Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.”“Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness. While not a lesson plan it documents my therapeutic journey to finding love against all odds. Useful for therapists, and for patients with Bipolar Disorder and/or Asperger’s Syndrome. A scholarly, autobiographical case history of my story was the showcase article in vol. 13 no. 1 of Psychoanalytic Inquiry in 1993.
Learning to love is an ongoing process and I am writing posts on new lessons learned.
All the original abstract painting is posted to advocate for Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome– for it is those very handicaps that feed my art. The more realistic nature art is dedicated to raising consciousness for animals and the environment. All other art work is purely for your enjoyment.
Finally I have also posted selections from my nature writing and poetry. My nature essays were published in a small paper in upstate New York for a year and a half. The poems have appeared throughout my life, coming and going as they please.
This is an award free blog.
All work on this blog is under copyright and may not be used by anyone, for any purpose, without permission.
“Inwardly think constantly of the Beauty behind flowers; the Light behind the sun; the Life that twinkles in all eyes, that beats in every heart.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
The Epitome of Humility
Ko-ko in her later years… one of my best teachers
You open our eyes to the Infinite with your soft-brown one-eyed stare, your gentle, pink-tongued kisses and your deep, dark velvet ways.
You open our hearts to Eternal Love, joining in our displays of affection, cringing at discord in dire dejection, Oh, Love-Dog with a failing heart!
You work your love-magic on all you meet with a willful wag of your toy-like tail. You soothe us in sorrow and defeat with the soulful "ear" of your single eye.
In your own pain, you have comforted us. Losing Dad you licked Mom's tears. Mom died and your kisses brought me back from the shrieking world of grief and fear.
And you are getting old, as I lie beside you bed, my nose nuzzling your greying head, inhaling your sweet doggie scent, I feel the fragile flutter of your tender heart.
Lulled by the hum of your delectable delight, warmed by your love, touched by your joy, filled with awe at each breath you take, I see in you God's mystery of life.
(Ko-ko died in 2000 sending me a vision after her death)
“Gradually extend the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love to include your family, your neighbors, your community, your country, all countries– all living sentient creatures.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
We rejoice at the spring bird-song of the mating season during the day now that we have the spring peeper choruses at night… some of the most beautiful sounds on the planet. We search every rock in every pond, looking for turtles sunning. The first opossum of the season appear and what a thing of joy it is. No longer is he cringing in some nest of wood and leaf debris for shelter from the cold. He is running past our door to find a mate. All round and rotund.
Animals work their unique and miraculous magic on depressed souls and bring joy. Animals are natural anti-depressants… how a child’s face lights up with joy to touch an animal or observe one up close. Adults, too, are wooed by their innocence. Animals bring enchantment, enrich our lives. That is why therapy dogs and other animals do such good work in hospitals, prisons, hospices for the dying, wherever there is misery.
The return of the animals brings music to the air, replacing the ominous gale winds of winter and the blanketed silence of snows. Insects hum and buzz. Birds sing and chirp. Windows are opened wide to allow sweet- smelling, soporific breezes to blow through our houses. Little green shoots become beautiful flowers in our gardens, along side roads, in the fields. Trees come to life again, gods of greenery. Fat, red-breasted robins perk up the lawn in their search for worms. And we no longer have to worry about animals starving. The deer we see mid-March in groups, scavenging for food are thin and weak. And the squirrels have run out of their stores as well, raiding the bird feeder which they normally leave to the birds. A late Spring means animals will starve and die with no edible items.
And yet, with all the pleasure the return of the animals brings us, do we welcome them with open arms? No, we fumigate our land and spread pesticides all over their territory. Many species of birds are heading towards extinction due to our use of pesticides and, generally speaking, our “development” of the land. We destroy vernal pools, thinking them mere puddles rather than the breeding place of frogs and salamanders. We take the babies of spring– the lambs, the calves– away from their mothers and slaughter them. Sometimes with abject cruelty, in full view of the mothers. The mothers wail in anguish. We break bonds stronger than the supposedly solid bond of human matrimony that nowadays fails as often as it succeeds.
In The Letter Writer, famed author, Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: “In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know–all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
This is how we repay those who bring us such joy, such love, such purity– those who uplift, save lives, care for us. It has been said that a dog is the only creature who loves his caretaker more than he loves himself. Dogs have it over us in this.
Spring is here and, with it, the return of the animals. Without them, as Rachel Carlson warned, it would be a “silent spring”.
“Underlying all life is the silent voice of God, ever calling to us through the flowers… through all things that are beautiful and that make life worth living.”
“The orderly manner in which the universe is run shows that it is guided by some form of intelligence that permeates all created things.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Watercolor by David M. Carroll
“Spotted Turtle Nesting in Moonlight”
When nature awakens in late March or early April, sap starts flowing in the trees and ice changes to water marking the end of hibernation. This is the grand opening of the wetlands and the pilgrimage to the vernal pools as David M. Carroll writes in his “Swampwalker’s Journal: a Wetlands Year.” A vernal pool is a body of water which fills up in autumn and winter and is swollen in the spring but often dries up completely by the end of the summer. Carroll describes vernal pools so beautifully: “It is at snowmelt and ice-out, the last sleets, first rains, and the earliest warming breaths of spring that they beckon wood frogs, salamanders, and spring peepers from surrounding upland woods, where they have passed the winter in rotted-out trees roots [a reason not to ‘clean up’ the woods], under layers of bark and litter, in small mammal tunnels and other hibernacula in the earth.” The melting snow heralds the march of the amphibians. “Vernal pool habitats hold a galaxy of small things that come to life the instant ice and snow turn back into water.”
Carroll walks the swamps, as the title of his book suggests, in search of mating salamanders and spotted turtles, bogs, fens and all wetland flora and fauna. He tells us that there must be a certain collusion of events– several warm days in a row followed by a darkest of nights with temperatures ideally in the mid-50s with rain preferably two nights in a row. And then the magical migration begins. The salamanders begin their “annual pilgrimage” to the vernal pond to mate.
My husband and I were lucky enough to have a vernal pond on the property next door to us and when Spring sprang out of the depths of winter, the sound at night from that pond made us feel as if we are camping out next to a vast wetland. The music of the spring peepers played through the night throughout the house, often starting overeagerly in the late afternoon. This manic symphony thrilled us every year. It was the first sign of Spring for us. The quality of joyousness and the affirmation of life gladdened our souls. Going to sleep with that sound made us remember what we so often forget, to give thanks to our Creator for his magnificent creatures.
This story, however, does not have a happy ending. In his epilogue to the “Swampwalker’s Journal,” David Carroll explains why it took him more than 7 years to complete this book. He writes that he became involved in saving some of the wetlands in his book and says sadly nearly all of his interventions have or will become “losing battles.” He describes the plight of the wetlands, bogs and fens as a “landscape of loss.” And he scorns our human selfishness as he writes how it “reveals explicitly the extent to which we think of ourselves as owning all living things, along with the very earth, air, and water in which they live, as if we possessed some divinely mandated dominion over all creation.” He warns: “As we will learn in time none of this belongs to us.”
“WE SHOULD BATHE OUR SPIRITS IN THE DEEP, PURE FEELING THAT STIRS WITHIN US WHEN WE GAZE ON THE GLORIES OF HIS CREATION. THIS IS THE WAY TO KNOW GOD AS BEAUTY.”
“LOVE IS THE DIVINE POWER OF ATTRACTION IN CREATION THAT HARMONIZES, UNITES, BINDS TOGETHER“
PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA
To Thomas:
Slowly creeping towards our fourth decade together. Will we make it? Love grows deeper against a background of eventual, inevitable loss. A loss more unimaginable than one’s own demise.
I look deeply into your eyes, my eyes linger, falling into your blue orbs, while you, in turn, delight in my gaze, going far beyond the polite looks people use in everyday conversations. We pause too long. I fall into the abyss of your sky blues and feel reverence. Reverence for your happy spirit, infectious mood. Reverence for the God I see in you.
It is not the Eros of our first decade that has morphed into something much deeper. Attraction, yes, but of a different nature. Attraction of the heart, the soul, the spirit. We bring each other to pure joy, bliss, a sharing of spirit. We give each other a taste of Oneness with all. Meditation has become our love-making. Nature has become our Temple. This life has become suddenly the blink of an eye.
Every year what budded in autumn now blossoms full blown in winter. Trees that were drop-dead gorgeous in their fall colors are now bare, with the exception of evergreens and a few stray deciduous trees that refuse to relinquish their leaves. Now the trees are stripped down to their souls and their souls sing a siren song to the universe.
The tops of trees lift my spirit; brushlike they paint the sky the baby pinks and blues of mornings, and the majestic magentas and violets of day’s end. Each tree has its signature shape against the sky, like a fingerprint or a snowflake, similar yet each unique. Some treetops in their bare state are shaped like a fancy coiffure; others look like wrought iron filigree. On distant mountains, against the snowy ground, some look like stubble on an old man’s unshaven face.
The colorful winter sky shows through, showing off bare branches. The curvaceous branches are stark, dark lines against the bright of day and the inky sky of night. These resplendent creatures are living lines that explode. Branches tangle like the lines in a Jackson Pollock painting. Others curve in the sensuous lines of a Brancusi sculpture. Buxom tree trunks stand strong surrounded by their dead blossoms and their burgeoning offspring like a Renaissance Madonna. In truth these trees are not like art at all. Rather art imitates them– their beauty provides the timeless inspiration for artists, writers and poets of all ages and styles.
Trees not only inspire, they themselves are paragons of diversity. One look out of a car window while driving on the Taconic and one can see squat pines alongside towering majestic firs, birches interspersed with maple and oak. And together the different brown and tan barks interspersed with evergreens create not only a mosaic of contrasting colors, but display an example to inspire humans to live together in peaceful unity.
These beneficent beings carry the heavy, dark grey clouds of winter. When it snows the tree trunks become canvases for the abstract patterns of windblown-snow, while the serpentine branches are outlined in white. In ice storms their branches become chandeliers, each enveloped in glassine ice, tinkling in the wind. While in the cold melancholy of a winter rain, the branches become oiled skins of snakes weeping to the ground below. And finally, in the night sky, the branches hold the stars in their arms, those with leaves holding them in their hands, as they nurse the moon.
All trees, no matter what their species, age or height, stand tall in proud humility, their arms reaching up to the heavens to the source in prayer– soft-spoken beings of peace and tranquility towering over us, as we the wee creatures race around distractedly below in our little lives.
As Christmas recedes into yesteryear, and as turtles and other creatures sleep in frozen slumber, and the New Year dawns after the birth of winter, let us weather the sorrows and “Fully enjoy the wonder and beauty of each instant.”
In this month of darkness, in this the darkest month, the light of the human spirit shines forth in a fullness shown by so many, in so many ways. As the days grow shorter, houses and trees are decorated, and snow falls. In the hushed silence of the nights, lights shine in windows, and the beauty is shared by all. For this season of giving brings the festivals of lights: Diwali (now past), Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. Each tradition incorporates light in its ceremonies and decorations. But all is not well. Millions know no peace in any season.
Yet even those living in the worst conditions show the light of the human spirit and celebrate the season of light in personal ways. For the human spirit is indomitable.
In December’s darkness we light lights. For we are beings of light. A light glows within each one of us. And, at the most basic level, we are beings of light because we are made from stardust. Perhaps that is why the stars hold such majesty for us– we are made from star material.
Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe”– a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest– a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
"Exploring the Spiritual Cosmos in the Digital Universe," "Harmony Beyond Boundaries in the Digital Realm," "Your Gateway to Infinite Wisdom in the Digital Universe," "Connecting Consciousness Across the Virtual Cosmos," "Discover Divinity in the Digital Universe," "Where the Spirit Meets the Digital Frontier," "Empowering Inner Growth Through the Digital Universe," "Digital Universe, Infinite Spiritual Possibilities," "Awakening Souls Across the Digital Horizon," "Navigating Spiritual Journeys in a Boundless Digital Universe."
MOONSIDE 
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