Canned Memories

This is the trash can I had in my bedroom when I was an adolescent. I recently pulled it out of my parents' basement.


Not so pretty, eh? The other side isn't much better. It has a painting of two grandmotherly red roses. I won't be telling you how old this thing is.

My old trash can has the names and phone numbers of friends from my past - phone numbers in the days before they became so long that a person could forget who they were calling before they got to the last number.

Barbara and Ken were our next-door neighbors. They really were perfect like Barbie and Ken. I babysat for them while they went out in their sporty white convertible. I was a little young to babysit, but I had my mom next door if I needed her. I got paid 35 cents an hour.

Notice in the bottom right-hand corner: the Beach Boys' address. Why the Beach Boys? They were certainly not my favorite group - or even in my top ten favorites. Sometimes there's no explaining a pre-pubescent...

See Leslie's phone number? She was my best friend in late grade school/early junior high. She had some kind of problem where she had to wear a full body brace all of her life. She died right after I turned 14, not long after I moved to Colorado. I didn't know that when I said goodbye before moving that it would really be THE last time. Forever.

Now that I think about it, after moving away, I never saw any of the other people whose names are on my pink, metal can, either. Many deaths.

Wow! I just googled the numbers and found that some of them still belong to the same families! After... a humongous amount of years!

Now that I know that valuable piece of information, I think that I should paint this can a color that complements my office and recycle the past.


"I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there's some kind of change." Bob Dylan

"The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past. The only thing we really have is nowness, is now." - Soygal Rinpoche

Legend #2

This is the second legend from the Ode article, "Legends of the Desert".
Click here to see the first one.

A man knocked at his friend's door to ask him a favor: "I want you to lend me 4,000 dinars because I have a debt to pay. Can you do that for me?"

The friend asked his wife to gather together everything they had of value, but even so it was not enough. They had to go out and borrow money from the neighbors until they managed to get the full amount. When the man left, the woman noticed her husband was crying. "Why are you sad? Now that we've got ourselves in debt with our neighbors, are you afraid we won't be able to repay them?" she asked gently.

"Nothing of the sort," he said, "I'm crying because he is someone I like so much, but even so I had no idea he was in need. I only remembered him when he had to knock on my door to ask me for a loan."

Legends of the Desert

In the recent issue of Ode magazine, Paulo Coelho shares three tales about "generosity of spirit" that Yasser Hareb, Vice-President for Culture of the Untied Arab Emirates, told him. Here is one of those stories:

Two men were crossing the desert when they saw a Bedouin's tent and asked for shelter. Even though he did not know them, the Bedouin welcomed them in the way that the conduct of nomads dictates: a camel was killed and its meat served at a sumptuous dinner.

The next day, as the guests were still there, the Bedouin had another camel killed. Astonished, they protested they had not yet finished eating the one killed the day before. "It would be a disgrace to serve old meat to my guests" was the answer.

On the third day, the two strangers woke early and decided to continue on their journey. As the Bedouin was not at home, they gave his wife 100 dinars, apologizing for not being able to wait; if they spent any more time there, they explained, the sun would become too strong for them to travel.

They had traveled for four hours when they heard a voice calling to them. They looked back and saw the Bedouin following along behind. As soon as he caught up, he threw the money to the ground before them. "I gave you such a warm welcome. Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?"

In surprise, the strangers said the camels were surely worth far more, but the travelers did not have much money.

"I am not talking about the amount," said their host. "The desert welcomes Bedouins wherever they go, and never asks anything in return. If we had to pay, how could we live? Welcoming you to my tent is like paying back a fraction of what life has given us."

Why Wait? Let's Celebrate Today!

On my other blog I once wrote about Terry Tempest Williams' latest book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World. I am a big fan of TTW's. I love her books and the work she does in the world. After I wrote about Finding Beauty in a Broken World, I was contacted by TTW's publisher who asked if I would like to speak with Terry for my blog. Would I??? But it never happened. I don't know why, other than the fact that I am not a big-shot blogger. The three people that read my blog would not create a huge spike in book sales for TTW. I don't think of TTW as an opportunist, but publishers must be in order to survive as publishers. I don't feel the least bit sad about the fact that I didn't get to talk with MY FAVORITE AUTHOR. Just being asked was quite the gift.

BUT guess who I am going to see at the Botanic Gardens this summer! MY FAVORITE AUTHOR! She can't avoid me THAT easily! The Gardens just came out with their speaker schedule and we have already bought the tickets for TTW! Yippppeeee!

Another thing that I am looking forward to this summer (Insha'allah):

I kept hearing that Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton were going to be doing a concert here on June 21st. Well... considering that I've never seen Eric Clapton and considering that June 21st is my birthday and considering that we saw Steve Winwood a couple of years ago and it was a great concert, I STRONGLY hinted that this concert experience was meant for me. But Mr. Carol For Peace thought the money would be better spent on a get-away. I didn't agree, but just decided to let it all go. When I went to bed Saturday night, a piece of paper poked itself out from under my pillow - a print-out of the seating at the concert venue with arrows pointing to OUR SEATS!

Oh! I feel like it's already my birthday! The gifts have already been received.

Gifts are fun, spending time with someone special is wonderful. And the thoughts behind those things are priceless.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest And No One is There

We have had MONSTER winds! The trees have been having nightmares. We have to hold on to heavy things or we'll blow to Kansas.

Today we did a little hike at our most usual place - looking for this year's owl nest. At two points along the way, trees were down across the path, thanks to the mighty winds. That is why I don't like hiking on windy days. You never know when a grandfatherly tree might kick the bucket right on top of you!

(Sorry for the poor quality. I took this with my cellphone and this is the best I could do.)

My closest call came a few years ago when I was hiking on a windy day and a pine fell across the path not long after a friend and I passed it.

Funny that I don't put too much thought into getting into an accident while driving, but I stress about a random tree hammering me into the earth. That seems a little backwards when I consider the statistics. And the fact that if I had a choice, I'd choose to be one with the earth over being intimate with a hunk of metal.

Oh, and we may have found a nest. The problem is that it is very, very high, so we can't see into it. We could tell that owls are either living there or using the nest as a vacation spot, because at the base of the tree, below the nest... well, there was some fascinating owl poop!

Brave Enough to Fail

John Bramblitt lost his eyesight in 2001 and he says, "It wasn’t until I lost my sight that I became brave enough to fail."

Mr. Bramblitt has been painting without the ability to see what he paints. You can see his work here and read about him here.

I am almost afraid to ask the question, "What would it take for me to be brave enough to fail?"

Something to think about...

Plans

Yesterday I found organic spinach and swiss chard seeds. I bought lots.

Today I found many, many more types of organic seeds in the local health food store. I bought even more.

Bush beans (in honor of our recently de-throned prez), peas, lettuce, kale, chamomile, arugula...

On this cool February day, there is no guarantee that I will be here to plant those seeds when it is time. I have nothing to assure me that the necessary growing conditions for a healthy garden will occur this spring and summer.

Still, we buy seeds, we make plans, we say goodbye like there is always a tomorrow.

I like what the Muslims say, "Insha' allah" - God willing. I will plant my seeds this spring, insha'allah. And I will follow through on my commitment to others, but I will only be doing it if it fits with The Plan that is larger than my own.

I'm not saying that I necessarily believe in a "divine plan" or that I do or don't believe in free will. I truly don't know how this whole things works. All I know is that I planned to go to work two weeks ago, but my body had other plans, and a woman on the plane that recently crashed in Buffalo planned to dance with her nephew, but instead, she left this earth.

Just looking at these seeds, I feel a lot of joy. Thinking of how much fun it is to see them pop up through the ground, visualizing the beauty of the plants, and salivating at the thought of the freshly picked vegetables, I've got all of the happiness that I need right now. Everything else that may come along will be gravy, er, vegetables.



Insha' allah, in a few months, I'll be looking at plants instead of seed packets. For now, this will have to do.

To All, With Love

- From the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in San Francisco

Maybe today the whole world can be our valentine and we will recognize that to love another says nothing about their lovability and everything about the openness of our own heart.

To Infinity and Beyond!

I hadn't seen her for... two years? Three? We never call. We RARELY email. But, for some reason, a couple of weeks ago, we set up a time for me to go to her house for tea. Being with her is as comfortable as the big, soft sofa that I plopped myself into at her house. Effortless. Soothing. Familiar. Real. Free.

Then, today, in the mail, I got these from her:


Now, how fun is THAT??? Valentines and fruity teas. (I drank the Blueberry right away, because it's a blueberry kind of day.)

And I quickly regressed back to grade school and memories of white paper bags with red construction paper hearts. The valentines my classmates would deliver. And candy hearts with weird sayings on them. I like the pinks and yellows best. The greens... not so much.

Love you, Diane. You rule! Be my icon(???) Be Good. So Fine.

The Wind Beneath My Cells

The wind today!

Whew!

The trees were having violent dreams!

Or lots of excitement!

Or wild, uninhibited sex that would leave the best of us exhausted, yet smiling all over!

I sat in the doctor's office on the second floor of an old 1960s office building, waiting for the physician's assistant to tell me that I'm getting better (yes, I paid them $25, on top of the insurance company's payment, in order to obtain that valuable piece of information) and I watched a pine tree rocking and rolling outside the window. I've never seen the trunk of a pine tree move that much. It made me a little dizzy.

In a book I recently read, the author spoke about visiting that Biosphere dome thing in Arizona and seeing little spindly trees tied to the ceiling with string or something. When she asked what that was about, she was told that, since there is no wind in there, the trees don't get strong trunks. They need the resistance of wind in order to strengthen.

Well, we here in Colorado must have some pretty strong tree trunks, because they are surely given some heavy dumbbells to work with in the winds that we've been getting!

What is it about the wind that makes it so that I can't seem to separate myself from it? Sitting in a perfectly still room with only the sounds of the banging and yelling of the winds pounding at the walls and windows, my body gets all jaggledy. It's like the wind is the moon and its pull affects the waters of my cells. Wind is high tide for cells.

Wind gives my cells violent dreams, lots of excitement and wild sex.