The way to love someone
is to lightly run your finger over that person's soul
until you find a crack,
and then gently pour your love into that crack.
~Keith Miller

Saturday, February 28, 2015

behind all this ...

 "Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries." 
~ Theodore Roethke 


"Let the beauty we love be what we do. 
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." 
~ Rumi

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding." 
~ Yehuda Amichai

(pictures of Atlanta skyline taken while on interstate and filtered through waterlogue app)

Thursday, February 26, 2015

beacon

This is a beacon tower, not the usual view, but an interesting one I think. I snapped it while standing, maybe when the ground is warm I'll see about laying down for a slightly different framing. This is a full color (no filter) photograph ... we are like 500 OVC ... socked-in, soup bowl brimming over, visibility about 25' straight ahead. I am teaching weather in ground school right now, lacing it with performance info about their plane in hopes that they'll connect the dots.  This may be the last time I teach a full class room of 20 somethings ... .

I did "make" life slow down a bit by cutting back on my job.  The best boss in the world said I could work only when I want to ... I said I'd like to work for commission only, he countered with the idea of what ever he is paying me per hour now plus that commission ... we will see, I'm not crazy about keeping up with my hours, plus with sales, it's really hard to tell when I'm "working/not working".  I sat with a customer yesterday for an hour and a half when the meeting really might have been concluded (successfully) within 20 minutes.  She had a port installed on Monday and her first infusion yesterday.  She went in at 8 believing she'd be done by 9 - no big deal, and was a bit overwhelmed by the process.  I guess it all got really real as she sat there with a room full of not quite-well-strangers.  Cancer ... sucks.  Cancer ... tries to suck every strength out of you.  (Enough of that, I'm getting a bit wound up here ... ).  So ... she is S1 and I believe her prognosis is excellent ... but she still needed an apparently-well stranger to help her process it.  I noticed that she is like me with so many of her basic ways of addressing life ... pragmatic, capable ... strong (... surprising comfortable with stranger/friends knowing her private emotional business, we don't want to trouble our "people" with our pains ... how bizarre is that?).  She said a lot of people depend on her (small business owner, only daughter of an aging parent).  She was pulling herself together as she said, "Just every once in a while I wish someone would "baby-me" ... amen sister ... I get it.  I told her that I think she will have to let her people know that she needs them to step up to the plate for her on this part of the journey.  Some times is hard to start a sentence with "I need" when you are very comfortable with "what can I do for you?"  Some people like not needing ... and we tend to either attract people who like us not needing or maybe we help mold our relationships towards that, probably both, idk.  I also suggested that she think of some way to "buy" a bit of pampering (like a pedicure ... she doesn't know that this will probably dry her skin out yet).  As I type this morning I recall what seemed very bizarre when I first heard of it ... which is, someone has a business of selling "hugs".  Just hugs.  Well, maybe it's more like "holding" ... hugs and holding with out expectations ... physical touch without sexual nuance ... I get it now, it might even feel like someone is catching you as you fall.  So ... I stayed with her for probably a couple of hours.  I don't think that could possibly be called "working".  The best boss in the world said if I change my mind in a month or two and want to work more just let him know ... in the meanwhile I am surprised by how busy just wrapping up what I had going at work is keeping me.  I am hoping for a few truly outstanding commission checks from what I have going.  I think I'm a person who prefers working for straight commission because the time  I want to waste on not working isn't be paid for as if it were working.

We are seriously (maybe, it seems so this time) preparing to move back to Texas.  I feel surprisingly ambivalent about that.  I am a Texan ... and it's pretty apparent when we go back that stuff ... little stuff like how the roads work ... stuff makes sense to me in Texas.  The unrest that our country is experiencing "feels" less crazy to me in Texas.  I don't know why.  It may be about the sort of men who wear boots ... I really don't know what it is, just that it is in fact a "safer", better feeling place.  Austin is weird.  Texas politics is ... weird is a nice word for it.  Maybe it's just that Texans tend to be practical people.  And friendly in a mind their own business sort of way.  Anyway ... we continue to look both North and South of the State capital.  I don't like heading back after all my home-folk are dead.  I don't like that not one of my children live there.  I do like that breathing is easier there ... and there are plenty of places that know how to cook brisket ... and the tortillas and tamales are real.  Everything tastes better in Texas.  That is a truth.  (Well ... not the local wine ... it may taste better in Texas then the same bottle tastes over here but ... I'm just trying not to stretch the truth.)

So ... I am back to finishing up a few little projects around the house before we put it on the market.  I think Sammy will love Texas ... and when he starts barking in the middle of the night I'll know it's just those pesky deer again.

couple of Pablo Neruda quote


"laughter is the language of the soul"
 maybe laughter is the native tongue of the soul ... life certainly teaches us other languages


maybe love, this type of love, is the universal language of the soul
(not sure about that, but it would be nice if it were so)

Old pictures of my people

Back of this photo says '71 and I know we were at the beach (SPI)
my mom's family was enjoying a huge reunion, thus the name tags -
I think it's funny that my older brother selected not to wear the tag...
and ... note the fashion sensibility of my younger brother, très J.Lauren (lol)
he way I'm holding my hand with the bent wrist - still do - all the time,
and I think it looks awkward (and very me).

At Daddy's parent's home for a Christmas get together.
That's Daddy's twin photo bombing -
he did overseas oil exploration  and was home only on occasion.
(and was great at pulling off elaborate pranks,
which was only one reason why I adored him.)
I am wearing a nightgown over my clothes in this pic
Grandmomma made matching nightgowns for all of my girl cousins
and we stayed for a sleep over.
I don't know when this was taken, shortly before the other I'd guess judging by our heights.
Daddy was 6'2 and Momma was 5'6 (always wore heels and big hair).
Tommy has the super flexed wrist here ...
also you may note,
my dad didn't wear a wedding band,
always a watch (face inside which I've never noticed anyone else do) but never a ring.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

My Dad was one of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder ...

There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The Man in the Arena (Citizenship in a Republic) 

Thinking of my dad especially today.  I enjoyed conversation with him so very much. I can still hear in my mind's ear the peculiar way he had of pronouncing Roosevelt's name, as though he might be getting ready to say rooster ... some private joke, no doubt about it.  This speech, given in 1910 at the Sorbonne, reminds me of men, like my dad, full of commonplace, everyday qualities and virtues. These were his values.

 Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non- remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of indifference. But the average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so; that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, at whichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an object of derision. In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises. There are well-meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of war. They are right only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is a war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this is whether the alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is it right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be "Yes," whatever the cost. Every honorable effort should always be made to avoid war, just as every honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life to keep out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to wrong. ~TR


~*~


 "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." ~Roosevelt (same speech)


35 years today ... difficult to believe how quickly time passes and how fortunate we are when pleasant memories remain.

... and after looking at this speech again today, it's amazing how different the "average" perspective seems to have shifted during  just a bit over 100 years.







Saturday, February 14, 2015

¿Sufre más aquél que espera siempre que aquél que nunca esperó a nadie?.



Does he who waits forever suffer more 
than he who never waited for anybody?
~Pablo Neruda

“In one kiss, you'll know all I haven't said.”
~Pablo Neruda

Friday, February 13, 2015

 Where have I been lately?

I've been standing in line at the local coffee stop/ looking for a different coffee stop ...


It seems as though I have made myself too busy to think much less have time to sort through my thoughts here on TN ... it seemed like a good idea at the time, now I realize I am over committed. The sky is magnificently blue today ... I notice that for the first time six hours away from dawn.  It's that kinda busy, the too busy.  I'm trying to delete or move things off of my phone that I don't want to see now.  I came across these two notes, both from 2014 ... they go together.

"The business of life is the acquisition of memories.  In the end that's all there is."
~Mr. Carson/Downton Abbey)

"Often we don't even discover them as memories until years later when they emerge, not as they were,but as they have become as ours souls expand enough to value what we thought at the time was dross as the real gold of our lives." ~GVdL (Dust in the Wind)

Also recently noted in passing ... "Your soul is the face you had before you were born." ~Richard Rohr.  Interesting idea, I thought. 

Why does that name seem familiar ? ... I wondered ... he is the author of Falling Upward.

" Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite. What looks like falling down can largely be experienced as "falling upward." In fact, it is not a loss but somehow actually a gain, as we have all seen with elders who have come to their fullness. 
  • Explains why the second half of life can and should be full of spiritual richness
  • Offers a new view of how spiritual growth happens?loss is gain
  • Richard. Rohr is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines
This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right--a fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life." Amazon Review.

I think our soul may begin it's "life" journey as the face you had before you were born and more, perhaps it is the face which wishes to be "seen" by others, maybe that's how we "connect", maybe we "feel" seen by people who become significant. And more ... It seems more relevant to me that our soul is the face, or true self, that we create with the choices we make as we encounter chance and circumstance.  Our soul grows, or more poetically stated by Vanderleun, expands ... Our soul expands (hopefully expands, because it seems that I have seen souls contract) ... 

Our soul expands to accommodate the face one faces God with.  

Some (and maybe all)  memories are mementos of the refining process ... as we are refined by the refiner's fire ... .







This is LB ... he was away from home for several days.  Yesterday he came home - to eat and sleep.  I think I know what he has been up to ... .

Thursday, February 5, 2015


I think this is how I feel ... not sure how this would really feel because I would never intentionally put my body in this position.

A few years ago I was "put under" for a minor surgery.  Anesthesia.  Genius ... one's body goes somewhere, through something, detached from the brain ... no, maybe that's not correct.  Probably the brain is collecting information.  I don't know how it works.  I know that I went to "sleep" and woke up feeling pretty fabulous.  I know that if I had been awake during the procedure I would have not have felt great about how my body had spent it's time. The surgery wasn't horrible, but it's interesting that something truly horrible could happen (to one's body) without the "soul" participating.  People know stuff like that.  It's interesting to experience that in a controlled environment. At least I found it to be so.

Now I find myself in what seems to be a converse (for lack of the proper word, because I don't know what it is) of the above situation.  My body would never want to be "chilling'" in a nylon cocoon dangling from a big rock. Seriously ... is this enjoyable?

I saw this picture and immediately wondered.  This looks as precarious as life.

I'm a little creeped out.  I'm trying really hard to catch up.  I wasn't "there", but ... two fell off the side of the big rock and one notices that  ... that.