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I think we should discuss this.
They say that, zoomed in really closely (of course), thoughts in our brains look like lightning storms.
Who's to say the Mother (Earth) isn't alive?
Seriously.
Healthy respect, that's all I'm saying. And hopefully no volcanoes will reach over into Portland.
On that note, enjoy your day. And send a little love down beneath your feet - she's had a rough hundred years.
love,
Charis
(this is an excerpt from my daily personal writing, which no one normally gets a peek at other than my mentor and on occasion, T. However, today's pages were calling out to me to cut 'em and paste 'em here, so here you are...)
I long to be outside. Not anywhere particular, just out, in the sun, feeling the breeze, hearing the animals, and all similar such stuff. There is a major problem here though.
I haven't spent aimless time outside since I was a little girl, and I can honestly say that I don't know how to do it. Up til now, I was satisfied with being indoors constantly, with the fluorescent lighting and recycled air and yucky radiation coming from appliances (yep, you guessed it – hairdryers too) and chemicals from household products, personal products, and everything between. I had no clue any of this was around. Since I can remember, I've been bombarded by all these things (I won't even go into the constant harmful noise that's there, just beyond your attention) until now after years of the constants of that environment, I'm completely unaware of them. Well, not completely, not anymore. Now I'm aware. But I'm still afraid to go out.Yes, afraid. I think that's a good word to describe the feeling I have. The trepidation about bugs, about winds that are too strong, about people looking at me strangely if I make a spot in the yard my own by sitting there for too long (what is she doing?). About grass stains on my clothes. Heck, after the reading I've been doing, I'm even nervous about crushing grass stems when I sit or lie on them. Goodness knows that, technically, there's really not much point to a blanket – it just keeps grass from receiving life-giving light where the area your body would take up wouldn't cause that much damage as an entire blanket would, and as we all, who've ever picnicked know, they don't keep the bugs off anyway.
It's a silly thing, that going outside in Nature, where we all originated, would hold such anxiety and a multitude of preparational thoughts to just go and hang out. I'm sure that anyone who'd never stepped foot indoors, or who hadn't spent more than an hour or two indoors at any time in the past several years, may feel the same way. Certainly it would feel as if your life were being cut off, if you couldn't hear the “heartbeat” - all the rhythms and noises of your Mother, who you never actually leave (aka, the Earth, Gaia, whatev you wanna call it).
When I was little, I remember being outside most of the time. When it was warm enough to go out, it was too also often hot and boring to be indoors. You can't read books all the time, and besides, there are places you can go to escape out there.
When we lived on Carroll Street, in the two story white wooden house where rats and/or squirrels lived in the wall and would scratch, scratch, scratch a couple inches from our ears just beyond the wood paneling at night, there was a tree that I hung out with.
It was outside, to the left of our porch if you were looking at the house. The “driveway” was there, although we always parked out front anyway, so it was a quiet spot. Brush and other trees were growing between our property and the lumber yard next door, and right on the edge, next to the fence made by this flora, was the tree.
It had a knot where a branch had been cut off a long time ago, and which still oozed sap sometimes. In retrospect, I guess it didn't heal all that cleanly. I would climb up to a spot where the two main branches forked off of the trunk and sit for a long time, seeing the sun shine down between the leaves, feeling the breeze against my skin, and feeling so at home there. That, in fact, may have been a place that felt the most like a real home to me over the course of my entire childhood.
Years ago someone had put a chain around the trunk, maybe to keep a dog tied up – people did that a lot in the South. You never think about how sucky it must be for the dog, usually because they're mean and bark at you. You're just glad that they are chained there, and can't rip a chunk out of your leg. But I guess I'd be pretty ornery too if I had to stay three feet from the same spot all the time. Some people never unchained their dogs. Yuck.
Anyway, a chain had been put around the tree long ago and now, because the tree had grown, its bark buckled and strained around the chain which grew ever tighter as the tree grew ever larger. I'd pry at it with my fingers, trying to get it loose, unable to. I asked my Dad to help once, but he was too busy (he probably didn't have a tool that could cut through the thick chain or the thicker lock anyway – I should have asked more people, as some of my relatives were bound to have something that could help). I remember looking at that painful metal, cutting into the tree, and feeling so hopeless and helpless. I knew it hurt. As I type now, the emotion comes rushing back to me and I'm feeling still guilty, wondering what would happen if, the next time I'm in Virginia, I go up to that property with a big chain cutter – would anyone mind? Would they think I was a crazy person? Would it matter?
Anyway, I never got the chain off. And by the time we moved, I was getting more interested in inside, teenage girl things like makeup and lacy bras and hair spray. But now, I'd like to get outside again.
It seems I probably should have been doing that the whole time anyway. But now, going outside isn't natural at all anymore. I wonder whether it's better to start slow or just dive in. I wonder how many other people feel the way I do.
Two nights ago, during the full moon, Terry and I sat across from each other, discussing what we wanted. He asked me what I'd do if I could do whatever I wanted, money, convenience, things like that were no object. I said that I'd travel until I found land that spoke to me and build an Earthship and live there, like that, learning about the plants and the land and God, in that way, and that I'd eventually want to start a family there. He didn't know much of what to think of that. Neither did I. Where did that desire come from? But it feels right, and I know that it may be the next big stop. Or, it may not. I just have to wait and see. Until then, I'll wait for my little apple seed to grow (which I planted last night) and my sunflower too (same thing), in their indoor pots using outdoor soil and getting lots of encouraging whispers from me, and I'll go out when it's warm this afternoon and do some reading. I think that's as good a start as any.
...yes, that says what you think it says...
Last night, after a long day of shopping and making decisions, I wearily reached for the dental floss, the bathroom door open behind me as Terry sat at the desk strumming his guitar.
You see, I really don't like shopping, not much at all with an exception or two, and I hadn't been doing regular shopping, I'd been doing wedding shopping, which, I'm sure you can imagine, carried more stress inducing possibility than most shopping excursions. There was a dress fitting (during which I tried on my dress, walked out into the room with the mirrors and box to stand on, and thought, oh no. I don't like it. The fact that I took a deep breath, blamed it on hormones and/or low blood sugar, remained silent and moved on is beside the point. Not liking it was a bit scary, and again, stress inducing), shoe shopping for the all-important wedding shoes (which are sitting in my closet, unconfirmed as the ones), searching for the right jewelry and a couple of gifts to mail out (you'll now who you are when something comes in your mailbox!), and halfway successfully something to eat that wouldn't make me nauseous (going uber healthy makes you basically physically unable to eat nasty food - you get sick. Good for the abs, bad for the mood) which ended up with a bottle of Kombucha sitting next to me in a car cupholder that took an HOUR to open because of unruly fizz...
Let's continue.
So I was reaching for the floss.
T was strumming his guitar, learning a new song.
-Charis! Listen!
I turned around and came a couple of steps into the room.
-Huh? (I was tired and grumpy and by God just wanted to brush my teeth, take off my makeup and crawl into bed, maybe play some Sudoku, and hit dream land)
That's when I heard it. T ran the pick across the strings then laid his fingers across, silencing the guitar hum. A moment later, I heard a hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo coming from outside.
An owl! So cool.
Then silence.
Terry plucked a string or two, then silenced the guitar. Another call.
-I think he's talking back to me!
And the owl was. This continued on for some minutes, with us getting more excited by each interchange, and wondering where the owl actually was - it had to be sitting in a tree outside one of our windows. So we shut off all the lights in the room and quietly opened the wooden blinds, trying to peer out into the sliver-mooned darkness and see our new friend.
That's when it happened.
There wasn't just one owl, now there were two! We realized this as the guitar went forgotten on the desk chair and we crowded the windows, trying to see, listening to a conversation between the owls.
-Maybe they're mating! I said. By mating I meant courting - like when you see birds chasing each other and tangling in the sky, their joy nearly tangible.
T thought I was being more literal with my words.
-Owl sex. The words came with assurance out of the darkness beside me, and after a beat or two, my knees buckled and I nearly slid to the floor consumed by silent giggles.
They were sounding more urgent, after all.
We looked at each other, eyes wide, as the calls continued, more in sequence.
About then we decided to give the frisky owls their privacy and I made my way back over to the light switch, after telling T that his last words would be the title of my blog post the next morning.
And so they were.
The end.
Yesterday, T and I made use of his birthday present! Yes, I know...his birthday isn't for another two weeks and change, but I have the present patience (only when I'm giving them) of a four year old...
"you wanna open it now?"
"...okay, what about now?..."
"just saying, it's okay with me if you open it early...."
...and on and on. Which is why the present had not sat in its box in our living room for 5 hours (after arriving via mail) before T was tearing into the tape, me eagerly waiting to see whether his face fell, lit up, or did a weird I-think-they're-not-so-great-but-Charis-is-watching-so-I-have-to-seem-excited thing.
So, after aborted hot air balloon, various trip, various stuff, and other such attempts at birthday presents, I finally settled on....
Roller Blades (duh, for both of us. It would have been really nice to give him a pair and say, here, go out, see you in a couple hours. No, got some for me too).
"Why, that's a pre-pubescent pastime" you say.
"Wasn't that a very, nineties, thing to do?" you say...
or, simply, "Roller blading is lame..."
I don't care.
I think it's fun.
When I was a little girl I had a pair of second-hand roller skates that were white with pink wheels. I wore those bad boys on the street in front of my house til my toes couldn't squeeze in any more....heck, speeding around in circles while the clouds swirled above me and a light rain cooled my flushed cheeks is among one of my very favorite childhood memories.
Anywhoo, because of T's and my love for the simplicity of just walking down by the beach, I thought this would be a nice addition, from time to time.
And, let's be honest. The sense of flying you get when you float along, a few inches off the ground, moving oh so smoothly as you're coasting from a speed burst and not putting forth any effort for that gliding you're doing right now, is lovely. And something I wanted. And, something I thought he'd love like I do.
But, I didn't take one thing into account.
T has no experience with roller blades.
So last night was spent going back and forth between M's car (he'd moved his out for space) and the weight bench in the garage, learning the basics of simply moving on those things (during which I learned that I can be a terrible teacher, mind you). He only spilled once (which still made me feel bad), didn't even scrape his hands (I would've felt really bad), and had some miraculous saves after that. Seriously, I was impressed. The boy has spectacular core strength.
We didn't exactly take them out for a spin...
Well, I did go for a couple turns in our itty bitty parking lot. Towards the end, when T's feet needed out and I was getting sleepy (yeah, yeah, it was only 8 o'clock...) I went out for one last ride around the lot and saw that, above me, the sky was my very favorite color - an azure blue fading from a light royal down at the very bottom (where the sun dissappeared), to the color of the velvet that diamonds sit on at the other end of the sky (adorned with a few diamond stars, of course).
It was breathtaking.
I thought about taking a picture but I knew that the combination of my autofocus camera, the ugly buildings flanking the piece of sky I was admiring, and my nonexistant talent for photography would make the image be a random blue blurb rather than the lovely and infinite sky that was captivating me.
So, I went inside and debladed. And went to bed. And woke up, to a Thursday. Which means (you guessed it) the weekend starts tomorrow! (makes me happy)
Happy last day of winter!
The fern trees outside my office have tiny new bright green baby leaves. All around I can see the coming of Spring - I can feel it in the warmer air (although I'll always miss Richmond's soft air in the Spring...it literally feels like feathers brushing your skin. This doesn't happen in climates where it never gets really cold...), smell it in the great big wild rose bushes I pass on my daily work walk. They infuse the whole sidewalk next to their yard with the delicious smell of living flowers - I think I could get drunk on it..., and I can hear it in the birdsong that seems renewed with a brighter tone and quicker pace.
Today's whiteboard quote is:
"True inward quietness, is not vacancy, but stability, the steadfastness of a single purpose."
~Caroline Stephen
And inside me too, there is a new quietness. It's like a germination. And what's growing in me right now are thoughts, and ideas, about something seemingly mundane (my new work), but to me it's so important and needed, even spiritual. I think things always feel like that when they speak to your soul, and this is something I've known I was meant for since I was about 10 years old.
So I'll wait for everything to mature until it's ready to be presented to the world, the same way that nature does. All is quiet, then before you can blink, the world is suddenly full of a riot of colors and other signs of life that seemingly came out of nowhere. But they didn't, they were preparing the whole time.
The first day of Spring is Friday - what will you be doing to feel it within you?
I’m sitting at The Panini Garden in Santa Monica, outside on their back patio in the 
perfectly sunny and breezy 79 degree weather. Perfect for…May. Early May. I might say August or September, but the light isn’t golden as it should be during the fall months.
Today, I’m okay with the ridiculously out-of-character November weather. I’ve never been to this place before, although every time I’m in Santa Monica and say I want to go somewhere to write T says that here would be perfect. Okay, okay, he was right. I love it. There just aren’t places like this at home. The back patio, where I’m sitting, has thin strips of linen draping from rafter to rafter, allowing enough light for it to be bright but completely taking the glare away. Tiny birds are fluttering between the gaps in the linen and in from the trees next to the fence down to the floor of the patio and back again. I didn’t even notice them until the couple next to me got up to leave and a tiny flock of them flew up. It’s an odd sensation because even with the slight breeze, you feel like you’re inside and you don't expect little birds to be everywhere. Sounds weird, I know, but it’s actually really cool. T and a friend are also here, working on a project:
It's one of my silly little mottos that you need to make it a point to know what you need in order to be your happiest
, or most productive, inspired, or least bitchy; however you wanna spin it. For instance, it didn't take me too long to realize that I need more sleep than a normal person in order to be my most pleasant and productive. I also am a morning person, and am at my best when I awaken before 7am, which, combined with my need for sleep, makes for early nights. I find that this isn't normal for my peer quarterlifers so every year or two I'll somehow forget how important it is and try to maintain my normal routines with less sleep (like, going to bed late every night and still getting up at the same time in the morning, like I've been doing for the past couple weeks) and I'm okay for nearly a month, after which it's downhill, quickly. So, I can either go to bed early, or suck. Generally and all-around, suck. I'll be less energetic, less positive, my workouts suffer of course, and I am serious when I say I lose intelligence. No kidding, I become stupid. Or stupider, maybe...? See - I need sleep right now.
So that's 1. Another one for me is that I need to be in lovely places. I don't mean necessarily my living space, which depends on a lot of factors and can't always be done, but as soon as I move to a new city one of my top priorities is finding the closest and most beautiful parks, gardens and trails, which I then need to go visit semi-regularly in order to feel whole and balanced.
I've known people before who said that needing those things made me less human - an old boyfriend and I had gigantic fall-outs when I said I couldn't always live in Florida because I needed real trees in my life. Sorry, I do...
So, back on topic, places like the one I'm sitting in, that has blooming lavender bushes lining the patio, intricate patterns inlaid in brick along the walkways and a simple fountain next to the door, not to mention the birds, are important to me. I lived in Richmond again between undergrad and grad school for about 8 months and Maymont was my savior. I miss it like I miss a person, and every time I go I feel as if I'm visiting an old friend as I walk the paths.
I'm sure that's one of the things that makes me odd, but at least I'm aware of it :) And I don't think there's a thing wrong with needing beauty in my life.
So, in closing, what are things you need? What calms your soul and makes the quiet voice of inspiration easy to hear, once your mind has settled? Maybe it's music or particular foods, or routines like exercise or visiting certain people.
Think about it, find out, then start putting some of that stuff into your schedule. Go on msn.com or any news site and you'll see how pampered our lives are compared to some in the world. We have a responsibility, at the very least, to appreciate that fact and make ourselves the most healthy beings we can, in order to contribute what we need to to the world.
Happy Friday :)
Spring has arrived and overnight there are new colors draped over the world! 
We drink our water out of mason jars now - it keeps water cool, once you do it for awhile you totally taste how oily and plasticky water from water bottles is, and there's enough space to squeeze a lime in! (hence the floaties you see above)...
Dandelions by the park bridge
Our trusty white blanket - it's been well loved, and has the grass stains to prove it...
Lots of reading and writing today.
(have I mentioned how cool copper bracelets are? They're also very good for you. Google the benefits of copper and see for yourself. We got these for $5 at the mall a monthish ago and have worn them ever since)
Today's quote:
I long to be outside. Not anywhere particular, just out, in the sun, feeling the breeze, hearing the animals, and all similar such stuff. There is a major problem here though.
The fern trees outside my office have tiny new bright green baby leaves. All around I can see the coming of Spring - I can feel it in the warmer air (although I'll always miss Richmond's soft air in the Spring...it literally feels like feathers brushing your skin. This doesn't happen in climates where it never gets really cold...), smell it in the great big wild rose bushes I pass on my daily work walk. They infuse the whole sidewalk next to their yard with the delicious smell of living flowers - I think I could get drunk on it..., and I can hear it in the birdsong that seems renewed with a brighter tone and quicker pace.
Orange Trees, #1 and #2 and #3
perfectly sunny and breezy 79 degree weather. Perfect for…May. Early May. I might say August or September, but the light isn’t golden as it should be during the fall months. 
, or most productive, inspired, or least bitchy; however you wanna spin it. For instance, it didn't take me too long to realize that I need more sleep than a normal person in order to be my most pleasant and productive. I also am a morning person, and am at my best when I awaken before 7am, which, combined with my need for sleep, makes for early nights. I find that this isn't normal for my peer quarterlifers so every year or two I'll somehow forget how important it is and try to maintain my normal routines with less sleep (like, going to bed late every night and still getting up at the same time in the morning, like I've been doing for the past couple weeks) and I'm okay for nearly a month, after which it's downhill, quickly. So, I can either go to bed early, or suck. Generally and all-around, suck. I'll be less energetic, less positive, my workouts suffer of course, and I am serious when I say I lose intelligence. No kidding, I become stupid. Or stupider, maybe...? See - I need sleep right now.
