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Category: Introspection

Monday Miscellany… No Wait, It’s Tuesday! How Did That Happen.

The heat is getting to me about now. We may have had a long and cool spring, but we have certainly made up for it since.  I try not to grumble, and there are days when the heat bothers me less than others, but there have been few of those days lately. Strange, as I had thought that getting my hair cut would help at least a little bit.

(just walked out of the Salon to my car selfie)

But although my hair is no longer limp, I am no cooler.   It is not even August yet and I have August lawn, and weeds growing in the flower beds because I could care less about going outside to weed them. There is only so much. that can be accomplished in the hour, or if I'm lucky two, before the heat chases me indoors. I may be a born and bred Texan, but you wouldn't know it.

At least the entire flower bed is green, even if some plants are tired. Others are fine. thriving in the heat. The limelight hydrangeas and the crape myrtles are lush, and the roses are blooming pretty regularly as well, including this petite beauty, just planted this spring.  In fact, just looking at the hydrangeas makes me feel cooler, at least for a moment or two. Even Tikka, who usually loves lying in the grass is reluctant. She waits until she must go out, runs out the door, and runs right back in. At least we are agreed, my puppy-girl and I.

The blueberries are also doing well. My two blueberry bushes are still quite small, but they are still putting out berries, even if I only harvest a few small bites a day. There was one big flush of fruit early last week though, after a week of rainstorms, and I managed to restrain myself from eating the berries as I picked them long enough to save some up, and make some blueberry barbecue sauce. I was inspired by an article in Local Palate magazine, as well as a recipe in Saveur, a recipe that I used as only a very rough guide. I used Korean red chili flakes (gochugaru) because I have a lot on hand, and local honey instead of sugar, in completely different proportions. The resulting sauce is quite good and not as sweet as many barbecue sauces, which suits my palate. I think I could do something more interesting with the layering of heat however and next time, which may well be next summer, and I may try using some guajillo chilis. I think there is potential for a Mexican/Korean fusion thing as filtered through my own Texan/New York/Tennessee tastes.

I used the barbecue sauce on a chicken, which I roasted slowly outside on the grill.   I ate part of the chicken with my neighbor's tomatoes, as he has more sun than I. I love my location at the end of the street, but if and when I move, one thing I want is the ability to grow some kind of vegetables, although at the moment I am the happy recipient of neighbor's and friend's excesses.

I had planned various indoor entertainments for the weekend, including catching Star Trek Beyond, but instead I started taking apart furniture and the weekend got a little out of hand with projects. Interesting how that happens sometimes.

I had been thinking about this project for some time.  Although I was perfectly happy with the Brix units that George and I had used as dressers and nightstands for a long time, recently they seemed a bit to cold and sterile to me. And yet I was not ready to let them go completely. Perhaps they could be repurposed.  As they are modular, they are also reconfigurable. In our original setup we had gray units and red units and one tall red/gray combination piece, all of different heights. I thought I wanted to make three units of the same height and move them. But first I had to figure out how to do it. I spent a good part of Friday taking the three smaller cabinets apart (I have one larger unit as well). Then I spent a good part of Saturday reassembling the pieces into three new units and moving them. The job remains incomplete. I can't move the larger unit by myself, but I should have some help with that later today.

So you would think that was enough for one weekend, wouldn't you? I would, normally. But apparently not this weekend. I reconfigured and moved furniture. I made blueberry barbecue sauce. I also made pickles, albeit simple pickles.

There were giant kohlrabi at the farmer's market, giant, 3 pound, kohlrabi. I bought one and decided to make pickles. I made two kinds. With half the kohlrabi, well perhaps slightly less than half, I made a simple vinegar pickle with a few Aji Amarillo peppers floating in the brine.   Then I also made a quick kimchi-style pickle with the other half of the kohlrabi.

So far, both are lovely, although my refrigerator is filling up with kimchi and sauerkraut and pickles. Once again it seems I am an all or nothing kind of person, the kind of person who is either all-in, or standing back, waiting. Am I the only person who does this? Do you manage to balance out your periods of rest and repose with your periods of enthusiastic involvement? Or do you go through lulls and periods of excess? I know I am inclined toward excess.   I tend to overdo, overindulge, over-whatever. Or I don't. At least, if I'm in I'm in with my whole heart, even if it is only pickles and reconfiguring furniture.

I no longer envy the more evenly paced, no longer wish to be different. It was almost as if I thought that if I could find perfect balance I would never feel pain or loss. Now I know that is not true. But I also know that the world needs people who live on an even keel, and people who don't, people who rock the boat, people of the quiet depths, of the intermediate waters, and of the explosive storms. Perhaps we each have a bit of all of these things hidden within us. Perhaps we feel them at different times in our lives. I don't live in the middle waters, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to find them, to bring the currents together to make something new.   As always, I am reminded of the mouth of the amazon, the meeting of the waters, where you can see the melding of fresh and salt, of massive bodies of water meeting and churning, and eventually becoming one.

July 26, 2016
It seems I have few words this week. I almost said I have few thoughts, but that would be misleading. It is more that my thoughts have not yet found their form as words and I am perhaps too weary to tease out the finer points of connection.

Instead I will regale you with photos of birthday tulips

and a few garden photos,

some taken in bright light, a degree of light with which I am not yet comfortable photographically,

and others in a softer and more subtle light.

Come to think of it, my words are lost somewhere in the middle ground, trying to find their own nuanced path through the wilds of light and shadow.

July 9, 2016
Growth

A week ago today I was home from a brief trip to New York. It was a trip I needed. I tend to discount how important it is to get away sometimes, thinking, erroneously, that since I am retired and live alone I have no need to get away. Even without paid work though, it can be important to uproot settled thoughts and routine, to step away from schedules and demands. Sometimes it is good, even, to take a break from oneself, from the normalcy and creeping fustiness of one's own routines.

I've been thinking, over the last week, how much a short trip cleared my thoughts, thinking how dull and clouded my countenance had become. I've been thinking how a simple change, a simple break from routine, can allow my inner lark to soar once again.

New York is different than it was. No, that is not true, but my perceptions have changed, now that I no longer live along the fringes of the New York Metropolitan Area. Granted I lived on the outer fringes, but there were so many things I simply took for granted out of constant exposure, My perceptions are different now, and this is not entirely bad, although it is not entirely good either.

As I was riding to Newark Airport I was struck by how sad and lonely the trees looked: bound, shackled, imprisoned. Yes, it was winter and everything was gray. But we are still skirting the fringes of winter here, but the grayness of the countryside is different than the grayness of industrial New Jersey. Industrial New Jersey has never, in my experience, been attractive, but this time the bleakness struck more deeply and I was troubled. I was troubled by how much we destroy and maim and constrict in the name of progress, a progress that is shallow and ultimately rather meaningless. As I looked at the lonely trees along the road to Newark, I thought also of the lonely trees on the upper east side of New York, much more well tended, cared for, but still isolated in boxes, solitary tokens of our admiration for the earth.

It was good to be home. It has rained. It has rained a lot and the ground was saturated, squishy underfoot, and the earth smelled soft and warm and full of life. Bulbs are beginning to sprout, lifting their leaves toward the sun, and as I sank my hands in the dirt, returning a few very small, shallow bulbs that had probably been lifted in the repetitious cycles of freeze and thaw, I loved the feel of life, of home, against my skin.

Nothing much is blooming in my neighborhood yet, but my neighbor's daffodils are in bud and will open soon. I look at them and wonder why I didn't plant any early daffodils, only late varieties, the ones that are my favorites. But I miss those early yellows. I must make a note for next year. I hear that the daffodils are up in other parts of town, areas below the freeway, closer to the river, where they are probably a half zone warmer and a week ahead of me. That doesn't surprise me. In Dutchess County NY, where I lived before, we were a half-zone warmer along the river than those who lived a mere 5 miles inland, and my in own front yard, protected on three sides from the ravages of wind, I successfully kept plants that were hardy only in climes a full zone south of my own.

Slowly blooms appear. Despite intermittent bursts of cold, spring will come. Every bulb planted is a question. Every bulb that becomes a flower is a promise fulfilled. I love the anticipation, the thrill of seeing new growth. Kathryn Hodgkin arrived in the middle week. There are only two so far, but I hope for more. She is tiny and easily missed if one is not looking. This makes her all the more precious in my eyes. Hopefully she is but the forerunner of a small colony of iris histroides, a tiny, early promise of spring to come.

February 27, 2016
The Sixth Thing

Yesterday's Five Things post was supposed to include the review of another book, but it didn't make the cut. This was not because the book wasn't worthy, but more likely because my thoughts on said book were still in the blather stage, and not ready for public consumption. Having an additional 24 hours of mental rewriting has helped considerably, although my thoughts are still wild and unkempt things, and they are already banging into other thoughts and creating new and varied reactions, which probably have nothing to do with the original book. So be it.

The book is Hive Mind by Garrett Jones, who is an economist at George Mason University. It is written for a general audience, and I found it to be fascinating and highly readable account of an important and perhaps overlooked subject. Jones leads the reader through evidence from a very wide range of fields in support of his basic argument, which is actually stated in the title: "Why Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own". The author manages to be simultaneously confidently persuasive while remaining somewhat cautious regarding what it all means. This is, in fact a good thing. Jones manages to mostly avoid falling into the various rabbit-holes and dead-ends that invariably open up in any discussions of IQ and inequality (either separately or together), and although there are a few places where he is inconsistent, a few times he seems to slip into mainstream generalizations, overall, there is a lot of food for thought here. In fact the sense I got from the book was as much "this is an important attribute of successful economies and the way they improve the lives of their participants" as "and now what are we going to do about helping others to share in the same opportunity". But that may be due to my own biases as much as to the book itself.

Of course it is this second question, the "What are we going to do about it?", that continues to roil about in my thoughts. And of course my thoughts meander to what this means in my own local economy as well as in the wider world. Although Jones does not talk about economies within countries directly, concentrating on differences between rich and poor nations, he does apply this information to disparities within countries as well, albeit briefly, using India and Pakistan as examples. And there is great danger in extrapolating large population trends to specific small examples; but there is also danger in ignoring the larger trends. Again, the point is that these differences seem to be important, and if they are important, then finding ways to improve the average IQ of large parts of the world is also important.

So this book, which is interesting in its own right, has raised up many questions in my heart. And I don't know where they will lead. And Jones seems to be raising a big question, one that is not being adequately addressed. We are not addressing it in our aid to foreign countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa. We are not addressing it in our work within the unequal economies that exist in our own country. We see data that relates IQ to race or economic status, and we look no further, because it is easier to dismiss something than to think about all the reasons that a disparity might exist, especially when the reasons are complex and multi-variant and may reflect badly on our own assumptions, especially when they infringe on our own sense of self vs other. Jones hints at some possibilities, he references studies that may lead to possible answers, but "may" is the critical word here, these are hints, not prescriptions. He asks the question but doesn't claim to know the answer.

This is a holiday weekend in the USA, a weekend in which we honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. It is a weekend in which we need to honor the right of each and every individual to be seen and treated as an individual, equal to each of us in every way, full and complete within themselves, fully worthy in an of themselves, each full of potential, as are each of us. It is long past time we honored the soul of humanity that exists in each and every one of us, and allowed each and every human the opportunity to achieve full fulfilment as individuals.

One of the lasting values impressed upon me at an early age by my father is that knowledge implies responsibility. I suppose it was his version of "noblesse oblige". Knowledge is not some abstract idea that we can just stick in a box out of the way until it is convenient. Knowledge always raises questions, sometimes questions upon questions. And it is how we respond to those questions that determines the quality and authenticity of our lives. Each of our lives is uniquely valuable, no matter what the arena in which we find ourselves. Each of us must ask questions. Each of us must find our own answers.

But the questions remain. Are we asking the right questions? And if we are not, what questions should we be asking? And of course, What are we going to do about it?

January 16, 2016
winnowing and consolidating

On the evening before I realized I was coming down with a cold I came home chilled to the bone. I wanted nothing more than to find a favorite oversized, thick, cashmere sweater and curl up into a ball in a comfy chair. But I couldn't find the sweater in question, a bulky Icelandic-style sweater that I had knit in the late 90s using a lusciously light and soft cashmere yarn. For a moment I was distraught.

But I remembered that I had either given it away or sold it on ebay. The sweater was too heavy for me to wear here, my house is never cold enough, and the color was not good either, camel, and oatmeal and gray. Even though I had loved and worn this sweater for many years, I didn't love wearing it anymore, and it was well-past time to share the love.

Once I remembered all this, I was content. I realized that I wasn't really looking for that particular sweater, I was looking for the snuggly warmth and coziness it represented. I could wrap myself up in a cozy blanket, or layer thinner sweaters. I can even knit another sweater in a shape and colors I like better now. That sweater was a part of my past, a treasured part, yes, but nonetheless past. I don't need to hold on to that sweater.

It seems strange to me in a way that now, when I am not writing about style all that much, or fashion or clothing, I am focusing so much on the details of what I wear. My closet keeps shrinking, and the process of refining is ongoing. Perhaps the winnowing and the not-writing are related. But it seems odd that in this time when I am focused the least on what is going on the wold of fashion and style, I am focused the most on what is essential in my own closet. Where is that taking me? I don't really know.

Or is this process of winnowing and consolidating, or creating a space that is both personal and essential a necessary step in being able to explore creative impulses, in being able to go out into the world and do good? I always knew that home represented sanctuary to me, but I have in fact rarely embraced that impulse. Perhaps I am doing so now. Perhaps, as usual I am over-thinking, struggling with my own personal tortured path to learning to let go.

I only know that at this moment this is what I want my wardrobe to be. I want to be enveloped in these colors. I am sure that the spectrum will flow and evolve over time, as will the details of the pieces, shapes, and structures. I am willing to move slowly only because it seems that whenever I seem to think I know exactly where I am going, I learn that I have misread a sign and wandered off the path. There are days when I wonder where this path will lead, if anywhere. Today seems to be one of those days. But perhaps that is really just congestion speaking, and eventually my brain and my path will clear.

December 8, 2015
The Morning After

I hosted a part last night. It was a lot of fun and I believe everyone had a wonderful time. I had a wonderful time, and I was all invigorated and abuzz with excitement afterward. Sometimes this sense of promise and excitement confuses me, makes me wonder if I might, at one time, have been more of an extrovert than I give myself credit for. But no it is not true. When asked what I inspired me from the conversations, I realized I still hadn't processed it all yet. Still haven't processed it all,

(Moisés approved of the flowers

And as excited as I was, I needed that bit of quiet time in the evening, after everyone had left. I needed, and still need my quiet time this morning, time when I reflect back on conversations and let them lead my thoughts down their own meandering paths. I always savor the morning after, the remnants of cleaning up and putting away, and the way these small physical activities guide my musings and lead to new insights and perspectives.

And I realized that it is the entire process that I enjoy. Preparing the table and preparing food is a way of preparing myself, of opening my mind and heart to fellowship and the communion of good company, to the sharing of food and words can open our thoughts and hearts. I get all organized before hand, and then, when the guests arrive, I tend to cast that organization part aside and just go with the flow, let myself enjoy and participate and watch and listen and be in the moment of the party, wherever that takes us all.

And then, there is the morning after, a time for reflection, a time to enjoy that special meeting of memory and hope and promise and wend my way down new paths.

November 17, 2015
Dye Class 2: Pink

After completing our first attempt at using a dye bath, it was time to move on to Arashi Shibori, and wrapping fabric around a PVC pipe for dyeing. I had more trouble with this part of the class, not so much because it was difficult, but because I let my head get in the way at first, over-complicating things. I attempted a rather complicated fold with angles, and probably too many layers of fabric for a first project. I also procrastinated a bit, and found myself attempting to wrap my too small, and difficultly folded piece of fabric around a rather large diameter piece of PVC pipe that was too large for the job. The pipe was too large for me to hold, the fabric too short, my fold kept coming apart, and it took me a while to learn to hold the pipe and fabric in such a way that I could also wrap the string tightly. Rather than untying everything and starting over however, I decided to go ahead and see what I got, egging myself on with the hopefully comforting thought that it would at least be a learning experience.

We dyed our fabric fuchsia red. Even in the dye pot, one thing was obvious. My fabric was taking up more of the color than Liana's. I had randomly decided to use one of the cotton sateen pieces in this experiment, rather than the cotton/linen I had used for the green. Liana was using the cotton linen. At the end of the afternoon, our pieces were removed from the dye bath, wrapped in plastic still on their poles, and left to cure overnight.

Friday morning we unwrapped our fabric, rinsed it and hung it to dry. My fabric was initially a brighter pink, but more of the dye washed out during the rinse cycle. Liana's fabric took up less dye, but held it better. There was still a difference in the color of our pieces, but it was not as marked as when wet. Mine is the piece on the right, a bit more vibrant than the piece on the left.

I was appalled at my piece. Despite the depth of color, which I do like, I took its rather free-form and amorphous pattern as a sign of failure. For all my self-encouragement the previous day, I was pretty much feeling like I should just stop right there and walk away. Everyone else's pieces were more uniformly geometric, neater, and more precise, and I wished my work was more like theirs.

As we worked on other pieces throughout the day, however, I came to accept the more random characteristics of my pink fabric. As I played with clamping the green linen/cotton, worked on hand painting and other ideas, I realized that my pink piece was very much my piece, very much in character, and try as much as I'd like, I'll never really be the precise, neatly organized, methodical dyer. Yes, I will keep records, but my experiences in dying reflect in many ways my experiences in life. Yes, I can be precise and nerdy about such things as finances and a few other things, but I am also very circular in my thinking. I am not drawn to symmetry. Balance yes, randomness yes. But I am much more interested in the happy accidents, the random connections, than I am in measured results. And yet the struggle between precision and randomness continues to define much of my life. I am both and I am neither. Notes, order, and structure are the backbone that allows the randomness to find harmony. I've said that before; I don't think I ever really believed it until I took a dyeing class.

As I worked on other projects on Friday, I struggled with what I would do with my pink fabric. It needed something, but I didn't quite know what. Liana took her pink piece, folded it, and dipped it in some orange dye that was in a tray. I don't know if it was a stabilized hand-paint, or the remnants of a dye-bath that was mostly spent, but I was drawn to the way the soft orange blurred and muted the pinks in Liana's fabric. I decided to do something similar

I folded my fabric in half lengthwise, and then in half again. Then I folded it into small triangles using a flag-fold. After clamping the fabric together, I dipped all the folded edges in the orange dye, holding it in a few moments to allow the dye to soak into the fabric. Then, when I was done with the orange, I noticed that one of my classmates had mixed a small batch of scarlet red for hand-painting. I took a brush and dabbed the red over parts of the edges that I had just dyed orange.

The orange and red provided just the balance the piece needed to make me happy. Despite the precise fold, the pattern of the dye on the pink is not precise, and I like that effect. I also like the way the color moves from light to dark, with the orange softly muting the contrast between white and pink. I like the way that something that starts out all wrong can still end up being so nice.

September 15, 2015
Monday: Sunshine and Blues

The Brugmansia, or Angel's Trumpet is blooming and this alone brings me great joy as I sit outside on the porch this morning with my computer and coffee.

The air is cool, and although it is not quite crisp, which I might prefer, the nights not quite as cool as is normal in the Hudson Valley in early August, it is still lovely to be out. I am amazed at the difference a few degrees have made in my own acceptance of the hot weather. It is still hot, and I believe today's high is expected to be near the record for this date. But I am accepting it better, primarily because I have longer windows in the morning and evening in which to enjoy the beauty of nature, even manicured suburban nature.

Even the act of simply sitting, of the softness of the fresh morning air, looking at flowers, and dirt with its damp loamy scent, lifts my spirits. This is good because I kind of crashed and burned this weekend and I needed a bit of a rekindling spark.

There was more than enough good in my weekend. I attended a great training session on Saturday where I met new people and had a wonderful time. I was filled with excitement, filled with a sense of promise and potential, offset with just a touch of trepidation over pushing my own boundaries. But really, I have come to accept and even embrace trepidation, for there is no growth, no creativity without a little tinge of discomfort. But by Saturday evening I realized I had experienced an accidental contact with gluten and I was as sick as a dog. Sunday morning I had to force myself to pull myself together. I am grateful for Sunday morning: giving someone a ride to church; the rituals of liturgy; the thoughtful and thought-provoking sermon that poked me exactly where I needed it; the camaraderie of working altar-guild after the service; the joy I find in tending to the altar linens (my main job) — of keeping things white and crisp — all of these things elevated my state of mind away from myself, away from my discomfort. I thought they would carry me through the remainder of the day.

I was wrong. I got home and was felled by a massive sinus headache, a headache from hell, a headache I could not escape. It stunned me because I have been mostly sinus free of late. But I have learned that food affects more than just our guts; that our bodies are complex systems with multiple and overlapping reactions. But that is not the subject of today's post. The subject of today's post is that I allowed that headache to bring me down. Yes, it hurt to move, yet it hurt to think. But I allowed myself to succumb to discomfort and misery. I allowed myself to curl up on the sofa and spend the afternoon watching bad movies as I sank lower and lower into the sea of despond. I allowed my trepidations to rise up out of the mists and give birth to fears.

Luckily for me I do tend to have a shut-off switch. I noted this long ago. I can wallow, I can flirt with things I shouldn't flirt with, but I am very reluctant to lose control. I can only go so far and then I throw the switch. This may be a gift I have received from my alcoholic father, inadvertently as it were. It is not a gift I wish to take for granted, for even gifts can be lost if held too lightly. Like all gifts, this switch has its benefits and its dangers. But today I am grateful and lucky to have a switch. I am also grateful for Tikka who dragged me out for a walk right in the middle of the neighborhood puppy-social hour, where I had to interact with other people and other dogs, and accept the gifts of conversation and wagging talks and many licks.

Today my head still hurts. Today I still feel a bit punk. But I will keep moving, albeit slowly. Today I am grateful for flowers and dogs and cool mornings. Today I am grateful for friends and obligations, for those things that pull us outside ourselves. Today I am grateful for an altar linen that needs to be washed and ironed, because although life is not white and crisp and pure, ironing linen reminds me of what we are striving for and why life is worth living.

August 3, 2015
Friday Morning

I have been sitting at my desk in the early morning, actually until this very moment, the moment I begin writing, pre-dawn light. There is enough light behind me that I can see my computer, see my coffee cup, and items on my desk. This has been a calming and reflective time.

I've been struggling with the day ahead and the blog post I haven't written, struggling with the frustration of not writing. Yesterday was supposed to be a day to write, but it didn't turn out that way. Instead yesterday was a day of phone calls and interruptions, and periods of mental stress and turmoil but also periods of insight and restoration, so not at all a bad day. It was simply a day that was too scattered to give birth to the words I was seeking.

And yet, yesterday was exactly as it should be. And today? I don't know about today. There are things I am looking forward to today, and things I most definitely am not, but at least the good things are timed well, as a reward. And I suspect that it too will end up being exactly the day it should have been, if I am willing to accept its flow.

I looked up from my desk, the light behind me, the hall with its rather mundane view of laundry room and small print made by a friend and artist from our former home, and this snapshot was born. I looked up and this post was born. How apropos of today's mood. Did I anticipate this when I arranged my desk, when I hung this print? Every new day is like looking through a doorway in the half-light. Every day there are choices to be made, obligations to be met, the world looming large. And yet there is also time for art, for reflection, for whatever it is that nourishes us. Perhaps some days the obligations seem to dominate, perhaps to overwhelm. But even then we don't lose the spirit, even when it slides into half-light and shadow. It is all in the angle of perception. Its time will come as long as the door is open.

July 24, 2015
Permission Granted

Sometimes you have to allow yourself to get a little lost. Just like you have to open yourself up and be vulnerable to truly connect with others, you also sometimes have to lose a bit of that worldly shell you've spent your lifetime building up in order to find some piece of your true self that has been there all along.

And that's the easy part.

Once you've found that piece of your true self, you have to nurture it and give it room to flourish. You have to give yourself permission to be your true self even if doing so makes you vulnerable. And vulnerability is exactly what we spend the first half of our lives trying to avoid.

I protect myself by throwing myself into projects. But projects end, and I am still here. Although lately it has seemed like a little less of me was here. I used to lose myself in knitting, or sewing, or writing, or cooking. But I have managed to ignore all those things. Oh I write here occasionally. I'm sure you've noticed that I write, then I stop, then I pick at it again. I've been playing the role of the dilettante with my own heart, indulging my impulses a little bit, and then, just when I start to really put in any effort, pulling back.

But why?

Because I am afraid.

What, exactly, am I afraid of? Am I afraid of losing myself in something? Perhaps. Am I afraid of doing the work to master new skills? No not really, anything worth doing is worth taking time and effort to master. I'm getting closer though, perhaps the critical phrase is "worth doing". Am I afraid that my impulses, my hopes and dreams and inner longings aren't worth indulging? Am I afraid that if I indulge my intimations and dreams, if I admit and honor the things that really drive me, that are important to me, that I will only learn how much of an incompetent failure I really am? Uh oh. That is a little too uncomfortably close to the truth.

I realize, although how I found myself through this maze of confusing thoughts and experiences is beyond me, that it is not about internal vs external, doing vs being, introverted vs extroverted, helping others vs helping yourself. All of these things are but mirrors deflecting my awareness from some greater, far more uncomfortable truth. I can't honor the external, the world, without honoring the internal. I can't honor my social, world-caring impulses, without honoring the private, internal, creative impulses. I can't help others unless I help myself. I can't love others unless I love myself.

Oops. I've said it. I can't love others unless I love myself. When things get too close, too vulnerable, when I get too close to falling into that pit of love, I pull back. I don't want to pull back, but I do. And I only pay lip service to loving myself, to truly loving myself, to loving myself enough that I give myself permission to be myself fully, not just the parts I think the world wants me to be, but the parts I want myself to be, all the creative impulses, all the insecurities and fears.

Baby steps. I have to take baby steps. Occasionally I am sure I will make a misstep; I will fall and stumble, but I will try not to fall back into the void.

And so I give myself permission to lose myself in creative pursuits. I give myself permission to follow a dream even if the end point or benefit is not immediately obvious. I give myself permission to put myself first when I need to put myself first. I give myself permission to make mistakes, and sometimes make wrong decisions, and to ask for forgiveness when I do so. Mostly I give myself permission to learn to love all of myself, even the secret vulnerable bits.

July 15, 2015