Blessed by Spirits
I have had three visits from the spirit world. Some might say they are “vague imaginings” born of grief and loss. But I know vague imaginings and these were different. In each case I had a soul connection with the spirit in question while they were living so it is not so strange that I would connect with them in death.
The first one happened when I was on my first trip to Europe at age 22. I was off to visit the tiny peasant town where my Grandfather was born. It was a tiny mountain town in the province of Enna, reachable by train and then a long bus ride up the mountain. The name, Valguernera Caropepe. I was in the train station in Sicily and an old Sicilian man looking very much my Grandfather’s type— short, grey-haired with a warm smile— saw me and started singing the words to Stormy Weather. I turned to look at him stunned. When I was a little girl I spent lots of time with my grandparents in Larchmont. Grandpa and I were inseparable. We danced and sang to music on the Victrola or his mandolin by day, had our evening cocktail together in the late afternoon (a Shirley Temple for me, Whiskey Sour for Grandpa and I got his cherry). And, at nights in summer, we went for walks catching fireflies, or sat together in the bedroom, each at our own window, in the silence of our thoughts, watching the neighbors in the courtyard below. Even as a little girl, I could feel that there was something special about the quiet we shared and that we were always connected. Physically, emotionally, and I like to think, spiritually. I took his death very hard. About Stormy Weather— whenever I walked into the living room where Grandpa was inevitably to be found smoking a pipe or reading, he would sing: “Here Comes Stormy Weather.” I looked into the smiling eyes of this man in the Sicilian train station as he sang the lyrics of the song Grandpa used to greet me with and I saw Grandpa for a few seconds. And then I had to leave to catch the train to his town.
The second time I had a brush with the spirit world was when my father died. Dad had been sick for three years battling colon cancer. The end was near and I visited the hospital often but had just taken a new job so was not at the hospital every day as, had I been stronger emotionally, I would have liked to have been. Again Dad and I were very close. Not like Grandpa. But in temperament and looks. My father married a Sicilian and I was the only one of the three children who looked like him with blond hair and light skin. And I was shy and quiet and liked writing and music like Dad did and didn’t like the screaming and yelling that was much a part of our family life. Dad didn’t either. Dad and I were sympatico— even to the point that my mother was sometimes jealous, though she had no cause to be. A few days before Dad died he went into something like a coma. His eyes were closed and he was mostly unresponsive. My Mom in an effort to get a response, teased him (Dad was the tease in the family) one warm November day, one last time, and told him it was snowing outside. (It wasn’t.) Dad’s eyes fluttered and he opened them and looked out the window and presumably saw it was not snowing. A few days later Dad died. I was at work in the ladies room at the time. I remember the exact moment. I knew Dad had died. I went back into the office. Moments later came the phone call. I had the moment down right to the minute. I called my fiancé to go to the hospital and see Dad before they took his body away. And then I stood on the street corner waiting for him, frantic with grief and stunned despite all the time we had to “prepare” for Dad’s death. Suddenly I felt a zephyr pass through me on the corner. Dad’s spirit. No mistaking it. No, for sure it was Dad. And then it began to snow. The snow only lasted a few minutes. A sign. Dad, a teaser, gave his last tease, for the benefit of my Mom. I told later told her there were a few moments of snow.
I didn’t get a message when my Mother died. We had quarreled the last night she was alive. My husband and I had done some fancy footwork to grant her last wish— we had gotten her home so she could die in her own house. We had been her main caretakers and it had taken a terrible toll on us. And though I didn’t get a message from Mom when she died, I’ve got her inside of me. Today even clearer than when she was alive, I hear her telling me how to handle the problems of life. (I still don’t always listen.) And, we inherited my Mom’s ten-year old dog— a miniature poodle, named Ko-ko. Ko-ko came to live with my husband and me and we loved her to pieces in our childless marriage. We never expected her to survive losing Mom (especially after losing Dad a few years before) and losing her home, but she adjusted. When she lost an eye to my aunt’s cat we again never expected her to pull through, but she survived. She drank up love like a parched plant and we were only too happy to give it to her. And then she developed Cushing’s disease and a cataract in her good eye, arthritis and a bad heart— but she kept on going with the spirit of a puppy. I almost believed she would live forever— even when she was diagnosed with cancer. But she didn’t. And in October, her 17 and ½ years came to a close. She had an appetite up until the last— eating dinner the night she died. Ironically it was a stroke or something she ate that impaired her breathing. It was too late to go to our vet. We decided to take her in first thing in the morning to be put down by the vet she knew and loved. I stayed up through the night with her trying to help her make the transition but she clung to life. And in the morning we brought her in to be put to sleep. Our tears were joined by a tear streaming down Dr. Howell’s face. I think he had begun to believe in her immortality, too. He gave her the shot. She reared up a moment and then was gone. We had made plans to meet my aunt and uncle that day. We could not break the date— it was too late to even call. They were coming to New York from Connecticut. I just couldn’t go. My husband, God bless him forever, went to meet them with out me. I went home to rest a bit, collect myself and then meet them later. I was at home on the bed doing Reiki, an ancient Tibetan form of energy healing, on myself. My eyes were closed but I was wide awake. And I “felt” Ko-ko. She was running in a white field filled with white flowers and then going towards a tunnel. I was with her at her eye level close to the ground and all around was pure white and she was very happy and excited. Running to be reunited with my parents. And I felt profoundly blessed by her presence as I did in life, for she had a beautiful soul. Instead of visiting us in spirit, my mother left us an angel.
I have longed for further contact with these three souls and with my Mom but the longing goes unfulfilled like so many desires in life. I am indeed lucky to have had these three visits. They are high up on the list of treasures in my life, whispering of a life beyond this one. Treasures too ephemeral for touch, treasures locked away in the depths of my soul.
Beginnings & Endings
No one in my family liked summer. Probably because we lived in New York City and summer is not fun there. Moving upstate changed all that– up to a point. Although I must admit a weakness for those beautiful June days when the temperature reaches perfection, the sky is blue with fluffy clouds, and a soporific breeze wafts through the trees. And true, one has much more time with the four or five extra hours of sunlight. Still in all, when the first hints of fall come I am bordering on ecstatic.
First there is the change in light. The sun, still hot in mid-September, does not pack the punch it did in July, when one could be outdoors for an hour and come in with a change in skin color. Temperatures cool. The grass does not grow as fast. The “blood” of the trees starts to flow back into the trunk causing leaves to change color. Walnuts, acorns and apples fall. The bats leave the attic for warmer climes, giving us yet another chance to plug up holes inside to keep them outside next summer. Summer houses are closed down. The butterflies, that were so rampant outdoors in August are now inside the stomach of many a child with the start of school. Even adults are not immune. Many grown people feel the flutter of back-to-school anxiety come fall. After all September means “back to school” for many, many years. Time to “honker down” again and mean business. Fall offers a new beginning and there is a tinge of excitement added to the anxiety in facing some thing new.
And most of all, fall is a time of riotous color, when a walk in the woods finds one reveling like a drunk, besotted by the yellow, orange, crimson, russet world which our eyes imbibe like a hefty cocktail. It is a time when Italian comes to the lips in a loud “Que bella!!” The green of summer is bucolic and raises the spirit, but the many colors of fall intoxicate. People start talking of peak color, and leafing becomes the pastime of many. It is the time to plant bulbs and endlessly rake blowing leaves.
But fall is a time of melancholia, too. Flowers die. Reptiles go into hibernation. Insects die or overwinter. Songbirds migrate. Trees eventually loose their leaves. Anxiety over new beginnings can be uncomfortable. And the end of the lazy days of summer brings with it shorter days, longer nights, and possible depression for many people. Moments of sobriety seep into intoxication with the new world of color as we may remember loved ones who can no longer share the beauty. Who can no longer enjoy those cool crisp days in September, so coveted in August, when coolness brushes the cheeks.
For autumn is a celebration of endings, too, perhaps best described by the French poet, Guillaume Appollinaire, in his poem Autumn:
“A bowlegged peasant and his ox receding
through the mist slowly through the mist of autumn…
Oh the autumn the autumn has been the death of summer
In the mist there are two gray shapes receding.”
When the Walnut Leaves Begin to Fall
It is the school-imposed end of summer, Labor Day weekend has come and gone and I am looking forward to Fall. It is not good to be this way. Ideally one should be living in the present… for that is all we have. I have yet to overcome this and many other bad ways of thinking. A breeze shimmers through what I call (in my ignorance of the real name) the penny tree for when the wind blows the leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. The sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. The angle of the sun in its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects going this way and that. My eyes capture swallowtails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. Some carrion must be nearby. Earlier we saw two golden hawks fly sunlit into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to overwinter– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks or snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have left already– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone and the bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing frantic excitement upon spotting him.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sebum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight is near. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
A Personal Look at Autism Spectrum Disorder
THANK YOU, Tina Brown, for your guest essay to the New York Times. (See below) My husband, of 35+ years, and I, like your son, are on the Spectrum and have other mental health issues at ages 71 and 74, respectively. We feel the bewilderment and intense-to-the-point-of-unbearable emotion that Gus Walz showed at the DNC while applauding his Dad, often in our own daily struggles with neurotypical friends and neighbors. My husband forwarded your article to me amidst a struggle I was facing at my age with a friendship! Yes, the worst time for those of us on the spectrum is not during our school years! It comes afterwards. My husband and I are among the lucky ones, blessed by God to find each other, and to be given the ability to help and console each other. My husband is a retired Psychiatric Social Worker, who helped many of the disadvantaged mentally-ill in his job, as I helped him help them, and as we help each other daily. Coach Walz, we, and all neurodivergents, need you and President Harris to win for SO many reasons, and, among those, to champion the cause.
Guest Essay to the New York Times by Tina Brown
Ms. Brown is the author, most recently, of “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil.”
My Son and Gus Walz Deserve a Champion Like Tim Walz
Aug. 23, 2024
The sight at the Democratic convention on Wednesday night of Tim Walz’s 17-year-old son leaping to his feet, with streaming eyes, a hand to his chest with a cry of “That’s my Dad” was heart piercing.
As the mother of Georgie, a 38-year-old on the spectrum who still lives with me, I recognized him immediately as one of “ours,” a sweet, unfiltered, slightly bewildered-looking young man who wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him in this epic moment of political adulation.
Gus Walz has, according to his parents, a nonverbal learning disorder, A.D.H.D. and an anxiety disorder, all of which they regard not as a setback but as his “secret power,” that makes him “brilliant” and “hyperaware.”
I know exactly what they mean. One of the joys of my life in the social churn of New York is living with a son whose inability to read the room makes him incapable of telling anything but the truth. Once, as my husband, Harry Evans, and I left a pretentious social gathering in the Hamptons, Georgie told the host sunnily: “Thank you very much. No one spoke to me really, so it was a very boring evening. The food was OK. I doubt I will come again.”
“I have never been prouder of you in my life!” shouted my husband in the car. How many times have all of us wanted to say that as we gushed about the fabulous time we just hadn’t had? Then there was the moment he went up to Anna Wintour at one of my book parties and asked if she was Camilla Parker Bowles. And the time at the intake meeting for a supported work program, when the therapist asked Georgie, “Has anyone ever molested you?” “Unfortunately not,” he replied. Georgie teaches me every day how much we depend on social lies to make the world go round. His sister — his forever best friend — and I feel so lucky to have him in our lives. So did his dad, who died in 2020.
And yet for people who are different and have no support, the world can be bleak. Their loneliness can be agonizing. Some people assume the school days are the hardest, but it’s the years after that are the social desert. Having a friendly, forgiving workplace to go to is critical. It’s often their only taste of community and what makes them such reliable and rewarding employees. The work from home movement has been a killer for people with special needs, often depriving them of the only social connections they have.
There’s something of a trend at the moment for certain businesses to say they encourage the hiring of people who are neurodivergent. Sadly, it can be just virtue signaling. Employers like to think that a person who is neurodivergent is some secretly brilliant introvert who writes code in his apartment all day, not the more likely candidate: an awkward kid with a gentle smile who takes time to get the hang of things and talks too much about the same subjects.
One of my son’s quirks is that he likes to wear bandannas and nail polish, and tends to say so in the first five minutes of every job interview. More often than not he’s told that no, that would not be “appropriate.” Appropriate? Being inappropriate is the very definition of Georgie’s condition, and for his family, his most treasured trait.
The most painful thing for a parent is to pick up on the scorn of strangers that her child often doesn’t notice; the whispered insults or titter at the next table. Remember Donald Trump Jr.’s sneer at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference? Referring to Senator John Fetterman’s struggles to recover after his stroke, Mr. Trump said that Pennsylvania had “managed to elect a vegetable.”
“I’d love for John Fetterman to have, like, good gainful employment,” he continued. “Maybe he could be, like, a bag guy at a grocery store.” Is it possible to go any lower than that?
But how could Don Jr. be any different from his father? The elder Donald Trump has never missed the chance to denigrate people with disabilities, and already the MAGA crowd is mocking Gus Walz’s emotional embrace with his dad. “Talk about weird …” the conservative media ghoul Ann Coulter posted (and later deleted).
If the Harris-Walz ticket wins, will parents of people who struggle with being different at last find a powerful advocate in the White House? This voiceless community is in desperate need of a new, mighty champion. Coach Walz, you who have been such an inspiring role model to kids all your life, and were caring enough to offer your own credibility to the role of faculty adviser of a new high school gay-straight alliance. I urge you: please make this your cause.
Face to face
“Be fearless, sincere, and loving and you will be able to look everyone in the face, knowing that you have done your best.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Divine Intelligence
“God is manifest in everything! Look at the beautiful earth, and how nature keeps it in balance– how there is a plan, an Intelligence behind everything in creation.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Star Blossoms
“When you find that your soul, your heart, every wisp of inspiration, every speck of the vast blue sky and its shining star blossoms, the mountains, the earth, the whipporwill and the bluebells are all tied together with one cord of rhythm, one cord of joy, one cord of unity, one cord of spirit, then you shall know that all are but waves in His cosmic sea.”
Paramahansa Yogananda in “Metaphysical Meditations,” p. 36
(Click to enlarge)
“Homage to Kandinsky” (esw)
The World Within
“When the body and mind become totally still, one begins to perceive the manifestation of Spirit.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
A Flowering Friendship
“The duty of friends is to continuously help each other to develop themselves. When souls seek progress together in God, then divine friendship flowers.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
(Click to enlarge)
The Smiling Moon
“THE BEAUTY OF NATURE IS LIKE A FOUNTAIN. YOU SEE THE BEAUTY OF THE SPRAY, BUT YOU DO NOT SEE THE WONDERS INSIDE THE DROPLETS… THE MOON SMILES AND THE STARS TWINKLE BECAUSE THOU ART SPARKLING THERE”… “Divine Romance” p.87
Paramahansa Yogananda
Lessons of the Lily
“FEEL THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD WITHIN YOUR HEART. LET YOUR HEART EMANATE THAT LOVE FOR ALL… THE FORCES OF GOOD ARE HUMBLE AND UNASSUMING.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
(Click to enlarge)
Oceanic Currents
Paramahansa Yogananda
“As soon as you lift your consciousness to the state of divine awareness, you see the oceanic current of God’s light flowing behind all matter.”
Stream in our backyard in Millbrook, New York that eventually flows into the Hudson River which in turn flows into the Atlantic Ocean, thereby hinting at global consciousness.
“Happiness lies in giving yourself time to think and to introspect. Be alone once in awhile, and remain more in silence.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Click to enlarge
Flower Seller for puja (offerings for the gods)
Allepey Town, Kerala, India
Simplicity
“Live more simply, so that you can find time to enjoy the little pleasures of life.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
(Click to enlarge)
Fly in a Lily, Millbrook, New York
Equanimity
“Calmness is the voice of God speaking to you through the radio of your soul.”— Paramahansa Yogananda
A temple in Khajuraho, India at Dawn
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For contributions and an introduction to the children at Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
The Life Cycle of a Dahlia
You’re born…
You open up to life…
You blossom and your beauty…
Unfolds…
You interact with other lives…
Of all kinds…
You slow down…
You wilt…
You get old and ailing…
and die…
Becoming dust…
Falling to the earth in rebirth…
Good Grief
It is Springtime and I am doing my annual Spring cleaning– maniacally giving away old and unused clothes and items that no longer serve or never did. Some things I remember as I go through the linen chest– others are totally forgotten as to origin and use. And then it hits. In the corner of the chest is a neatly folded piece of green check cotton cloth. I immediately know its source. It is the cloth my Mother used to make curtains for her kitchen. Mom was always making curtains. When my husband and I were married she made curtains for our first apartment. Seeing this green check cloth brings me back to a hard period in my life when seeing my Mother was my only joy… we are sitting at the table in her kitchen having tea and laughing. It is a happy meeting… So many years ago.
And now with the sun shining and the birds singing and fresh air wafting in through the windows I am struck with a clutching stomach of grief. Tears that feel they could go on forever when I was in my fifties now are gone some 20 years later. Loss has hit again since then… a few times and those times are more sore. I let the sun beat down on me to soothe the memory.
Grief is not just a human phenomenon. Elephants will stand over the dead body of one of their herd, in some way showing respect for the departed spirit. And I think of examples close to home. The doe we saw one day going over to the dead body of a fawn on the side of the road. Or the baby rabbit we saw crossing into the middle of the road where a large mass of flesh with fur lay. And even closer to home– my husband and I adopted my Mother’s dog once Mom got too sick to care for her. Ko-ko had stayed with us many times in our house and loved being there. We never took her to see Mom again because the parting was too hard on both of them. We did take her toys though, from Mom’s house one night, and put them in our bedroom, among them a corroded rubber Santa. We were sitting at dinner that night and Ko-ko went into the bedroom. We heard a blood-curdling yelp and then whimpering. We went in and found Ko-ko with her old Santa in her mouth. The Santa was her version of my green check curtain. A stabbing wound and tears.
Clearly animals feel grief. Some die of grief just like humans. Grief binds us together, human and animal, and perhaps provides the special appeal of the new life in Spring. Yet when Spring inspires happy faces and a general feeling of well-being, and flowers are blooming everywhere, the contrast can be cruel. As T.S. Eliot so eloquently put it: “April is the cruelest month.” But once it is May the new life has settled in and we can go out in the yard and bake in the sun– the universal giver of life. And then with June… “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days…” (James Russell Lowell)
We humans have no prerogative on grief. Our lives entwine with happy moments and tragic in this vast web of existence, and Spring and loss are just two facets of possibility.
For contributions to Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
The Return of the Animals
I confess to being a springtime scrooge. When everyone else is oohing and aahing over the warm weather, welcoming it and delighting in it, I cringe, knowing that, despite the fact that there are some magnificent days in April, May and early June, Spring is the harbinger of the dreaded hot-humid-hazy, lazy days of summer. Admittedly, this is a terrible attitude and a worse way to think, not living in the present at all.
April may be the cruelest month as T.S. Elliot writes, and I concur in many aspects, except for the return of the animals. Why? Because the animals work their unique and miraculous magic on depressed souls and bring joy. I once read that animals were natural anti-depressants… a very astute observation. 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 almost here and, with it, the return of the animals. Let us open our hearts to our fellow creatures and show them the appreciation they so deserve, for without them there truly will be, as Rachel Carson direly predicted, a “silent spring”.
For contributing to Michael’s home for street children in Uganda, click link below picture of Michael and Angie…
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Last of the Informal Show
These photographs are the last to go to Michaels Makindye Foundation for street orphans and homeless children in Uganda. See reference at end for information and donations…
Some of my India pictures are going as well… see “India” on the blog. One appears below…
Delhi Market
Makindye children
Michael and Angie
Click on link below to see Michael’s charity:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Jeepers Peepers
Above: the vernal pool not yet unfrozen and below: the YouTube video to hear the song of the Spring Peepers
It is late afternoon and it is spring according to the calendar although still quite cool. I have just spent the late afternoon listening to “music.” Some have likened it to the sound to bells. Others to bird song. And still others, with unimaginable disdain, to “some kind of nature noise.” For me it is one of the happiest of sounds. The act of creation transformed into sound decibels for all to hear. A sound that comes from the earth and resounds to the heavens, unwittingly praising the Almighty. I hate to leave, and wish I lived even closer to the pond, so that the sound would surround me totally, filling my ears every evening with the sound of perhaps the single-most highlight of spring for me. The siren song of the Spring Peepers.
How have they cast their spell over so many? I cannot say except that their song is uplifting and filled with hope despite the natural perils they face daily. For, as true of all of us, they may die at any moment– say as a meal for a nearby perching crow or underneath murky waters eaten by a snapping turtle. They call for a mate without ceasing, without fear, single-mindedly, without a thought for their own safety. It is nature at its most elemental, in its most singular scope. They all sing out vying to be heard– so many voices. In some spots, I am told, their song is deafening. How nice to be there; I cannot get enough of their sweet music. It moves me to tears– these tiny creatures singing out their heart’s desire.
As I return home to family “situations” and domestic duties, I yearn for the simplicity of their song. Their total fervor. For if they sing then all is right in that small part of the world. Progress has not paved over their pond. Disdainful humans have not drained a “vernal pool.” David Carroll writes about vernal pools in one of his books on turtles called The Swampwalker’s Journal. As the title suggests, Carroll walks through such places in search of turtles and other amphibians. He defines a vernal pool as a pool of water that fills up in Fall and Winter and freezes, swells in the Spring and often dries up by end of Summer. But a vernal pool is utmost a place of magic, not only where turtles lurk, but also where mating frogs deposit gelatinous eggs, which turn first into tadpoles, and then, later, become frogs. Vernal pool habitats hold a galaxy of small things that come to life the instant ice and snow turn back into water. And after a requisite series of warm days, followed by spring rains, on the first dark night, vernal pools become the site of the “salamander night.” Salamanders leave their hibernacula to go for a night of endless mating and then return to leaf litter in the woods to disappear for the rest of the year. Some people, who know nothing of vernal pools and their function, deem them a nuisance, a “big puddle” to be filled in or drained. Some people know little of spring peepers except that they are “noisy,” “like some sort of insect.” (Poor insects being made out to be the pesky lowest of the low.) The natural symphony of hormonal, harmonic sounds sometimes falls on deaf ears.
And when, after finishing my evening chores, I try to read, I find the haunting sound of the spring peepers deep within my psyche, making me restless and anxious and wishing to be at that pond, surrounded on all sides by their sex song, inebriated by the unbridled joy in the air, immersed in the utter power of nature manifesting in one of her gentler forms. In the song of the Spring Peepers nature celebrates life-to-be rather than taking lives away. For most of all the song of the Spring Peepers is a song of tremendous faith, faith in love, and faith that love will propagate and new life will emerge untouched by the often destructive hand of man.
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To read about and/or give to Michael’s foundation for orphan and street children in Uganda, click on the link below the picture of Michael and Angie:
http://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-Makindye-Foundation
Informal Show… paintings and photographs
In May the art work below will be going to Michael’s home for homeless and street children in Kampala, Uganda, The Makindye Foundation. For more picture links and information on donations etc. click on link below…
http://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
(Click on all images to enlarge)
“Bontecou Lake”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Wildflowers by the Roadside”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Weeping Willow”, Lucasville, Ohio (Photograph)
“Reflections of Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract watercolor)
“Sunny Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract Watercolor)
“Trees in Winter” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Moonlight” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Sunlight over Trees” Millbrook, New York (Watercolor)
Some of the children in Michael’s Makindye Foundation…
(see link at top)
Synchronicity
The Oxford dictionary describes “synchronicity” as “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
Wikipedia has a longer definition: “Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.”[1] In contemporary research, synchronicity experiences refer to one’s subjective experience whereby coincidences between events in one’s mind and the outside world may be causally unrelated to each other yet have some other unknown connection.[2] Jung held that this was a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind that can become harmful within psychosis.[3]“
As a Bipolar 1 woman who was not diagnosed, let alone medicated, until I was 28 years old, my life was full of synchronicity. I was working as a clerk in Columbia University libraries, cataloging art books. My family did not “believe” in psychiatry nor in mental illness. I kept everything secret from them until I could no longer, when I had my breakdown at age 28. At that point I went for emergency care to the Columbia Counseling Service and was told to stay with my family for a week or go to hospital. I was lucky enough to be able to go to my parents for a week . I had begun therapy with the psychiatrist I would wind up staying with until age 74. But at the time I was all alone. I had a best friend from grammar school who was living in France at this time. She and I corresponded every week. We remained close until she died at age 39. I had a few friends at work, but I lived alone and was isolated. And I became psychotic at times. Synchronicity ruled my life. Parts of a song on the radio, or a program on the TV, a man singing in the street… they all had special messages for me. I thought of people in the street as “teachers” for me to learn from and the people who worked with me, as “mystics,” who understood me, and who were trying to train me.
It was exhilarating when the teachers were happy with my progress but terribly depressing when I did wrong. There were “signs” for me to interpret all over the place. And at work, I regarded every book I catalogued as something that held secrets to help me get mentally well or learn truths about life. I would do my job faithfully, most of the time, but while doing it, I was on the constant look-out for special messages meant for me. I did what I called “readings”. I would find some lesson in each book. One book I was working on held a special secret about the womb and the egg and the sperm uniting and becoming a zygote. I pictured the uniting of the egg and the sperm as fireworks. (Thirty years later, saner and married and actively creating art, and, writing a newspaper column upstate on the side, I created an abstract photograph called “Conception”.) But in the library, I did what I called “time travels.” I didn’t talk to people much during this period. I listened to co-workers and street people, read extensively and deciphered messages. People would come up to me at work to actually talk to me sometimes, to be nice, I guess, and I would leave the world of the womb, and zygotes or some such thing, and talk to them normally as if I were in their world. I was not!!
In other words, to put it in professional terms, I was WACKO!
That is all behind me now and fortunately, though I have had some hard times, but they have occurred within the realm of a marriage, to be 35 years long this May. It has offered me the only stability and deep love in my life. Gone is the world of readings and messages. Gone is the synchronicity. Sometimes I miss it but not the craziness that went with it. Now I have more meaningful, everyday experiences of sanity. There are still some epiphanies, but not like the old days.
Before I close I must add, there was at least one incident that was truly synchronicity… that was not delusional… that felt distinctly like a message from God, the Universe. I was working at my desk and suddenly my scalp felt prickles all over it. I grew alarmed and so decided to go to the reference room for one of my “readings.” Clearly this warranted research. I went to the Reference Room of the library and found a one volume encyclopedia which I pulled off the shelf. In order for the reading to give answers impartially, I had to open it at random and then put my finger on the page. So that’s what I did whilst my scalp prickled. My finger pointed to a picture. It was a print of Christ with a crown of thorns. I was stunned. I felt like it was a message from God. And to this day I think it was. It was a message of hope and love.
Yesterday I wrote to a fellow blogger, Anneta Pinto-Young, at Devotionalinspirations.com, who is a Social Worker and a Christian Minister and recounted this story briefly in response to her post on coincidences in her series on “Hearing God Speak.” She told me something very wise. She said that religion and science have always clashed over these type of things. Sure, I was delusional for much of the time, but I did have occasional experiences like this one. And, she said, that was God sending me a message of his love and encouragement. I felt that then and I feel it today.
Maybe I don’t need the secret messages any more. God’s word comes through friends now and most definitely through my long-suffering husband.
What can I say but look out for synchronicities and see what message there is for you.
MOONSIDE 
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