Saudade solastalgia

"Is There an Ecological Unconscious?"-nytimes.com

I remember my year spent living in Brooklyn and how displaced I felt surrounded by concrete and steel. I would walk to the Promenade, stand at the rail and watch the heavy stream of traffic rush beneath me, wondering where everyone was going and if anyone would take me with them. I finally moved to spend a summer in upstate NY where I watched fawn and fox play in the field that was my backyard. That summer was a long deep breath and exhale, a much needed return to what I feel sustains me. Brambles and pine, redbuds and dogwoods blooming. When I close my eyes I see red earth and slate with smooth curves gently carved by summer rains, metamorphic rock that is born through change, a change that comes to me through the shifting scenery, the direction of the wind. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma that was called my home. But it never felt like home, only a place with familiar faces and recognizable street names. Eventually I ended up in Madison. I haven't decided if this feels like home yet... When I think of home I think of somewhere I have never been. I feel the lonely absence of something I have never known and the painful displacement from a place I have never been. Saudade solastalgia. Does it even exist?

I suppose it takes strength to endure life, but when it is a life you have created out of fear or indifference, then it takes a lot more strength and courage to be accountable and transform the fear into change.

My voyage home

"we sailed away on a winter's day..."

Awake to change

I found this quote by Pema Chodron and thought it was appropriate for Martin Luther King's birthday.

"This leads to a bigger underlying issue for all of us: How are we ever going to change anything? How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? In a potentially violent encounter, how do I communicate so that neither of us becomes increasingly furious and aggressive? How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen?

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

a monument, a photograph, a door...

At some point, you stop thinking about time. You stop thinking about what day it is, what month, what year. When you look for time, you discover no one can agree on the second. Distance between then, now, and when is arbitrary. Time becomes a question of "how do I feel?" and "what ever became of...?" You ask questions until every word begins to sound the same, only incoherent syllables remain. You discover that there is no need to speak. Time becomes a line, a crease, the knitted brow of thinking. You try to forget time, carefully smoothing away what never was, what came to be, and what might still come. Time rejects your silent invocations and conjuring. Finally, time becomes a monument, a photograph, a door... but you don't think about time anymore.

Winter

The sun was slow to rise this morning. I've been noticing the days lasting longer. It's hard for me to put myself into winter, it's hard for me to stay still in my own body and mind. The cold, the monochrome vistas, the dark. I usually escape for a while. I'm here in body but my senses have flown south. It isn't like summer, when I can feel each bead of sweat as it rolls down my back, sometimes starting at the nape. It isn't like summer when I go for long walks and bike rides just to hear other people living through the open windows of my neighborhood. My favorite thing is to hear someone practicing a musical instrument, playing a song I know... I like to hear jazz being played unsteady and shaky through bloom scented air that sometimes smells of fragrant fish and gasoline as it drifts off the lake. Winter has failed to capture my attention the way every other month has and does. But I don't entirely put the blame on winter. My thin blood and penchant for dresses and scant tights rather than woolen sweaters and snow boots makes anything below 65 degrees Fahrenheit entirely unenticing. This morning though, I noticed the sun softening the window panes in my bedroom. A slight blue glow diffused by ivory lace. I noticed the light painted through the black wicker shades that hang in my bathroom. Only in winter would I see this light - fragmented on glass through the ice. I still feel distant, but the distance I feel sometimes comes into focus... the visible life - puff of cool air meeting my warm breath, crystallized water tapestries on glass, the bare branches and twigs individually encased in ice, my feet as they pat the ground and crunch the cold covering - sometimes slick, sometimes soft, sometimes a puddle masked by thin ice. Suddenly the cold snaps me back into place and I remember where I am. Looking down at my hands, I notice the dry cracks and breaking skin that cover my veins, veins that have pulsed freely for 933,947,758 seconds and counting. Plunging into the cold, I feel myself again.

today's message is...

"Thicker skin. Open heart."