Yes, I know, I\’m missing C, D, and E. I\’ll catch up, I promise. My day job had someone quit last week and it\’s been a zoo; her replacement comes on the 14th, thank dog.
But on to the most important part of this post – FROGS!
F Is For… Frogs!
Frogs are an indicator species. When they\’re present, it\’s a sign of the health of a particular ecosystem, and in particular, of its water quality. Every spring around our homestead comes the singing of the frogs, one of my favorite sounds. They have a frog nursery in a seasonal pond in front of a neighbor\’s horse ranch, too; we love to go count tadpoles and watch them grow. It\’s still a bit cold yet for that, but I have pics from last year.
AND, stay tuned, because Himself (The Noble Husband Man) has given me footage from our trailcam! I\’ll have deer, and bears, and raccoons… oh my!
I\’m glad it\’s the new year. It\’s an election year here in the States, finally, and I am optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back on the right track. It\’s funny, though; many years I feel called to set intentions or resolutions and I\’ve felt none of that this year. I\’m more interested in taking it easy and working on my mindfulness practice, which ultimately seems to be helping me with productivity. I feel like that\’s logically backwards but I\’m also superstitious enough to not want to mess with it if it\’s working.
Writing
This is still like pulling teeth. I trust that fallow periods are necessary, and things are starting to crack loose slowly, but man. Slow sucks. 🙂
I\’m working on drafting Ambush, and playing with a couple other things. One involves crow shifters and that\’s got both Rachel and I excited. I\’ve been messing around a little with poetry and memoir, and those are satisfying. I\’m re-reading Deena Metzger\’s Writing For Your Life, and it\’s been a good thing to revisit the silence of my own mind and thoughts. I like her ideas about writing and life, self expression, and psychology.
Community
One of the local writing organizations here has put out a call for Writer In Residence and I\’ve decided to apply. I think it sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to give back to the writing community while having a more structured place and time to specifically write.
This weekend, we have our first Soulwoman Circles of the Salish Sea event and I\’m excited. The SoulArt Pocket Vision Journal session still has spaces open and we\’d love to see you there on Saturday, January 18th. More info is on the link.
We\’re overhauling the Writer Zen Garden website and have a new forum and chat function available, which I\’m stoked about because I want to move off of Facebook. I don\’t like their practices or interference in our elections here in the States, and want to have an alternative for our members when we offer workshops and other events.
Day Job
I think working writers don\’t talk enough about working and writing, and it leads to the persistent myth that a) writers can easily make a full-time living by writing and that b) if one isn\’t doing so, one\’s writing isn\’t successful. Most of my colleagues who write full time have spouses who support them and pay the mortgage and other bills. It\’s rare that a writer can make a full time living. The Author\’s Guild just did their annual earnings survey and earnings have sharply fallen due to the consolidation of publishers, rise of independent publishing, and many other factors.
I work a day job in the insurance industry and have found it useful from several standpoints, one of the most important is that it grounds me on the left side of my brain. I can go to work and when I leave, I can leave my work at the office and not drag it home with me. That allows me to focus, without pressure, on my writing and other creative pursuits, knowing my bills are taken care of. I like to write in the mornings before work, and I used to write extensively during my commute on transit. I no longer commute that way and am trying to figure out where to fit that writing time in my current daily round.
Art
I\’m knitting like a fiend. I\’ve got a blanket going as well as two sweaters and a shawl. I find that deeply satisfying and meditative.
What about you, Dear Reader? What do you like to do to fill your creative well? What\’s new in your world? Tell me in the comments; I\’d love to know.
My \”Walking in the World\” feature is meant to be metaphorical, in terms of a \”flora and fauna\” report, as author Julia Cameron terms it, and not literally as a report about walking.
Not today, Dear Reader. Not today.
In the late 80\’s, I injured my knee catastrophically while downhill skiing. I was a racer, but on that sunny Saturday, I sat down to wait for a friend to join me on the main face of the mountain. When she skied up, I stood up. My knee dislocated for the twelfth and, though I didn\’t know it then, final time.
My parents, unhappy with the idea of a jock daughter, failed to have it properly looked at. I was given an immobility brace for three weeks and no x-rays, and that was it. By the time I saw a surgeon fifteen years later, the damage was done. He seemed stunned when he walked in the room with my radiographs. I had a small bone broken off and floating under the patella, a meniscal tear, and my patella itself was off by 16 degrees. I had no cartilage left on either sides of the knee: advanced osteoarthritis.
I was thirty-three.
The surgery was a success, by all accounts, and they were able to go in arthroscopically and not have to cut the knee open. (Uh, good…?) I had six months of physical therapy and thought that was it. I was done. The PT place didn\’t give me any exercises to continue and I was released back to my normal workout routine.
About three years later, my husband and I decided to go on an Outward Bound Dogsledding trip for nine days in the Boundary Waters, that zone between the U.S. and Canada at the top of Minnesota and the middle of nowhere.
My doctor stared at the sheet of paper that I needed her to sign: \”Medical Release Form.\” All students of Outward Bound over the age of twenty-five are required to get one signed by a doctor.
\”So, tell me about this knee of yours.\”
Shit.
In the end, she did sign the form, but under protest. She insisted the only way she would do it is if I went to Rehabilitation Institute in Chicago to see an orthopedic specialist there. If you\’re not familiar with pro sports, this is one of the places in the country they send, for example, injured NFL players in an effort to prevent them being taken completely out of the sport, or car accident victims who might never walk again.
And, apparently, me.
Six months it took me. My physical therapist was a specialist too, with a PhD. She and my doctor consulted, and they consulted with my primary physician. I didn\’t need further surgery, they said. I asked if I could jog, ever again.
\”Maybe,\” the orthopod hedged.
\”Maybe depending on what, maybe?\”
\”If you do everything I tell you to do.\” He shrugged and pulled up his pant leg, revealing a surgery scar by his knee that was bigger than my three small dots. Small, but not invisible. \”I jog.\” He let his pants down. \”But it took me a lot of work.\”
Okey dokey.
That weekend, I went to the zoo with my family. We walked all over. I wore some cute new shoes I\’d gotten at a discount chain store in my neighborhood, the kind that regularly holds \”BOGO\” specials (\”Buy One, Get One).
The poor quality of the shoe didn\’t even occur to me, until the next day when my knee swelled up to the size of a Chicago softball.
When I went to RIC that week for my appointment, my physical therapist was horrified. \”What did you do?\”
\”I went to the zoo,\” I said, and burst into tears.
When I got home, I threw out every single pair of shoes that I owned, except for the pair of athletic New Balance that the specialized shoe store gave me on doctor\’s orders, (the doc even gave me a special piece of paper to take with me so they\’d know what kind of shoes to give me), the one pair of office-quality shoes, and a pair of loafer-like black flats – also from the same store.
Okay, I kept the two pairs of four-inch heels, one a gorgeous, unusual emerald green leather, and the other ruby like the Ruby Slippers.
I couldn\’t bear to throw them out for another ten months, even though I didn\’t wear them ever again.
Okay, that\’s not true. I tried wearing them at work one day. One day. And I had to take them off by 11:30.
Today, I can walk. A lot. I can do three miles in an hour, and if I\’m gentle, I can do all day at the zoo. I can actually jog to catch a bus, as long as it\’s not more than a half-block or so. I can do squats, and just yesterday with my new physical trainer, I sat down with my weight on only one leg, while holding the other leg in the air. I didn\’t think I could do it, and I had to \”spot\” my injured leg, but it worked, God damn it. Three sets of five.
Walking in this world isn\’t just metaphor. We\’re physical beings. It\’s easy to forget that, when we\’re on the computer and sucked into the echo chamber. But if you\’re not going to the gym on a regular basis, give it a shot. Even if all you do is walk, it\’s enough.
It’s easy to think that our neighborhood is ordinary. After all, we live there and see it every day. We forget that what is ordinary for us, may be exotic for others.
I’ll give you an example. I have a friend who lives in Melbourne, Australia, about as far from me, here in Chicago, Illinois, USA, as it’s possible to get. I was telling her about riding the CTA, which stands for “Chicago Transit Authority” and generally refers to the elevated light-rail commuter trains, though it can also mean buses. She told me about a “roo,” or kangaroo, in her front yard. They couldn’t leave the house until the police came to remove the animal, since she had a baby with her and would become violent if approached.
Now I don’t know about you, but a kangaroo in my front yard would be quite something, must less a mamma with a baby. And the idea that this “cute” animal might hurt me is alien in the extreme – though, if you think about it, those feet and powerful legs probably do pack a wallop.
When I got to thinking about it some more, the world I live in here in Chicago is very different from where I went to high school. I lived on a seven acre horse ranch in the middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Our ranch backed up to a larger cattle rancher’s place, and behind that, it was all Plumas Sierra National Forest. For miles. And miles. When it was dark there, you could see the stars. In Chicago, it doesn’t get dark. It’s an amber glow from the street lights – in fact, you can tell the boundary between Chicago and neighboring suburbs by the color of the streetlights.
What about you, Dear Reader? What’s unique about where you live, but that just seems ordinary?
The snow has started. They\’re predicting gusts up to 50 mph and 4 to 10 inches of snow, but most of what will be to the south of us if the weather reports are to be trusted. It\’s started to snow now, which you can\’t really tell in the foreground but that hazy bit down the alley shows it better. The alley isn\’t usually this strewn with trash, but the wind has been hellish the last few days and blows all sorts of crap everywhere. It\’s got to drive property owners nuts, because no sooner do you clean it, than it\’s littered again. Grr.
Weather is strange. It\’s one of those things we can\’t change, but we like to bitch about it just the same. \”It\’s snowing!\” It\’s February. In Chicago. \”It\’s cold today!\” It\’s Winter. In Chicago. I\’d be more worried if those two things weren\’t happening at this time of year in this town. No, this isn\’t a rant about global warming, though that is a rant that needs to be had and a problem that faces all of us who live on planet Earth, but my point about the weather is that it is out of our control. If ever there was an answer to \”Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,\” weather\’s it.
So I take pictures of it. I like weather, by and large, because it reminds me I\’m a physical body, not just keyboard operating fingers attached to a brain, and I have to wear clothes and make sure that I\’m fed and have emergency supplies if we get snowed in. (And, while I\’m on that subject, how come I never get snowed in? I want a snow day, damn it!)
What about you, Dear Reader? What are your favorite weather coping strategies?
Julia Cameron talks about a lovely idea in her book, The Artist\’s Way, about \”flora and fauna reports\” that she would get as letters from her grandmother. They were remarkable for two reasons: first, they came so frequently and for such a long duration; second, because they were so in-the-moment as to be Zen koans.
Today, I needed that idea. The alarm went off at 0500 and I did not want to get out of bed. For one thing, it was, well, 0500. Duh. For another, the weather has turned nasty, which in an of itself isn\’t a surprise because it\’s Winter. In Chicago. For another thing, I didn\’t get up early yesterday because I needed the sleep. My body\’s probably fighting off the cold that my coworker brought to the office. But really, it\’s because getting up takes escape velocity.
I\’ve said it before: big goals don\’t work. We set them and then get stuck trying to be perfect, trip, fall, and stay down. This only makes us feel worse about ourselves and our big goal – which, after all, was meant to make us feel better about ourselves, not worse. This time of year, I see a lot of setting of resolutions, goals big and small, and I feel the competitive push to join in the dash toward personal betterment.
But this I\’ve learned: novels aren\’t written overnight. Morning pages keep me sane. And now, I\’m endeavoring to make \”going to the gym\” as regular as morning pages are – which means, daily. Just go. Show up at the page. Show up at the gym. Don\’t have expectations about outcome. Focus on the journey. Turn off the inflow if the inflow doesn\’t help you get onto the page, to the gym, or whatever your target is. Be a friend of your future self. Stephen Covey said, \”Exercise integrity in the moment of choice.\” So, for today, I got up at 0500. I went to the gym. I will write my morning pages.
For today\’s Walking In This World, I leave you with my favorite Zen Koan:
Chao Chu fell down in the snow and yelled, \”Help me up! Help me up!
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Evening Snow at Kanbara, Edo period (1615–1868), 1834 Ando Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858) Woodblock print; ink and color on paper; 8 7/8 x 13 3/4 in. (22.5 x 34.9 cm) The Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1936 (JP2492)
Julia Cameron\’s second book in her Artist\’s Way trilogy is entitled Walking In This World. For many years, I mis-read this title as Walking In The World, and the difference is notable. \”The\” world is inspecific, whereas \”This\” world is particular. By focusing on this reality, this moment, we focus on the now. It is in the now that our power resides, where we access our own inner strength and wisdom.
Cameron uses images in her work of Japanese woodblock prints. These are fascinating pieces of art, because they\’re carved into wood in a negative image and then stamped onto paper as a positive image, colored from there. I found the image, above, while doing an internet search, but am most familiar with the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have a large collection of works by Hokusai, who is one of the more commonly known woodblock artists.
Katsushika Hokusai Japanese, 1760-1849 Dawn at Isawa in Kai Province (Koshu Isawa no akatsuki), from the series \”Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)\”, c. 1830/33
Not all of their collection is on display, such as this image, but you can page through their website and view an extensive archive of material. Hokusai focused on images found in nature, particularly mountains and especially Mount Fuji. He also has some haunting images of ghosts from Japanese folklore.
One of the most obvious ways to ground is to work IN the ground, by gardening. What I\’ve discovered about gardening is that weeding is like laundry – it never ends. As you keep working in your garden, the weeds keep growing.
The best part about gardening is the results of the growth. I love seeing tomatoes turn red, and peppers finish growing. We have chard that is getting huge and beautiful. It\’s almost a shame to eat, since they\’re so pretty. My lilies are opening and my curry plants have lots of yellow seeds that scent the air.
Weeds remind me that daily maintenance yields positive results and that there is serenity in the everyday.
Today, as I prepare for our barbecue, I am reminded of the people in my life. My friends bring me so much, not the least of which is the process of drawing myself out of myself and into this world, this physical, concrete place in which I live. I am grateful to my friends for so many things, but this perhaps is one of the most important.
The 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month are the Prompt Group meetings for the Evanston Writers Workshop. It\’s funny, but I find that on prompt days, I don\’t usually do my morning pages in the morning. Today is no exception; I wrote this morning instead of doing the pages (by that, I mean I worked on a WIP and not my journal). I think that says less about the pages or Prompt Group than it does about me and my feelings around having lots or too much to do, but there you go.
What do you do on your lunch break? Do you take a break at lunch? I learned many years ago that for my own sanity, I have to have a break in the middle of the day. Today I took care of some housekeeping tasks and then went outside to knit for a half hour. Having to deal with the odd man babbling loudly on the sidewalk, while annoying, kept me in the moment. What was he doing? Why was he babbling? Did he know I sat on the park bench above him? Did he know the stairs led around a switchback and he\’d be practically in my lap? Was I safe? Was I being judgmental?
I find those kinds of monkey-mind questions happen more on days when I skip my morning pages than on days I do them. That\’s not to say I float through my morning page days all serene, like a yogi; I\’m just more aware of them when I don\’t put them on the page. It\’s as though my thoughts, expecting to have been put down on paper, are waiting for the attention I normally give to them. Meanwhile, I knit. I got a row done on a shawl I\’m designing.
There\’s some kind of universal lesson there, I think.
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I\’m glad it\’s the new year. It\’s an election year here in the States, finally, and I am optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back on the right track. It\’s funny, though; many years I feel called to set intentions or resolutions and I\’ve felt none of that this year. I\’m more interested in taking it easy and working on my mindfulness practice, which ultimately seems to be helping me with productivity. I feel like that\’s logically backwards but I\’m also superstitious enough to not want to mess with it if it\’s working.![\"IMAG0469\"](\"https://acatherinenoon.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/IMAG0469.jpg\")
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