what I'm thinking about

I'm thinking about my trip and trying to look forward to putting on jeans and -gulp!- support pantyhose for the 17 hour plane ride... My sister tells me the support hose will leave me feeling energetic and with no swollen ankles when I land in Geneva... she better be right.

I'm thinking about the kids the teachers tell me are rats when they drop them at the door and they are never the ones who turn out to be rats for me... and how I wish they would never do that.

I'm thinking about the bailout and debt and this never ending campaign that leaves me on pins and needles. I'm thinking about where I will spend election night... not home this time... I want to be with other Obama supporters for this one. Where are Obama people gathering on election night?

I'm thinking about Pete who has had a fever and a rash and a little kindergartner who was stung by a scorpion that was in her hair!!!

I'm thinking about the things I don't want to forget and things I am sick of thinking about.

I'm thinking that since I took that writing workshop I have absolutely nothing to say and that I find myself boring and redundant.

I'm thinking about how much I love tempera paint and how glad I will not have to mess with it for a couple weeks.

I'm thinking I need a manicure and an eyebrow wax.

And last, I'm thinking about Fabian, who when I told them to draw a picture of their family and to include pets, drew a picture of an elephant who he told me slept with him and loved peanuts... isn't that great?

happy ending

I met Natalie and Joe this summer in water aerobics. They're in love... crazy, sweet sixteen kind of love... smile at each other silly kind of love... blind to everyone else kind of love... and I think they are about 76, 77 years old... you really feel good just being around them.

Tonight, at our end-of-season BBQ I asked Joe how they met... and he said in high school. They dated for four years in high school... but he went one way for college and she went the other and then the Korean war broke out and he was sent to Korea and when he came back things had happened and Natalie had married Hank, another guy they'd gone to high school with.

Then he and his wife attended their fiftieth high school reunion and he saw Natalie and she saw him. Within four years later both of their spouses were deceased and within months they were together. Natalie has told me she has never been happier in her life. I should tell her it is obvious...

Natalie then tells me this happens. A friend of hers had dated a guy in high school who became a Jesuit priest. She had married and divorced four times, Nat says, trying to find the right guy. A friend of his who knew her encouraged him to call her and he did. When they met they flew into each other's arms... each other was what they had been missing.

The Britcom, Time Goes By was on last night. I think I've seen every episode at least twice. When Lionel bumps into Jean, three decades have gone by. They have misfires and misunderstandings but attraction wins out in the end and in their bumbling, stiff way they end up together.

Lately I have found myself trying to just live today. Trying hard to not think, not dream and for God's sake not speculate on what I am or am not hearing... but today it has been particularly difficult.

the workshop

Spent the weekend in Sedona. Inside. It was beautiful outside, but I was inside. Inside a theater/lecture hall of the Red Mountain High school for two full days taking a workshop with Natalie Goldberg.

I learned some important rules:
use a fast pen. continue no matter what. keep your hand moving. don't be tossed away. don't cross out. be specific. write from your whole body. figure out what your obsessions are. tell the truth. lose control. read it aloud. it is not a precious something... it is just writing!

Some words I heard:
I stopped sleeping on Sundays. symbolic pools of blood. Ramon brought me back to life. they were not killers. I was a hog man. six months away from a heart attack. it's coming and it's coming today. red grass. one, two, three. is is is unraveling. dumb and slow. fuck. all the different kinds of years. my heart is as full now as my desire was full then. he didn't know he was beautiful. unballing.

Some words I wrote:
I didn't have a camera or maybe the energy to pull one out. in the midst of this somberness were light and life. whatever it is, it is not the future. begin to think about the important parts, like shoes. now I'm thinking about it. flotilla of mushroom. polished skull. her neck in cinnamon warmth. light cast with a shade of cool. rough skinned and still cool after all these hours of resting next to my water bag. peel-pull, break off a segment. sits like plates, cockeyed and stacked in the sand. the woosh of snow as it leaves the shovel. soaked through, teeth chatter, can't even talk.

not much else to say right now, but I think you could start in any one of these places and there would be possibilities.

spinach pie and other food for the soul

Cooking is not my first love. I find it nearly impossible to follow a recipe, usually adding or substituting something along the way. The other day I made spinach pie and added some grated zucchini which made it a bit soggy but added little to the flavor and a whole wheat crust, but apparently these additions satisfied my need to dink around in the kitchen... and the outcome was good.
But as usual, too large for one person, so I have been on a spinach pie diet most evenings this week. I've found that a dash of Tabasco really adds to it, and last night I included a dollop of sour cream which wasn't as good as plain yogurt might have been.

While I eat my spinach pie I have been reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, as I will be attending her workshop this weekend. Now that is food for the artistic soul.

She wrote the most amazing thing: The problem is we think we exist.

Don't you love that?! I've been toying it with it all day.

this is about me

Seems this last week strife and conflict has erupted all around me. A friend of mine lost his job, several people at work are bent out of shape, there are pastor/parish conflicts where I attend church and since the Republican convention the tone of the presidential campaign is about anything but the issues.

Often when these kind of things have cropped up around the outskirts of my life I have wondered what to do. How do I effect change? How do I resolve conflict? When do I stand back, when do I step up? Most things I've learned are beyond my control. Most of the time the best thing I can do is bear witness, pray, and live in compassion. Most of the time I am okay with this, understanding that my ability to send love, compassion, and hope to a situation is the way I best serve it. And that is what I will do, except in this one case. Barack Obama.

I am going to work the call centers for Obama, and in fact, today have been calling people in his Neighbor to Neighbor program. For the past two presidential elections I have voted, I have prayed, I have put bumper stickers on my car and endured people driving by shouting obscenities at me, and I have sent money. In the two prior presidential elections I have been disappointed by the outcome. I do not want the same thing to happen again. Obama is right. This is not about him. This is about me.

I want a country my grandson's can grow up in and be free to express their opinions, disagree, without someone else shouting them down and calling them names. I want a country where every family can have a doctor and every child is provided the best health care available. I want a country where people can earn a decent wage for an honest days work. I want to live in a country that realizes we must love out neighbor as ourselves regardless of his faith, age, nationality, color of his skin, or sexual preference, and find a way to live and flourish while remaining constant to that golden rule. I want to live in a country where being educated, innovative and thoughtful are not only valued, but considered essential. I want a country that looks beyond the moment and considers the future when it makes decisions on the environment, military action, and social reform. I want a country that cherishes values but understands that core values can be nurtured in diverse beliefs.

I believe that Barack Obama would stand with me on these issues, that he would listen, that he would refine what I have only roughed out. His opponent would not.

I don't expect a free ride. I don't think these things will be easily come by. I think it will take years of hard work and no little sacrifice to make all I can see for this country, for my grandchildren, happen. But I believe the American people are equal to the task if we tell them the truth. If we explain the steps we need to take to get from here to there. I am done with fear and manipulation. We are a great nation only when we think great thoughts. The time is now. We have waited nearly too long as it is.

My sister told me Obama needs to get tough and attack back and I asked her if that is really what we want from him. Win at any cost? Win even if you have to hit as low as your opponent? I don't know. I don't think we really win when we play their dirty games.

But this is important. Too much is at stake to let this election slip through our fingers. I have to stand up and do what I can.

food

I have noticed that I have not been eating well. Oh, I do all right for breakfast and lunch. For breakfast I eat basically the same thing every day, and lunch I pack in to school and it usually involves a salad and rice or beans or hummus, and maybe a small granny smith apple. Almonds to snack on, or maybe half of one of those new protein bars. But it is dinner I have really been slip-sliding through. I eat with disinterest and I am beginning to think, poor judgement. I eat like I don't really care about myself and this has got to stop. I have this really beautiful kitchen now and I feel like I'd like to begin celebrating it and myself with delicious, healthy food.

This morning I browsed through my Real Food Daily and Vegetarian cookbooks and began to look at some of the beautiful, healthy entrees I find there. I tend to like the vegetarian cookbook better - fewer, simpler ingredients and plus they are smaller, so I don't feel like I need to throw a party to get rid of all the food - and identified a couple things I'd like to begin with. A spinach pie or a tomato feta pizza. Each easy and straight forward and nutritious... the protein-carb-fat ratio is within the realm of acceptable. And they look yummy and just right for still hot late September in Arizona.

I need to clean this desk I am sitting at, and the whole room really, then clean my refrigerator, which still has not been organized since the remodel. After that I will know what ingredients I need to produce my first dish.... I think the spinach pie....

I want this to be a new leaf I am turning over. One that says I value myself and I am worth beautiful healthy meals every day.

peace, love and vote Obama : )

voice

This is a magic lantern... my most recent double page in my altered book. I have been thinking about magic, miracles and expectation for the last couple of days since I watched the DVD, The Secret, last week. Also today, I went to see my spiritual director, as always a treat for me as I never fail to come away with this view of my rag-tag life as a whole organism moving in a purposeful direction.

We talked about art, my life at school, and the movement of the holy. I showed her my book so far and told her about the staff-meeting discussion I've had with my principal, told her about my vision board and my recent journaling. This discussion turned toward expectation and the role it plays in my life. I told her about a Jan Richardson quote from her book Night Visions: it is, "know your anger. use your voice. expect resurrection." This quote has always had a strong influence on me, reminding me to find the power in my anger, the energy, and to harness it with my voice, always expecting rebirth and redemption.

I hold onto expectation. hope. I look for things to turn out well. I expect them to. Yes, I have a short list of personal expectations, but I told her this is not really what I mean here... then I told her of another quote I think about often.... from The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer; "We all spend so much time not saying what we want because we know we cannot have it.... Go on. Say what you want."

I told her I have been practicing saying what I want. Not just for me, though I say those things too, but I say things I want for the world. I want peace, real peace, and I want to see the people of the world to be fed both nutritionally and spiritually, I want to the earth to thrive, to see disease and suffering to end. I said that there are plenty of people out there who do not want me to say these things, who tell me they are silly and can't be had... there are people like my dad, whom I love, who see the world divided up into those Democrats, those minorities, those freeloaders, those sexual deviants who only want to see the cup half empty and are slightly put off by my Pollyanna-ish ways. There have been people who have told me peace is an idea that will never be because all the nuns and priests pray for peace and still there is no peace. there are folks who have asked me to listen to reason, see the world their way... and I have tried it from time to time, but it is just too damned grim.

We need to say what we want. We need to expect what we want. If we never say in unison that we want peace, will pray for peace, will live for peace we will never have it. Miracles are not things we can just leave up to the nuns. We have a responsibility and until we become one voice saying what we want that we have been told over and over we cannot have, we will never have it.

Me? I choose miracles. I choose expectation. I choose the happy ending. What I want might not happen in my lifetime, or even in my grandson's, but if I do not voice my want loudly and repeatedly then it will be as if it never was.

There is a magic lantern. rub it and ask for what you want.

my hike

Yesterday I hiked Mt. Humphrey's.

My friend Sandy had e-mailed me and asked if I would be interested, and I completely shoved aside the thought that I had not hiked all summer... certainly not up-hill anyway and that I have been experiencing chronic muscle pain and said, yes. We met at 6am, picked up two more hikers, and headed up to big pine country.


I skied this run in March!!!

I was pretty concerned by the time we reached the trail head. My legs had been giving me fits for a couple of days. Historically the person who leads the hike, I told them I would stay to the back and just see how I would do. I took smaller steps, letting them pull out in front of me... I like the silence of the forest anyway, and one of our group was a talker. They would stop pretty often, I thought to wait for me, but eventually when they stopped and I caught up, I just kept walking... slowly, paying attention to my pace... at some point I began to get out of breath... elevation and grade catching up to my lung power... but I started counting my breathes... doing a belly breath. Four steps per in-out breath for a higher grade, three and even four on a flat grade. I think the oxygen was feeding my muscles... I was feeling no muscle fatigue at all.

As I reached the saddle, not the peak, I began to feel my Achilles tendon in my right leg. That was the end of the hike for me, but I had done so much better than I'd expected I wasn't complaining.

Only three of us made the saddle, the other gal had difficulty with the elevation and had turned around. We ate lunch, enjoyed the view, and took a couple pictures to document our accent. Then we headed down.

Down hill was much more difficult. We were tired from our climb. Gena and Sandy both fell as we went down.... I was fortunate that I kept my feet under me... by the time we reached the midway point we stopped and tossed back a couple Advil's... I began to long for Phoenix and the jacuzzi at my health club... as we moaned and complained and wondered both to ourselves and to each other when the end of this descent would come, we also agreed that we had a great day, that we would not have passed it up.

Dela was sitting on the ski lodge patio munching on french fries and sipping a libation. She was glad to see us and we were glad to see her. We decided to grab food there, in the beautiful mountains, rather than in a congested Saturday afternoon Flagstaff.

The jacuzzi was wonderful last night, and when I got home I pretty much fell straight into bed. This morning I still felt okay, but took a couple more Advil as a precautionary measure. Now it is 4:30 and parts of my lower body are really beginning to get stiff. I'll walk later on and pop a couple more Advil before bed.

I remember ten years ago it would take me three or four days to get over a tough hike. I wonder what it will take this time.

moving forward

I've been working on this altered book for about a week now... it is my first, and after a tentative start, I am starting to feel more confident.

What started out as a hum-drum page started to pick up steam when I began to collage on dyed bits of phone book and paint spattered & stained newspaper used to protect the tables when students paint. I also tried my hand at pen and ink... it has been a very long time since I played with that media.

Here's a close up... I lightened the photo trying to help you see what is happening, but think I only managed to make it look washed out. I don't think this is done yet, but as of now have no revelation where it will head next.

This is the second double page spread... again, I was just playing with colored newspaper, plus my gessoed surface has a lot more texture. As of now I don't seem to have much to write, but as I trudge along, I imagine this will get easier... anyway, I hope that is how it works.

peace

hump day

One month to Geneva, Switzerland... yippee! And doesn't the cold whiteness of the snow look good on this hot sunny day?
********************

A Monday holiday means that Wednesday comes almost immediately.... two more days until Friday! How sweet....

I have been working on my altered book at school and finally feel I am pulling myself forward a bit on it... I'll remember to take my camera tomorrow and get some pictures... also went to the school library... they are weeding out tons of books and I picked up a pile of poetry books and some old picture books I'm going to play around with... I cut trees, paper doll style, out of watercolor and tempera stained newspaper and pasted them to the bottom of a collage. I love, love, love colored newspaper... so many ideas, so little time.

I find I am smiling a lot. Why is that?

love/peace

nothing accomplished

I had not planned this weekend on purpose.... seems so much of my time has been over planned, tightly scheduled... the only thing I told myself I wanted to do was clean my office, and that is the only thing I did not do.

Saturday wandered an hour north of here to Seven Springs with daughter and grandsons and spent the day watching and trying to help catch crawdads. The water was refreshingly cool, the crawdads were almost alarmingly plentiful, and the boys were in little-boy heaven. Honestly, even though when the day was over I was more than ready to go home to my quiet house and take a long shower, it was a great day, totally unstructured, and just what I needed.

Sunday I ran around... accomplished very little it feels like, just took care of errands, went to Borders and bought two books, one about writing and the other about art journals and picked the boys up at 4:30 to spend the night. Funny, even though the boys wear me out after a time, they also relax me. When they arrive the rest of my world must stop. Like holding a baby... when you hold a baby, nothing else in the world matters... anyway, we swam, ate dinner, built a fire in the chiminea and toasted marshmallows, took a bubble bath and read 6 books.... after that Grandma needed to go to bed, she was tired.

Monday the boys left at 11. I wrote in my journal, told myself to clean my office, but found something else to do instead. Parents, daughter and husband and glorious grandsons were coming to dinner at 4:30... I prepared my shish-ka-bobs, then sat down and leafed through a book. 8p.m. they all left and I packed up a box of art supplies to take to school tomorrow... I have some ideas and some extra time this week where I might be able to think about my own art.

I got nothing accomplished... or maybe I got everything accomplished... there are still piles on my office floor, but I did locate my encaustic book. I found a site on encaustic monotypes I'd like to play with and made reservations for a room in September so I can attend the Natalie Goldberg workshop in Sedona. Things are rolling out even though I don't know what they are rolling out to....

I guess the bottom line is though, I spent my weekend with the people I love the most, the people who love me, and I can't imagine it being better than this. No, I did not get the clutter cleaned up in my office, but it will wait another day or week for me.

love and peace