Meeting Dogs vs. Being Married, Searching for God, and Building Community

The dogs are excited enough.

First, the dogs --

 

Whether you are meeting a dog for the first time or coming home to your own dog … whether the dog is reactive or simply exuberant or whatever … the rules of engagement as formulated by Cesar Milan are simple: No talk, no touch, no eye contact. Or as I tell friends coming to my house, “Ignore the dog.” What you’re doing is keeping your own energy calm. You don’t ignore the dog indefinitely, of course, but what you want to reward is calm behavior, not excitement, on the part of the dog. 

Calm is rewarded with play.

I am completely on board with Cesar’s advice and only wish more people would practice it. Even when directly instructed, too many find it difficult not to approach a dog head-on (an aggressive approach in the dog world) with big smiles (showing teeth) and/or cooing voices (inviting dominant behavior from the dog). Then when jumped on, many of those people assure the owner, “It’s all right.” No, it is not all right! You are working against the owner and not in the dog’s best interest! 

 

But that’s all I’m going to say today about dogs...

Then, marriage --

 

...because what I want to focus on today is a book by David Brooks, and I want to begin by saying that the way to approach a dog is not the way to make a good, strong, satisfying and lasting marriage. 

 

On Sunday morning I was writing to a friend, telling her about The Second Mountain, and admitting that I did not fully engage with the book until I came to the section on marriage. And then, as I was writing that to my friend, it occurred to me that what I miss most since my husband died is exactly what we should not do when meeting or reuniting with a dog! 

 

I miss the talk: the shorthand of “trivial” daily sharing (never trivial to the sharers of it) and the deeper conversations extending over hours or even years. 

 

I miss the touch: holding hands while walking, sitting side by side in a restaurant instead of across the table from one another, being in direct physical contact as much as possible. 

 

I miss the eye contact: seeing and being seen, not as two strangers glancing at one another on a sidewalk but as intimates, seeing each other’s hearts and minds and souls. “He saw you,” that same friend wrote to me once. 

"The first time ever" -- I saw him.

Here is the sentence from the section called “The Stages of Intimacy” that changed my casual, desultory reading of Brooks to total engagement:

 

When you choose to marry someone, you had better choose someone you’ll enjoy talking with for the rest of your life. 

 

That sentence stopped me in my tracks. Brooks continues:

 

It doesn’t work unless two people can fall into a state of fluid conversational flow. The phone calls can last hours. They can spend a fourteen-hour day together and the words don’t stop. Everything can eventually be said, and every topic can be discussed. This is what Martin Buber called ‘pure relation,’ when I-It becomes I-Thou. This is what it feels like to be known.

 

We saw each other.

I really appreciate how David Brooks does not set aside passion to focus on common interests and common values. Friendship is not enough to make the kind of “maximum marriage” he describes and most of us (those who wanted marriage) always wanted to find. A relationship can “make sense” without touching the depths of the soul. Couples who enjoy each other’s company and admire each other 

 

…may tell each other that they love each other, they may feel real love for each other, but somehow it’s not the kind of love that makes it painful to be away from the person, the kind of love that stirs up turmoils of fear that the other person might go away, the kind of love that produces enchantment and deep happiness when the two of you are just next to each other doing nothing, the kind of love that calls forth the everyday service and constant solicitude that marriage requires.

 

I can almost see some of my readers recoiling in disgust at this description of what they would call “codependence,” but my money is on the quite well-known woman whose name escapes me at present who said in one of her comedy routines (or in a book she wrote?) that what other people call codependence she simply calls the human condition. Well, but maybe not everyone wants enchantment. Someone once accused me of romanticizing my life, something the Artist and I certainly did, but if we didn’t, who would, and why would we want to stop? 

The Second Mountain is not a book about marriage alone but about commitment and transformation. (Or should I say transformation and commitment?) Brooks calls the first mountain the one on which we strive to measure up as adults.

 

On the first mountain, we all have to perform certain life tasks: establish an identity, separate from our parents, cultivate our talents, build a secure ego, and try to make a mark on the world….

 

The goals on that first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorces….

 

Then something happens.

 

What happens varies from one person to another, but the result is the sense that there is another mountain to be climbed. There may be but is not necessarily a change in careers or marriages, but it is transformation that characterizes the second mountain, a move from acquisition to contribution. Topics such as intellectual commitments, spiritual seeking and/or conversion, and community building—these are reasons why I think everyone, not just romantics, should read this book. I loved the idea of community building focusing on possibilities rather than problems, especially the story of the Spartanburg (SC) Academic Movement. 

Basically, the story is about the joy of commitment, which reminds me of the answer Richard Leakey gave when asked if he was really willing to give his life to Kenyan politics. His response was, “What else does any of us have to give?” Where we give our attention and care and time is where we give our life. Something to ponder….

 

What will I practice this year?

"What's up, Momma?"

 Whatever you practice

grows stronger.

 

Those five words stopped me in my mental tracks. They’re from a little book called Radical Compassion, by Tara Brach. A practice is intentional, whereas a habit is often unconscious, but in either case repetition creates a groove.

 

(1)       Only yesterday I was looking at the pages of my very first sketchbook, given to me by the Artist Christmas of 2004. It came in a wooden box (with carrying handle) that also contained pencils of all kinds, watercolors, brushes, and pastels. Trying out the pencils that first morning took courage on my part, but even in this first book, before any classes, there are a few drawings made as time went by that I see now as “not awful.” (Many, admittedly, are pretty lame.) Much more importantly, for each one I see, I recall the place, the day, the circumstances, such that together they constitute a kind of visual diary stretching from 2005 to 2010, many entries from winter months in Florida. More than does a photo album – because a drawing takes so much longer to produce – they bring the past back to me and give me pleasure. And so I inch slowly, in thought and preparation, back into my once-daily practice of drawing, a way of recording the ordinary stuff of my everyday life.

2006

2009

Big jump here. 

us

 

(2)       Giving and loving, in thought and action, is a practice for which my marriage was a school, and now that the Artist is no longer with me, I have been consciously and intentionally expanding outward that small,  personal world. How far can my loving intentions reach?This thought will connect to others (perhaps) in what follows.

 

(3)       In general, over my lifetime, humor has not usually been my first response to anything (and I can be obtusely literal at times), but lately I’m finding it a better response than my habitual reactions to a lot of situations. Instead of leaping to argue or withdrawing to brood, my slower response (because I am not a fast thinker) is gentle and often leads me to laugh at myself. Because whether or not another person intends to say or do something cruel or dismissive or presumptuous – and often they don’t intend that! – if I don’t feel I deserve it, why would I want to take it on and feel bad and launch an angry exchange? Or silently hold a grudge? If the other is speaking or acting from such a negative space, isn’t that just sad? Don’t they need, maybe, reassurance? At least a smile! – I don’t know. I’m just today beginning to work through these thoughts. (Note: Snippy or smart-ass humor would only be anger in disguise. Not what I’m talking about.)

 

Back to the drawing board

Drawing, giving and loving, laughing are all practices I’ve chosen to focus on in this new year. The last one on my list, (4) forgiveness, is the biggest challenge of all for me, but I am hoping that the others will help me get there. BLTN. Better Late Than Never. Mieux tard que jamais.

 

My bookstore Christmas tree dropped almost all its needles at once, making procrastination not an option for taking the tree down and putting away the ornaments, and that in turn cleared space in the front window to showcase other green plants, living plants, which received a much-needed beauty treatment, ridding them of dead leaves and cutting back where needed. Having live things indoors with me helps on these gloomy-skied January days.

Window greens

Because yes, the sky is grey, and the days are dreary and cold. “Do you miss Arizona?” someone asked. Mornings in the mountains of the Southwest aren’t much warmer than northern Michigan mornings, but I do miss the almost daily appearance of the Arizona sun and the way it brought the temperature up considerably by afternoon. So, the sun. And the mountains. I miss the mountains.

“When you were in Arizona, did you miss Michigan?” No, I said, because I knew I would be coming back to Leelanau in May. I didn’t have to miss Arizona in summers past, either, when I could count on returning to the mountains in winter. Life is different now. But it’s okay. I am not unhappy about where I am. This is my beautiful home, and when we finally get more snow, it will be even more beautiful. Update: It's Saturday, and it's snowing!

 

Only the beginning -'

There are exciting aspects to 2024 Michigan winter bookstore life, too. For one thing, the long-awaited release date for Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, The Waters, draws near! As the buzz builds, my impatience grows! Meanwhile, in addition to the Tara Brach book quoted at the top of this post, I am rereading one of my favorite Walter Mosley novels, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (a book I find absolutely perfect) and have read William L. Andrews, the editor’s, introduction to a paperback edition of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, a novel (yes) by James Weldon Johnson that I will jump into as soon as I reach the last page of Mosley. Finally, from the Grath collection of river books, I most recently chose to read (or re-read? I don’t remember) a book titled Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness, by Henry van Dyke. Obviously, a book with such a title is not one to race through, so I read the preface and first chapter and then slid it back in its place, to pull out again perhaps on Sunday afternoon. 

 

Many more thoughts percolating about enchantment and right and left brain stuff, but I will keep those for another day. 

To be continued....

Gift or Grind: It’s All in the Receiving

Although I do it every day, grinding coffee beans is not a "grind" at all!

 

When I was (belatedly) in graduate school at the University of Illinois, there was a wonderful coffee shop west of the main campus called the Daily Grind. “See you at the Grind,” we might say to a friend. “Oh, I was at the Grind.” Etc. Socializing did take place there, but usually only in the late afternoon. Earlier in the day, regardless of the number of people sitting at any given table, most heads were bent over books and notebooks, everyone reading and underlining and scribbling away. All of us regularly spent hours studying at home (some people until after midnight; my own preference was to get up at 4 or 5 a.m.), and there was no end to studying, but when we needed the comforting presence of others, the Grind was more help than distraction, so much so that when I think of my graduate school days, much of my nostalgia centers on the Daily Grind. You wouldn’t think that from the name alone, would you? 

 

This morning, the beginning of the day of the winter solstice, I was beset by all kinds of feelings, but I woke from dreams with a single thought: “We’re alive. We won’t always be alive.” It was not a new thought, not shocking or frightening. It didn’t even have a lot of feeling attached to it. Just truth. We’re alive. We won’t always be alive. The feelings came later, quite a jumble of them, when I looked at Facebook and saw a friend’s memory of her late son, then another friend’s memory of her late mother. May their memories be blessings to those left behind, I thought, and a third friend came to mind, one who is (as we all are, but she is close to the end and aware of it) in the process of dying, even as Christmas comes near. Our beautiful friend, so full of life and laughter!

Full moon, morning before solstice

solstice moon

On laundromat morning, I don’t get up any earlier than usual, but I certainly get dressed and ready to go to town earlier. As the pack made its way from ghost town to “civilization,” the full moon of the previous morning was fading on its right-hand curve, and, as always, I thought of Ahmed (another departed friend), who taught me to distinguish waxing moon from waning moon with the words ‘premier’ and ‘dernier.’ It is the curves of the miniscule ‘p’ and ‘d’ that hold the clue. So this morning’s no-longer full moon is beginning to wane, although the solstice means that our days now begin to lengthen again toward spring.

 

But before we were on the road, there was already Peasy.

the corner I share with Peasy

Peasy has half a dozen stuffed animals, which I try to keep corralled in my little book corner so we won’t be tripping over them everywhere in the small cabin, so when I told him this morning, “Go get your lion,” he first ran to the corner where most of his toys were gathered. But the lion wasn’t there, and he ran back to find it in the Artist’s corner. Has he learned the word ‘lion’ -- or is it simply that the lion, as the only toy still retaining (so far) its squeaker, is more fun than the other toys, his most valuable possession? Squeak, squeak, squeak! Joyously, proudly, he ran back and forth with his lion!

Peasy with lion, taking a break from running and squeaking

No morning is ever a “grind” to Peasy! He doesn’t care that one morning is pretty much like another. To him, each one is a gift. Another day! He’s alive! He’s with us! Life is fantastic! His enthusiasm is boundless and infectious, and we can’t help laughing and feeling grateful ourselves – for each other, for this crazy dog, for another day of life.

another glorious desert sunrise

Originally I had it in mind to write about grinding and milling – various methods from stones to mechanics – but really, do you want to read about that? Somehow I doubt it. You are basking in memories of Hanukkah or celebrating the winter solstice and/or looking forward to Christmas and a new year. And just maybe you have sadness, too, because someone you love is no longer with you or soon will not be. Turn, turn, turn – the seasons and the years. "Everything is temporary!" (my favorite line from the movie "Moonstruck"), I remind myself.

death in the desert (as everywhere)

Is life pointless because it is limited and ends, always, in death? Some people think so. Yet when it comes to gold and silver and diamonds and such, their value lies in their relative scarcity. For each of us, with one precious life to live, what could be more valuable?

All around us, even here in the desert, we are surrounded by life. I should say, by life and death, all mixed up. The earth teems with life and death, as do our days. Would you be a pioneer on another planet, given the opportunity? Not I. The way I see it, our species grew up on this planet and has adapted to it -- and tried to adapt it to ourselves, sometimes with disastrous results, but that is not part of my thought for today. Today I’m thinking only of what a gift our brief tenure is in this wonderful adventure. Not a single human being or even the minds of all human beings who ever lived, all those minds together, could ever have dreamed up such a vast, complex, incredibly fascinating set of wonders! 

So whether you give gifts or not or send holiday cards or not or bake cookies or light candles or have a decorated tree or do none of those things, I wish you joy in and of your life. Our future together -- as friends, as a species -- is, as our individual futures are, always uncertain, but if you are reading these words you are alive right now, and while we cannot hope to be joyful every moment we’re alive, intermittent joy is a recurring gift, n’est-ce pas? And gracious receiving can be as important as generous giving, I do believe. So if you possibly can, take a leaf from Peasy's book.

And Merry Christmas!!!

 

happy dog!!!

Books read since last listed (and who knows if I’ll squeeze in any more before year’s end?):

 

169. Sisman, Robyn. Weekend in Paris (fiction)

170. Wizenburg, Molly. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (nonfiction) 

171. Duncklee, John. Coyotes I Have Known (nonfiction)

172. Palka, Kurt. The Hour of the Fox (fiction)

173. Hudson, Virginia Cary. Flapdoodle, Trust & Obey (???)

Wrapping, Unwrapping, and Wrapping Up the Old Year

Good morning! Last dawn of 2019!

In the days preceding Christmas, my writing desk displayed a row of colorful gift bags for local Arizona friends and neighbors. “Would you like me to find a box you could put those in,” the Artist asked, “so you wouldn’t be so crowded?” I thanked him but declined the offer. “I like to look at them,” I told him. For me, those colorful bags went some distance toward making up for the lack of the fragrant Fraser or balsam fir I would have had back in northern Michigan.

Outgoing gifts, only partially reflected in memorabilia-crowded mirror

Incoming gifts -- and ours to open!

Over on my bookshelf was a substitute “tree,” a shorter, less elaborate mesquite branch than the one I found and used last year, but something, at least, on which to hang Moravian folded paper stars and other ornaments from sisters and friends. I also cleared the remaining top of the bookcase of other items to make room for gift bags from sisters and friends. In that way, my book and writing corner served, for a little while, as our Christmas corner. 

lighting my corner of the darkness

Because I don’t know about you, but when the short, dark days of December roll around, I “need a little Christmas,” and I’m completely sympathetic to Jo March’s complaint that “Christmas [wouldn’t] be Christmas without any presents!” Poor as those “little women” felt, yet they managed to scrounge up gift surprises for each other and for their mother, and in my frugal life it means a lot to me to be able to do the same. 

Still in Michigan, and starting way back in summertime, I had great fun thinking up and making and buying little things and making a happy collection of items for the bags I would later assemble. But I’m lucky. I have sisters! The Artist thinks my gift bags are a “girl thing,” and maybe they are. I do know that my sisters and I have a wonderful time finding and buying things for each other. “Oh, Bettie will love this,” Deborah will say to me as we stand together in her friend’s gift shop, and I agree. “You’re right. That’s perfect for her!”

Gifts on any occasion need not be expensive or elaborate or enormous to say “I love you” to recipients. It is indeed the thought that counts. But giving tangible body to the thought counts, too, I find. For instance, my sisters and I typically give each other cute socks, tee shirts, books, holiday ornaments, and kitchen items, and whenever I put on a shirt or pair of socks from a sister, or pick up a book or admire an ornament or use something in my kitchen that a sister gave me, I think of that sister, and she is right there with me. The gift keeps on giving!

New shirt from a sister!

New socks from a sister!

New apron from a sister!

more new, heavenly soft shirts

Sometimes, surprisingly people other than the givers are with me, too, through gifts I receive. Such is the case with a book one sister sent me this year, a book of poetry by the cousin-in-law of a friend of the Artist’s and mine. I have yet to meet Cele Bona, but her poems are powerful, and her name and relationship to our late friend Al Bona, himself a friend we also admired for his poetic gifts, brings Al to mind, though he has been gone for years.

Years! They pass so quickly! Some years I send Christmas cards, other years New Year’s cards, and sometimes no cards at all. But the truth is that I enjoy buying bright postage stamps and taking stacks of cards to the post office almost as much as I enjoy going in with gift packages to mail. I often think of a friend who hated going to the post office (and now there are ways to avoid the p.o. altogether), but whether I’m at home in Northport, Michigan, or in Willcox, Arizona, the post office is almost always a delightful stop for me. I love the way the United States Postal Service connects us all, and when I go to the p.o. I feel that connection, a little the way I feel it when I go to my precinct voting place in northern Michigan (where I’m happy to say we use paper ballots!). We’re all in this together, these places say to me. We may be far apart in the moment, but these places, these rituals, these bits of paper and other stuff provide us with tangible links to each other.

A friend back home collects our mail and sends it on to us.

[Reminder: Gifts can be wrapped in brightly colored recyclable tissue or reusable cloth. Paper envelopes that hold cards can be recycled, and the cards themselves can be repurposed. Besides, it’s only once a year!] 

But just as I never tell anyone, friend or bookstore customer, “You have to read this book!” -- I only make suggestions or offer ideas -- so I do not intend to guilt-trip anyone into buying or giving Christmas presents. Whether or not one celebrates this holiday or any other, giving presents in the U.S. is, like so many other decisions in this freedom-loving country, an individual choice. Neither am I going to go all religious here (wouldn’t that be inappropriate?!) and dwell on the Infant as God’s gift or the gifts the wise men brought to the Infant, because the truth is that for centuries even Christians did not celebrate Christmas or exchange gifts. Is Dickens responsible for kicking off the holiday we all know today as “traditional”? Who knows, and what does it matter? Philosopher I may be, but there are some things I don’t want to argue about, and Christmas is one of them. 

And just as I will not guilt-trip anyone into giving gifts, neither do I intend to let anyone guilt-trip me into abstaining from gift-giving. I love that part of Christmas! I love looking for, thinking about, finding, selecting, buying, making, planning, wrapping and giving gifts for Christmas! It is a big part of my holiday joy. No colorfully wrapped packages? How sad! Maybe someday I will be an old lady in a nursing home, hunched up in a rocking chair and unable to indulge myself in what is, for me, a very modest seasonal orgy, but until then I’m not giving it up! 

For now, though, all the wrapped gifts have been unwrapped to exclamations of delight, bright bags and tissue are put away for another year, socks and tee shirts tucked into drawers, and soon it will be time to take down the ornaments and stow those in cupboards and closets, time to unplug and remove lights from the cabin windows. — But no, maybe I’ll leave those lights up a while longer. They are such tiny lights, such brave little lights, after all, and we do need our courage and indications of each other’s loving presence as we go into another new year, don’t we? So with that in mind, here is my wish for family and friends and everyone in the world, known to me or unknown: 

Amid the challenges and struggles that another year will certainly bring, may we find also hours and days of joy and gratitude and love, and may we return again and again to a calm center of peace. 

Happy new year, one and all!

You’re Not Getting a Complete Picture

The other morning I had an e-mail from a reader of this blog that read, “Pamela, I have just read yesterday's blog. Your dedication to loving life inspires the same in me!”

I do love life. Indeed, what else is there? Everything else for the human species — love, honor, integrity, good deeds, art literature, our very appreciation of beauty in the natural world — depends on our being alive and receptive and responsive. At the same time, we all need reminders of the wonder of life, such as this one I found in the words of a Western painter:

...You’re a little biological entity that has some very miraculous sensory organs, and you have a brain so you can organize it and understand it partially. And you’re fragile. You live a very short time in a hostile, and yet friendly, universe because you evolved in the ecology in which you live. And you can either shrink from the world in fright and try to avoid the reality of your perishability and sense of being no more, or you can throw yourself into it and say it’s an adventure. And I’m going to drink it to the full and experience what I can and record what I can, and distill and understand what I can. 

- Wilson Hurley, painter, in an interview, in WILSON HURLEY: A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION

Reader, thank you for your message and for the subject heading you gave it: “Grateful.” I am grateful for your words of encouragement! It helps to know that anything I’ve written was able to help someone else! 

Look for the singing bird

The truth is, though, that I do not put my whole life online in this blog (or anywhere else), and if you think I don’t have dark nights of the soul, you would be very mistaken. Sometimes (though these have been uncommon lately, I’m happy to say) I even have dark days of the soul. Thinking that warm spring days had arrived, for example, I found it difficult to be plunged back once more into freezing nights and winter-cold days filled with bitter, relentless wind — and the coincidence of learning, as another overcast morning dawned, seeming to dawn with grudging reluctance, learning that same morning that someone I had believed was dedicated to the betterment of the world and the downtrodden is working instead with very different aims than those he states publicly — well, that coincidence brought me very low, very low indeed. And even on the best of days, a dark current often runs intermittently beneath and behind the brightness, because the general direction of our government these days and of world governments and societies in general is not one I can see as “bending toward justice” or likely to create a better life for future generations. 

It is not disagreement, as such, that weighs heavily on my heart but the hatred and vitriol that too often accompany it. Why should other Americans brand me an enemy because our beliefs about the country’s good differ? Was one bloody Civil War not enough? This hatred makes my heart heavy. The wise counsel dialogue, and I have tried to initiate dialogue — on violence and on partisan politics, attempting to allow myself to be vulnerable in hopes that those who see me wrong would not see me as an enemy but as someone with whom they could share not only their views and beliefs but also their reasons and feelings. What I got back, other than encouragement from friends already in agreement with me, was a resounding silence.

So if you see me as flying above political tumult and dwelling in another, simpler, more lighthearted reality than anyone else, you see a partial picture at best! Should I correct my presentation of self by including pessimistic gloom, despair, and nightmares in these posts? And if I’m not going to do that, why even mention the bleak side of my mind and heart today?

Little tree of thorns

Thorns, yes

But it is also full of life

I asked a friend, a writer and artist, how she managed to maintain her sunny, upbeat attitude in today’s difficult national climate. I wish I could remember precisely her response, but it went something like this: “I’m trying to lead with my strength.” Happiness was not her only emotional state, you see, but the one she chose to share with others. She chooses, continually, to share her strength, rather than her weakness.

Painter Wilson Hurley was not unaware of his own “perishability” but chose not to dwell on that and live in fear. Neither am I unaware nor unaffected by the ills of the world and the horrors perpetrated by mankind, but I refuse to let that aspect of reality blind me to the wonders of life and the world, which are equally real. (Besides, as I say, my attempts to invite dialogue on the sorrow and anger infecting us all went nowhere, and beating a dead horse is the last ploy of the defeated.)

“Il faut lutter,” my friend Hélène wrote to me long ago. “Il faut se blinder contra la vie.” She had lived through war, had lost her husband to other women (not one but many), had no children or any other living relatives, and her old age was spent in poverty, every day a struggle — but she never, even while retaining a sharp mind and keen awareness of world events, never lost her charming, childlike joy in pleasures that required no expenditure of money: the song of a bird, a letter from a friend, sunshine through her window falling on her “little garden” of potted herbs. These were her armor, talismans in the struggle not to lose her love of life. She was really not barricading herself against life, you see, but only against life’s sorrows, and she used life’s joys for her barricade. Even that doesn’t fully capture it. Rather, the joy in a bird’s song for a while took precedence over any other thought or sensation. My friend was not hiding from reality behind a barricade of birdsong, because the singing of the bird was as real as anything else and worthy of attention. 

What brings us joy is as worthy of attention as the flaws of the world we would mend if we could. Is that better? We will be here only a short time, and each of us has a different way we can help others. Sharing joy can be one of those ways, as my American artist-writer friend and my Parisian friend Hélène showed me. 

So I am not going to delve publicly into my fears and sorrows here on “Books in Northport” and only bring them up at all to say to anyone else who feels sad or fearful or pessimistic or hopeless, today or any other day or night: You probably feel alone, but you are not the only one. To be alive, to be human, is to struggle.

But where do you, where might you, find joy? What do you, might you, love? This winter I find my bliss in the sublime indifference of mountains and desert I love more each day, as well as in the companionship of my husband and our dog and our neighbors. Also in the peaceful nearness of cattle and horses. The occasional butterfly on a warm day. And all these are real aspects of the real world.

Passing through

What the future holds, none of us knows. We are passing through life, and all we have is today. For now I am here. And so, if I can share even the smallest quotient of my happiness or maybe “inspire” someone else to find it wherever he or she may, please consider these seasonal retirement postings as my “mite” for the collection plate. For now, it is what I have to give. On my good days. And if you want something cheerier from me today, go back to March 28, 2015. The sun sets, the sun rises. 

Sunrise