Today I Wear My Smile

Waking tired I’m dead a sleep, I do not want to move.
Move I do, I wash my face with vanquished energy.
My clothes look worn and old they’re used
but purchase I cannot.
I think and I can change this style,
I can wear my smile.

With make up on and hair brushed back
I take my coat and coffee.
To drive as every other morn, down this forsaken highway!
But speak with loving thoughts and cheer
to heart and mind a while.
The hurdles melt along the way
for I can wear my smile.

Good Grief

"Any feeling of bleakness gives you the chance to look (even if starkly) at what is real in our lives. What do you value? What do you hold dear? Are your actions reflecting those values? And what can you do to make it so?"


What do I value and how are my actions reflecting those values? I am not sure really...


I find myself in this place of grief attached to the life I had. One that was the only one I planned for, all of my values were centered around this commitment, my belief, values, identity, reality and daily tasks. I grieve for the relationship that was less than I needed intimately but satisfying in the most complete way. As I try to seperate I find there is a duality with me. The one with my former life and the one I am living. A new one being born on the inside of me while the old one carries on all around me. This sounds like a painting.


"Look for the openings, the cracks, that will lead you to a new and even more fantastic way of being, because that is what this change is really all about. Life is intended to bring and show you joy."





confirmEtymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French cunfermer, from Latin confirmare, from com- + firmare to make firm, from firmus firm.
Date: 13th century
1 : to give approval to : ratify 2 : to make firm or firmer : strengthen 3 : to administer the rite of confirmation to 4 : to give new assurance of the validity of : remove doubt about by authoritative act or indisputable fact synonyms confirm , corroborate , substantiate , verify , authenticate , validate mean to attest to the truth or validity of something. confirm implies the removing of doubts by an authoritative statement or indisputable fact.

Ruminating

I walk astride a path of choice
while trying not
to step
in quicksand or into the light.
And blythely straddle across
the casm of pain
squeeze past loss
stepping over hope
in between hate
desparation
conviction
love
and abject derision.
I choose not to decide.

Mid-life Soul

...it is a time to incorporate the opposite polarity, whatever that might be. ~Carl Jung

The word 'crisis' is derived from the Greek word krino and means "to decide".

In Jungian terms, this urge to break from old routines is really an outward expression of the "separation from the youthful persona". This is the shift from a persona-orientation to a Self-orientation, and according to Stein, is "critical for the individuation process as a whole, because it is the change by which a person sheds layers of familial and cultural influence and attains to some degree of uniqueness in his [her] appropriation of internal and external facts and influences". This can only be done if one is prepared to let go of one's youthful identity.

Those are good chaos words... So I'm taking a walk today, and realize I've unleashed myself from everything except my children who I hold somewhat at bay so as not to taint their tender minds. I have left my marriage of 18 years, my faith of more thatn 20 years, and many good friends in this change. Having cast off all of those defining anchors I am left to drink, unceremoniously of course, and I walk in this avid loss. So I walk and decide to just listen to the sounds around me which are crickets and frogs and various other bugs which brings rest momentarily to my thought riddled mind. I wonder about how long this transitoriness will go on? But then I stop thinking and just breathe for a moment.

Grasshopper

I walked out to my car last week to go to lunch and noticed a very large grasshopper on the ground near my car tire. It's body was a soft greenish grey. It's legs were covered in moss green and grey stripes. A very worthy grasshopper. I tried to nudge it away from my tire so as not to squish it when leaving then I noticed a second grasshopper! Twice as lovely as the first and even larger. This one was soft grey with grey and dusty pink stripes on it's legs, something I had not seen before. So I stooped and looked at these two delicate creatures for a brief time and wondered at their visiting me.

Needing all the optomism I can get these days I looked up the symbolic meanings for grasshopper to enliven meaning this day. God Bless this meaning.

Among the Chinese, the grasshopper came to symbolize flourishing descendants and hence abundance as well.

In ancient Greece, the nobility wore golden grasshoppers in their hair, possibly because the grasshopper's fertility made it a symbol of abundance. The grasshopper's song during the day and its silence during the night made it an attribute of Apollo the sun god and the kind of friend or helper who makes a lot of noise but disappears when help is needed. In China, the grasshopper paired with a chrysanthemum indicated high office. For Christians, the locust became another symbol of Christ's resurrection or rebirth because it sheds its carapace. St. John the Baptist came eating locusts and wild honey as was permitted by Levitical law (Lev 11:22; Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6).

Joseph Campbell said, We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The Flaming Grasshopper, a blog for the Chelsea Green publishing company (specializing in sustainable living), describes the grasshopper as representing potent life energy contained in a small “insignificant” exoskeletal package, capable of covering great distances in a single leap. It is also an ancient symbol of good luck.

This website was the best part of my find.


Renee'

Belief

The soul of the tree appeared plainly.

It felt like I was looking through three dimensions: my own, through that of the nights and the physical manifestation of the tree in its divine force. I came upon it unexpectedly. I have never granted nature a "spirit" but rather a vigorous inanimate life force with instinctive rythms and cycles. The funny thing is I had the honest sense that the tree hadn't anticipated my seeing soul and was laughing and howling in the night wind before me. I saw it's face.

I sat in my car briefly upon shutting it off, wanting to listen a while longer to a song on the radio, when my eyes came to rest on this roaring movement. It might have been the wind, it might have been the light, it might have been what MY mind can see through my eyes, but, the moment I identified the fact I was looking at the soul of this tree it was as if it instantly retracted itself up from eyes and seeing heart, as if it felt the whisper of my words and reduced the appearance of it's energy back to that of only natural elements. I sat waiting quietly looking at the tree for some time, for the roaring laughter, but did not see again the display of life I had seen just minutes before. Last night the soul of a tree appeared plainly.

Father’s Day Poem
6/15/08

Father

Some of your teeth still scare me
like glass in sand
that cannot be seen until
piercing flesh and sole
in jagged line

The sand is extraordinary still
light and heat bubbling up
I extend my foot in stride
to push with heals exposed
my weight into the ground
and bear with prick of pain and blood
each step
with swollen sole and smile

With soft eyes and flowing mane
you conceal the teeth of old age
your opinions like stone
some large and some like pebbles
they drive scrape and heal
pit and tousle too

I love you like the summer
And seek you like the sun
Your words they sometimes scare me
Like running on the beach playing
finding glass in sand