Full Moon Blues
Lunacy prevails
The foundations of daily life are crumbling
It is all “Maya”
a dream we are living thinking it is reality
We have no choice but to go on
All that matters is love
and God is Love.
Blind Attraction
Sometimes
The blind can see
and the seeing are blind.
Attraction goes beyond
Seeing
and becomes
Sensing.
Distortions of I
I was writing to a friend recently about my own distorted view of the world at present– upset about a very ill, very dear aunt in hospital, the last elder by blood, and also about a colleague/friend in hospital. This all comes on top of my husband’s mental health program closing and his possible reassignment to work with ex-cons. I don’t do well in hospitals, being totally OCD about germs, contamination, sickness and vomiting. With no protective walls thanks to a breakdown years ago, I feel terror-stricken and ill as soon as I walk in the door of a hospital. As for the ex-cons, my husband, Tom, was attacked once by an angry client, so my fear of him working with ex-cons with anger issues is not totally unjustified. In my email to my friend I didn’t go into these details but here is what he wrote back. (Blacky and Betty are his adopted dogs):
“Blacky and Betty don’t know how good they have it. They are detached from normal human sufferings. They are truly positive, focusing only on good things and are grateful if I pet them while handing them a treat. They love the snow and the cold doesn’t bother them. As long as ex-cons show them love, they don’t care. They would love to cuddle with your friend and aunt and wish them well. They would love you and Tom to take them out to play.
Love from, V,B and B
It’s hard being human.”
In thinking over what he wrote, I decided that dogs (and most, if not all, animals) live in the present. Humans, however, are hampered by experiences from their past (sometimes trauma), and fears about the future, based on their past traumas. For example, my obsession about vomiting began with an alcoholic father who would come home drunk and become ill, happening enough times to be etched on my memory decades later. Knowing this does not make it better—nor does it make it go away. Neither does knowing the name for this illness, “emetephobia.”
It is true that animals also experience trauma but somehow they seem better able to unlearn trauma than humans. Animals may fear death when they are surrounded by it in slaughterhouses, but unlike humans, they don’t seem to foresee death scenarios in everyday life.
“Still thou are blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!”
from “To a Mouse” by Scotland’s favorite poet, Robert Burns, 1759-1796
I have said many times, my dogs were my best teachers. I will try to take a page from their book on love, think of how they would act, and draw strength from their lessons. “Perfect love cast out fear.” My love is far from perfect, for I am full of fear. But I can choose to focus on my aunt, my friend, my husband and “be” with them totally and lovingly as my canine companions, Ko-Ko and Duchie, were every day of their lives on this earth.
Iced Reflections
The fluid, monochromatic, abstract form of the ice
Over the intricate, colored lattice work of the reflections of trees
Water in its various states each with its mysterious qualities.
The Microcosm and the Macrocosm
Grace flows through the limbs of a tree reaching skyward, its intricate patterns of branches pleasing the eye– just as grace flows through the orderly, spikey branches of frost on a window.
Patterns repeated ad infinitum in all creation.
A microcosm of the macrocosm and a macrocosm of the microcosm.
God’s breath breathes through all.
The Beloved
For a very long time when I was alone and had no hope. Being Bipolar and having Asperger’s, I thought I would never find love. I had lost it many times. My vision of the future was totally black and bleak.
Years later, at age 35, I found love again. This time it felt right though I was filled with much uncertainty at the time. Almost 24 years have past and it seems righter than ever. We have nudged each other to grow and we have grown. There is still a future to face, now of old age. But every day can bring a new and unanticipated revelation. Recently, and on more than one occasion, I have looked into the eyes of my beloved and seen a tiny glimpse of The Beloved. An epiphany of sorts. For love of a human is but a taste of the love of God.
In the video below, Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf, sings of earthly love and The Divine. For those of you who don’t know, after starting out as a folk/rock star, he found Islam and that radically changed his life. He gave up fame and fortune to pursue God. In the end, he found his way back to music to use it to witness The Beloved. And that is the title of the song below.
Heart to Heart
“Love cannot be had for the asking; it comes only as a gift from the heart of another”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Stars in the Eyes
When I was a little girl of seven, I swallowed the “Prince Charming” myth whole. I cried watching the movie Sleeping Beauty, because I wanted my own prince to come. Then adolescence happened and I found myself a wallflower– not only at socials but in everyday life as well. Few friends and no dates. I had one good friend who was best friends with someone else which somehow negated our relationship. I was painfully shy and full of anxieties. College was a little better. I had my first boyfriend, a run of relationships that mostly went nowhere fast and, again, few friends. High school peers were marrying off. My brief brush with marriage to a Sri Lankan ended when he went back home, promising to return. He never did.
And then it happened, totally out of the blue and beyond my control, I fell in love with an older, West Indian woman at work. I became obsessed with a relationship that was never to be and nearly lost my job in the process. Unable to handle such feelings on so many levels, I went free fall into a downward spiral of depression and psychosis, commonly called a nervous breakdown. It lasted for years. But I still believed in love and Prince Charming (in this case, “Queen” Charming). For years I lived in the netherworld of mental illness, locked in isolation. I explored being gay but like my college relationships, all failed. I will never know the truth of all that happened between the West Indian woman and me. After testing many medications before arriving at the right cocktail, years of therapy taught me about my own fears of love and how to love. I was diagnosed Bipolar but treated as if I had Asperger’s as well, since I could not decipher what in hell’s name was going on in social relationships. I was not officially diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder until some 30 years later.
One day I grew strong enough to stand up to life. For the first time, I could think of what I wanted in a person and look for it. After all I had been through, I still believed in the “Prince Charming” myth. But he never found me. I found him. He didn’t sweep off my feet. I swept him into my arms. I understood him because he was Aspie like me. I knew if I did not make a move he never would. So, with heart-pounding fear, I asked him out and then he asked me out, and we bumbled along and married 4 years later, after I basically said “now or never.”
We remain happily married almost 24 years later. And so came “happily ever after.” But not exactly as I expected. For one thing there were fights which I hated. I had to learn that this was normal. Then, when my best friend died a few months after my father died, both of cancer, it hit me for the first time. There was no “happily ever after.” I realized that marriage either ended in divorce or death. Both dire. And that one of us was going to lose the other except in the unlikely event we both died together. How could I have been so stupid and not have seen this before??
Today my love for my husband runs deep and I realize I am closer to him than to any other human I have ever loved. I live in terror of something happening to him. As we both approach old age every good moment becomes a treasure I try to engrave on my memory. My husband has blossomed into an empathic, caring clinical social worker. He now expresses his deep affection towards me. Even I, who had a hard time recognizing love, can see this. He still teases me relentlessly. This is his way of showing love. I understand that because my father was the same way. But my husband delights in getting away with teasing me. “What joy!” he said one morning, as he played some mischief on me. “I love this “love thing’!” he said. I never thought he would say that or turn out to be so affectionate and loving. Just as I never thought I would find love. And when I looked at him with love in my heart that morning after the teasing stopped, he said, “What?” We still have trouble interpreting expressions and are still shy of eye contact even with each other. I said what I had read long ago that a child had written. When two people in love look at each other, stars come out of their eyes. A wonderful image that comes as close to “happily ever after” as one can get.
In the Heart of a Dying Star, Life
The work of Professor Brian Cox who appears in the video:
Old Barn with Window View
Could not resist the lovely curve of the roof of this little red barn– some might call old age sag.
Vestigial Remnants of Hibernation?
It is frigid outside and has been for a long time. It is very cold in many parts of the country. The holidays have come and gone. The hoopla of the inauguration is over. Now begins the nitty-gritty of hard winter work. I find myself listless and not wanting to go outside or exercise or paint or take pictures or do much of anything I usually love to do. I have a cold but that does not excuse this lassitude. When I go to my favorite deli, I find that Terry, the sandwich lady, is in the same mood. “I was ready to go home the moment I came in,” she says. My husband was dour and I was sour. What is the meaning of this discontent? Could it be some vestigial remnant of human hibernation? While man has never hibernated, science finds his metabolism slows down in winter and he becomes less active. Binging on food and drink over the holidays may not be the sole reason for weight gain in winter. Perhaps we should be sleeping off the extra pounds.
I who love winter and live for fall each summer, find myself longing to hear the music of the spring peepers. It is months away– well about a month and a half away. They signal for me the first harbingers of new life. Terry, who also loves winter, tells me today she is sick of winter as she makes our sandwiches. Perhaps it is this string of Arctic air and grey days and icy road conditions and snow every few days. Perhaps, and more likely, it is the human condition to always be dissatisfied.
Hibernaculum for turtles and other animals
I miss the squirrels. It has been so cold and snowy they seem to be laying low in their nests. Judging from the tracks in the snow the animals most on the move are the deer. And as much as I love the silence of winter, I find myself longing for the sweet dulcet music of birdsong at mating season in spring.
We bought a calendar for the new year with a celestial map of the sky for each month so you can find the constellations in the night sky. We have yet to go out with flashlights and match the map with the canopy of stars. It has been too overcast or too cold or too something. But my dazzled psyche is humbled by the view of the stars through the stripped down trees that we see from bed every night.
Then again maybe it is laziness. Too many sugar highs in December have led to a deep low in February. And after a tease of spring one day in which the temperature reached almost 60 degrees we were let down even further. Not liking being unproductive, I think I can overcome this. But maybe I should just go with the flow and accept a period of inactivity, let the land lay fallow, so that an increase in productivity may eventually result.
I know I should focus on what is positive. Winter is the season of silent beauty that I so long for in the summer heat. I delight in the quiet of winter days. The snows bring a hushed stillness good for the soul. It is a time to regroup. Spring will come. Hopefully if man has not destroyed all the vernal pools, the spring peepers will return. And if pesticides have not destroyed all the birds, sweet mating songs will be sung. And if the weather turns more clement, our spirits will soar once again, and we will be busy bees making honey while the sun shines.
MOONSIDE 
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