Bontecou Lake in Autumn
Millbrook, New York
This landscape no longer exists. Cut down for hunters. 😢
Overloaded Circuits
(Computer art by author)
I’m in somnia
with jackhammer brain
a buzzing mind
a humming with emotions
thoughts and pictures
memories of joys
lost to death
spirits close to my heart
seemingly worlds away
guilt, loss and happiness
sickness and death
as well as
breathtaking beauty
a bedfellow with
gnawing worries
and gnashing nerves
fleeting images from films and
music playing at high speed
in the library of my mind
voices of today, yesterday and
fears of tomorrow
vying for an ear
asking me to listen
to them all
all at once
a cacophony of sounds
in the humming silence
of the specter-filled
haunting darkness
with fearsome death dangling
its loathsome threats
before my darting eyes
afraid not for myself
but of losing him
as he lies beside me
breathing noises
breeding worry, sorry
dashing thoughts of love, passion, doubts
a scarily-still lump beside
insomniac-hyper-racing-mind
manic me
finally arising out of
maudlin months
of dismal darkness
and deep, dark despair
when death smelled sweet to me
*
I get out of bed
to lay my face
upon the windowsill
to gaze at the mystery sky
full of twinkling stars
glittering to the rhythms
of the pulsing universe
my only hope for some
semblance of somnolence
my only chance for peace.
For info on my Bipolar memoir, please see: http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html
Unity of Being
Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist:
“We are all star stuff.”
Professor Brian Cox, Particle Physicist:
“Every atom of carbon, every living thing on the planet is produced in the heart of a dying star.”
Sergio Toporek, Artist:
The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star.”
Dr. J.S. Bell, Quantum Physicist:
“No theory of reality compatible with quantum theory can require spatially separate events to be independent.”
Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist:
“Organisms can never be totally unrelated to one another, since it is all but certain that life as we know it originated only once on earth… Go backwards, no matter where you start, you end up celebrating the unity of life…”
The Beatles, Musicians:
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
Russell Targ, Physicist and ESP researcher and Dr. Jane Katra:
“… connection has been demonstrated repeatedly on the microscopic quantum level in experiments where pairs of photons (quanta of light) are sent off in opposite directions at the speed of light, but retain a connection, even after traveling many kilometers, whereby a change in the polarity of one photon observed by a researcher in Basel causes a corresponding change in the other photon observed by a researcher in Zurich.”
Joanne Elizabeth Lauck, Author of The Voice of the Infinite in the Small:
“… small changes in dynamic systems produce changes of great magnitude… small events emerging out of this wholeness give rise to nonlocal events, because all is connected.”
Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist:
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
******************************************
Scientists and artists agree. We are all one. They just use different vocabulary.
In my tiny life, I have only found the experience of connectivity demonstrated twice. Once, when my father died in hospital across town from where I was working and I “felt” his death at the minute of his dying. I “knew” it. And the other, when my brother collapsed suddenly in Michigan from what was later determined to be lung cancer, and I lost my balance and fell simultaneously in New York City.
Of course, there are the little syncronicities: thinking of someone and then seeing them a few moments later or dear ones calling each other at the exact same minute, or saying the same thing at the same moment, thinking the same thoughts simultaneously, etc.
It is not just family and those close to us that are connected to one another in this life (and perhaps in previous lives), but all of life is tied to one another, born of a dying star, born of star-dust material. And yet so often we see the “other” as foreign. As Einstein so eloquently said, this is the “optical delusion” of our consciousness.
We are all connected. Not by cell phones and computers and the social networks, but by the very building blocks that compose us. And, if we can rise above the everyday pettiness, a Herculean feat to be sure, and feel the one consciousness that flows through us all, we could tap into a limitless ocean of empathy, and a unity of being.
Khajuraho, Madya Pradesh, India at Sunset
(Click to enlarge) In conjunction with HeyGo Tours @ HeyGo.com
Diwali in Khajuraho, Madya Pradesh, India
Happy Diwali! Street Market in Delhi, India
Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India at Sunrise
Eyes to Eternity
At age 35 I found someone who was more afraid of closeness than I was. I understood him almost from day one. This understanding came out of years of therapy that followed my breakdown at age 28. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know that I was depressed. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know that my failed relationships were due to my fear of closeness. Before the breakdown, I didn’t know I was Bipolar. I learned a lot of things in therapy that helped to change the direction of my life.
And then one day Thomas walked into the library where I had been working for 10 years. He got a job as a library assistant. He was a graduate student and wanted to work part-time. I took the first steps towards asking him out because it was obvious he never would. I had learned a thing or two after a stint at being gay. We bumbled our way into a relationship and, after 4 years, into marriage. We didn’t know that either one of us had Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder on the Autism Spectrum, until much, much later. We just thought we were very, very shy.
After some 33 years of marriage we are still shy with each other. Our instincts are still to run away from closeness, but now we are able to override the first gut feeling. We have grown together, becoming very, very close. So close that now my biggest fear is of losing Thomas. So close that sometimes we communicate without talking, as if we are on the same radio frequency. In fact talking often confuses things.
We have pushed each other along life’s path. Tom became a clinical social worker and I became a writer and artist. The road has been bumpy in spots. My being Bipolar has been hard for Tom at times. Many times. But there have been many more moments of joy that make it all worthwhile. We both feel the other is the best thing that happened to us, and the journey continues. New lessons are learned. There are still new magical moments and new epiphanies.
It is 3A.M. I lay beside Thomas in bed listening to his breathing as I watch a silent light show outside our bedroom windows. This is not a 3A.M. awakening born of despair as some are. At the moment I feel the Presence and that Presence fills me with love.
The moonlight beckons to me, and I respond by getting up and gazing at the twinkling stars and the hushed light of flickering fireflies. In the quiet stillness of a country night I am stirred by the music of the silence. My ears hum, the sound of the nervous system according to my husband.
The cool air is intoxicating. I go to the den to write and sit in a moonlit cathedral, watching the seemingly random flashing flames of fireflies flying in a frenzy of love. The madness of desire. Well do I know how love possesses one’s spirit and makes one fly through life, manic with emotion.
Yet sometimes, beneath the energy that stirs one’s blood, lies a silent union—a momentary glimpse of eternity in a loved-locked gaze into the eyes of one’s beloved. It is fleeting, at least for me. Gone in a flash, and yet it leaves me wondering just whom I am seeing. The inner voice says that God has touched my soul through Thomas, for the best of human love is merely a sampling of the Divine. Eye contact, so problematic for both my husband and me, is wondrous in this context. For a second, eternity beckons like the moonlight, whispering of another life, another world, something beyond the here and now.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
Khajuraho Temples at 6 A.M., Madhya Pradesh, India
Animals in Khajuraho at 6 A.M.
Street Food in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Temple Service at Night in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India at 6 A.M.
Camel and Cow, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Dog Kissing Statue of Ganesh, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Hanging Out on the Street Corner, Palayam (Old Market of Calicut), Kerala, India
Mango Seller, Palayam (Old Market of Calicut), Kerala, India
Decisions, Decisions in Palayam (Old Market of Calicut), Kerala, India
Food Shopping, Palayam (Old Market of Calicut), Kerala, India
Sandal Shop, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Tyranny of Mind
4AM
and you a warm lump
under the covers
of Morpheus
Me wide awake
eyes moist with tears
I write
lest I forget
the vulnerability of you
yesterday
lest one day
you ARE no longer
a day of dread
so locked into desire
for your presence am I
fearful of the future
lest it tears me from you
or you from me
Not yet awake
to the wisdom
of the sages and the ages
to live forever in the present
“Until death do us part”
The import of those words
have begun to resound
with a fierce vengeance
now decades later
The treasure of you
multiplies like the loaves and fishes
I fear a famine
not of food
but of your presence
I try to hold each wrinkled emotion
on your face
in a forever place
lest you be torn from me
The specter of loss
hangs over me
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Street Food Stand, Delhi, India
Twinkling Twilight
As twilight falls, as we approach August, the little sparks of light appear nightly– fireflies, lightning bugs, glow worms, whatever one chooses to call them. They start early in July– one sees a few sparks here and there but as July draws to a close, twilights dawn with a display of tiny fireworks. Why do they hold such fascination for young and old alike? Why do they bring us such a sense of wonder as they flicker on and off in some rhythm unknown to us but titillating in their communication with each other?
Of course I remember, like everyone else, catching fireflies. It was a ritual my Sicilian grandfather reenacted with me every summer. Grandma would save me a peanut butter jar, nicely washed with little holes in the top she made with an old-fashioned can opener. Grandpa and I would go out for an after-dinner walk, a treat…
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MOONSIDE 
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