Eye-Contact and Animal Healers
As someone with Asperger’s who spent much of my life avoiding eye contact until I was properly medicated, I still feel uncomfortable with eye contact in human interaction. Yet I actively seek out eye contact with animals. I am not alone in this. For people with Asperger’s and Autism, eye-contact with humans is fearsome and yet with animals, sublime.
People say eye contact with animals is less threatening, yet I believe there is more to it than that. Gazing into the eyes of an animal, I feel love, depth of consciousness, and connection– all qualities quite impossible to feel with humans, except in fleeting moments with my beloved Aspie husband who, too, has problems with eye contact. Perhaps because Aspies and Auties are so starved for affection, so hungry for a form of love that they CAN handle, animals offer pure and simple love, and unconditional acceptance. The truth is animals are excellent therapists and natural healers!! P.S. Animals are good for depressives, too.
(For more information on eye contact and Asperger’s and Bipolar Disorder, see the memoir I wrote of my experiences with love, called “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things” http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html)
Bedazzled
“Sound and light affect our consciousness, for we (like them) are composed of vibrations.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
Beware the enticements of worldliness
lest it lead you to the frazzle of despair.
Look behind the Light of nature,
and let the eyes be
bedazzled by the Beauty
of God hiding there.
Feathery Fog
(Click on image to enlarge)
January trees
please and tease
their feather-arms
tickle the skies
gratify the eyes
their lattice work branches
the soft, silky brush strokes
of a winter masterpiece
Soulful Eyeful
It being the holidays
missing
loved ones
one of the most loved
one of the best teachers
a little dog
Ko-Ko
all innocence
all love
all pure soul
oh, to nuzzle her fur
smell her dander
feel her tongue
upon my face
and her fluffy fur
against my skin
and Dutchie
another innocent
another tactile teacher
peace personified
oh to hold her in my lap
as she sleeps
and have her total trust
lying on blue-jeaned legs
oh for a visit
from either
or another gift
from Ko-ko
who shared a vision
of the beyond
after she passed
now
no wee ones
just an ache
where love still lives
Spirits Past and the Mystical Bliss of Horses
It is almost Christmas, and my birthday, and today I cried reading an old birthday email from my sister. She signed it “Lisa the Pizza, Tony Baloney and the rest of the gang ‘up there’,” meaning my brother, and my mother and father.
“Tony Baloney” died two years and a half ago, leaving behind three adopted children whom he adored and who adored him, and a loving wife. My father and mother died 25 and 20 years ago, as impossible as that seems. Dad and Mom died this time of year. And my best friend, Wendi, died shortly after. All of cancer of some sort or the other. But they all loved horses.
We now live in Millbrook — horse country. Horse farms dot the countryside. My father and mother and Wendi would have adored it. My brother was the only one to visit Millbrook, coming with his family whom we put up at a nearby horse ranch. They all had the time of their lives. One of my fondest memories of my brother is from that visit. We are holding hands as he is relaxing after a day of riding with his kids. He is drinking and smoking (what eventually killed him) and we are taking in the sunset on the porch of the dude ranch.
I love horses, too. It is in my blood. Dad played the horses and my brother worked on several racetracks, including Belmont. Now I abhor horse-racing, finding it cruel. My brother had horror stories to tell of how the horses were drugged and run hurting. I have seen horses being put down– all for a senseless sport. Dad and I would quarrel about this if he were still alive.
I remember stroking a horse once at a show nearby and the bliss I felt was mystical in a most spiritual way. I wanted that moment to last forever. And the happiest I have ever seen my husband was on a moonlit ride we took in a canyon in Arizona on our honeymoon. Horses bring happiness. My husband knows it. Dad knew it. Tony knew it, Wendi knew it and to some extent, Mom knew it.
Too old to ride now I pet horses when I can, and admire them as we drive by horse farms. I photograph them when the spirit moves me. I ache inside for my parents who would have adored it here in our little barn. For my brother, the cowboy, as different from me as night and day, but bonded by a deep love and shared losses. For my friend, Wendi, with whom I shared a not-to-be replicated link of love. Merry Christmas, Tony Baloney, Mom, Dad, Wendi!
My blessing comes from the love I share with my husband who married me despite my mental illness. It comes, too, from our spiritual connection to nature. I admire my husband who works with society’s outcasts as a clinical social worker. My giving is on a much smaller scale– tiny things here and there– online activism and such. You play the hand you are dealt.
Christmas can be a hard time, and New Year’s, too, and I know there will be the inevitable meltdown into tears over losses of loved ones, over mortality, over our material nature. And perhaps you will also have your own moment of bleakness. But I hope that you, too, will be able to touch your bliss at Christmas and find a blossoming hope for the new year.
Blessings of joy to all!!
Away in a Manger
Unmistakable pride
in the smile
on the mother’s face
bonding with her
babe asleep beside her
in utter security
in utter trust
of their caretakers
unknowing of their future fate
at the bloody hand
of man.
The Silent Cathedral
Listen
to the silence
of the trees
they communicate
in ways
science knows not
yet
and
the fog and the snow and the mist
the incense
suffusing
the silent cathedral
Gone is the Magic
Snow falls
in hushed tones
magically transforming all,
dressing trees in white,
lace-like filigree.
These trees now gone,
on the old dirt path,
victims of a wilderness
lost to landscaping,
taming the wild
into manicured parks,
leaving many animals now
homeless,
leaving a loss
of beauty that once reigned
supreme.
An Apparition
Here one second,
the next, gone,
with traces only in our hearts.
The ephemeral nature
of all life.
Our loved ones,
people and creatures,
here with us
for a pause in eternity
and gone for seeming eons.
*
It is as the Hindus say
all “Maya,”
a dream of life,
an apparition,
some form of us
awakens one day
somewhere
we know not
when or where or how
right now.
The Spiders’ Secret
A chill wind blows the yellowing leaves off the trees. They drift down to the ground like giant snowflakes. The air is pregnant with the feel of the coming holidays. Fall has truly come, with the sudden drop in temperatures, a full 10-20 degrees cooler than a few weeks ago. This is the real Fall, no faltering Fall, but a Fall that will guide us appropriately into winter. November appears as a mirror image of March with its vibrant color of decay, while March is the decaying color of about-to-burst-forth Spring.
The birds are at the bird feeder all the time now. They are not stopped by our presence when we come to fill the feeder or blow leaves under it. Nothing stops them. They swoop around the feeder and the surrounding trees like Kamikaze pilots, darting here and there recklessly. The squirrels are in a frenzy as well, stock piling acorns and walnuts which they will retrieve without fail in a month or so in a snow-covered land.
To me, the trees are most beautiful at this time of year, when many of them are bare and a scattering of leaves remain on dark brown branches. The leaves that remain quiver daintily in their precarious positions on the tree limbs. Yet these are the survivors. The other leaves have fallen and gone the way all living things eventually go. Most trees have lost all their leaves and they stand in stark contrast against the blue sky, the stormy sky, the grey sky. But I find them most beautiful against the night sky, with arms reaching up to the darkness, trying to touch the stars twinkling between the branches, as moonlight dances on their limbs.
November holds the last glimmer of color. A carpet of yellow lines the woods now– and one can see inside the woods that are so dark and impenetrable in summer. Some forests have carpets of oak leaves– dark brown tan in color. Others are paved with variegated colors– vibrant crimsons against yellows and faded greens and tawny tans. The un-mown lawns are now taken over by the spiders covering the fields. At precious moments, one can see a world of webs that only appears in a certain slant of sunlight and reveal a silent take-over by the spiders in webs that sparkle secretly, mirroring the infinite web of creation.
The yellow, brown, and crimson leaves are complemented by the ubiquitous yellow, brown and crimson mums that appear on the roadside near mail boxes, on porches or along driveways. These tough little flowers withstand frosty chills and stand tall throughout most of November– hearty, generous souls, so giving in their colorful, velvety splendor.
Halloween pumpkins begin to sag a bit or shine with wetness as if encased in glass. They will soon be tossed– pine combs, wreaths and fir swags to take their places, and the season of lights will begin. Anticipation hangs in the air. Autumn seems the fastest season to come and go. I try treasuring each moment, but the minute/hours/days just sift through my fingers like so many grains of sand. Then Christmas/Hanukkah comes and fades in a flash and we are into the Nor’Easter blizzards of January. Another year is gone and a new one has come. Would that we could be in forever in the season of love, but it is also a season of loneliness and loss and darkness. It is good we are defenseless against time.
Now, at Thanksgiving, it is our time to give thanks. Inspired by the Native Americans, let us thank the earth. Let us give thanks to the trees for their constantly changing beauty, to the stars for their piercing presence in the night sky, to the leaves for their inspiring colors, to the sun for its life-giving power. Let us thank the Spring for its awakening hope, the Summer for its warm, thriving growth, the Fall for its beauteous bounty, to the Winter for a time of renewal. Let us thank the soon-to-come snow for its hushed, white silence that transforms our world, to all the animals for their pure souls, to our families and friends for their precious love, and, lastly, but mostly, to the Higher Power of our belief for the macrocosm of creation.
Happy Thanksgiving and may you each be blessed with the all-embracing, pervasive, pulsating Love in Nature.
Dark Clouds Overhead
Things have spiraled out of control. I am following far too many blogs and comments and finding it hard to keep up with all the new posts I want to read. I am on too many animal rights, environmental and political lists. Right now I have had a few weeks of migraines nearly everyday and am finding it hard to get myself to Physical Therapy to treat some problems that need addressing. I am losing my temper at my loving husband and he, in turn, is under so much pressure at his clinical social worker job that he is losing his as well. Clearly something has to be done. I cannot stand the person I have become.
This means I will not be posting for awhile and I am not sure how long, or, if this is turning into a bad thing altogether. I will not give up the animal activism and environmental lists because this is one of the few ways I can give to the world. There is a reason I have been on disability for the last 13 years. I have a major mental illness, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s and these take their toll on my life and those around me. So please forgive me if I don’t read all your posts, or read them and don’t respond. I love some of you, and care for many of you, but now have to get my life back. This means more meditation, more Reiki, possibly learning Qi Gong and lots of prayer. It feels too bad right now to stay on the road I am on.
Good-bye for awhile and my warmest regards,
Ellen
For the Love of a Horse
Oh to be one with you,
White-marked Third Eye,
to mount you
and ride you into forever
to nuzzle my nose
in your silky mane
to smell your hot breath
upon my face
and feel your tongue
upon my cheek
to smell the sweetness
of your leavings
and
hear your hoofs
against the road
and your snorts
as you run
*
my love for you
is from a distance
though once
we danced together
and
you nuzzled
me out of depression
and into bliss
oh how I miss
those magic moments
when we were one.
Stages of Being
Beauty in Life
September 1
In denial
Death in Life
October 1
Forboding
Beauty in Death
November 1
Acceptance
Afterlife
December 1
SILENCE
Tempus Fugit
Poof!
After awaiting September all summer, the month of the Autumnal Equinox came and is almost gone. I try desperately to stop time, clinging to each day, to no avail. These next few months, my favorite time of year, go by in a flash, like sand sifting through my fingers. Poof! In a flash the trees turn beauteous, with variegated flames of color. Poof! The leaves are gone.
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 starts to stop growing. The “blood” of the trees starts to flow back into the trunk, causing leaves to change color. Walnuts, acorns and apples fall. Butterflies, so rampant outdoors in August, have gone inside the stomach of many a child as they go back to school. Even adults are not immune. Many feel the flutter of “back-to-school” anxiety come Fall. Summer vacations are a memory and it is time to “honker down” at work. Fall offers a new beginning but there is a tinge of 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. And the end of the lazy days of summer brings with it shorter days, longer nights, and concomitant depression for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder. 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 coveted, cooler, crisp days of September when coolness kisses 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.”
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.
Supposed Indifference in Asperger’s
I climbed down
from the tangled branches
of my thoughts
to greet you
but it was too late
you were gone.
Don’t give up on me
I love you can’t you see
but there is such difficulty
all because I am Aspie.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
A Microcosm of the Macrocosm
To see a cathedral in a flower,
to be drunk with its nectar,
under an opalescent sky.
*
“Infinity is our Home. We are just sojourning awhile in the caravanserai of the body.”
~ Paramahansa Yoganada~
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
My Mind is Broken
It is 3 A.M. and it is another night I cannot sleep. I have taken two sleeping pills to no avail. When I am manic sleep does not come easily. I write. I eat. I check email. I pace the rooms back and forth, in and out of bed. Luckily my husband does not wake during my perambulations. The mania is not of the inflated ego variety, though I have had that at an earlier time in my life. Years ago I remember going by Harlem on a bus route home one night when I was flagrantly psychotic and proclaiming, “These are my people!” Why I said this I couldn’t tell you now– sparked most likely from some manic feeling of camaraderie. But, of course, it was beyond grandiosity and just plain crazy (yes, that is a psychiatric term). Perhaps the roots arose out of the closeness I had with my Sicilian grandfather who was not exactly white and who had much spirit– what an African-American might call “soul.” And from my father, a jazz trombonist, who spent his youth sleeping in bathtubs in Harlem when he would come to the city from white suburbia for jam sessions. He, too, like my grandfather, had “soul” hidden under white skin.
In any case, thanks to the anti-psychotic family of medicines I am not grandiose tonight. I did forget to take my meds the other night and, like Karma, that affects everything about my life. I am just raring for the day to start, for the morning to come. I see a drunk sitting outside on a stoop smoking. I want to see, not the people of the night, but the purposeful people of the morning, going to school, going to work, walking their dogs. Two hours and forty-five minutes to go. And then time to wake up, have coffee, pray, make plans for the work of the day. How can fifteen minutes seem like an hour? How can the cool night breeze masquerade as a morning zephyr? I will make one last attempt to go to bed and sleep. First, I will post a video of Jusuf’s, formerly known as Cat Stevens, of a beautiful hymn he sang, “Morning Has Broken.” I am also posting a photo I took of a marsh in the morning light. Enjoy! And Good morning!
This was written a year ago in a mild manic episode. Right now I am fighting depression triggered by Lyme disease and antibiotics. I have zero creativity so resort to rewrites. Hope to be back writing soon and commenting on fellow bloggers’ posts. Please excuse the silence but that is how it is being Bipolar. (Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase, my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
September Transitions
Lazy, hazy, daze
of
fleeting flashes of summer
Creeping dashes of Fall
among the splashes of departing green.
Instinct vs. Love
(Click on photo for video)
“Instinct”
they say condescendingly
but it is not.
“Anthroprophism”
they argue
but it is not.
Science now knows
animals show altruism,
animals show love,
elephants, dogs, dolphins…
“Love” they say reverently for man
but it is and is not
Science now knows
hormones course through our bodies,
Oxytocin they say,
I say how clinical,
a dissection of love
for man
and
animals.
A Wee Life
Oh wee one
how I envy thee
trudging up and down
the raindrop slopes
of rain and nectar
safe within the confines
of radiant yellow
succulent pink
in a self-contained
world of beauty
however short-lived thy life.
No Trespassing
You don’t belong here
this is my home
and you are intruding
this twig my perfect camouflage
for my stick-like appendages
I searched high and low
to find my home
and although nothing is truly ours
these are my digs
so “Bugger off!”
MOONSIDE 
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