with something...' When do breaking the rules become a good thing? My answer to that is when it is done to serve the common good...

Floating thought

I’m often amazed that people think they have to look to the skies to understand spirituality when it can be seen in the smallest of places… first within our hearts… the disconnection begins when we look outside of ourselves for spirit when all along, it’s within....

Explosions

As firecracker bangs rattled in the distance, I reminisced about last year's 4th of July fireworks' display in Sonoma. I went off on my own to the field where the city set off its show. After a few starts I settled on a spot I thought would be secure after the evening turned dark. Sonoma, particularly that section with few lights, could get inky black. I watched how families rolled in, spreading blankets out. More of a rough crowd gathered nearby. (Rough in expletive language, what was in their souls I didn't know). I tucked my knees under in meditation stance to ward off the profanities, blocking the negative expressions around me...

As darkness weighed down, I looked around the field wondering if I had made the right decision to sit where I was when a woman, if I had to guess her age 60ish, asked if I was alone. I admitted I was and she asked if I wouldn’t mind if she joined me. I didn't and she sat down similarly crossing her legs. We began the usual getting acquitted chit-chat. We talked about why we both ended up there on our own. I told her I was fairly new to Sonoma. She told me she could have gone to her relatives that day as per usual but she wasn’t up to it that year. She explained that recently she'd been diagnosed with a brain tumor. My immediate response to hearing her diagnosis was simply, “That sucks." I didn’t prevaricate. I didn’t try to make her feel better. I guessed that at her relatives' house she would've had to hear all the usual things people say in that situation. Whatever was pressing on her head, on her experience, imploding or exploding, I didn't tax her to share.

Our discussion turned to politics and where we thought the country was heading. She shared her career history and I shared my career expectations. Finally, the fireworks display started. We watched together and turned to each other after a particularly glorious one exclaiming, ooh, and ah!!

At the end, we parted ways. She wished me good luck. I may have wished her that too. As I walked to my car I saw her near me. She stooped a bit, huddling against the cold night, and wound tight in her thoughts. I fought the urge to walk with her. There are times when we all really need to be alone.

What I took away from my experience was this: In my time of needing company, the universe had sent me this woman to sit next to me. And, in some way, being able to tell me about her tumor, someone who didn't have any expectation of her also helped. There are times when you need someone to acknowledge the truth of your pain so you can in turn accept the truth of your circumstances. I find that once you can accept that truth, you can heal. Can anyone ever heal if their pain is always denied?

I never saw the woman again so I don't know if the explosions in her head were ever freed. I hope that wherever she is, she has peace.

White Water

For a few weeks, I’ve felt like I’m drowning; that feeling of not knowing which direction is up – the one that will take me to safety. I conveyed my downtrodden feeling to a friend, and when she asked why, I bypassed the immediate surface response and felt for the real truth which is that I’m not living the life that I want and I don’t know how, right now, to make it work. She understood and stated, sometimes it’s hanging on and riding through it. Seeing where she was, a mother of three who worked full time, a wonderful wife, and an active writer seemed to me like someone who had the key to knowing how to make it work. Yet being able to relate to me - someone whose nearest goal is to be able to have her own house again – gave me reassurance that she had been where I was and pulled through. Her words felt like the light beaming from the light-tower on the water.

Submerged in water, it’s hard to see the light from above. I know this first-hand, because during a white-water rafting trip I had completely let go and found myself deep in. The desire to let go and experience what could happen overtakes me sometimes, which is what happened in this case. In a half-second decision, as water splashed and flooded the raft, I let go and I slipped down. Though I had a life-preserver, I pludged in so deeply, I had no sense of where the water's surface lay. All I could see was green. And it surrounded me completely. I didn't know which direction to swim. I may have started to panic then a hand came in and pulled me out.

The hand belonged to our raft guide. He panted and fell back into the raft after my rescue. I felt foolish and guilty for what I’d done; guilty for putting our guide at risk and guilty also because my friend on the trip had a dire fear of drowning. Yet at the trip’s end the guide said his highlight was pulling me out. My friend felt grateful for seeing that I could be rescued. And I felt grateful that my half-second decision to fall in wasn’t a fatal mistake.

I’ve wanted to let go recently but fortunately I’m surrounded by faithful friends. One opened up her house to me, another saved my bacon by giving me 100 dollars when I really needed it, no strings attached. My recent bout of wanting to give in is not feeling a sense of direction or life purpose. The boat trip gets much harder if in fact you don't know where to go. But I hung on with the faith that my vision could/would clear. Happily, today, my storm, at least the one where I couldn't feel a sense of purpose, has blown over. For the first time in a long time I felt a new surge of energy for my career path. Though I may have rapids to pass over, having the courage and faith to stay on has showed me that I can turn my life into the direction that will give me bliss and the one that is full of light.

"You must unlearn what you have learned..., " Yoda

This is what I realized knitting is for me, unlearning. I have for some time, possibly since childhood, wanted to learn how to knit. I remember my mother’s giant knitting needles stuck in yellow balls of yarn. I don’t remember her using them honestly. Perhaps that's why I didn't seek her in attempting to learn. But I recall those needles and the mystery that laid in them in how they worked... Anytime I received a hand-knitted scarf I cooed. Inwardly I thought, "could I do this?"

While in Sonoma, I caught the bug to once and for all learn to knit. I saw knitting circles at the local pub but I hestitated. Was this the crowd I wanted to fit in? For whatever reason, on Twitter I followed someone who had yarn as her avatar. She tweeted about her knitting group and I decided to join in. This circle was at a coffee house and for anyone that knows me, if anything, I'm a coffeeholic so that was extra incentive.

Though I tried to get materials in Sonoma for my last minute decision to join the group that night, I couldn't find any (one of Sonoma's drawbacks) so I went empty-handed to my first meeting. I thought I'd sit back and watch... No going... Kat loaned me her needles; Sasha loaned me her yarn. Sasha casted the needle, showed me the basic stitch and I was on my way. "Oh boy!!," I cheered. I was making an actual row. "I'm knitting," I exclaimed to Kim. "You are, you are making magic over there," she replied. I was all aglow. We chatted. I dropped a stitch or two which Kat fixed and I continued on my merry knitting way. Then our knitting story time came to a close and I returned the needle and the yarn before it turned into pumpkins. (Now that I think about it, the yarn color was orange... whoooooow).

The next day I traveled to Novato to pick up my own knitting supplies. I barely knew how to navigate the needle sizes and the yarn but I picked what seemed the most Universal. ('cause I am, afterall, rated U for Universal). I got home, flug open my new wares and stared... I tried to recall how to cast (actually I didn't even remember the word "cast") Kat, the group leader, had told me I could find videos online. I did. I watched. Rewound. Paused. I tried to imitate the narrator's movements. And I tried. Somehow, my thoughts couldn't connect to what the narrator was saying. I couldn't tell if I was doing it right. Flustured, I tweeted, "how could I learn how to play the violin yet I can't coordinate knitting needles... argh!!" Or something to that effect.... The answer came, via a tweet reply, that I had to unlearn what I had learned... Actually the tweeper said that I must have a strong mind (nice of her) and that my mind wanted to go one way and not the other. This I thought was an incredibly insightful answer....

I returned to the knitting group. I explained my consternation and showed my needles. Kat watched as I tried to cast. She showed me how to do it, returned it and I continued, not doing it right. She watched and caught my fingers movements. She said that for whatever reason, for whatever habit, my fingers wanted to go one way. She literally fastened her hand to mind to show the right way. I relearned.

I have no recollection of my old fingers habits. All I know now is that I have found the rhythm to mastering the basic stitch. And have done it enough to know where the errors are... I have found yarn forgiving as I've unraveled rows to correct mistakes. And to go back "on line" so to speak.

Normally, I can pick up things quickly. I like to get right to the point. In this instance my thoughts and behaviors were so ingrained that I questioned how well I do learn things.... Perhaps I'm encouraging old habits instead of expanding my horizons. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I could learn, be open, and have people willing to wrestle my hands so I'd get it right. Whether or not I'll get to the level to be able to make a sweater or socks I don't know... For now, I'm happy going by the row.... :)