Category: Everyday Enchantment

All in the Family

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One of the side effects of minimizing social media was to be time to work on THE BOOK. In truth there are a few books battling it out in my brain, but the one I have made the most progress on was my intended.

The India Book.

A lot of it has been written. Well, a lot has been written, whether it makes it into the mythic book or not will depend largely on my friends who honestly read and comment, a paid editor and my mood.

This was the plan until yesterday when I made the decision to pick up a memoir I had started reading some time ago – before I realized my world was not under my control – and now I am questioning where to put those writing hours.

The book is Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas. The cover promises a chilling, gripping, and thoughtful read and it does not disappoint. I am fascinated with Ms. Thomas’ self- assessment (and later professional diagnosis) of sociopath and what that means. Her stories of childhood, adulthood, her professional career as an attorney and volunteer Sunday school teacher and her dispassionate, yet raw and honest depiction of these things has me rapt. But more than the actual details of her life and her postulation that sociopathy is a cocktail of genetics and environment, I am deeply in love with her command of language and writing ability.

So much so, that I’m leaning away from India and closer to the “memoir” I accidentally started a few year ago.

By the way, I now understand why it takes some writers 10 years to complete a book. It’s not that they get up every morning and work from 9-5 pounding out prose and researching characters and methods of murder; it’s that they can’t stop editing and complaining and changing their minds. I’m guessing.

Perhaps writing a new chapter for the memoir will lead me back to India.

Telling the stories no one wants told. This single sentence keeps showing up in the front of my mind like a wall street ticker on an Apple product release day. Telling the stories no one wants told…Telling the stories no one wants told…

Sleeping with cousins, inappropriate touching, being slapped down the stairs into labor at nearly nine months pregnant, affairs, illegitimate children, alcoholism, murder, serial marriages, deceit, war, strength, undying love, suffering, living on a boat, living out of a car, killed in the line of duty. It’s all in my family.

It’s all part of my story.

 

Urgency Reset

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Been thinking a lot about urgency lately.

Particularly how social media creates a sense of urgency without really doing anything. Almost all social media channels use their users to create it for them.

Think about it: Aside from the algorithm-driven passive sales on Facebook, we’re reacting to the posts of those we know.

We are compelled to up our game, drop out, do more, do less, get the app, sign the petition, boycott him, support the other guy, all because someone we know, or someone who knows someone we know, is somehow suggesting it. Just by sharing their own opinion. No matter how uninformed.

It’s genius, really. Somehow.

We need to do more. We need to go out more. We need to post food pics and selfies in front of quirky places. We need to practice our inversions so when we’re in Germany we can pop up into one in front of where the wall used to be. We need to post the best version of ourselves we want others to see. We need to prove we’re unique. Just like everybody else.

It’s a mad scientists social experiment. It has to be.

I’m only halfway through day five, but I see this just through my tendencies to reach for my phone when I want to escape a conversation, or I’m bored, or I have a few minutes. I’m filling space and avoiding being present with nothing. Photos and posts of things I normally wouldn’t choose to read. Probably.

And as I scroll my mind is making calculations and decisions, seemingly without my permission or input,  about what I should post next or what glib response I can throw down on a friends photo.

But what if we picked the people or pages we wanted to visit rather than minlessly scrolling? Showed some restraint, some control. What if we chose how to use social media rather than being pulled along by the suggestions of a computer program? Is that even possible?

I get the irony here. I am suggesting you reframe how you use the very media on which you are likely viewing this. I’m just another voice asking you to do something, creating urgency.

I don’t know the answer. There’s a happy medium in there, or out there, somewhere. A place where information and mindfulness meet. I haven’t found it yet, although I am kind of partial to blogs. 😉

It all just makes me very tired.

So, today I spent some time in nature. And some time reading. An actual book with pages that I turned with my hand instead of tapping the right side of a screen. My whole house was open, the wind blowing the curtains on the back patio, breezes running from the front to the back. I caught the light outside and thought more than once about capturing it in my phone. But my phone was in another room and did not go get it. At least twice.

Then finally when it was time to start dinner I retrieved my phone to check for messages – just one, and finally took that photo.

This afternoon, just a few hours of cleaning my house, watching birds and butterflies and shamelessly reading seemed to reset something. No telling if it will last, but for now I would much rather sit on my back porch with a glass of wine and that book.

And no phone.

 

Saving Elma

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I had a dream last night about my yard. It was scruffy and scrubby and for some reason I was surprised to be ashamed of it.

In truth, my own yard has, how shall we say… a natural look to it. It is in fact made up of mostly drought-tolerant, native plants. The front yard came with a towering live oak and preening magnolia, both of which shed leaves all year long. The back yard has an orange tree and out-of-control rubber tree as squatters from the beginning. Everything else we planted.

In the beginning of our occupation we added loads of native wild flowers: galardia, dune sun flower, porter weed, blue curl and our front yard was an explosion of healthy color. We just sort of let the plants take over. We let nature be nature.

Our landscaping philosophy prompted a new, now gone, neighbor across the street to stand with arms folded, one hand aloft to alternately rest on her chin and point to our yard while sharing with another new neighbor (also gone) that “they actually intend for their yard to look like that.”

Nature is messy, and like a child, it should be given certain liberties to explore. But also like a child it needs some discipline. Especially if you’re living in a deed restricted neighborhood. We did receive a lovely letter from our HOA in those early days citing us for our misuse of visible property. We fired back with an environmental manifesto and have been left alone since.

A few years after we were shamed by the HOA, the city encouraged native planting and less grass. We felt vindicated, but our yard was still messy. Again, in the natural sense.

I am compelled to design my yard, like I would an interior space, with a space plan and recommendations. I have, in fact, done this. Even to scale, but I lack the enthusiasm to implement or enforce it. Instead the yard upkeep is the domain of my husband. If I want to change it, I have to change it.

It remains largely unchanged.

Our back yard has been given more consideration. Probably because it is where I spend my time. We planted a winged elm, bay tree, a couple of privets and some other small trees. When I say we, I mean I supported the choices and effort while my husband did the actual work of planting.

We added a stone patio that I actually did work on and design and there’s a hint of a wall we lost interest in around one of the trees.

Our yard is small. If I stood in the middle of it and extended my arms toward our house (the screened enclosure) and the fence that proves this space is ours, I can practically touch both. I would love to have an open patio, with simple columns holding up a simple roof or even a vine covered pergola, but mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds hover just on the other side of the screen like desperate paparazzi, and they’re all looking at me. So the screen stays.

Aside the from the intoxicating fragrance of the orange tree in early spring, the winged elm has captured my heart. In fifteen years he has grown to over 30 feet from just a spindly little sapling. He drops his leaves sometime around December, stands stoic for a month or so then shimmers back to life with tiny green buds in March. Perhaps it is his timely deciduous nature that reminds me of trees from home that tugs at my inner nostalgia. Maybe it’s his happiness to return in the spring that makes me swoon.

Over the years, he has produced offspring, tiny shoots and saplings. They have started grow. Most are about a foot tall, many we have removed, but one has reached about 6 feet. It is a single sinewy stalk with thin, but strong little branches. She can’t stay where she is. There’s no room.

Next to our driveway we removed a diseased some-kind-of-myrtle tree a couple of years ago and that space feels naked. We decide to move the young tree here.

Her roots are long and we lose a few inches on them here or there but otherwise the earth released her easily. A deep hole has been dug and is awaiting her arrival.

It’s been a particularly hot and dry spring and we’re concerned for her survival. We water her daily, usually three times a day.

It has finally rained. And against the vibrant colors of wet nature, she is brown. All her leaves have turned brown. I touch her leaves gently, they’re still very soft, not brittle. I bend her tiniest branches and they still have life, they do not snap.

There is still hope.

I have named her Elma. She deserves a name.

This morning as I am getting ready for my day, Larry (that’s my husband) comes in looking bright, “Don’t give up!”

“On Elma?”

“Yes, two little green shoots around the base.”

“Her base.” I correct.

As he was tending to her and reconstructing the little moat around her tender roots he spied signs of new life. She’s strong. She wants to live out her dharma in our front yard and provide shade during the brutal summer months.

And when she gets bigger and stronger she will be able to see her dad over the house. I’m pretty sure he can see her.

And I’m certain he’s been encouraging her.

 

Island of Excellence

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I have been successful at creating and sustaining two morning habits (if you don’t count coffee). Journaling and reading.

The reading is non-fiction, usually something about writing, or the yoga philosophy. This morning it was both. And this time the messages were the same. That is to say my interpretation of them, while interrupted by a weather delay, was the same.

First, from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg:

“Rather than following rules, have a friendliness toward existence… If you are kind you will naturally be doing the right thing… Don’t be a goody-two-shoes, just to be a goody-two-shoes, it’s not based on any reality.”

Permission.

As I was carefully inserting my Ganesh postcard from India between chapters, then placing the book on the short stack on the end table with the big wooden Buddha beside my sofa, to pick up the other book, I noticed a strange quality to the light outside. Yesterday the sky had announced itself by turning pink; this morning it seemed to be shyly hiding behind dusty glass.

Fog! I love fog!

Abandoning the second book for now, I grabbed my beloved iPhone – vowing as I made my way to the front door NOT to react to the red circles on the upper right hand corners of all my social media icons – and went in search of fog. It was so thick I could feel it on the surface of my eyeballs, like that first look underwater in a lake.

I looked down the street in one direction for a mystical shot – too many parked cars – then the other. Out to the main road I headed. I stood in my two sizes too big man’s t-shirt and baggy shorts with my hair in a scrunchy from the 90s, sans make-up or pride and pointed my phone down the curving main boulevard lined with oak trees heavy with moisture and black iron unlit street lamps.

After about 27 shots of basically the same thing I was approached by a man walking purposefully across his side yard directly at me. When I noticed him I turned in his direction. “You taking pictures of the house?” he demanded. “No, the fog,” I managed with a smile and a finger pointing down the street, as if the fog was hovering only there. Muttering as he turned to go back into his house, “Ok, cause I was gonna say.” What? You were gonna say what? Don’t?

I stood in place and lifted my phone with much less enthusiasm, to demonstrate that it was not pointed toward his home but indeed where that fog was living, just in case he went back to the same window through which he spied my suspicious activity in the first place.

It rattled me a little. I do not cope well with being accused of wrong doing. I am a rule follower. I want to be a rebel and in some respects I suppose my behavior and beliefs could be considered outsider, but mostly I’m a law-abiding good girl.

Perhaps this fear of misbehavior was a seed planted as a teenager.

While working at a clothing store in the mall I was accused of stealing clothes. I was shaken. I would never. I had made the mistake of placing my own clothes in a bag from the store and attempting to leave. I explained that my boyfriend was picking me up to go out and I had brought a change of clothes from home. They were from the Spiegel Catalog, I said with great pride. She said okay, but she never really believed me. Never apologized. And that left a mark on my goody-two-shoes permanent record.

I want to make sure all these mistrusting people know I’m telling the truth. But of course I cannot control what anyone thinks of me and in fact their thoughts and opinions of me are really none of my business, but rather a reflection of who they are.

Letting it go – the photo thing – I returned to my perch on the corner of my sofa, next to the big wooden Buddha and opened the Yoga Sutra book I have been studying. And found this:

From The Secret of the Yoga Sutra: Samadhi Pada by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD

“To be born as a human is the greatest achievement, and to die without knowing the essence of life is the greatest loss. The immense wisdom and power buried in our body and mind is clear evidence that nothing is beyond our reach… Our boundless intelligence and power of discernment give us access to the infinitely vast universe inside us and outside us. Nothing is impossible for us. We are extraordinary beings – individual islands of excellence.”

An individual island of excellence would probably not be so concerned with the fear and anxiety of others projected onto them. Compassionate, yes.

An individual island of excellence would move on, break a few rules, write the story that no one wants told, eat left-over cheesecake for breakfast. Ok, that last one maybe not really excellent.

It’s about breaking the rules for good, not for the sake of being contrary. So many of us follow rules that don’t even really exist. We do something because someone once told us to or told us never to and it stuck. They aren’t laws or even policies. It’s a very weak box constructed of shoulds and shouldn’ts that provides the illusion of safety and conformity.

Einstein’s greatest contribution to me personally was his edict to: “Question everything.”

Good advice. One question could collapse that whole silly box. Without walls it’s much easier to be an island of excellence.

Simpler Times

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Day 2 – Social Media Restriction

Like all diets, day two feels easy and doable. We’re wired that way, to find accomplishment in the beginning to keep us focused and strong through the cravings. Sometimes it works.

I am noticing my tendencies, those mindless moments when I reach for my phone. There’s a gap between thoughts or shiny things and I feel the need to be doing something and apparently my phone has the answer.

My phone sleeps in the living room.

Even though I have to walk 20 paces or so to reach it, it happens to be on the way to the coffee pot and starving pets awaiting breakfast, so I  A U T O M A T I C A L Y  check it as I pass by.

I tell myself I’m checking the time. Maybe the weather. But there is clock on my stove bright as day within my line of sight and the weather is right outside my door.

What I’m actually doing is taking my popularity temperature. How many likes or comments did I get on Facebook, Instagram, WordPress? Any texts requiring immediate action only I can perform? Any missed phone calls from people desperate to talk to me?

This is what social media has done to me. This is what media does. Advertising and marketing creates a sense of lack to be filled by a product that will create a sense of worth.

Social media has created the disease and the drug. Like alcohol.

We live in a culture of urgency. If you text me and I don’t respond within minutes I am:

A. So rude.

B. Obviously too good for you

C. Clearly ignoring you (please see A)

This social media urgency is aiding and abetting all the stress we are already under. Much of which is self-inflicted.

When I was a kid (somewhere between the invention of television and the invention of the internet) there were actual phone numbers we could call for the time and the weather. “At the tone the time will be….” Yes, we did have watches and clocks then, but no one was connected to a satellite for the exact time. And the weather could be heard on local news three times a day, not 24/7. Television went off the air at midnight. There. Was. No. Cable.

How did we survive?

What about life before texting? Emailing? The era of the instant response?

Real conversations with emotions and facial expressions took place, well-thought out letters were written and mailed, and we visited people. We got in cars and drove to someone else’s house. Maybe even in another state.

We’ve reduced ourselves to 140 characters. We’ve lost patience with paragraphs containing more than two sentences and articles with more than 5 paragraphs of 2 sentences. Communication used to have a sort of elegance. But that left and took manners and civility with it.

At the risk of sounding like my grandparents: things were simpler in my day. There was an unappreciated clarity that came from running down the street to tell a neighbor or friend something. No context was necessary. Instead of 500 texts to make plans that may never happen, we went outside to see who else was outside. And then we played, or in later years, hung out.

I’m no longer apologizing for waxing nostalgic. It is exactly because of my age and the distance between my youth and today that I can have this perspective.

My grandparents had it. They sold their home in the suburbs of Harrisburg to purchase an 18th Century stone farmhouse, with acreage, a pond, a barn and a spring house. My grandfather raised cattle for a hobby and grandma planted a vegetable garden and collected antiques. He still worked as an engineer for the highway department and she continued to work as a dress designer. They responded to their longing for simpler times in a very real way. They physically removed themselves from convenience to reconnect to something more meaningful. Each other.

Is that what I’m doing? Is putting limitations on my social media usage, thereby my phone usage, akin to moving to the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania? Perhaps.

Sounds pretty nice to me.

 

 

 

On Restriction

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I am putting myself on restriction, just short of a social media fast. I have promised myself I would take the month of May off from social media. Realizing I use certain streams for my business, I adjusted the terms and conditions of my imaginary contract to grant me limited access to Facebook only for the purposes of promoting events for the yoga studio.

My name is Allison and I am a Facebook video addict. I mean, come on: sloths, otters, motivational up-and-comers, forward thinkers, Ted talks?! And what about all those baby pictures, alpacas, silly chickens and people who need me?

But it has to stop. For now. I find myself losing up to 3 hours a day.

What I could do with those 3 hours! What could I do?

The time wasted in the morning could be spent on my yoga mat or wandering the early morning streets of my neighborhood hunting critters big and small. My mid-morning/early afternoon stretch could be spent writing and my evening hour could be spent in actual conversation or reading something inspirational. Or honestly watching recorded shows with my full attention. Do I even like these shows enough to watch them without distraction? I’ll let you know.

So, May is Blog-a-Day month for me. WordPress is a form of social media, it’s true, but it somehow seems more noble. And I can’t seem to stop myself from snapping photos of magical Florida nature or, full disclosure, my cat (oh my, I’ve become such a cliché) so I will still utilize Instagram.

But neither of these platforms seem to demand as much of my time as the book of face. I will post my blogs to FB in some of the groups I belong to and even my feed on occasion, and I will share my Instagram captures with FB as well. But I will not be drawn in by that tiny red circle glaring at me from the corner of the F square on my phone, declaring how many people love me and are anxiously awaiting my attention and reply.

We’ll see how it goes.

I really, I mean honestly, want to finish writing my book on India. So, some of my found time will be spent jittery and disheveled in the corners of coffee shops nearby. And on days under 90 degrees, perhaps on my back patio, where I will no doubt be distracted by the fauna flitting and skittering about in my back yard.

I also have two houses stuffed into one right now and would love to continue purging and organizing that back to one manageable space. This is the year of the purge for me.

It is day one, but I am hopeful I can create this shift and come June, if I’ve behaved, I may just allow myself access to the wonders of Facebook again.

For now, you can find me on Instagram @allisonswanderland. Or at one of my two blogs: www.allisonswanderland.com – for stories of nature, travel and talking animals or this one, www.enchantedlife.blog for musings on all things that make life magical like: minimalism, zero waste, food stuffs and philosophy.

I know I’m assuming you care, it’s okay if you don’t. But I’d love to hear from you in the comments on the blogs or Instagram. Or even Facebook, just don’t expect a response until June 1.

Personal History

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I am lost in a sea of personal history. Memories and emotions gently rock my present, nudging my attention this way and that.

My room: the repository of my past. Photos from as far back as 1800 and something. My great-grandparents parents photos and maybe their parents too. Some I know, some are magical ghosts of my DNA.

My room: the sanctuary of my creative aspirations. Over 20 boxes of hundreds of beads – many semi-precious stones that I could just caress for hours. I am partial to rubies, they feel mysterious and rich. Aquamarine gives me space, I can’t help but take a deep breath in when working with them. And sapphires are the keepers of  secrets. In boxes in my closet are unpainted canvases, paper cut for projects forgotten and photos I’ve taken and left to die in the back of a drawer.

My room:  the organizational nerve center. Four file drawers hold the remnants of an abandoned organizational system, files numbered and lettered but empty. Files full of bills paid, places to visit, the history of my pets and cherished documents that allow me to wander the earth.

My room: holder of tiny sacred spaces. An altar that continues to grow even though there appears to be no more room, sits atop a large bookcase. As I was counting it I thought I’d find new homes for some of the excess Buddhas and rocks, but there appears to be no such thing as excess Buddhas.

This was to be the last room on my list but something compelled me to “knock it out.” It’s been a week. More than. I’m almost done counting. That was supposed to be the easy part. But to count photos you must touch them and I don’t know about you, but I must also look at them. And as I do I am mentally eliminating some and finding purposes for others. I am sorting and organizing memories as if I can come back to them when I’m ready.

There are just a few boxes of photos left to count and then all the jewelry supplies. I have set a goal to complete the counting by the end of this week – Sunday. In the meantime I am surrounded by a mine field of unfinished projects. And it’s creating heaviness, filling spaces that I need free and open. Cards that need to be cut, photos to be sorted and culled, letters to be read and overall purging. This is just round one.

As I sort through the stuff that has built me I wonder what I am really hoping to gain by this process. My goal from the outset been space and time. I want to be able to walk into my home and not feel compelled to straighten up, but I sense something much deeper at work.

Urgency. I carry with me, deep in my gut, this sense of needing to get things done. Organizing, categorizing, sorting then storing. Get it done, check it off. But when it’s done will I be sad? Will I look for the next thing to accomplish no matter how trivial? Maybe that need will abate once things are ordered. Maybe not. This is the work of the process. This is why to abandon it or hold fast to rules would dilute the outcome.

It’s cranky and itchy, the process, but in a most informative way. It’s doing its work on me and I like, don’t like it. I think that means it’s working.

It’s Written in Hindu, in the Stars

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A few months ago, I had my Vedic Astrology chart done. It was infinitely entertaining and confusing. In spite of that, I learned a few things about myself that may explain some of my behaviors. But isn’t that how these always go? We fit our story into the fortune to create a reason from which we gain insight.

In addition, I have been writing my book on India (for four years now, but just recently with for real earnestness) and a few of my traits are being revealed to me here as well.

Stay with me, this all relates to the purging food organizational structure trying to find peace phase I’ve been going through the past 50 years or so.

In the astrology chart it shows that my ruling deity is Yama. He is the god of death. This excited me. What I have learned in this journey is death of anything makes room for new beginnings, new life. The death of an idea, a habit, yes, even a person, creates space. I do not wish to end the lives of others, I do however like to complete things. Moment to moment our inhale dies to the exhale, day dies to night and is reborn 12 hours later. The birth of a child is the death of the pregnancy. One year dies to the next and so on.

This chart also proclaims my dharma (the thing I was born to do) as “carrying things away.” This too, made sense. My favorite creature on the whole planet is the vulture – nature’s humble janitor. THEY CARRY THINGS AWAY. Stuff we don’t want, dead stuff, so we don’t have to deal with it. It’s noble.

The writing has revealed my tendency to live my life in fragmented sentences. Grammatically this would look like … To be continued, more to come, stay tuned. Which is completely counter to carrying things away or ending them.

Balance? Harmony? Insanity?

I rush. I cram too much stuff in. I’m learning to let go of a few things on my schedule.  I’m better at prioritizing. But there’s still a lot I don’t complete.

I noticed this as I was writing about an experience in the desert of India when I was on safari with a group. We were at a park looking for interesting animals and such. When I felt we had seen everything there was to see, I was ready to go. The yoga guru I was traveling with, chose that exact moment to lay down on the hard cracked earth, knees bent, hands folded on his belly. What? Why? C’mon! I walked back to the jeep like a spoiled child denied a treat.

The pouting lasted about 10 minutes. I walked back out to where he was and stood there willing him to hop up, clap his hands and say, “let’s go.” Instead he waxed poetic about all that he could see. For about 20 more minutes. I surrendered – mostly because I didn’t have a choice. When we finally did make it back to our jeeps to leave, the sky turned a brilliant orange. The setting ball of fire filtered through unseen pollution created a magical show for us. That we would have missed had my Vulcan mind meld worked.

I’m great at beginnings. I am an ideator, an instigator, a starter. Initiation is my wheelhouse. Implementation so-so. Completion? Let’s just call that an area of opportunity.

This purging, ordering, organizing, cataloging seems like a reaction to this fragmentation and a fulfillment of my dharma all at once. I am carrying away the stuff I no longer need. Or want. The physical and the energetic – if you believe in that hokum – are being distributed among friends, thrift stores and ebay.

It’s another project started that I intend to see through.

It seems the less stuff I have the more space there will be to complete those sentences. To sit still and notice. To be where I am when I am.

To stay for the sunset.

 

 

Speaking of the Dead

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I was sitting in the back of the room with the other yoga nidra facilitators listening with half an ear to the teacher in the front. I can’t even tell you who it was. I don’t remember. In my distracted state, I cut my eyes toward the giant picture windows to my right – I do this often – and between the lush, old stately trees I could see the lake sparkling. A small hole between branches provided the perfect view of a cerulean blue sky and in that tiny hole a vulture soared.

Another one.

They are everywhere in Florida. They are everywhere, period. But they are in my awareness more than almost any other creature.

During this 10 day training I have entertained hoards. At one point, I was peacefully rocking myself back and forth on a swing, enjoying the breeze coming off the lake, lost in the lapping of the water against the shore; I leaned forward for some reason and when I looked up dozens of vultures were making their way across the sky above me. They were low enough for me to see the holes in their beaks and hear their wings flap as they gained purchase against the wind.

They kept coming. I was awestruck. I have never seen so many aloft at once.

I stood, as much as a salute to their humility and grace as to close the gap between us by another foot or two. I longed – long – for one to swoop down and sit beside me. They are clearly my animal totem and I simply adore them.

No matter when I looked up, during this ten-day training, they were there.

As I sat in the back of the room watching my friend soar effortlessly, I thought, “What are they trying to tell me?”

“Clean up your dead.” It was as if that single vulture had stopped, looked me in the eye with hands on hips and said, “Clean up your dead.”

The meaning simultaneously accompanied the words, yet I tried to analyze it, figure it out. It was an opportunity, in that moment, to simply say, “ok” and let it all go. But I needed to know more. I needed to figure out what my dead was. Which relationships, beliefs, habits was I supposed to let go of? How should I clean them out, how will I know if I have?

This gift that was handed to me became a light that revealed a pattern that doesn’t always serve me. Planting a thought in my brain then attaching a million other thoughts to it. Trying to figure things out.

Sometimes I just have to say ok. And so I did. Sort of.

I am using this command, ‘clean up your dead’ each time I find myself hooking into a thought pattern that isn’t serving me. I won’t catch them all and it will be a process of recognition and repetition until finally it’s not. But I’m committed.

And if I hold on a little too long to the dead weight, I have plenty of airborne friends around to remind me.

Witches Brew

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Daily Prompt: Captain Picard was into Earl Grey tea; mention the Dude and we think: White Russians. What’s your signature beverage – and how did it achieve that status?

I wish I could tell you I’m never seen without my trusty water bottle or a bucket of green juice, but I can’t in good conscience.

Instead I can be caught with any number of liquids.

In the morning, it’s my own personal brew. A blend of dark and  lighter roast coffees from exotic origins.  The hot magma sends tendrils of steam upward, tickling my olfactory senses  and I begin to swoon. A dash of cinnamon, a teaspoon “or so” of organic raw sugar and a plop of organic half and half complete the alchemy.

I breathe deeply once  with the cup cradled in both hands, its precious contents at the ready. On that first intake I can feel the blood in my veins beginning to warm, animating the cells in my body, sparking the flint in my brain, cranking the gears to life. It’s necessary, medicine really. And there might be more than one cup.

Around lunch time I usually reach for that quintessential southern delicacy known as ‘Sweetea.’ On occasion water. On rare occasions. Not really very often at all.

In the evening, f I am going to imbibe, and often I am, it’s going to be a Pinot Noir. Deciding to have a glass of wine sends a message to the brain creating an internal environment to relax. A Mona Lisa smile begins to tug at the corners of my mouth as I twist the cork out of the bottle. That ‘pop’ signals my salivary glands to prepare for that first hint of bitterness. Yet I wait, I give the bottle a few minutes to acclimate, then I pour. This too requires a few moments.

It’s foreplay.

At that first sip my taste buds spring to life. I can feel the dark liquid slide down my throat and spread like warm fingers throughout my torso, hugging me. I sigh, lean back, take another sip then set the glass down as the day’s edges begin to soften.

When I’m in India I can’t get enough Chai. Jamaica, Sorrell tea and ok, Red Stripe. Whole Foods, Green Dream. Hindu temple, mango lassi. I don’t drink soda or nearly enough water. I get far too many calories from my liquids and entirely too much pleasure.

If I had to let go of any of these, for just a little while I hope, I could. Everything but the coffee, just one cup. Like I said, it’s medicine.