Tis the season

Ah... the holidays are post and with boxing day comes that lonely meh feeling.  The gift you didn't get haunts, the indigestion you did get lurks and the family member you got into a gun argument with was just... ugh...(another post on that topic later...).  Overall, I have to brag that my holidays were absolutely lovely.  Very stress free, with snow, with movies, with chocolate cake and with lemon basil cookies (my very favorite). 

Today I was with my friend Amy and we were sipping lattes by a fire and talking about 2012 and Canadian geese and our hopes for 2013.  I think most people I know have one of two opinions about 2012; either the year kicked YOUR ass, or you kicked the YEAR's ass.  As I look back at my blog posts for this year and the mix tapes I made each month, I think I kicked 2012 all up and down the place.  It was hard, and had its low-blow moments, but I learned how to lean into the fear and the hard times.  

 Leaning into fear is not a natural inclination for any of us I would venture.  We are fixers and self-medicators.  It is too easy to sweep things under rugs, tune out harsh voices (even our own) and pretend.  But when the hard times really hit this year, I found myself standing in the midst of my own emotional chaos alone.  That is not to say that I am alone... I am so NOT alone.  I am blessed with fabulous friends and family and students and colleagues and neighbors and... well, just lots of people.  But I really found that handling the hardest moments of this year by myself was liberating.  I felt like a real ass-kicker of all those anxieties and fears and other turkeys that would try and get me down. 

There's this great quote in Hamlet: "Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be." I think this means that since none of us can know when our time will come, why worry about what we can't control?  Why allow the fears to get the better of me?  I know a couple things for sure; that I am loved, that I love, and that life will have its good and bad times.  The readiness for life (and all that encompasses) is all. 

Back to those geese... I've had this thing about geese since I was in high school.  I'm not a superstitious person, but when geese fly over, I see it as good luck.  They fly in patterns and they honk and call out to each other, I love it.  The other day, I was out on a walk and a flock of geese flew right over my head.  They were quiet except for the springy hinging of their wings.  It was so cool, and it was so hopeful.  I've also been grading Mary Oliver finals from my seniors, (not a sign of good luck, but a daily occupation) and so this poem seems the perfect capstone for this post.

Wild Geese

 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I hope that your new year celebrations are lovely and that 2013 brings you love and blessings and joy and light.

Busyness and illness

I haven't blogged in a while, and I thought I would at least do one post for October since it seemed to flash by in the blink of an eye.  I was super sick, then I traveled, then I got sick again, then I had a mountain of stuff that needed immediate action.  It was busy. 

Homecoming calls for the old school Cons.

Santa Fe simplicity

Road trip!!

At home, room with a view

And in the midst of all this busy, between holding babies and grading papers, I came to some wonderful epiphanies about who I am and what I want.  Isn't that nice, when the busy in your life makes way for thoughtful reflection and epiphanies?  I spent a lot of time reading and more time journaling and writing.  I rediscovered poetry and found some new songs to gush about.  And I realized that where I am is pretty darn good.  I know what it feels like to want more; the feeling of dissatisfaction when looking around your life and seeing the same ol' and wanting the brand new because that somehow equates to something better.  I think this is better.  Right now is better. 

I'm kinda discombobulated today... I reconnected with coffee after my month-o-illness and suddenly I am all kinds of caffeinated.  But I will end with this excerpt of a poem I'm liking now:

And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

"Roses, Late Summer" by Mary Oliver

Happy Autumn to you and yours.

What do you subscribe to?

I subscribe to some really good magazines.  There is no greater pleasure than sitting on my balcony with a coffee and a Coastal Living, or Mental Floss.  Recently, I resubscribed to a magazine I had canceled a while back.  It is a fashion magazine and I canceled it because its portrayal of women got a little too blatantly sexist and really just plain rude.  I like fashion; give me a layout where a stylish peacoat and a smart heel are paired ridiculously well on a darling woman who is leaping confidently across Fifth Avenue, and I'm like, "you go, smart-heeled girl, I bet you'll get that job you're interviewing for."  This magazine was definitely interested in using fashion to sell a message.  The problem is that the message wasn't "you go girl" but "you use your sexuality to get what you want, girl."  Okay, if I'm being honest, the magazine in question offered me a free scarf and a stupid low subscription rate, I was momentarily dazzled by the free scarf.  It is awesome.  I wear it all the time.

Truer words... Martha Beck's column in the Oprah magazine

This fashion messaging made me think about what ideas I subscribe to.  In the magazine stand of my brain, what ideas, beliefs and values am I subscribing to that are ultimately bringing me down?  I did a mental clean out of all my subscriptions.  The subscription of self-image came up a lot.  I'm no glamazonian super model, and the last time I wore a size zero was never.  But I finally had the realization (actually more of a der moment) that women's sizes and shapes are diverse, and they should be.  Women constantly subscribe to an unreasonable self-image because someone somewhere must have sent a dictatorial memo that there is only ONE standard of beauty that we all must follow.  And for what reason?  There is way more than one type of beautiful woman, and if we are all unique like snowflakes, then logic suggests that there is way more than one standard of beauty.  Are you still with me so far?

Another bunk subscription is other people's definition of success.  Do you ever feel like the moment you've accomplished your latest goal, almost immediately there is an anticlimax?  It could come as criticism from another source and it could be your own self-criticism.  It is sometimes very difficult for me to be okay with my version of success.  I think I'm doing okay, but someone comes along and sends a message that my success isn't somehow enough.  At this point I have to pause for thought and ask myself a couple of key questions.  One, do I appreciate what I have accomplished?  Two, did I feel successful?  If I can answer yes to those two questions, guess what?  I did it!  Allowing other people to define my version of success really saps the joy from my accomplishment. 

a fake tattoo... but a good permanent message

It is so imperative in this often contentious culture to subscribe to the things that ultimately make us happy and enrich our spirits.  If we find happiness and contentment in our lives, then we will be better humans, we will support others and we will feel the rich gifts that come with this one wild and precious life. 

The heart of the matter

Are we honest with ourselves?  I mean, there are some little white lies we tell all the time, but are we honest with ourselves about the things that really matter?  It's hard to do, right?  It's kind of scary to face the big ugly truths. If we face it, then we might have to do something about it.  It's easier to ignore the harsher realities and honesties and live for the moment. 

Remember that scene in The Matrix when Morpheus tells Neo to choose between the pills?  One pill will lead him back to his quiet and boring programmer's life, ignorant of the larger truth, and another pill will deliver him into the cold reality outside of the matrix.  For a long time, I took the safe pill.  I liked my little safety bubble; I could sit and watch episodes of Mary Tyler Moore and eat peanut butter cups.  But earlier this year, when the proverbial fit hit the shan in my life, I had to reexamine how the practice of self-medication was serving me.  It is okay to self-soothe when hard things happen, and we need to figure out what we need when we need it, but beyond that, we need to not be afraid of the big awful truth.

For one thing, the big awful truth won't have any power over us once we confront it.  For another, we won't have to carry it around everywhere once we face it.  Growth and change comes from facing the big awful, and we are all strong enough to face it down.  I find myself waking up each morning and confronting my little lies.  I want to make sure I'm not carrying around some giant elephant on my back and putting on a facade of "I'm fine".  That stuff festers and smells and starts to become truth even though it is a fiction I totally created in my head.  So I have these mini-interventions with myself.  What is true, what is false?

I was an early cheerleader for truth... and Niwot, but also truth...

And the outcome is always good.  Freedom comes with honesty.  I've felt so alive this year and it is because I'm leaning into the hard and scary and demystifying it.  Does it suck, absofreakinglutely it does.  But it replenishes and fortifies in it's wake.  Peanut butter cups do not replenish and fortify, maybe in a perfect world.  But in the meantime, I'm trying to be real and truthful about who I am and what I want. 

Summer days drifted away...

Yes, school is starting up in a few weeks and I am clinging onto the last days of summer (barbecues, afternoon naps, iced tea with friends) with both hands.  I revisited my summer to-do list and I think I did okay.  I read a lot, saw a ton of movies, I soothed babies and chatted with friends I haven't seen in a long time.  No regrets.  Summer days, like weekends, are there to recharge my soul. 

Okay, so I didn't learn French, I didn't watch the Story of English, and I spent an obscene amount of time sitting on a porch playing Drop 7 on my iPod while listening to The Boxer Rebellion, Regina Spektor and Sigur Ros.  I got a new high score.  Bonus.

But I DISCOVERED a lot this summer.  Discoveries are awesome, especially when you aren't looking for them.  I've said before in my blog that I often succumb to the "go, do, become" pressure of life.  If you haven't DONE this or GONE here or BECOME this, then what contribution have you made?  I don't know where this comes from, but that is a crappy voice to have on a vacation.  My summer motto was "sit, think, be; let the summer come to you".  And it did.

And the recharging came from this.  I like my summer to-do list.  It was a good guideline and made sense to have some goals, but I'm okay if I didn't learn French.  Tres bien!  Croissant! Bonjour! There.  It was more important to be present with others and watch the world go by. 

 

My friend and bandmate Jenn had this great epiphany about sunsets.  She's way smarter than I am (she has, like, five degrees) and she had this huge, metaphorical, connective dialogue with me about what she had learned from the metaphor of sunsets.  It got me thinking, sunsets have always been a little sad for me.  The day is done and there is a farewell that seems a little heart-tugging.  Out at the beach, I had to pause the scrabble or card game I was playing and go take a photo of the sunset.  In truth, sunsets are common as the rain, but different every night.  I saw the sunset as a transformational time when the page turns and the next chapter reveals itself.  No matter who you are, what you do, or how you live, you transform.  You can't help yourself.  I have seen the rate of change speed the hell up in my life lately.  The transformations that used to seem slower have increased their rate of change and my head spins a little bit in the process. And just like a sunset, it happens daily but is different every time.  

It was a very good summer.  I am happy, rested and ready for the challenges of the next school year.  The changes I've gone through are in a sense providential I think, as though something is coming and this version of myself needed to be ready for it.  I hope your summer was equally as wonderful.

Gone to Santa Fe

Santa Fe is pretty magical place for me.  I've never had a bad time there.  My friends keep moving there so I will always have a place to stay.  And the drive down is not too bad.  It is 6 hours and 21 minutes which is basically three episodes of Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Three of This American Life, lots of twizzlers and Annie's bunny mix, and three bathroom breaks.

What is it about this town that so attracts?  Is it the possibility of seeing George R.R. Martin in person and asking him what the eff is wrong with King Joffrey?  Is it running into a psychic at a bar who tells you your energy is, like, seismic?  Is it hunting for pumpkin butter at Trader Joe's?  In truth, it is all these things and more.  Maybe it is the way the adobe buildings settle into the landscape as though they sprung up out of the arroyos.  There are no Tudor mansions in Santa Fe.  

And it is all about art.  Art is everywhere in Santa Fe, and people want you to get all into their art and talk about art and argue about art and accept art.  And the art is everywhere.  No, that is not a soup terrine, it is art.  No, that isn't a nifty throw blanket, it is art.    

And I observed.  I'm trying to be all creative and start a band and write songs and generally not hide my light under a shrubbery, but I just needed a weekend to watch and listen and be.  Usually I am a spitfire of hilarity, just ask my friends.  I have been described as "life of the party" on more than one occasion.  But not this weekend.  I'm sure I made for fun company, but I needed to listen more than I spoke.  I was taking it all in.  

I listened to The Shins and read the Nora Ephron book my mom loaned me.  I got a pedicure with my cousin, ate breakfast burritos while watching Wimbledon, and was entranced by "Moonrise Kingdom" (seriously... go see that movie).  My cousin Emily has this phrase, "that's sooo Santa Fe" which basically means that there is no standard, expect anything.  I think every vacation should be so serendipitous.  I still haven't seen the Georgia O'Keefe museum (but my mom went, does that count?) nor did I venture too far from my top three favorite places to eat (Harry's Roadhouse, El Parasol, and Plaza Cafe) but I did try new things and found some new favorites (La Casa Senna... heavenly patio of twinkly lights and gorgeousness).

The "Jesus cloud" outside Harry's Roadhouse.  

So I hope you're getting some vacation time in this summer.  And by vacation time, I don't mean running from museum to landmark to restaurant in a sprint.  Take some time, enjoy the place where you are and let it unfold itself to you.  Santa Fe wanted to impress me this weekend, so I let it.  

Happy trails to you.  

seize the moment

Do you seize the moment often?

This whole year has been about seizing moments and breaking out of my sad turtle shell... okay, I don't have a sad turtle shell, but I can be a little reclusive sometimes.  So lately I've been trying to say "YES, I WILL DO THAT!" more often than I say "No, I have to go buy stamps."  There's just something scary about not having an anticipation guide for life.  And I am sadly not one of those spontaneous, awesome people who buy stamps as needed.  But I've been trying to change that.  So when my friend Shannon called me the other day and said, "I have two free tickets to see Foster the People at Red Rocks tonight, wanna go?" I said, "um, yes."

Pretty

Foster the People... a little blurry... a little far away

So we went, we had a fabulous time and I was glad that I said YES to something I otherwise might have missed.  Now I don't want to be a perpetual YES person, but I think I overrule potential awesomeness with my overthinking.  Have I missed moments that could have changed my life?  Yes.  Is that okay?  Yes.  Have I done really awesome spontaneous things?  Yes.  Did I regret those moments?  No.  I think it is good to have a balance between the yes and no poles of decision making.  The trick is to own your decision and not beat yourself up either way.  And when you own a decision, really go for it with gusto.  Be present in the moment and appreciate it just for what it is.  Carry on.  

My cousin and her friend chillin out at the lake on the 4th

In an instant...

Every place has a type of natural disaster that haunts its residents.  My mom, who lives in Oregon, wonders when the big earthquake or volcanic eruption will hit Portland.  We go to the coast and see signs for tsunami evacuation routes.  My dad, who lives in the mountains, has what every mountain dweller in Colorado has, a nagging fear that lightning will strike a dry pine tree, and acres of forested land will burn up in the blink of an eye.  I live on the plains, so I've seen these fires from afar, too many to count.  I've heard of people who've lost everything in a wildfire.  The thing is, you never think it is going to happen to someone you love or to a house you know well.

The '72 bus and the side of my dad's house.  That's not the real color... fyi

It was a typical Saturday.  I had read the paper, done chores, worked out, and done my nails.  Then I checked Twitter and saw the Boulder Camera's tweet about a fire up by Beaver Meadows entrance station at RMNP.  At first I didn't think about it.  It didn't sound severe and I had already heard so much horrible news about the High Park fire near Fort Collins.  Now that fire is a huge beeyotch, it has consumed close to 200 private homes and thousands of acres of forested land.  The devastation is something the rest of us Coloradoans have been acutely aware of, donating money and goods and lending helping hands where needed.  I clicked on the article.  It said that the fire started at 1600 High Drive... hrm... my dad's neighborhood, and that the neighborhood had been evacuated.  I knew my dad and his partner Mary were out hiking for the day, but Harry, my dad's housemate didn't answer the phone.  No one home...

Dad walking a friend's dogs in the neighborhood.  The houses in this photo are probably gone.

I was headed up to Estes Park anyway.  A friend of mine was getting married to a guy I still needed to meet, I was going to catch up with a bunch of good friends, and I had this great dress and killer shoes.  So I shoved all that in a bag, called my cousin who lives in Estes and we started a command center of our own; calling Mary's cell phone, checking the computer for the latest information.  I sped up to Estes and I remember driving past the skydivers at the airport and thinking, "What the hell?  Why are you skydiving when I can't reach my dad and I don't know if his house is gone."  Don't you just love mustering righteous indignation at people living their lives while you're in turmoil?  When I got to my cousin's, we drove down to the place where evacuees were gathering and Mary called.  She and my dad had just arrived to chaos and not been able to get up to the house.  Dana and I drove over to them and we waited... and watched.  We watched helicopters dump water on the smoke that seemed perilously close and horribly ominous.

And then we ate a little bit.  Dad made jokes like how now he could finally move in with me and live in my basement (which is not funny, ha ha so much as funny, hell no).  Our waiter was from Lithuania and brought the wrong order and I started to feel like I was dreaming.  This wasn't really happening, right?  The fire would only get a few vacation cabins and it would stop and my dad would be able to go back to his house that night.  Then we went up a hill and looked across into my dad's neighborhood.

 

We found dad's street, and the houses down the hill from his house.  And then my dad said, "Well, it might have gotten the house," and we all froze.  He took some photos and we squinted across and we saw the peaks of my dad's roof above the trees... but we weren't sure.  We wanted to believe that it was there.  I started to think about all the stuff that was in the house.  The painting of my dad on Marroon Bells, the computer with all his photos, the giant map of RMNP that had red lines all over it where he had hiked, everything is replaceable, but there are lots of things he couldn't easily replace.  Then there are memories of people and the fun times we have had at the house.  My dad calls his house "Basecamp" because a lot of people visit at any given time.  I actually have to book time in advance if I want to stay there.

The day Lucy met the elk.

At the end of the day, we went to a briefing for the evacuees and the list of structures lost was released.  And they didn't read dad's address.  His house had been saved by incredibly skilled firefighters, helicopter pilots and police officers who worked hard and braved smoke and fire.

There was relief for what was saved and profound sadness for those who lost everything.  Losing a house cannot be assuaged by insurance, your home is an extension of yourself, and good, innocent people lost the very safe place that they had created.  The Red Cross set up a shelter at the high school and people dispersed to be with family and friends and neighbors. 

Smoke from the High Park fire over Lake Estes

After the stress dissipates, your body stops tensing, everyone is safe and you settle into a kind of sleep, you review.  I had to say things to myself like, "that just happened" and "what just happened?" I couldn't believe it was so close and so real.  This year has truly been a game changing year for me.  Everything I had previously done, the ways I had adopted and settled into like a warm blankie took a 180 (there are some back blog posts about this).  And this change is sometimes subtle, sometimes not so much, but it seeps in and around and suddenly, you like asparagus... like who knew that would happen??  What I noticed about my response to this situation was my lack of paralyzing anxiety and panic about the unknown.  Anxiety was a nice blankie for me to hide under for a long time, but it didn't really serve me at all.  The unknown is coming for all of us, we just don't know anything about what the next day, hour or minute will bring.  Sometimes it comes as a beautiful surprise, and sometimes a horrible tragedy.  And the kicker about both sides of that coin is that life keeps going on around you; the skydivers will just keep skydiving.   I wish I had some profound, deeply metaphorical Bob Dylan song to share with you here, but the one I keep coming back to is the chorus of Ok Go's "Here It Goes Again": 

Just when you think that you're in control,
just when you think that you've got a hold,
just when you get on a roll,
here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again.
Oh, here it goes again.

Sunset from my dad's porch