Ramblings of A Lost Mind

2011-10-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

THE GAMBLE

This man, John Lyons, was the guest speaker during the church sermon on Sunday at the church we've been going to since January, Grace Fellowship United Methodist. Most of the sermon revolved around this "Two Roads" talk that he has done hundreds of times, but was new to us. I couldn't find any videos on that, but really, it was this last part that got us thinking.
As we drove away, we were headed towards his parents house to pick up my oldest son, and whom we spoke of during the drive. Along our walk that evening, we drew more parallels: parallels between this "Gamble" Lynch speaks of God making with people, and the relationships we have with the people around us, primarily my son.
My son is a great, wonderful, imaginative child. He is also a challenge to deal with. Both my sons are, really, and bless the heart of this man who has chosen to be with me, regardless, and help me raise them, despite the fact that they are not of his flesh. Sometimes, the pressure is a lot for this man to handle. He wonders what he has to do to get through to him, to them, to get them to understand and finally get the discipline and wisdom he is trying to impart to them.
We've struggled with it a little bit, how best to approach these boys. We came to the conclusion at some point that we are both trying to "right the wrongs of our youth", but they are both opposite ends of the spectrum. His parents didn't punish or guide enough, so he wants to push them harder; mine I saw as too demanding and critical, without softness and light encouragement. So I try to love them with freedom and he tries to rein them in with restrictions. It is amazing actually that we never argue, especially not in front of them.
This sermon, though, gave us some new insights on how we could use God's love for us as an example of how to deal with these children. I guess I am more a New Testament parent, and he is more the Old Testament type, and we can throw that back at our parents and see how they were the opposite as we see ourselves, but the real question is: in view of this New Testament Gamble, does it change our approach to parenting? Should we offer love and grace without significant consequences?
Things to ponder over the next few months....

2011-08-04T18:41:00.000-07:00

DISPARITY

Watch this:
http://vimeo.com/7070167

Then read this:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/entertainment/08/02/11/jennifer-lopez-american-idol-judging-deal-done

Welcome to my Wednesday morning. The juxtaposition makes Hollywood seem like an evil place to me. How much of her reputed $150M self worth does she give to charitable causes?

2011-08-04T18:35:00.001-07:00

2011-08-01T18:14:00.001-07:00

POINTS OF CONNECTION

I've drifted off the map a little bit over here. Been busy doing a whole lot of nothing, nothing more than rearranging. I've been out walking, running, working, dreaming, studying, planning, and sometimes just drifting. Mostly at night.
I never thought I was really one for the pool. I must have liked pools somewhat growing up, considering we were typically found at one in the suburban summertime. All the kids on the family it seemed did time on the neighborhood swim team, but my time seemed to last the longest. Looking back on it, I am not sure why, because it's not like pools appeal to me that much. Especially as I have gotten older, and bathing suits have become less kind to me, and especially when it seems like it always someone else's idea. Usually my kids are the ones dragging me out there, and I go because they want to, meanwhile thinking of all the other things I could be doing, like catching up on my reading or housework, etc.
So I expected that when my kids left with their dad this summer for an extended vacation, I wouldn't be in the pool much. Having a pool in the backyard is a novelty for all of us, but I felt a bit Shania when I saw it for the first time - "that don't impress me much". I didn't think I would find myself in there without someone dragging me to it.
Lately, though, I am have once again realized I had a false idea of things. I have found myself in the pool at least five times more a week than I expected, and it feels really nice to be in there by myself. It feels good to be in there with my love, as well, but sometimes he is a distraction to the best part of pools, I think - the silence that surrounds you underwater. A lot of nights have found me floating under a tableau of silky clouds and stars, alone and unprompted.
When I am out there, I hear nothing but my own thoughts, maybe the gentle sloshing of water. I find it so liberating to lay there without any effort at all....to have the weight of the water and the bouyancy of my chest hold me up. I used to think keeping my toes above water was the trick to floating, but now I see it is only the pulse points of my wrist that need to be exposed to the sky to be able to lay effortless without losing the surface of the water along my sides or my face.
I lay spread-eagled, completely surrendering to nature's glory. The stars seem so far away and mysterious, the clouds so soft and so fast, of delicate design, and the trees bend and dance in the wind. Birds fly from house to fence to power lines, swift moving masters of the air. If we humans control this earth, no one has told the birds yet. I can't help feeling insignificant and small, the way I feel standing before the mountains. "You can ask the mountain," Antje Duvekot sings in Long Way, "but the mountain doesn't care".
The mountains, the stars, the sky, even the birds...been here longer than us, and might outlast us all, if we don't kill them all first.
These are the kind of thoughts I have out there in my very own water-bed, and these thoughts are all connected to other thoughts, thoughts stringing up like leaves on a vine, connected but yet individual.
I think of the water and the earth and the sky and their ever stretching life spans, and I think about what we have done to them. Chemical plants leaking into bays and killing life and the lifestyles that life supported. Oil spills in the Yellowstone River. Strip mining. DDT. Agent Orange. Monsanto. BP. How can individuals even come close to standing against corporate power and pollution, how insignificant is one man up against money and greed and powerful environmental dangers. Fuel dependency, carbon emissions, water shortages. The fate of humanity, the fate of the mountain that doesn't care, the fate of the ocean and even the stars - will they still twinkle if there is no one there to see them?
I think about people. People I love, people who annoy me, people who have come and gone in my life, people I want to see more of and people I am not sure I want to see again. People of my past, people of his past, people of my children's past and future and present. Everywhere in my thoughts, these people appear, and sometimes I push them down because I am not sure I want to think about people, but somehow we can't get away from them. Everywhere and in every thought, there are people. To care about the earth is to care about people, even if people don't always care about the earth.
Thinking about other people is really always as much of a puzzle as say, man's purpose and the fate of this planet. We are more connected that we have ever been before, but we have yet to use this connection to really deepen our understanding of our mutual human condition, at least not in the way I see it. You can Google anyone, or stalk them on Facebook, but it is an ineffectual means of gaining true understanding.
In this documentary we watched recently, Google Me!, this man googled himself and then met several people across the world that shared his last name. We watched most of the movie, then stopped for dinner and discussed the various people, but they seemed so unconnected and dissimiliar. And that is part of what makes life so rich, really - the variety and intensity of individualism. Yet, when we watched the last part after eating, I realized it was the best part - where all these distinct individuals with little in common got together in the same place and had a mutual experience that deepened their understanding of self, others, and maybe the meaning of relationships and family. In that sense, Google, the internet, technology, may be a means for us to advance in some cohesive fashion that allows us to effect positive change on the world.
The movie reminded me of that sense, the sense of disconnection and scattered thoughts, but all streaming down the same mind vine. It reminded me of that sense of floating, arms lifted upward, in silent supplication with the universe, and the sensation that I was like a puppet strung from the sky, connected to the greater dimension and yet tied to this human existence that we all have in common, in which the search for the meaning is still our common destination.

2011-05-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

OBJECTS D' HEART

"They are just things," he has said to me, "I don't know why you get so upset about them." I know that, on the surface, but its the deeper meaning of the objects he doesn't seem to get, or wants me not to look at, when he uses that argument with me.
I'm doing better with the things around me, or maybe they have just been disappearing more and being replaced with my things, or our things, so the past is less likely to bother me now. Maybe lately I have just been thinking of other things.
There is this person I know. She has been struggling with some inner demon. It is easy to look in from the outside and say, gee, that is really messed up, but none of us really know what it is like on the inside. She sees things the rest of us do not see.
Lately, she had a freak out about something that seems so minor, really. It was nothing more than an object, basically wood and string put together in ways that veil us from the rest of the world.. That, though, combined with some other triggers, set wheels in motion in her mind that led to a confrontation between her and her husband, with one of my best friends, between my friend and I perhaps, everyone jumping at the sound of her gun.
I decided this time I was going to hold my ground, I was not going to be sympathetic about the pink elephants that danced around her mind. It is easy to be selfish, and want to draw lines between friends and family. In the end, though, I struck a different tone. Maybe I wanted to see if she would admit to me what she had done, and for me to set her straight in her mind with gentle persuasion instead of anger. I still did not understand or agree with her point of view, but I could see the hurt she was covering up inside over this exterior of toughness and I wondered....if you want to remove this thorn in her side, you have to start at the source.
Even though we didn't support her position, we did support the removal of the plank from her eye, and so, the one from her house. To that end, this morning we stopped by to pick this object up, this simple thing that had triggered this most recent flare up. Curtain rod and valence now sit in our garage, waiting to be returned to their rightful owner.
About a half hour later, we were on our way to meet up with another couple to pick up some other objects. These particular objects had held sway over my man's heart for a long time. These objects, basically wood and string put together, help connect us to the rest of the world. His uncle, his father, they used bows to bring down game to eat, and then passed down this ability to a young boy who was impressed by this, and he learned it so well that he set several records in competition. It was a huge part of his youth. The whole family was involved for some time, and later just himself, and now all the memories of archery are also connected with the memories of family, and of this uncle who passed away just a couple of years ago.
I remember my man talking about his connection to these objects, but I was not expecting his reaction to them, especially to the one his uncle had let him use during his youth. I had never seen him react to something so strongly, and I realized in that moment something special had happened, some kind of transcendence I had been waiting to happen for him.
Also, it made me think about things. About the places certain objects belong in our hearts, about how sometimes taking them away, and sometimes bringing them back, helps change our emotional landscape and the way we think about...well...things.
Somewhere behind these thoughts, I am sure, you could play another object of wood and string, a scratchy violin tune that pulls our heartstrings and makes us feel something...undefined...something kind of sad, kind of nostalgic, kind of yearning and missing and hoping for things to change and fade and yet always remain alive in our memory.

2011-04-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN

We come into this world naked. As babes in the garden, new in the world, we walk without clothes with our father by our side. He's with us in this world, when we are young and before we have any shame. Then we awaken, sharp with knowledge, and begin hiding ourselves from Him and from each other. And so it is in the story between man and woman, "the cage that's been handed down the line" as Springsteen says.
Fourteen months in and we have our first fight. Or quasi-fight, anyways, really it was just kind of sudden sharp annoyance on my part. A shopping adventure with the children gone awry, I was tense, he said something and I bit his head off. A few minutes later, I was sweeping up a mess the dog made in our absence, another stress, and he came into the kitchen. I didn't want to feel the distance between us, so I apologized and gave him a hug. His body stiffened, and he tried to explain his point of view to me, but I stood firm on mine, and there I was with the sharp words again. No resolution, and I walked the dustpan out to the garage, dump it, then stand there for a few moments in the driveway, sad, watching the young boys and girls play in the yard across the street.
The girl across the street is coming into sexual maturity, and the boys are flocking around. J swears she is having sex with at least one of them, but I disagree. I think she is awfully young, and he reminds me of how early innocence is lost. But I think she is sweet and I want her to stay a babe forever, close to her family, walk next to her father without any guilt in her heart. Tonight they are playing Duck Duck Goose, a childrens game, but when it is the boys turn to be chased, they taunt back with some slang words that make me wonder if J was right.
I don't really know who was right or wrong tonight, you could make a case for either side, but after that, we walked carefully and quietly around each other. "Walk softly and carry a big stick" - what President said that? I was busy, he was busy, we were doing our own things. I laid in the bed and waited with a book for him to come to me at the end of the day, only to find him slipping into the covers and off to sleep with nary a word. Not even our customary...goodnight...love you...arm out to the side...a space next to his heart for my head to lay...touching each other...limb to limb.
I watched him fall asleep for a while and then begin snoring. I had been comfortable, but now I am somewhat frustrated and can't imagine sleeping. I go out into the dark night, one, two, three dogs walked in circles around the neighborhood, at first hot and fast, telling my side angrily to the dark night in my mind. Then I stop feeling justified and hard and start softening, feeling sorry, longing to be close again. By the third walk, I have worked towards forgiveness and lightness of being again, and shower and then lay down next to him.
He is naked upon the sheets, and my gaze takes in all of him, the wonderfulness of his skin and thigh and bone. I am all adoring of him still, so long into this and the sight of him fills me with such rapture. Usually his arm would be flung around me; it is wrapped around a pillow instead and I can't get close, I have no arm to hold me, no shoulder to stroke. I long for his touch, a sign he still loves me, even when I fail, even when I am not perfect or sweet or fun to be around.
All night it seems I watch him. I hardly sleep, in tune with his movements, waiting for a chance to get close, to amend the seperation between us. The chance does not come until very early in the morning, when his alarm goes off for us to get started on our busy day. He wakes, and I tell him how I missed him so, how I was sad and sorry, how I longed to be close to him last night, the things I wished we would have said last night. He doesn't say much in response, just holds me in his arms for longer than I expect, stroking my side in affection and comfort.
Later in the day, we are driving, and I tell him about my walk last night. The stars were twinkling in the dark blue sky, Orion the hunter and his arrow pointing the way, a breeze flowing through the spring air, and people restless in the night. It was late on a Friday night for action in this sleepy working class neighborhood, but there were men outside cleaning off their grills, sitting in chairs with a beer, or standing near their cars with cigarettes or cell phones, each one flickering a glance over my chest before turning their eye, making me wonder if men were really all we thought they were, or if my bra just wasn't doing the trick last night. Or perhaps it was doing tricks of its own. The young girls and boys of the night were restless, traveling in packs, girls giggling in the night, disappearing into parks, boys teasing them from across the street. And so the dance begins, the dance we find ourselves struggling with, the one that makes us stand before each other with trepidation in the dark, neither one of us knowing what to say to make things right.
Later, I talk to him more about how I felt, so alone and missing him, how I felt cast out, and he says it was just my perception. "I was there the whole time," he said. "All that was just inside your mind. You could have reached over to me at any time."
And then it makes me wonder just how God works,if Adam or Eve had come to talk to him about their banishment, if there was ever an offering of amends or an attempt to make it right. Or maybe that is what we humans have been trying to do ever since, when really, He is always there, just waiting and loving us the same, no matter how pitifully we fail at being perfect.

2011-03-31T17:05:00.000-07:00

EVERYTHING UNDER HEAVEN

I've often contemplated the function of beauty. In my past musings, I have dreamed beauty away as inconsequential, a passing fancy, a temporary state that exists simply as a basis of initial attraction. I didn't want to believe in the meaning of beauty, because to say that it has purpose, and then to admit that it has gone, is to say that the motivation fades as well. I want my love to be like Shakespeare envisioned, one whose strength does not diminish, though "rosy lips and cheeks within [Time's] compass come". If love, and our motivation to both give and receive it, is based mostly on aesthetics, then it can't stand the test of time.
I had this friend who was an artist to some degree. He talked about the perfect girl as being someone who might not be exactly perfect, but who would be so beautiful that any of her imperfections could be forgiven. I am not sure if that is too tall of an order to fill. Our debate on this led to no agreed upon conclusions, and when our friendship took a walk, I wanted to continue to stand on my side of the fence about it.
That was some years ago, and I was still convinced of my stance, up until the other night. I was running at night in my new neighborhood, something I have been doing regularly now, although not nearly enough to stop the midlife growth of girth. I looked up from the sidewalk and a sight caught my breath in my throat, and caused a feeling inside me. A want, a desire, an exultant joy, an imagined bliss. It was no mere mortal that turned my eye, but the sight of the water falling across the water from the fountain in the middle of a lake across the street, the little bridge that crossed into a neighborhood with landscape lights shining on well designed front yard gardens and smartly painted front doors.
This bridge leads to a place I call "Seventh Heaven", a name based on one of the main streets there. I have been getting to know that area in nighttime explorations, and I know that inside those streets, there is a little misty hill that has a strange path leading up to a sundial with uniquely carved stones in it; that halfway through, there is an ivory colored curvy line of a water structure in which glacier cold water flows in a tunnel parallel to the street. That one of the walking paths leads into a wood in which a hand crafted cart bridge crosses a little creek before the path randomly ends in a field bordered with white fences. I love to go to this place, but I only allow myself the pleasure as a reward for working really hard on my tedious little two mile route around the house. Mostly because when I go out there, I lose track of time, and spend longer than I have on a weeknight wandering past the huge houses in the dark, houses with art delicately balanced on high vaulted walls that can be seen from tall windows from the street.
And I know now, I know when I see this view of the lake and the bridge from this vantage point on my weekday route, I know the true function of beauty. And I see and hear examples to fit my new theory all over the place.
It is to inspire.

2011-03-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

Come to the edge, he said. They said:
We are afraid. Come to the edge, he
said. They came. He pushed them,
And they flew..."
- Guillaume Apollinaire

RELEASED

I've always been an adoring fan of the two principles of self preservation in relationships: independence and individualism. In the past in this blog, I have talked about my struggle to preserve my Self, to be true to who I was. I have talked about how I did not understand women who lost themselves to relationships with family and their spouse. I've invested my emotional energy in developing a safety net of good girlfriends, because of perhaps some residual anger and mistrust of men from either my youth or my upbringing.
At the same time, over the past years, I've been developing a deeper understanding of God and what He wants from us. To that end, I found myself this past Sunday sitting in a pew of a church I have been regularly attending. There was a different minister leading this week's sermon, and at first it was really hard to settle in. I really enjoy Jim Leggett's preaching, and this new guy was a lot more high strung and animated. I am not even sure I agree with all the things he said, but it has made me think a lot since then on the meaning of this week's message.
The basic point of the sermon was centered around Galatians 3, where Paul is arguing with the people of that area about some perceptions. The essence of the scripture, and the sermon regarding it, is that salvation is available through grace alone, and not through good works. Paul challenges the people to ask themselves if their righteousness originates from obedience to the Law, or to belief in the Spirit. The concepts both Paul and this minister expanded upon are enough to chew on for a bit. However, it was certain key phrases the minister used that caused my mind to compare what he was saying about our relationship with God to our relationships with other people.
Specifically, it was the mention of the fear of losing one's individuality as they enter deeper into a relationship with God, that this fear was a common human feeling, that crossed mental hairs with a similar thought I had been rolling around in my noggin. This one has to do with my relationship with the one I love, and how it impacts my relationships with those fore-mentioned girlfriends that previously I depended on for my emotional security.
My friends and I talk a lot less than we used to. Mostly this is because they are busy - they were always busy. I was used to being the one doing most of the calling, but lately I haven't been calling as much. I've come to depend on my man for being my best friend, the one I turn to with the daily ups and downs and examinations from every angle of each thought that comes to me.
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with one of these girlfriends, catching up, and she, although supportive, questioned some aspects of my compatibility with my mate. Mostly this was in regards to sort of a freedom from constraints kind of vein.. Basically, she questioned if my wild spirit could be satisfied with the subdued lifestyle of the morally upright. I felt a bit like she was pointing out our differences as a reason it might not work, or also suggesting that in order for it to, I would have to give up some of my identity.
And yet, I see myself doing that very thing, or feel it, feel us moving from being two separate individuals into a unified One. It is that feeling of a loss of distinction between bodies and souls, and the beginning of true intimacy, when the other starts to feel like an extension of one's physical self, and when words become less important because you already know what the other one is thinking. It is the time in a relationship when you go from sharing in each other's individual pursuits to forming your own together.
Take, for instance, the birds. I have always been scared of birds, particularly of being close to them, touching them, holding them. Either they are small and fragile enough that I can hurt them, even by accident, or they are big and fierce enough to hurt me. I had no use for birds. This man, though, he spoke of the birds with awe, and points them out all the time, and because of him, I started to look for them. I started to watch the sky. And then over time, I got more curious, and more trusting, and more ambitious about it. We got the binoculars, and the camera out, and we watch for them and try to identify them. Then I started to find places we could go check them out at, and different ways we could interact with them, and it became like our thing that we do. In the past month, I have held on my hand one of the heaviest birds, the Great Horned Owl, and one of the smallest, the hummingbird. Because of his encouragement, I volunteered to hold the small birds in my hand after a bird banding, before they realized they were free and took off in flight. This was an act of courage on my part, but I have faith that this man would not lead me into danger, and therefore when he says, go ahead, hold the bird, it will be okay, I was willing to trust that. And I think about the vanilla sky, about jumping off the edge because I have that much trust that this love will hold me up.
And I see myself changing in this, developing, losing some of me to some of us and it's scary, so I relate to what the minister is saying about how it feels to give yourself completely to God. He talks about how it is possible through faith to close our eyes to this fear and wholly succumb our talents to the glory of God in pursuit of this relationship, how faith the size of a mustard seed can bloom into this complete trust that God has got us covered. It is having faith in the sanctification of sin through Christ's sacrifice and not trying to create our safety nets of good works that gets us the golden ticket in the end. It's letting go of those wilder parts of ourselves, not because we have to be good and perfect to be with God, but because when we do, the better parts of ourselves have room to grow.
That morning on the way to church, this man of mine had dropped me and the children off at the youth building, then gone to park the car. We agreed on our plan to meet up on our way into the church. As I left the youth building, I was scouting around in the parking lot for him. I did not see him, but I saw a bench in the shade under the tree in my path to the church that would be a perfect place to meet. The only problem was, there was a man on it, a stranger. I worried about texting my man and telling him to meet me there, I worried over sitting next to this strange man in the meanwhile, I worried that I had already passed him or that somehow we would be lost to each other. As I neared the bench, though, I was startled and amused to realize that the man on the bench was no stranger, but this love of mine. He was already there waiting.
And I think maybe this is what the minister was saying, what Paul was telling the Galatians. We don't need to worry ourselves with the details on how to be exactly like God wants us, to follow the exact formula for how to be in His graces. When we get closer, we will realize He is there already, just waiting for us to catch up.

2011-03-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

TEXAS CHALLENGE 2011

So, it's been awhile since I have written about geocaching. Not that I haven't been doing it - in fact, I've found 641 caches since the last time I wrote an actual entry about geocaching. Apparently I needed my outlet to explore my feelings about my failing marriage, subsequent divorce and beginning of a new relationship instead. So...back to our regularly scheduled program....
We've been anticipating this year's Texas Challenge for a long time now. Last year was my brother's first time to participate in this type of format for geocaching, and it fed right into his competitive nature. His local region did not have a team of their own last year, so he played for our team, SouthEast Texas. Since then, the cachers in the Corpus Christi area united under the banner of the South Texas team and made it their mission to come back this year and be a serious contendor in the field against North and Central Texas, as well as our team and possibly West Texas, if they decided to show up this year.
Our team was still wound up over our victory in San Angelo last year, and we also wanted to win, although we had sort of gotten used to losing. Plus, we were the hosts this year, which meant a lot of planning from those who normally would be involved in the hunting process. You can't do both. This time, it was on our home turf so to speak, and hosted in the town of my brother's alma mater, so he was excited about the logistics. Several text messages and emails were exchanged making plans, which curiously did no good because we weren't organized until up to the last month, even with a year to prepare.
During the midst of all this planning, my father's probably-terminal illness had been getting progressively worse. The medication does not have the same effects that it used to. With my mother's prodding I am sure, he had begun to take the steps to having an operation on his brain that has a good chance of slowing down the progression of symptoms. Somewhere along the way in discussions, he was invited to camp with us for the evening, and attend the Challenge with us. The original plan was for him to join my brother in the competition on their bikes. In the last minute strategy meetings before the event, though, on both the South and SE region sides, the terrain was discussed, and how it would play out in biking. My brother and I both thought at this point the biking portion sounded too tough for my father, whose primary symptom is a loss of muscle coordination, so in a series of texts to follow, it was determined that my dad would hike with me, and this would free my brother up to bike more rugged terrain.

So it was that Friday night, the company around our campsite included my brother, my dad, my children, my handsome darling boyfriend, another couple we have been spending some time geocaching with lately (Chris and Shelley), their teenage daughter, and this friend of my brother's that helped us last year and then helped him form their own team, David. We brought some wood - the origin of the firewood is a story for another day, really- and made a fire this evening, and we all roasted some marshmellows, made smores, and stayed up too late talking, some with beers to keep them company as well.
My brother and J had actually gotten up here the night before, as well as David. We had made the camping reservation, and yet when J left to go pick up the kids and I from another fellow geocacher's house who graciously allowed us to park our extra car at her house close to the park, my brother and David had hung up their South Texas banner across our picnic shelter, claiming our camp as belonging to their team. Things got a little more interesting when our hunt team leader asked if we could use our camping shelter as home base to prepare our team and act as headquarters during the competition. Turns out South Texas had the same idea. So, we decided to share. And that is how in the morning of the competition, we had about one hundred and fifty cachers, give or take, wandering in, most wearing pink bandanas to signify they were with the SouthEast team, and a smaller number wearing yellow banners advertising their allegiance to the South region.
If the Texas Challenge is foreign to you, this is how it works. Numerous temporary geocaches have been hidden all over the designated park, and the different teams have four hours to find as many as they can. Each one holds a certain point value, based on the difficulty of the find and the terrain it is located in. Each cache has a corresponding number on a paper scorecard which is punched with a hole punch that you find in the cache itself, each one bearing a different design for verification purposes. The cards HAVE to be turned in before the event officially ends, at which point the scores are tallied, and then averaged among the number of cachers competing to determine the winning region. There are three ammo boxes given to the top three teams, each being painted either gold, silver, or bronze. The team that wins the coveted golden ammo can gets bragging rights for the next year. This contest is in its ninth year of existence, and this is my fourth time to attend.
Because my dad was potentially going to slow down the hiking, and because J wanted to get out there and try to score as much as possible, we had decided to split up and for him to go by bike. Also, we had my dad's canoe with us, which was a competitive advantage, but only two adults could ride in the canoe at once.
When the contest begins, the team leader is given the thumb drive with the file on it that has the locations of the caches and the first aid stations. Then there is the tedious process of loading those waypoints on to everyone's GPS units. J always gets roped into being actively involved in this process, being that he is like the technology expert. This day, my dad and I left on our canoe when the contest started, right after getting our waypoints, but J was held up for almost the whole first hour of the competition dealing with a particularly tricky GPS unit that no one had software for.

Close the 4/5 cache hide site

My dad and I's strategy of taking the canoe originally panned out for us very well, because we were able to get a cache find on the water, which was a high terrain and therefore high scored cache. However, once we beached the canoe and got out on land, my plans for us to excel this day began to unravel. We wasted about 45 minutes of the first hour looking for three caches we could not find (granted one of them is what they call an "evil hide" and the other was a 4/5 on Difficulty/Terrain, which may as well be called an evil hide). We also had to cross the spillway that I show in this first picture. After that, we began hiking down the Chinquapin trail, we started actually making some finds, getting about a dozen in about two hours or so of hiking around. The last hour, regettably, we wasted a lot of time just trying to get back to the lodge from where we were, and walking along the road, find just a couple of caches in that time. I think we could have gotten more if I had thought to call home base and have someone come get us and take us to another trailhead to get to another cluster, but I was not thinking too well at this point about where we could go next to maximize our finds. We were really tired and wore out by that point.

After the scorecards are turned in, there is typically a bbq lunch and then later on a casual party. We had decided to skip the bbq and bring our own lunch, and our afternoon was spent kind of traipsing back and forth from our campsite to the lodge to make appearances at the events, let the kids play on the playground, and visit with our friends. We were there at the lodge for the official announcement of the winners. South Tx claimed the golden ammo can in a triumph of victory, having a small but dedicated team desirous of winning this year. North got the silver, Cen-Tex the bronze, and our team got nothing this year but pats on the back for hosting. Next year we'll have to make a comeback.
The highlights of my weekend were some of the casual moments spent in this day, before and after the competition: laughing over breakfast with J over some conversation we have been having since the origin of our relationship over a year ago, some musings I had while the kids were playing on the playground as I looked out over Lake Raven and watched the wind make the tops of the trees dance, and of course the revealing of Texas DreamWeaver's ingenious stunt during the evening event, which involved a Bingo game where everyone was a winner. Later there was another campfire, more smores and marshmellows, roasting weenies, and then snuggling into our double sleeping bag that I got J for Christmas (so we could sleep together in the same bag when we go camping, something we have done four times already this year and hopefully many more to come).

The morning after the Challenge typically begins with a pancake breakfast and ends with a CITO event. If you aren't familiar, a CITO event is where we gather to pick up trash and make sure we leave a place better than how we found it. I had decided to do our CITO much like we did the Challenge, but substitute the company of my boys for that of my dad. This idea was born from K's requests for a canoe ride, and because I highly suspected my father had chunked a plastic bottle into the woods during the Challenge the day before. So we rowed the canoe across the water, beached it, hiked the Chinquapin trail, then rowed back. We could not find the bottle of my dad's that had mysteriously disappeared from his hands, but we did find several other plastic bottles and about half a bag of trash or less by the time we were done, including the stuff we found along the way in the parking lot.
Now, we made it all the way across the water and back, a one mile round trip, without capsizing the canoe, so I was pretty happy about that. However, as we pulled up to the boat launch, I realized my camera was missing. It was a cheap disposable camera that I had, but I wanted the pictures I had been taking off of it all weekend. I had just had it in my hands before we prepared to beach the canoe, and so it had fallen out of my pocket not too far out. I looked around, and then saw it not six feet out in the water, resting on some swampy lilypad area. I gave my cellphone to my son and took off my shoes, preparing to wade to it, but the water was too deep for wading. So I took the canoe out by myself, and as soon as I reached for the camera, I realized it was off balance and, poof!, I was in the water.
So, I got my camera back, but I was soaking wet now. The boys were on the shore laughing hysterically as I swam back, pulling the canoe with me. This explains why my pictures look psychedelic - they did turn out, luckily, but the film had gotten wet and warped.
Then I had to change clothes. I had one clean shirt but I had to wear two day old dirty jeans, and no underwear, for the rest of our journey. We cached our way out of the park, then did a little bit of caching around the Sam Houston statue, running into fellow geocachers at every stop. After a misguided lunch in Huntsville, we set out for home, with stops for dogs along the way back. We were pretty tired and it took us a while to get back in gear after this, but luckily I had taken the next day off work to help with that.
Next year my oldest boy says he wants to do the Challenge with us, and not stay back at the Camp Lil Cacher program they put on every year to watch the children while their parents participate in the event. Last year was J and I's first challenge together, but we were just starting out together and were somewhat distracted by infatuation. I am hoping next year the two of us will get a chance to work together and score up some high points, so AJ might be in for a tougher ride than he thinks, but we will just have to see!

2011-01-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

JUXTAPOSITION

jux·ta·po·si·tion

an act or instance of placing close together or side by side,esp. for comparison or contrast.

the state of being close together or side by side.

It's a cold, drizzly weekday night. The two of us are at Academy, looking at mens clothes. It sounded so fun, the idea of trolling around Academy looking for items on clearance. Once we got to our intended section, though, it seemed a little awkward to me. I slipped off to the women's room, my mind still rolling over some of the conversation topics from dinner, things that make me think, things that make us laugh, things we will end up bringing up later in other conversations. Seems like some of these things we have been talking about since the beginning of talking, things like the differences between men and women, the problems with both, the value in both.

Here I am wondering if some of what we talked about should have me being concerned, and somehow it makes me feel self conscious. I'm thinking about other women again, other women from the past of every man from my past. I'm kind of in this weird place in my head when I make it back to where he is browsing for shirts. He is having trouble deciding, and asks me, "which of these would you rather see me in?" It is such an odd question to me, this idea of a woman picking out his clothes, that it makes me wonder about those who came before me. Which one of them trained that in him?

"I'm not that kind of girl," I smile at him, but then send him off to try on a few agreed on choices nonetheless. While he is gone, I let my eyes wander around the shirts, playing this game, pretending, if I WAS that kind of girl, which of these clothes would I see him in?

My eyes keep falling on some sweaters that I am innately drawn to. I wander over to look at them more closely, and realize they were not his type. They would have looked great on my exhusband, though. This would have been something I would have bought for him. And I smile ironically at my head-self, admonishing myself for thinking I was so different than her, or them, when on the inside we are all the same.

Done with our errand, we leave to meet up with my ex to retrieve the kids from their visitation with him. J pulls into the parking lot nose to tail with my ex's Jeep, so close that the doors can't both open at the same time. My ex has to stand there in the drizzle while I load the little one into his car seat. He is questioning me, acting as if he is concerned that J might be a threat to the safety and well being of those he cares about. which is just so funny and frustrating all at the same time, being that now for the first time we are all protected and cared for by someone who has our well being as a top priority, the way he never did. He was a bit the snarly dragon that this hero rescued us all from, in fact, but seems to be doing a little projecting of his own bad reflection.

Earlier, we had been on the way to drop the kids off with him when he had texted me, told me what he was making them for dinner. I was a little surprised, being that he was making one of my favorite things in the whole world, and when I showed up, he invited me in to see. It turned out to be just a sleigh of hand, a trick if you will, but we kind of laughed about it like old friends. In the back of my mind, though, I am still simmering angrily over a dream I woke from this morning, a dream blending the places and faces of our shared past with some recent unsettling elements he has brought unbiddingly into my life.

Later, I am standing in the hallway listening to the children settling in for the night. My eyes take in little silver shapes in the dark hallway. I run my fingers over them, these left-behind nails, places where pictures used to hang, pictures from the previous life that was being lived out inside these walls.
Now the kids are asleep in bed and we are getting there ourselves, J and I. We are snuggled up impractically tight, talking over the events of the night, laughing under our breaths at all the foolishness in and around us. Side to side, hip to hip, knee on knee, sole of foot running across tops of other, the remarkable oneness of intimate beings. The murmurs of our voices rise and fall here in the dark, where the shadows of the past fail to find us, because right now we are someplace they can't get in.

2011-01-15T14:07:00.000-08:00

ON THE INSIDE

Some years ago, I was kicking it in Austin with my best friend from childhood. We had been girl talking until late in the evening, and then she had told me she was tired and was going to bed. I laid down on the inflatable air mattress futon with my little son, but had a hard time sleeping over the next hour or two, because of the cacophony of laughter and muffled conversation coming from the master bedroom, where she laid with her husband.

I remember being annoyed by this. I had driven all that way to visit her and longed for late night analyzing of people and relationships, the way we were when we were in high school and college. What she was doing with her husband, that kind of inside amusing conversation, is part of what I had driven all that way for. I felt like she had lied to me by telling me she was tired as an excuse to go hang out with her husband instead. But he's always here, I thought, and I hardly ever am, why can't she spare the time for me now instead?

For a certain amount of our adult life, I felt like this friend tried to make me jealous by deliberately showing me or telling me about things that she knew I didn't or would never have. For instance, I remember her once talking about how much closer she and her husband were after traveling to foreign countries where they both knew very little of the language there. I was telling my sister about some of her comments like that, and she said, "well, you should say, well, having a baby together, you should see how close THAT makes you," to one-up her at her own game.

The problem with that is, it wasn't all that true. At some point, I realized that perhaps some of my perception of this issue with her stemmed from my unhappiness with my own life, and that just being happy for her when she showed me these things was in fact the only right response.

It was the only response that wasn't self centered. After all, she wasn't the one responsible for my life being different than hers. Just because she didn't know what "the Other Side of the Bed World" was like doesn't mean I should punish her for it by not genuinely being happy for her when she had things, even if they were things I didn't.

I didn't understand for the longest time why my girlfriends didn't have the same need to talk that I did. For years, it felt like I was the one who called them, who maintained the relationship, who wasn't too busy to pick up the phone or to have a long conversation perched on a chair in my backyard, or the front porch. I didn't understand why, if they had the same number of kids I did and the same amount of work inside and outside the house, why did they not have the time for me?

Lately, I have been figuring it out. For twelve years of my life, I had a roommate who had little connection to me, though we were bound by legal and responsibility matters. We knew each other, but we weren't each other's best friends, and certainly not the ones we turned to with our deepest and closest secrets. Now I don't have time to call my girls anymore. So much of my attention is focused on this man I live with now, and what I don't give him, I am giving to my kids. I don't have all that much to say to those outside anymore, because the language between us is different, and things that are so exciting and hilarious to us would seem probably pedestrian and mundane to the outside world.

The other night, an hour or so after I had tucked the kids in, this man and I were still awake between the sheets, talking and joking around. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe, ribs hurting, whole body shaking with the effort of trying to be quiet about the hilarity, while in the other room, my son yelled at us, "GO.TO.BED!", the same words and same tone I might have been using a year or two ago at him and his brother, who by now was long fast asleep. The next day, I was kind of laughing to myself about that, and finally, I think I understood my friend a little better.

2011-01-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

GHOSTS OF LIVES PAST

The first time he drove me to the house we live in now, it made me sad. I think he was misinterpreting the reasons why; it wasn't quite as selfish as he made it out to be. It was his pain and confusion that made me cry, not mine. It was the whole idea of building a life around someone and having that person just disappear, a figment of the past. It was sadness, over his divorce and over mine, over this mutual experience that both brings us together and sometimes stands in our way.
It was seeing her touch all over this house that made me sad, the little things that were obviously the selection of a woman, a selection a man would concede to only out of love or compromise. It was the fact that so many of her things were still all over this house, the litter of a woman who betrayed him and then walked out, treating marriage like the sham it might have been instead of a condition that implies a solemn vow to work out problems when they arise, not run away from them. I had thought of him living in that house for the few months afterwards, sleeping on a bed that belonged to her, on bedding she picked out, watching curtains she chose stirring in the fan of the night. I thought about him changing who he was to appease this woman who would just shit all over him and then walk out, leaving all this behind her for him to deal with.
It makes me sad, and it makes me angry sometimes. I think she did not realize what she had, because to me, he is like the most precious of all elements. He would do anything for the people he loves, even put up with her annoying habits and inability to give back in the same ways. He is so special to me that I cannot understand how anyone could have hurt him, or, even less, not valued him the same way that I do.
When we had started out, I wasn't thinking about her. I didn't think about her on our first date, during our first kiss, during the first time we made love. Now I can't stop thinking about her. Thoughts of her ride beside us in most everything we do, and he doesn't understand this. "She's not even worth wasting brain cycles on," he tells me, and I know this, rationally. I know that what he has to deal with is so much more that I don't have even the right to be bothered by his past with her. After all, he is willing to accept my two children fathered by my ex, helped me move from the house I had shared with this other guy, sift through all the mutual belongings and memories of 12 long years, even deal with this man face to face, while I will probably never have to see her again.
Yet I think about her over Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with his family. I wonder if they consider me a better or worse replacement for her. I wonder if they liked her gifts or presence better, if she told better stories or was easier to talk to. I think of her as I use the things she left behind. He tell me, "they are just things", yet sometimes it bothers me that she had them, or that she left them there. It was her fanny pack I wore this morning to carry our water, camera, and other geocaching equipment during our caching bike ride, doing the things she was not willing to do with him. It is her coffee maker I used to brew the coffee I am drinking right now. It bothers me to have such an intimate relationship with her things.
Yet, these things are functional, like he says, and better to have someone use them who will appreciate them then throw them away. I wonder how she could have thrown him away, how she could have seen him as disposable, and how much better or worse off he is for the recycling. I don't like it that someone that was not even worthy of him could have been given the opportunity to do more damage to him than the women of his past had done.
Sometimes I look at her picture on the internet. I stare at her face, trying to figure out how someone as wonderful as him could have chosen someone like her. I compare myself to her, and wonder if he finds me more or less attractive, or if I cook better than her, or if she would have been a better mother to his children than I am to mine, or maybe to his one day.
There are things I know that make me feel better when those feelings become too painful or sharp to deal with. I know I can give him so much more. I know that the reasons he was unhappy with her will never be the reasons he would be unhappy with me - that I am a willing companion to share all his adventures with, that we love the same things, that it is a given that when he suggests going for a walk, or a hike, or a bike ride, that when he wants to go geocaching, I am smiling and happy to be doing that exact thing. There are so many little complaints he has about her that he will never have about me. Plus, I adore him so much that any dissatisfaction on his part would prompt me to adjust to his preference.
And maybe it is just simple jealousy or insecurity on my part. Some of that certainly is wrapped up in these emotions, as well as some competiveness. I know that drive makes me wonder if these feelings aren't positive in some way, because they re-commit me daily to taking better care of him than she did. If it wasn't for that, or for my past, it might be easier to take him for granted, but I never will, I know that. I will appreciate what this man has done for me for the rest of my life, as the way he has lifted me I can never pay back except for complete devotion.
He wonders when I will get over this, the carrying around of her in my mind. He has moved on, and doesn't understand why I can't. Someday I will, I know. Give me a few years. Let me have the same amount of time she did, some of the same things, some things that are different, some things that are so full of awesome that she could never compare - and I will get over her presence eventually.

2011-01-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

REDIRECT

Hey...psst....over here...

http://stateofwilderness.com/

Although...it's thematic....

so all posts not related to the theme will still be posted here.

To be continued....

2010-11-28T20:36:00.000-08:00

THANKSGIVING

On the first leg of a recent holiday road trip, we had come into the town where I went to college. We stopped for dinner there and he teased me about not seeming to know my way around, but the place had changed so much my bearings were off. I kept looking around expecting to see something I recognized, but in the end I only had a short span of memories sifted through before I grew weary of it. I smiled at the telling of a story of a Thanksgiving past, when I brought a couple of friends from school home with me. One had joked that my mom was fattening us up for slaughter, and my roommate had succumbed to a tryptophan-induced nap in the hallway by the door. All afternoon we had to be careful not to hit her head, and it seems funny to me now.

On the way back from our rip, we had a bit of an adventure, having gotten a little lost on the map and in conversation. There was a late night, and then a workday, and then I was side by side with my companion for several days. It was a time for turkey and transitions. Some moving of large furniture occured. It seemed to cleave like bookends our shared pasts, one year or more removed from each other.
And then there were the family gatherings. Included the ones in my mind, ones that had or might have happened, and visions of ones to come. In one scene in my memories, my exhusband's mother is teaching me how to make her version of banana nut bread, a favorite holiday treat for this first son of hers. She is a little exasperated at the fact that I had never learned to bake from scratch, a skill she feels like every woman should have. She considers it her responsibility to pass this on. Every year after that, when he was apart from his mother, I made banana nut bread for him until it became habit.
This Thanksgiving, there were three family gatherings, two at my parents, one at his. On one of these, I had wandered into my parent's study. My mother had been reorganizing and there were boxes everywhere. Curious, I peeked in one. Thre were some empty photo frames, and some loose photos. I picked up a stack to flip through, see if there were any pictures from my youth. No such luck. They were all pictures from my wedding, eleven years ago this summer. I tried to look into my own eyes from back then, to see if they showed any hint of knowledge of what was to come, but all I saw was the fresh face of youth.
Before this family gathering, I had stopped by my exhusband's house to pick up the children. I handed him a foil wrapped loaf of fresh baked banana nut bread, his mother's recipe. I told him I know he had wanted to be with his mother this Thanksgiving, and this was as close as I could get for him. I don't have any residual emotion for him, but it felt like making peace with this past, a little nod to the past and a little gratitude for him letting me go, to go be happy.
And I am happy. Never been happier. And I am thankful for that. I think about that as I hold the hand of my man on a stroll down a wooded trail, of just how appreciative I am of this, this moment, all of this. I am thankful for the love of the man beside me. I am thankful my ex has given me some time away from the children, the three breaks I have gotten...one in June, one in August, one in the now. These moments are restoring my sanity. I am thankful for my family, and those little shining moments that make life worth it. I'm so thankful to God for taking care of me, of showing me the way, for giving me hope, peace, joy, love: the gifts of the holiday season.

2010-11-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

HEARTS TOWARDS ZION

Originally, I was crafting a post in my head about transformation, about how my internal life has been changing over the past months. I've been distracted from this mission, however, by the demands of daily life, by my little children, by the packing up of my house, the seperation of things, by living in the moment, and mostly by this book I have been reading that has been sucking up the spare time I would have spent writing.

Today I had a flash of insight, though, about something I have been thinking about regarding the story I am reading. The story (Devils Gate, by David Roberts) is a historical account of the Mormon emigration to Salt Lake City, mostly centered on the plight of recent converts who dragged poorly built handcarts 1300 miles to get to their "Zion".

There's a lot I could say about this story. There is a lot I have said about this story, actually. What I want to focus on, though, is what has both impressed me and bothered me about these people I am reading about. Most of the people in this story were from England or various other places nearby there. They were converted to Mormonism by disciples of Brigham Young, who sent his people over there to obtain more souls for his recently settled-on piece of land in Utah. In the short amount of time between their conversion and their persuasion to board vessels that carried them overseas, then trains that took them from New York to Iowa City, then their overland journey through the wilderness of the west, they became so strong in their faith that that it was enough to carry them through a journey of incredible hardship. When they faltered, they relied on this faith to get themselves back up again and keep them moving. When members of their party were dropping to death from starvation and exhaustion, they prayed over it, they asked their God for strength. They honestly believed that reaching Salt Lake City would be akin to reaching their land of milk and honey, that Zion lay just ahead on the horizon.

Part of me wonders, especially after reading some of the gritty details of their grueling journey, how they could have been so sold on this idea that it was enough for them. I marvel at the fastness of their faith. Along the way, their brethren was dying alongside them, and yet on they marched, hearts set towards Zion. I wonder why they just didn't give up on the idea of reaching Zion, and how hard it must have been for them to believe there was something good waiting for them at the end of the journey on the dark winter nights where they trudged on, surviving on such small rations that surely would have made any one of us living in this day and age cry and give up after one days worth.

And yet...is there that much of a difference between that faith and ours, in mine? Sometimes I wonder how I got to be such a polly-anna optimist. When things get hard, when things don't seem to be working out, there is this part of me that is just convinced that Zion is right around the corner. I haven't always been this way, though. I think there are times I have been, and that perhaps that was my natural tendency, but that was something I lost in the past dozen years or so. A number of times during those years my heart was heavy and despondent, with the attitude that things would never turn around, that my life was shit and would always be that way. I felt like giving up a lot, even as recently as last year, my optimism grounded to a halt. I didn't have much emotional strength to "rally the troops" and convince myself that "this, too, shall pass".

I have beat depression, or maybe I was never really depressed. Well, I do think I was, during some of those times, but I do remember having an epiphany at one point, after a terrible low, that the one thing that combats depression and sadness is Hope. When you are really, truly down, though, it is hard to have that hope that things will get better. Once I realized Hope was the anti-depressant, I tried to focus on that when things got difficult. It is hard to hang on to that, though, when you can't see yourself out of a hole, when you look around and all you see is the darkened edge.

I am so far past that now, though. Now my heart is soaring and it seems like nothing can really get me down. I can see it in my responses to things, situations that maybe last year would have seemed a calamity, but now are easier to recover from. I can feel the difference in the emotional center of my chest, where there is just calm and light where there was heaviness and darkness before. I feel like I was "saved", not really in terms of my "salvation" necessarily, but in the way that my entire internal landscape has shifted back to this trust and faith that things will work out, that there is something Good in this life. There are times now where I feel bliss and joy, feelings I haven't had in so long that it makes me feel like a kid again, or takes me back to times long ago where I felt this way and then had forgotten what it felt like.

Sometimes in my responses to situations now, I feel some of what these emigrants must have felt, with the blind certainty that somehow I will make it to the land of milk and honey, that soon, just around the corner, Zion will appear, and there will be much rejoicing. I think I understand their heart's compass a little more as I question my own and find it pointed in hope's direction.

2010-09-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

HEART WIDE OPEN

Magic is part of what stirs my heart to movement. It seems that in order for me to believe, there has to be some element of the unknown and secret mystery, which seems counterintuitive but it's true. I wasn't drawn to what I saw as the dryness of Christianity until I recognized magic in the acts of Jesus Christ, the unexplained mystery of his acts of healing and transformation, as example. It feels like some kind of connection to a world behind the veil, and the mystery keeps me interested over the long term.
I think element of magic to them helps me feel deeper, and for the past some years I have let the magic of Jesus be enough for me. My heart was not full before, and I questioned that, to some degree, in terms of what it meant about me. Was it possible that I had forgotten that the heart is a muscle, which needs to be worked in order to get stronger? Did its muscles atrophy through lack of use?
From the first outset of my current situation, a conversation with a psychic in the historic old shop opened up the riddle of mystery. The words she chose, even more than her predictions, were meaningful and significant in some personal way that perplexed me in their coincidence. Those little kizmet moments, and jokes falling into place that came thereafter, and unusual physical reactions, emotional leapings, added to the feeling of perhaps what some call chemistry, or spark, but what I call magic.
Sometimes I want to be a skeptic, and then something else happens. A night walk around a chapel, a flash in the grass, a two harmonica cache; a walk in the woods, a shimmer of light, two matching stones lying side by side in the place no stones are, these things make me wonder sometimes about the meaning of the message.
In my wondering, I think about a time before, a woman I went to see whom I was told could see your future in the remains of your tea. She came highly recommended,but when I sat down by her, what she said was deceptively simple. "You lost something," she said, "that was very important to you." In that moment, I felt like I HAD, and that she was the only one that recognized that, but I had no idea what it might be. I felt the sensation of loss, but couldn't envision it in my head. It may just be that I am emotionally gullible, but I thought about that for a long time after, wondering what it was I think I had lost. Eventually, I came to believe that it was belief in love. Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking of this notion of romantic love as something that was obtainable and real. I started thinking the stunting was the only way we know, reluctantly and half heartedly reaching for The Settle.
Over repeated exposure to the object of magic, though, I felt my heart opening, like a vault. I had wondered if my heart was capable of loving graciously because my actions in the past did not seem to match it. I know now that it was because it was kept inside a cage of resentment, and that situation did not stop me from being a person who was capable of loving to the utmost capacity. It was stunted due to the inability of the object to return the love in the amount and intensity that it could be given. Love needs love back to grow, and the way mine grows now is like the sun rising in the sky, that at midday might be so bright that all the world could see it clearly but might be unable to look at directly.

2010-09-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

SATISFACTION DIPS

Hello world. It's been a while. I've been lost for a little while down a rabbit hole, and am just coming back up to take a look around. Spam bots seem to have taken over the comments section, and my blogging fever is running a different direction these days. I'm hoping soon I will be able to share that direction with my friends that have stopped by here.
Meanwhile, back here in the wild yonder of my own mind, I've been meandering down some road for months now, chasing elusive answers to age old questions. I've been questioning the nature of love. When I say nature, I mean exactly that, in some ways - the way Mother Nature designed us to fall in love, and why we choose who we do, and why love sometimes stays and why it sometimes goes. I've been looking to various places, but mainly the realm of biology, and evolution, and its effects on relationships between men and women.
I don't know if I have all the answers yet, or even if I know what the questions are. I do know a bit more than I did before, though, and I am curious to see if I can put it into some form that makes some kind of sense, and teaches us what we need to know to have some kind of hope in the futility of it all.
Let's start by considering the prairie voles. After all, that's where the scientists who study these sorts of things started. Not many animal species have monogamy down pat, but of the ones that do, the prairie voles are the ones that do it best. There are many species of voles, which is a small rodent, but Microtus ochrogaster, commonly referred to as prairie voles, are the only ones who are monogamous. When researchers took a closer look at these animals, they found some interesting hormonal relationships that encourage long lasting pair bonds.
What we have learned from the prairie voles so far strengthens the hypothesis that love is hard wired in our DNA as a response to a combination of hormonal interplays. When two opposite sex prairie voles meet, the interplay in the smelling of each other's pheromones may result in an increase of norepinephrine, which results in the mania and sleeplessness of early attraction. After spending some time together, the voles become habituated to each other, which causes a decrease in cortisol levels in the pair, the hormone of "stress". They are calmed by each's others presence. Following this, they have sex for 24 hours. In these rodents, like as in humans, this brings about a release of oxytocin and vasopressin, the hormones of love and commitment. The two are now mated for life, and help each other raise the young.
The prairie vole model demonstrates the importance of oxytocin in developing long term pair bonding, but what does it mean? The roots of monogamous human relationships have some similiarities to the hormone changes in the voles. The initial surges of a love relationship between two people follow some of the same hormonal pathways. The beginning stages are dictated by surges of norepinephrine, then the latter stages of commitment and long term relationships are fueled by oxytocin and vasopressin levels.
Studies of humans who had fallen in love showed that during the initial phases of pair bonding, the woman's testosterone levels increase and the man's decreases. In the woman, this change drives the woman to initiate sex more, and the man to intitiate more cuddling type behaviors. Those actions, in turn, stimulate the levels of oxytocin in the other to increase, causing more satisfaction or affection; in turn, deepening the bond.
In a similar monkey study, they found that the couples with high oxytocin levels would act in ways to comfort each other after a relationship stressor, such as the introduction of another female's scent. The pairs would seem to have an understanding of what the other one needed to raise the oxytocin levels back up to the optimum level.
So this is how Mother Nature designed this thing, this thing called love, to promote relationships steady enough to raise the offspring until the point at which it can take care of itself. In humans, the hormonal cascade seems to run in four year cycles, which is consistent with what evolutionary biologists belief was initially the time period that it would take for sucessful mating to occur and then the need for parental investment from the father. Early in the formation of a bond with another person, a hormone called DHEA (for short) increases, and stays high for about four years before it starts to wear off. Four years is also the time that most couples report a "satisfaction dip" in their relationships. My current theory is that if people had some understanding on what that feeling is, that dip in hormones, then they might be more likely to stay in the relationship when that dip occurs.
Over the past months, I have been spending an increasing amount of time trying to understand all this information, and more. My interest in it was of two fold, one with trying to understand why divorce happens, why love doesn't work, and the other part trying to understand what was happening to me, as I was falling in love again, and not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the past, or humanity as a whole. I'm trying to understand what draws us to one person rather than another, what is making me feel like I have never felt this way before, and how to keep those feeligns over time, as oposed to wasting energy going from one relationship to the next. I have more in my mind about evolutionary biology, and how we can use this knowledge of hormones to add to and deepen our relationships over time, so expect further entries on this subject.

2010-07-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

PERCEPTIONS Part 2

It was a weeknight, sometime midweek. I was in the parking lot of a popular chain restaurant, checking out my best friend's new car. Her wings, one might say, to fly away with.
I've been spending quite of bit of time talking to this friend. She's been going through something, and yet she doesn't want to talk about it. She wants distraction. She wants something else to think about. We had been entertaining her mind with camp stories and wilderness adventure website discussion inside. Now it's time for her to go home, and she is not ready yet.
There was a wide expanse of lawn between her car and the nearby bank. We watched the children play in the grass, shooing them a safe distance away so that we could have more private conversation. In our parting words, we reveal the inner workings of our hearts. She tells me her worries and concerns for what lay ahead. Then she shuts down again and throws back into my court the burden of conversation. What else can I pull out of my hat....
So I tell her about this other thing that's been on my mind. I tell her about my latest late night obsession, which has been a little over the top, even for me. I was tired because I kept going down this odd internet road before bed. Some astrology thing that had my brain ticking. I kept getting frustrated because the hits were not working out - I wanted this particular kind of exchange from the experience and it hadn't been yielding it, and then suddenly I had hit jackpot. I found a website that said exactly what I wanted it to say, and yet, I didn't like the answers. It was like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that turned out to be fool's gold instead. I wasn't sure of its accuracy, so I turned it on its head and ran the reading another way.
I was comparing certain zodiac alignments involving myself and these people in my life. I would expected comparing these two individuals from this kind of dimension would yield radically different results. However, when I ran the "test run", on the former relationship, the answers came out eerily similiar. The stars were aligned in almost exactly the same way. The ten paragraphs were practically identical, actually, within about 80%. There was only slight differences in wording. I knew how this one on the second reading turned out, so it was somewhat ironic that it cast this one as the longer lasting relationship.
The differences between these two readings I would say were accurate, and it was these differences I was talking to her about now. There were about three. She agreed with me on what I told her it said, but then adding her own perspective.
"That is one good thing I can say about your ex," she said. "He always gave you the freedom to be who it is you want to be. Ultimately that is really important to you."
And to a large extent, that is true. My life was shaped by the forces of desire for freedom. It was part of the sympathy for the mustangs and little Wild Horse Annie trapped in a polio cast and longing to break free, let her spirit run unfettered, and her imagination as well caught up in the rumblings of the hooves of wild horses. I'd been talking of freedom for years and never really living it. Or was I. Did he give me that gift that no one else had been able to give.
And it was possible. I remember thinking that, actually, as a reason to justify remaining with him all those years. With him I was free to be myself, and he always accepted this about me, didn't influence me to change in any way. In his family, I had gotten acceptance I had never felt in mine, and that was important to me, in terms of personal growth. "I still think you guys weren't meant to be together, though," she added, and we agreed.

Later we come back to this same conversation. I was telling her these stories of dinner fiascos. How I had this same paralyzing feeling about cooking with these people in my life, and then when I do, there is some spice incident that throws a damper on the whole thing. Kind of a funny random memory of a garlic incident dinner in college I had forgotten to tell her about all these years. I am asking her about how it started out with her man, something I should know the answer to somehow but don't. We weren't hanging out a whole lot in this period of our lives, both in the budding of new significant relationships. She can't remember when that all happened for them. I never remembered having those kind of feelings with this ex. I tell her about how it was for us back then, how we would help each other make dinner, the stuff that was endearing about him back then but later would drive me nuts, like how he would go behind me and add more to the pan. Back in those early days, we were having fun with it. I don't remember having this kind of anxiety. She added that it all goes back to what she was saying that night after dinner. The anxiety wasn't there because there was nothing but acceptance.

When I think about what she is saying, I think about my reaction to my parents. My childhood friend likes to blame my "running off" with the ex on my negative reaction to my parents heavy handedness. She thinks I rebelled against the tyranny of oppression, and perhaps it was, in some way, but not that directly. It was probably this kind of general acceptance of who I was as an individual, and no attempts to change me, that drew me to him in the first place. Looking at it this way makes it seem like less of a sad thing, a regret thing, but rather an experience I was fated to have to learn to get over some of my issues with esteem, or learn how to deal with them.

In a way, I am glad we had these conversations now. This next week, I'll be dealing with some of the real consequences to the ending of a life together. I think thinking of him through this more favorable lens may make it easier to deal with the splitting up of a family household. We'll see what kind of peace that brings me in the days ahead.

2010-07-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

PERCEPTIONS Part 1

It was late in the evening, early in the week. I was on a certain popular social networking site. The little messenger screen pops up, a friend of mine from the past. I hadn't talked to him in six months, so I was filling him in on recent history. He had noted my name change.
"Good. Now you can get back to being the girl you used to be, the one I knew."
This thought catches me for a little while. I tried to imagine that, this fun game I like to do where I detach myself from my "lens" and try on someone else's. Life begins to seem like a pile of fractals, all layered on top of each other to create this thing called reality. What is the truth, if not some inner core made up of all these things, these many perceptions and reactions out there on this emotional universe from a million different angles.
It's the eternal mystery, this kind of guessing at what it looked like from the outside, from all these different aspects. I wonder what kind of impression this person had of me. In this case, it would have been a rose colored view, as there was some adoration on his end. I wasn't available, because my loyalty kept me with somebody else. But he had probably had me under a microscope longer than anyone else had in my natural life. So I have to wonder. What was it that he thought made me who I was in the first place?
I task him with answering that question.
All week, I've been wondering about this myself. I'm wondering why some people might suggest, as he had, that I needed to go "find myself" first. Did I lose myself? Did I? It's really hard to say, because self is only half our reality and half someone else's perception of who you are. So my half says, no...I've always been here....so whatcha talking about...
Only, their perception might have changed. From what to what?
I try to think about who this girl was that this person had known, maybe fifteen years ago. The context in which you know someone is relevant in terms of relative common reality. In this case, our mutual interest had been literature, the written word, writers with cult followings, old movies in which dialogue mattered. He was always a captive audience for anything I wrote, and offered his critique, which had been well thought out and honest. So certainly some of his perceptions were based around this sort of exchanging of ideas, intellectual discourse in the wee hours of the morning at the all night diner.
Have I lost this person, this part of me? No, not really. I can't stay up so late anymore, but there's still that part of me that digs deeper and deeper into those subjects of interest, that wants to talk talk talk of ideas and come to some clearer understanding of it all. Here lies some of the source of the cosmic cowgirl persona, this riding out of the mental range, rounding up stray thoughts and making fenceposts out of them. The touchstones are still the same; Kerouac, Robbins, Pirsig. The mental fences are still strung with horses, beat poets, Indigo Girls, behavior, humans, evolution, science, psychology, religion, poetry, animals, all the many little bits and pieces of mental floss I pick up over periods to chew on for a while.
Nah...I don't think I ever lost myself. I don't think I need to slow down for a while and look for her, either. I think somewhere in there those things that made me who I was are all still there. Where would I have gone? Would I have become invisible to this marriage? I think I held tight to that concept of identity and self preservation rather well, so I get some kind of emotional bypass, a free skip ahead on the game board. Move your piece one square ahead....

2010-07-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

THE DOLPHIN DIALOGUES

In the defining book of my seventeeth year, namely, The Fountainhead, the central premise posed the question, "Does Altruism Exist?" The author, Ayn Rand, used her characters to prove her premise that, in fact, altruism (in this case, meaning the quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others) does not exist. She holds up two architects as examples as either end of the spectrum, and shows us through Howard Roarke that self is the only thing that matters...well, that and principles, which should be inherent as part of the Self at any rate. Truth and Rationalism are the reigning heroes of this novel, while self-sacrificing Peter Keating plays a particularly pathetic role as the perpetual people pleaser.
I think it's funny now that my best friend and I were so consumed with this idea, this novel, that we debated it for a year or more. We bought into the idea completely that Rational Self Interest was the highest ideal, and that it made perfect sense to not sacrifice self to others. We took it apart and put it back together again, and never realized that it ran contradictory to our beliefs as Christians. Now, looking at Rand's philosophy, some parts I buy into, but some I can't seem to wrap my mind around.
The Christian attitude towards altruism is completely different. In fact, the idea of altruism is present in several of the major world religions. Most religions advocate the spirit of selfless giving to others. However, even Rand would argue here, as well as some philosophers, that ultimately, the motivation to serve others, or to give to others, is still primarily motivated by matters of the self. For instance, the giving to less fortunate by members of the church, the philanthropy of the rich and powerful, the caring for children even, is all governed by the impulse to avoid anxiety by giving into what society says is right, what our religion says is right, what our conscience tells us. Giving as a means to ease our conscience or to feel good about ourselves, they say, is still a selfish act.
To really be "altruistic", in its purest form, is to give to someone or something without expectation of reward. Perhaps in its truest form it takes the shape of a man dying for his country, for his values of patriotism. Or, say, a nun who spends her life among the ill and dying, or a freedom fighter. In some cases, it may even be people you know, who give freely to their community without expecting recognition or reward.
As I get deeper into my faith, I learn more about what it is saying, and the examples that are given about what love is. I throw love into this equation, because in a way, the relationships between lovers speaks volumes of the eternal debate between self and others. Every day there are choices to make between acting for ones self, and acting for the benefit of others.
In the New Testament, Paul lays forth examples of what love ought to be. In an oft repeated verse in the First Letter to the Corinthians, verse 13, he says this:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

One could assert, and some have, that the self seeking part of that verse indicates that love means selflessness, to put concern for another's well being ahead of your own. Many other biblical examples assert the same doctrine of altruism in relationships (e.i Phillippians 2:3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves), and seemingly Jesus himself not only advocated but lived a life, was in fact a walking example of selfless giving. How much selfishness was inherent in his act of sacrificing his mortal body for the forgiveness of sins of people he hadn't even met yet?
I wonder about what the truth of this debate is, and put it up to both the theoretical test of objectivism and the subjective test of experience. Are the actions we make towards other people, even when they appear to be selfless in nature, even when we appear to be giving up our own wants and desires, subconsciously driven by selfish motivations? Is, say, the giving up of desired time and attention for the more worthy goal of someone's health or habits really based out solely out of concern for the other's well being, or the perception that it may pay off in other opportunities or rewards later?
Do any of us ever love others selflessly, and if so, is that a noble goal? Is the act of love inherently selfish in nature, wanting some part of another for oneself, or is true love the ability to let go of a lover, if the other person would consider themselves better off without? Altruism, or selflessness, in its purest form, is to give without regard to reward or the benefits of recognition or need. To give selflessly would mean to never expect anything back. Would that even be a worthwhile goal, to never get back what you are investing into a relationship, say? In our culture, that kind of giving eventually either defines you as a doormat, or ends a marriage. We may give selflessly at times to love, or sacrifice our immediate selfish wants or needs for the benefit of another in the short term, but the expectation is in what scientists call "reciprocal altruism"; that, in effect, the good you do comes back to you. Even people who would term themselves "pleasers" or "givers" eventually want the same kind of treatment given back to them, otherwise it fuels resentment that interferes with the continuance of the relationship.
So I am not sure, based on some of those questions or theories, if Rand was right and altruism does not exist, or if basically we all do a little bit of selfless sacrifice for others on a regular basis every day. Look at moms, for instance. Or look around you, at your friends, at your lover, at your mate. It may be less black and white and more a million shades of gray, so much going into the motivations that it is impossible to seperate our motivations out between selfishness and selflessness.
Or consider the dolphins. I wonder if Rand ever considered the dolphins (read below story). Is there any evolutionary fitness strategy, any selfish motivation to the actions of dolphins putting themselves in harms way to save humans from certain death? Can their actions be explained by anything other than true altruism?

2010-07-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

DOLPHIN ANGELS

I've been reading this book, The Wild Places, by Robert MacFarlane, and every so often there is a paragraph or part that just touches me and I want to share it. Here is today's:
In 2004, a father and son were sailing in the Gulf of Mexico when their yacht was capsized by a gust of wind, sixty miles offshore. They clung to the hull, as it was carried on the powerful currents of the Gulf. After night fell, the water became rich with phosphorescence, and the air was filled with a high discordant music, made of many different notes: the siren song of dolphins. The drifting pair also saw that they were at the centre of two rough circles of phosphorescence, one turning within the other. The inner circle of light, they realised, was a ring of dolphins, swimming round the upturned boat, and the outer circle was a ring of sharks, swimming around the dolphins. The dolphins were protecting the father and his son, keeping the sharks from them.
(p.42)
I read more about this story, as it is an actual true event, on the internet, and learned that the father and son were of great faith. They were out there for two days, and felt strongly that God would take care of them. Here is a quote from the father about their experience:
We made peace with God about it. Ultimately it came down to unless God moved on our behalf, we wouldn't make it in," Ken Heybrock of High Point said. (AP, Charlotte Observer).
My take is that God sent in his dolphin angels. It is pretty amazing that the dolphins would do that. Here are some other stories I found of dolphins saving humans from shark attacks:
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-23-2004-62070.asp
http://www.eurocbc.org/page157.html
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20081216-178325/Dolphins-save-Puerto-Princesa-fisherman
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21689083

Apparently, it is an occurence that has been reported as happening as far back as ancient Greece, where the first dolphin related human rescue was reported. Very fascinating. I wonder what motivates the dolphins to take the actions they do. Any theories?

2010-07-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

SLIPPERY SLOPE

Driving into the rain, into the city, passing the red cliffs that marked the entrance into this state and the approach to the major city. Heading south, into the comfort of warm beds, to the prospect of town and hot food and showers. The land rose up on sharp angles all around us, while the rain dulled the edges. It made me start thinking, or maybe I already was.
I was thinking about an image of home. Perhaps this thought was tied to the feeling of missing my children. I was imagining them now, and I could see their little faces light up with laughter, their father having fun with them. I was thinking about what "home" was to these children, and I had a fresh memory of what it was at its best, two people standing side by side, playing off each other in terms of jovially directing the children, . That was a man and a wife. But now, severed apart.
And not for less than good reasons. I imagined what it was like from his side, how he must feel about losing his wife to loneliness and lack of trying. How this woman, for twelve years his companion, was out in the wild with another man. About how it feels, this sensation of divorce, how much like pangaea splitting apart, a continent adrift. Once locked land mass, removed. How the distance began to lap at its edges, widening, the gradual drifting away into the great ocean. A life, less lived.
What does that even mean, I wondered. Do all of us ever fully live our life. How? What's the criteria?
I was of thinking about what is is people do with their lives. What do they really do with them? There's the outside perception, and then there is the way the day to day operates, the activities that people do to fill their idle time.
I am thinking this, and trying to imagine my companion in the everyday. This got me curious, wondering about his experience with the continental divide. Was it the same for him, this mutual experience we had?
I ask him questions. The answers lead to more questions, as this usually does with me, and I try to wrap my mind around this image of two, the motions of a marriage, the ways we fill our mutual time. I am thinking about his answers and trying to imagine it, this life he is describing. My imagination carries it, but then I feel that jagged little edge of jealousy and I stop. Still, my mind carries images of union, of what passes for peace among two people, the agreed upon time spenders.
I'm trying to think of how I could put in words what home life was like for me the past decade plus of my life, how we had spent our time. My mind reached into the memory bank and pulled out one rather odd, but perhaps typical, memory. It was a memory of baseball season, maybe one or two years ago. What did we do with our lives?
We took our boys to things they were involved in, mostly the older one. In this memory, we are at a baseball game, watching my older son from opposite ends of the field, and fighting. Often, the fighting, the anger, a drink in his hands half hidden from view, or the frustration of sitting alone in the crowd.

Around this moment, the radio turned to a Fleetwood Mac song, the song I had chosen to dance with my father to at my wedding to this man in my memories. Stevie Nicks singing about climbing a mountain, and turning around, and how I had felt like that before, and how I had given it all up to live in union with this man, the same one so much anger between years later. I wonder what my father thought of the reasons I had divorced this man, and, and how he might have felt about allowing his daughter into such a union.
I think about my parents and their imperfect marriage, about how perhaps they feel torn occasionally, too, between feeling sad about the idea of divorce, of this fractured family, and feeling happy for me for finally climbing that mountain and turning around. I wonder where their sympathies are.
Me, I feel sympathy for everyone. I feel a little sad about each one of these broken continents, not just myself, but the lot of them. Starting with my parents, but spreading not just to myself and my island of loss, but this man of my past, this one beside me, and the wife of his past. How that feels to be seperated from this greater whole, cut adrift, and the whole thing makes me sad. In my case, maybe I am more sad about making the choice in the first place, about these choices we make that make ourselves miserable. And yet there is so much happiness in life, like the way I have been feeling, that makes it so much more worthwhile that we lose to those locked years.

I am sad for a while, wondering how we went up in these situations, how these things happen, how we let go. I wonder how my father let go of his daughter in union to this man, and how he would have been able to release me. As I sat in a tub full of warm water, I contemplated this, and I remembered just exactly how. He had asked me if I was sure, if this man took care of me, if he was good to me, looking me in the eye as I answered, something my father seldom did. He paid attention to me when I told him yes, I was sure, yes I was happy. I was so in love with that man then I couldn't see the obvious faults that would divide this land. Or, perhaps, it was just that then I only saw the good, and there was some of that, too, occasionally.

Or perhaps, things really were wonderful, for a while. And this is the thought that calms me, eventually, perhaps some cognitive dissonance, but peace with that piece of history in me.

2010-05-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

EPIPHANY Part II

During the sermon that morning, the minister brought up this concept of identity and self worth. The point he was making, based on this section of Psalms, is that God's love for his children is based on knowledge of one as a person, as a creation of His, not on what kind of success you have had in your life. My mind wandered off his words a little bit, to wrap my mind around "identity" and "self worth", with the question being, "what makes a person worth loving?", not in God's terms, but in ours.
I didn't feel like I needed to pose at myself the question the minister posed to the congregation, which was "who are you?", the subject of identity. I know who I am. Perhaps more than most people, as my friend Rhonda suggested last week. Identity and self understanding has always been important to me, even mentioned in previous entries. Determining self worth has been a hard one for me, though. It's closely tied to related words, such as "self esteem" and "self image", things I've struggled with in the past...or have I...that's sometimes the question. From a historical sense, I know I have sold myself short on big occasions due to problems in this area, some residual effects of childhood wounds and a failure to sort of understand what to value in myself enough to raise the price on. I struggled with that walking into this failed marriage, which is what made it so hard to leave.
I think about that now, as the minister is talking. I remember something that affected me greatly last year, words that proved the death knell of the marriage, words that couldn't be taken back, things that directly indicated that the failure of my husband to love me was my fault, for not being worth loving. I knew he was wrong, at the time, because...well, everyone is worth loving. Not just because we are God's children, but because we are human. Humans have a need for love, a need for attachments, and truly everyone in them has something worth loving them for.
On the way home from the service, I was talking to my son about both the message of the sermon, and that night he witnessed his father saying these terrible things. I wanted him to understand what the minister was talking about, how God defines our worthiness of love, and how it parallels the way I feel about him. Truly, by the time a child is brought into the world, love has already been developed without the child having to do or be anything for it but themselves. Every little expression of personality, character traits, the positives and negatives and everything in between that makes a person who they are, simply the knowledge of who they are is part of that love. It should have been part of the language between husband and wife, but it wasn't what was spoken in our house, and I wanted my son to understand that, too, so that he could understand the choice I had to make. Surely most children don't want to see their parents split up, but I want him to grow up knowing it was a choice I made to live a life more worth living. I wanted him to know I was walking away to give myself the chance to live a life loved.
The night that time bomb exploded, I went to a friend's house with the children. I talked to her about what he had said, and she told me he was wrong, not just to say that (especially in front of my children), but to think that. "I love you," she said, "because you are a good person who genuinely tries to do the right thing."
Is that what a person has to be to be worth loving? I had spent a lot of time after that night wondering. I asked my close friends why I was worth loving, asked that husband himself to take back those words by giving me reasons. Everyone had different answers, because there are different reasons why each person placed value in me. Jen kept telling me, "it doesn't matter what I say, though, you are going to have to figure out your own reasons why you are worth loving. This is just what I see. You have to see it yourself to believe it." It's not that I questioned it. I always knew he was wrong, but for some reason it just kept hurting. That feeling went away some months ago, though, so I became healed, whether it was through acceptance or through the virtue of real love. I hadn't thought about this in some months, what it was that made me worth loving, but now I rolled it around a little.
I wondered, what is it that people think about themselves that make them think they are worth loving? What are those qualities we see in others that makes us want to emotionally invest in them? Among many other questions, I posed this one to my son, whose ten year old answer astounded me with its maturity, and the way it matched my other friend's idea, and even what the minister was saying, although I doubt my son was actually listening to him when he spoke these words.
"What makes a person worth loving," my son said, "is being good to others. Helping other people, being nice to other people, treating other people well....that's what makes a person worth being loved."
I looked for a little while online, curious as to what other people thought made them worth loving, or made others worth it to them. I looked at personal ads, thinking that this might be a place where you could see what other people, looking for love, used to describe themselves as being someone worth it. "Fun loving" was the most common term used in the women-seeking-men ads. "Trustworthy". I started to wonder if this was truly what women thought were the qualities that made them deserving of love,or if it was based on some idea that this is what men these days are seeking. I wanted to dig deeper into this concept, but got distracted by turning the question on its head, wondering, "is love worth it?" After all, in many experiences of life around me, I see it fade and change and hurt and disappoint. Is it worth all you have to suffer as a result of its potential consequences?
I was still thinking about that when my sons and I headed to the cemetery that afternoon. We were on the way to replace a geocache I had hidden by the graves of two girls who touched my heart. I didn't know these girls, but their headstones made me sad and caused me to reflect on the value of the life I share with my own children, of the love we hold for our children in our hearts.
We paused for while on a shady bench to wait out a family visiting a new grave nearby, the grave of yet another girl who died way too young. I watched as the family each took turns solemnly approaching the fresh headstone, spending time in their mind remembering, speaking to her, telling her how much she meant to them. My heart bled for them, with the imagining of how hard that must be. We waited near another new headstone, that of a young man in his prime. Fresh flowers lay next to his headstone, one with a note whose words had bled in the recent rains, but were still legible, a testament to how much he was missed and how special he had been in the life of the person who left this for him.
Finally, I made my way over to the area I was seeking, noting the flowers and balloons left for the little girl who recently joined the others. I replaced my geocache, then made a nod to the little girls lost. I opened up the picture on the older girl's headstone, again struck mute with her beauty, and thinking about her life,which I had read about on a website tribute to her following her early death, at age 20, by the hands of a drunk driver.
Then I gathered up my children and kissed them. I thought about how life is so short, how time might stop at any minute, how our time on earth is so fleeting, and how precious it is. I thought about the love that family had for the little girl that they now would miss forever, and how it is that, those things, that make love worth living for.
That make love worth leaving for.

2010-05-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

EPIPHANY PART I

Driving home from an outing with the children, I found myself reflecting on a collection of thoughts from the morning. The children and I had been at church in the morning, and at the end of the service, I noticed my oldest child looking at me, wondering what he was seeing in my eyes. As the service ended, I was overwhelming with emotion, this curious kind of emotion that looks like sadness to other people but really is a manifestation of humility when confronted with the power of God's love, and is in actuality an expression of happiness. I tried explaining this as such to a girlfriend on the way out of church when she asked about my wet eyes.
On the way out of church, my son wanted me to explain my tears. At one point, I stopped the car to look directly at him and explain this concept that I was getting in full doses, that I wanted him to understand. At home, we sat down and talked about it some more.
I was trying to explain to him the content of the sermon that had reached me on this emotional level. I also wanted him to get it for himself as well, to understand that this love that God had for us, for me, for his children, paralleled the love I have for my sons, and what it means, what's it worth, and what you have to do to get it. This conversation followed us in intermittent means throughout the day's events, and yet left me questioning some facets to it.
One of the points that was made in the scripture reading today, from Psalms, is that God's love comes from his knowing of us, that He knows us so well and intimately that the words we say, the things we do, come as no surprise to him. Have you ever loved someone like this? I think we all have. Children are full of surprises, for sure, but ultimately that's the feeling of "family" - that these are the people who really know you, who can anticipate the way you would respond to certain things, who know you so well that they sense what appeals to you and who you are.
As my son and I talked about this concept, and about family, and about expressions of love seen, said, and unsaid, his grandparents came up. This was related to a point I wanted him to get about my childhood, and The Void, and why God's unconditional love means so much to me. I asked him if his grandparents ever told him they loved him. He said they didn't say it, but he just knew that they did. I asked him how he knew, and he described certain actions, the way his grandmother took care of him, granted him things, prepared special meals for him. He told me that although his grandfather expressed these things less, he knew that he loved him "just a little bit more than Grandma does". When I asked him how he knew that, he told me that his grandfather just seemed to know what he liked, that it was like they had a special connection or something. When I pressed him for examples (because I could not imagine my father beginning a conversation with him about, say, Bakugan or something), he described situations where my father acted on a perceived interest of my son's, and presented him with something that appealed to him on this basis, "like he knows I am interested in the military, and he brings out a war movie to watch with me", he said. This made me laugh, thinking about my father, but in the end, our talk in this segment ended with my son saying, "It's like Grandpa and God are a lot alike. They both love me in the same ways", and despite my own issues with my parents and upbringing, I accepted this as truth, and I am so glad for my son that he has both experienced this kind of love in his life, and accepted it as such.

2010-05-09T11:38:00.001-07:00

IN ALL THINGS

It seems like I've been concentrating much of my latest entries on matters of the spirit. It's not all I have been thinking about, and there are reasons I can't get into everything that has been moving me lately, but these ideas on faith have been compelling enough to put into words, especially after church on Sunday, and today was no exception.
In these entries, I find myself describing the initial stages of the church service. The combination of the imagery on the projection screens, the music on the stage, both in terms of the people involved and the songs themselves, the dark atmosphere of this contemporary service, even the design of the altar serve to set the emotional table, so to speak, and prepare the heart for the message at hand. I like that this service engages me emotionally, but it's the sermon that provides the intellectual fodder than I crave. Move my heart, but move my mind the most.
So this morning's scripture reading had me excited from the get-go, because it was words from the Apostle Paul, and I was waiting to take them apart and look at them with discernment. I've been wrangling up my complicated issues on Paul all week. To a degree, some of these issues are part of my quest for truth in all its forms, which means not accepting the idea of being spoon-fed my spirituality, but arriving at truth through questioning and seeking. In my seeking the truth about Paul, I find that about half of the books in the New Testament attributed to him are believed by many Biblical scholars to not have been written by him at all. Also, there is this question for me on whether Paul's message was truly divinely inspired, or simply originated in his own mind. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if what Paul was preaching was truly, in fact, the same as what Jesus was preaching. Sometimes I think that we, as a church body, actually spend more time processing and trying to follow Paul's word than Jesus, and I am not sure then if some of the intent has been diluted along the way.
At any rate, I cannot dispute that today's scripture was Paul speaking in line with Jesus, and it was a reading from Romans, which is one of the seven (out of the 13) books attributed to Paul that are undisputed as being authored by him. I looked up the reading when I got home to examine what I liked about it closer, but found that my NIV Bible was not reading the same as the words used by Bryan this morning, exactly. I liked his wording better, especially for Romans 12:10, which in my Bible reads:
Be devoted to each other in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Bryan's version read something like, "Treat each other with mutual affection. Try to outdo each other with honoring one another." I liked that idea much better, and it seemed much more clear to me than the lines above. I'm not sure which translation he was using though, because I looked it up in 21 different versions and none of them read like that, including The Message, which I was told he preaches out of. (This is another one of my issues with interpreting truth from the Bible, but that's a whole 'nother entry).
At any rate, Bryan was using these lines as a vaulting place to explain how the church community is supposed to be to each other. He got into this idea of the original Greek words in this text, or in other places in the New Testament, that were used to describe God's love. There were actually, according to Bryan, three Greek words for love originally used in today's verse (Romans 12: 9-17), three words meaning different types of love, and he expanded on those and what they mean. I've been thinking about the Greek ideas on love for the past couple of weeks, so this part was very interesting to me, as well as the bigger idea on how we lose some of the meaning of the Bible through time and translation - in the course of translating it from Hebrew to Greek to English and somewhere there and back again at different times during Biblical history. Sometimes the original words used in the Hebrew or Greek translations actually have a much deeper meaning, or say three different levels as opposed to the one in the English language. In truth, the English version of the word "love" is a conundrum, because it is one word that means so many different aspects, whereas in other languages, such as those mentioned above, they divide that word into several different words to reflect these different aspects.
So the point of the sermon was that there are these three types of love that God desires for us to show to each other as part of what it means to be a Christian. He described them as the following: agape, meaning unconditional or selfless love, koinonia, meaning fellowship, and philadelphia, meaning brotherly love. He is describing how these types of love may play out in a church community.
As he described the three forms, the words he was using were bringing memories to mind. When he elaborated on agape, on the giving without expecting back, I thought about Michelle. I thought about all those times Michelle had been there for me without ever asking anything in return. She is the living example of that kind of love. It's bigger than just her, though, it's this whole church. It's Erik and Paul Johnson laying a floor in my kitchen, for the price of nothing more than the materials, a whole day of their lives they gave for me that I could not even repay. Or Rich, helping me move in before I even knew him. His wife Kerri showing up at the hospital when Kaleb was born, and listening to me talk about my sadness about not being able to hold my baby. She offered me a sympathetic ear, and told me a story about her son being in NICU for a month, and how she didn't get to hold him either, so she understood how that felt, but that now he was a strapping little boy and just fine, just the way my son was going to be.
I remember the kindness of the church after the Great Flood incident, how a member of my bible study showed up at my door the night we got home with bags of groceries and a hot dinner, and how the Johnsons showed up the next day with a new car seat to replace the one we lost, and a cash donation raised by their Sunday School class. I was overwhelmed with gratitude when Paul Johnson was standing there with that offering. I remember telling him I couldn't believe a church was this giving to its members, that I had never witnessed a church congregation being like this. He said something to me like, "Well that's what MAKES a church. A church that doesn't do things like this is not a church worth belonging to."
I think I learned what our church is from moments like this. None of it was anything I asked to receive, but yet it was just freely given in a response to a perceived need. I can see Michelle's hand in many of these events, the link between, not only because she was the one who brought me into this church, and provided the example of how to BE in this church and as a person of faith, but how she was the one who asked Rich to help me, who told Kerri where my baby and I were, who drove three hours with two dog kennels in the back of her truck to rescue my family and my dogs from the Great Flood, who told the congregation about it, who saw a need and filled it over and over, if not from her deeds, but from her words. She exemplifies what it means to be a person filled with the genuine spirit of unconditional love. And yet, even though I know in my heart that there is nothing I could do to make Michelle stop loving me, I want to be worth that love. It inspires me to be a better person, for her, and for this God that we share, and for the church she brought me to. I think that kind of unconditional love could make a person complacent, and feel like they didn't have to try then, but somehow it works the other way, and at least for me, makes me want to live up to it. In the way that the giving of the congregation to my family when it was needed makes me want to give back to them, an endless cycle of paying it forward and paying it back.
At the end of the service, I look over to see my oldest son, earnest expression on his face, looking up at the words projected on the screen, and singing along with the hymn. In that moment, I wonder if he knows how much I love him. Understanding the unconditional love that God has for us can be likened to the relationship between a parent and a child. Sometimes I worry that I am not staying within the lines enough to please God, but vice versa, I wonder if my son understands that all the fussing I do at him to stay between the lines is not a reflection on him, or that it means I do not love him, or will only love him if he is perfect. I tell him I love him every night, but I think about the number of times I spend fussing at him and wonder if he knows that is out of love, too. I wonder if he won't grow up in therapy explaining that his mother's attempts to get him in line made him feel unloved as an individual. I wonder if he understands the concepts Bryan was talking about today, and about the agape aspect of both God's love and my love for him.
After church, I took a bike ride with my sons. This older one stayed out in front, leading the way, I took up the rear, and the little one who is just learning how to ride was in the middle. We just started trying to teach the little one about riding longer distances, about how to navigate the obstacles in the neighborhood. Sometimes the older one would have to stop, turn around, and tell the little one the best way to deal with that obstacle. Sometimes he would just lead by example, showing him the way without telling him. There were times where I would have to push the little one from behind to get him over a hill, or a bump, to get him going again when he lost his momentum. Sometimes I was back there rooting for him, "go! pedal faster!" or sometimes I was rejoicing with him when he figured it out. "Good job! Way to go! See, you can do it!". As we made our way around the suburban sidewalks, I was thinking about my church community, and how sometimes we worked like this. Some of us lead in front, teaching us or showing us the way. Sometimes we needed that push from behind when we were lagging. There are times when we want to rejoice in each other's accomplishments or strengths, or when one another finally makes it over an obstacle or figures out the way. It's these kinds of love, the brotherly love for each other, the fellowship, the selfless giving, the living as examples of how Christ wants us to behave that helps us grow as a group together, as we grow as individuals. It's how we keep each other in line, some following, some leading, all the way moving closer to God.

2010-04-25T11:24:00.001-07:00

FLASH

It's Sunday morning again, and I'm traipsing into church late again, rapscallions in tow. Kerri and Rich wave at me when I come in, and gesture to their row, a good place for us as our kids are happier next to their kids. As always, the music is interesting on some level, and this time it is Gene ripping it on guitar on stage as another woman and man play backup instruments and vocals. After the music ends, Bryan begins his sermon, and I'm hoping that the bribes hold up as enough incentive for my children to remain quiet so I can concentrate on the words.
This sermon was the first part of a series on "ReThink Church", three parts I suppose to go along with the three times Jesus mentions church in the Bible. The scripture chosen has in regards to a conversation Jesus has with Peter, and I am thinking about this, and how it is somewhat connected to another conversation Jesus has with Peter that Gene was talking about last week in his sermon. In Gene's sermon, he mentions Peter's desire for importance, to be the favored disciple, with Jesus rebuking him with "Get behind me, Satan!" Yet Bryan's sermon focused on Matthew 16: 13-20 in which Jesus tells Peter "That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
So on one hand, Jesus tells Peter to stop trying to put himself first, that the desire he has to be more important than anyone else is akin to the devil, and yet in here he is telling him he IS important, so important that he is going to base the whole church upon him and in doing that, the devil won't win. It seems almost like a contradiction on the surface, yet when I turn it over in my mind, I think that what Jesus was doing was something that makes leaders great - using people's natural talents and desires to work towards the collective whole. Peter had a need to feel self-important and valued, and what Jesus was doing here was taking that desire and turning it to serve his purpose - to empower him through it, charge him through this need by directing it into the area that would both satisfy the desires of the Self but give it a more noble purpose.
In a way, I think, this is connected to the whole idea of ministers or church groups as a whole guiding people to search themselves, though prayer, spiritual insight, reflection, or education, to discover what their unique talents are and how then to use them to serve God's purpose on this earth. We are all created in his image, but yet each possessing different levels of expertise, experience, or natural gifts that can be used in different ways to serve the world. I am thinking along those lines, the same lines that parallel some of what Bryan is talking about, in regards to ministry, but I am also thinking about this concept of how Jesus is relating to Peter, about how even those things that seem to work against us sometimes, like Peter's self aggrandization, are all part of the Big Picture of how God wants us to work for his Glory. I am also thinking about
how God sometimes illuminates what it is he wants us to see, or reveals his plan to us in little flashes, how he finds a way to help us see how our strengths or experiences are part of the purpose he has in mind for us.
So it happens that Bryan is talking, much like Gene's sermon last week, how being of the faith is not simply about passive listening or presence, but active seeking and participating. It's not enough to sit there on the pew, or to say you are a Christian, but to live it breath it be it. So on that level, I am thinking about how much of my time has been spent making excuses for not serving my God on a ministry level. I have lots of excuses, so I am going through them one by one here as he mentions the specific types of ministry the church is involved in. Money is always so scarce that I pray for God to understand why there's so little leftover for Him. Evangelism is not my style, and never will be. In a way it's probably a shame, because I know I have strengths as a persuasive salesperson (just ask my old boss) but it's my conviction to personal freedom that will prevent me from trying to change anyone's mind except through example of faith. I have issues with the homeless, which are too great to get into within the scope of this entry. Putting a hammer in my hand a'la Habitat to Humanity would be dangerous not only to myself but to others around me. Or maybe it's just being on my own with these two rapscallions that has made me feel like I can't, I don't have the means or the way to give back in that way. But maybe it's not that way I am supposed to be giving, anyways. I don't have a passion for those types of ministry, and it is only through our passions that we can serve the best.
I am contemplating a subject I should know backwards and forwards by now, the question of what are my strengths and my passion that I could use to fulfill God's intentions for me in terms of service to the world, and maybe it's as simple as what Michelle said last week, "start writing"...but of what? What is the intended message that can serve both my God and my self's passion, the world and the individual need to communicate in this medium? But it's not that simple, because I don't believe that God only possessed me with the desire to write, but also with the passion for animals. I used to joke that I was serving God by serving Dog, but I was only half-kidding. Indeed I used to think that I was serving his Purpose for me through my work, and I am sure in a way he still is, but there's something missing from it, something not complete.
In the recent past by way of explaining my background or vision to someone else, I've been thinking about something long forgotten, but it is something that comes to mind every time they start talking about ministry in church. My mind flashes to the image of the vision that drove me all the way through school, my "ten year plan for saving the world", and when I feel that call to ministry, I think, "Not yet", and imagine this vision. It's a dream decades long, of childish drawings of the same thing over and over that took a more distinct shape over thousands of repetitions from the eighties to the nineties, but something I haven't though about much in the past ten years. That makes me really sad, and at the same time, my mind starts planning it over again : a place of animal refuge, where animals come to be rescued, to be cared for, rehabilitated mentally and physically, then re-homed with certain criteria, to make sure what befell them never happens again. In addition, the animal rescue would support human rehabilitation as well, with specific types of people in emotional need in focused work with the animals, to give them back what they were missing or needed work on - empathy towards others, a connection to the physical world, a way to re-program them for caring for another besides themselves.
But as this dream has laid dormant in me these past ten years, so other things have become dormant as well. Even though my daily dedication to animals hasn't changed on some levels, there are changes over time and with exposure that have deadened my heart in ways I wish it hadn't. Over this past week, there were two incidents with J that showed me this. During the week, he sent me a link to a video about a man losing his dog, a video that should have made me cry but somehow couldn't touch me, which is disturbing in some levels to me. I tried to rationalize it with truth - the video was breaking up for one, which certainly detracted from its emotional message, but also the overexposure I've had to these types of situations. The other was watching him interact with a dog at a party. He was examining the dog, noticing the little ways the inferior care she was getting was affecting her. The next day, he was still thinking about her, thinking about the things he noticed and how he wished he could have changed that for it. Seeing him with that dog, or thinking about what he said about her, reminded me of the way I used to be, and how I've changed over time. In some ways it is ironic that in my single-minded dedication to learning and absorbing everything about providing quality of life to animals, I end up becoming desensitized to the little details that really all make up the Big Picture I was working towards - making the world a better place for animals. I felt inspired by those events to re-open this part of my mind and heart again, in order to serve the animals better, by which I can serve my God. I do believe that at least part of the purpose He has in mind for me is in the role of animal advocate, to be the one who gives the voice to those who don't have one, like Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus', immortalized in a plaque on the second floor of the Statue of Liberty, speaks of:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

During Bryan's sermon, he makes a point about Christian service by turning on a flashlight with low battery. The dulled light flickers on for a minute, then goes out. He says this is what most people's faith is like, without the recharge given to us by commitment to presence. This brief flicker reminds me of my own heart's brief lurches in those two dog related incidents above, but it's the flicker itself that matters, in a matter of renewing the flame. He replaces the battery in the flashlight, showing us now how we are to live, how we are meant to be the Light of the World, and his sermon, and those other influences, serve to fill my heart back up to find ways to be that light, in the ways that drive and move me to lift my lamp up beside that golden door.

2010-04-18T10:24:00.001-07:00

HIGHLIGHTS

Sunday morning rolls around again, and I am contemplating church, a place I feel a need to get back to but with the usual struggle of inertia and dressing of children in time. With a little nudge and a push, I get the motivation to get them up and out in time. This week, I tried a new approach, and decided to take the restless souls of the children to kids choir practice so I could open my whole mind to the sermon. On our way upstairs, I see my beloved friend Michelle, on her way to the service in which I will soon be joining her, and stop to hug my childhood best friend's mother, who is delighted to see the three of us in attendance again, or just in general. I am already feeling so filled with the people in this church, who have come to mean so much to me over not just the course of my spiritual life, but my entire life in general.
After dropping the kids off, I manage to catch up with Michelle and her mother, and we grab coffee and cookies before finding our seats in the Contemporary Service. Vicki mentions she has been running ragged all morning trying to make sure the changes to Sunday School are situated, but she is stopping now for a spiritual break because she really wants to hear Gene's sermon. Gene has recently taken charge of our Bible Study group, and I have come to appreciation of him over the past months I have been getting to know him. My curiosity is piqued about how his sermon is going to be, and he is already leading into the scripture of the day as we walk in to find our seats, reading the story about Jesus overturning tables in the temple, being angry about the way humanity is changing faith into something it should not be.
After he reads the scripture, the focus is on the four teenagers on stage, two boys playing guitar accompanied by two lovely young women singing. I recognize one of the girls, new to the vocals, as Michelle points it out - it is Rich's oldest daughter. I see Rich and his wife to our left, watching her debut and smiling. I am so glad to see them there this day, and see their daughter up on stage, a lovely youthful version of her mother, and a testament to their upbringing.
Gene's sermon was one I could think about for days, in fact probably will, as it hit me on several levels. The title was "Barbarian Christian", and he turned the scripture story of the anger of Jesus at the money changers in the temple into several concepts, one being an idea I have thought about often in the past few years - that as we are called closer to God, the walk becomes more narrow, that Jesus is not a representation of some hippie-peace-love guru but in fact one who stands up for tolerating only that which represents true faith and commitment to God, not complacency and "free Grace" without conditions. Several parts of the sermon made us laugh, Michelle and Vicki and I looking at each other with understanding and appreciation of his humor. He challenged the congregation to stop focusing on the outer layers of the onion, the "little gods" that got in the way of true expression of faith, while saving only the little nub of the middle for God, when God wants the whole onion, all the layers to be about Him. He elaborated on examples of "spiritual warriors", who would not accept status quo but rose up to influence change, specifically Martin Luther and John Wesley (the founder of our particular denomination of Christianity). The entire sermon served as a method of charging people to be fired up inside, to not accept less but expect more, from ourselves as well as others around us, to turn our souls on fire for Christ and what he was standing for, and stand for it ourselves.
After this thought provoking yet amusing sermon, he turned it over to the vocal group again, and invited us to meditate on what was spoken. As the group sang, I was watching Rich and Kerri watch their daughter, and imagining the pride they were feeling, and happy for them that their daughter was growing up to embody the values they worked so hard to teach their children. The entire hour, I had been feeling this general sense that "church=love" in my heart, that these people were the reasons I continued to come here, that every one of them taught me something or served in some role in my life.
As I put my head down and listened to the music, I opened my heart to God and began a conversation with Him of gratitude, of thankfulness, and I found myself thinking of the beginning of my spiritual conversion, something I have had to defend or explain to people from my past who questioned this re-awakening of faith for their own particular reasons. I thought about how I was hit on so many different levels all at the same time, which all served to open my heart, right at the very same time that Rich and Michelle stepped in that open door and offered me a place to go where all those things could find outlet, and how amazing it was that God crafted that opportunity to bring me closer to Him. From there, it all grew outward, to a place in which these people I find here became my "church-family", the people who are always there to support me when I need it, who are my safety net, the people I run to when I need answers, who help me when I need help, who act in all the ways family would. These are the people who became my true family, so that when my real family, my "nuclear" family, split apart like atoms under pressure, I had a place to fall. I had a system of support already in place. I remembered introducing my real family to my church family at one Christmas service, how proud I was to point out all my friends here, and how I had realized how much these people meant to me at that point. I also remembered during the nuclear fission of my real family last year, some anger from my real family that these people here had come to mean more to me than they did. But that's because this was a safe place to fall, a place where the people were always there to lift me back up instead of tear me back down, where when I fell, I was bounced right back up in order to be the person God intended me to be, like a spiritual trampoline.
I was overwhelmed with God's intentions in providing this for me, like he had the foresight to know I was going to have this need for this, not only because of this family split but for other reasons as well, and set things in motion in just the right ways to guide me to the resources I was going to need later on. I turned to Michelle and started to explain to her what I had been thinking. She completely understood, but then took it past my own understanding to the next level.
"Yes, we are here for you, and we do these things for you because God planned it that way. It's because he has intentions for you, and I know this." We look at each other with an awareness of my history, of how I was hiding my light under a bushel in misery, and am just now coming out of it and becoming the person God intended me to be all along. Her belief in me and my purpose has always been clear, though, and has been unwavering.
"You were meant to do something amazing in this lifetime," she says to me intently. Then she turns away and adds the final instructions, with authority.
"So start writing."

2010-03-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

STAGES

I'm cutting through the dark night on a highway I've traveled down hundreds of times before. It's a way I know by heart, or so I think. A phone call from an old friend, distractions from the back seat, and I'm cruising through the memories of times gone by without even looking at the signs, lost in my thoughts and the music. I start to point something out to my son, a story from the past, and I realize this is not the town I thought it was, and suddenly nothing looks familiar. Suddenly I am seeing the signs, incongruous signs for Lake Somerville and Caldwell. This is not the highway I know, and with a rush of clarity, I remember the right turn I was supposed to make God only knows how many miles ago. I call the friend whose house I am on the way to for her to talk me through which turn to take out of this town. Ironically, two GPS receivers sit idly next to me on the passenger seat (they only work if you turn them on, see....).
So I make a turn, and now I'm on another highway, the unexpected highway, the highway that used to take me to San Marcos, and the horse of my heart, but now I am hoping is taking me back to the highway I was supposed to be on this whole time. I'm not really sure where I am anymore, but somehow I'm okay with it all, because I'm tuned into classical music and the concentration of calm. It's all about the journey, and I am just trying to enjoy it without worrying about where it's going to end up.
Except that my friend is expecting me, and I make the night more of a comedy of errors when I try to make it her house from memory and not off the directions. At any rate, I'm an hour behind anticipated arrival when I finally pull up at her house.
She welcomes me in with a smile anyways, and after some discomfort trying to to get the children off to bed, I join her and her husband at the kitchen table. Everything in their house flows in neat, orderly lines. Abstract art hangs from boldly painted walls, staring down at bantam futon furniture. Classical music flows from unseen speakers, settling us into "serenity now".
I sit across from D., who is stirring a cup of tea, and her husband G., who is sketching with charcoal over an etched drawing, lines moving every which way but somehow connecting to a coherent whole. I begin our catching-up conversation with an explanation, a redirection of parenting skill attempts based on the premise that I have to become more self reliant, learn to be mother and father both, because the father is not coming back, or at least not in the ways that it was before.
Each explanation begs another explanation, and we go back further and further, to explain the demise of this relationship that wasn't meant to be. I pose questions, questions directed to G., questions as if I am questioning myself, but I'm not, really, It's almost like I want him to agree with me on this thing, which is "the thing that is not love", showing them the scars as if I need to prove my pain to them. They get it. I ask G what it would be like if he was across the world from his wife, and he looks at her like it pains him to even think of it. "And if you were, would you want to write to her? To talk to her? Would you miss her?" Of course, of course, but it would never come to that. D has her hand on his leg, and he looks up from his sketches to meet my eyes, and then look at hers as he gives his answers. She listens to him with half a face turned towards him, smiling softly. I draw on my own experiences, asking him if he would make the same choices as this man did, and yet knowing the answer was no, before I even asked.
So then we're done talking about 'what is not", now we move on to talking about "what is". I've had enough of the darkness, and I move on to the light. I tell them about hope, and about yearning, and I ask them if they ever felt like that, do they understand what that is. I ask them questions about how these things start out. It seems like it's been so long for me, or maybe that I've never felt like this before. I explain what I am feeling now, and ask them if they ever felt this way. G looks up at me and meets my eyes, and they both kind of smile and start to tell me the story of their beginning, a story I have never heard the whole of. She starts to talk about a note he left on her car, about six months of letters back and forth, of a picture of him she could look at and hold in her hands. "This was in the old days," G. teased, "before Facebook profile pics. Back when we had like real pictures, you know. Remember those things?"
So I ask them questions about how these things start out. It seems like it's been so long for me, or maybe that I've never felt like this before. They identify with what I am explaining, nodding and giving each other knowing looks. Then G explains it better, the beginning of knowing.
"At first, you discover each other's intrinsic qualities, those little things you have in common. And those things begin to take on a life of their own. Then there's the inside jokes, which also begin to take on a life of their own. They build on each other, until you've got this whole...thing going on that's bigger than all of that." He gestures, a hand flowing up into the air. I get it, and I also see from them, from the way they are together, what that looks like as it grows.

Then it's late, and we retire. In the morning, D and I talk as she prepares her day's lunch in the kitchen. She tells me about a radio program that morning talking about a book that reminded her of our conversation last night, and about how sometimes the things that happen to us that are sad, or bad, are really there to help us appreciate the good, and the light, that much more. It's something I have heard a few times, a few different ways, over the past couple of months.
In the end, she gives me some direction on how to get to what I need to get this morning, a map of sorts, outlining some stops along the way. She leaves for work, and I begin preparing to leave. As I went to get the children ready, I saw a picture from their wedding. It was the most beautiful scene I had ever seen. They were standing by a window that looked out on a rainforest, somewhere exotic, like perhaps Madagascar, and it was just the two of them and the minister. She was so beautiful, and they looked at each other with adoration. It made me smile, remembering her as the Prom Queen, and G teasing us about our alleged dorkiness.

I drive off to the next stage of my journey, thinking, thinking about pictures and maps and directions, and how sometimes we have to take the wrong way before we see the signs that are pointing us in the right direction, to the road of light and better days ahead.

2010-03-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

AND GRACE WILL SET US FREE

Every Sunday, it's the same struggle. Two kids who don't want to go to church are scrubbed, dressed, and sent out to the car, always at the last minute. No matter what time I get started, we always seem to be leaving right when we are supposed to get there. Realistically, we are always about ten minutes late - the amount of time it would take me to get the youngest situated in some kind of other activity besides sitting next to me in service, struggling to sit still and be quiet. So there we are, and there we struggle.
Every Sunday, it's the same thing. It's the struggle with him to keep his mouth from running, a million little disturbances, the occasional dirty looks from people around us. Luckily, I think, we have choices between two services, and this one I always choose, because it's not nearly as quiet of a service as the other one, not nearly as serious, so not nearly as high of a penalty. If I had my choice between the two, I would choose the other - the other service going on next door is more mentally engaging, whereas this one, the contemporary service, is more emotionally based. There is always something about it, though, that makes me feel God at a heart level, instead of a head level, and this week, it was no exception.
There is live music, and colors swirling, and darkness inside the heart of the church, and pictures projected on to twin screens on either side of the stage, the words to the songs running over them. This week, it started with a picture of light streaming through the open canopy of a forest, a place where God exists to me. I was feeling it, not thinking it. A woman onstage was talking about her decision on a particular song we were to sing, talking about how her life was so full of all these distractions, and finally, when she came to ask God to reveal to her what music she should chose, and sought his counsel on the other issues, the answer was that He had been waiting for her this whole time, just waiting for her to start leaning on him already. And with this revelation, she chose Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) , a modern twist on an old hymn. I always loved this song, but this day, I was being moved by the words.
Clips from a movie about the Last Supper rolled across the twin screens as this week's Scripture was played from a recording that reverberated throughout the sanctuary. The minister began his sermon, a time that is usually the most challenging with the children, mostly the youngest one. Today, it was the usual struggle again, the constant whispering between us, his requests for toys or potty breaks, my admonishments, attempts to engage him in coloring, the questioning myself on if other well-intended people are right, if he is too young for this and I should just make sure he is in the nursery during this, or in the little church choir upstairs, but always the guilt of pushing him into something away from me when all week I spent away from him at work, the desire to show him how I live my faith, how I want it to be for him, the expectations I have versus the reality of taking a three year old to church services that he can't understand. The difference this time, though, was how I felt about it. My heart was so much lighter than it has been in the past, dealing with this same problem, and I say a silent prayer to God, thanking him for bringing that light back into my life, for chasing the darkness away.
I am only catching snatches of the sermon, which is exasperating me, because I really want to absorb it today, and some of what Brian is saying is speaking to me. In fact, he is kind of talking about some of what I've been thinking about, about the struggle, and how we are to deal with it, questioning if we allowed ourselves to be defined by the struggle, or transcend it. "Some of us here are dealing with pain, dealing with past abusive relationships, dealing with dark times, and what God wants is for us to not be defined by that, but defined by this instead", and he gestures to the breaking of bread and the spilling of wine, of the sacrifice of the Lamb. He is talking about Passover, and the marking of the doors with sheep's blood, and the gift of people's presence in our lives, and my mind is rolling.
Then we break for communion, and all these thoughts spill out when I dip the bread into the wine, and take my place on my knees to pray after. I lift my heart up to God, and I am thanking him for the light he has placed in my life, for leading me out of the desert, for transforming my heart the past months, for all the gifts He has brought to me, for His presence most of all. I am weeping with gratitude for this God, who saved/ a wretch like me.
And wretch I was, so darn miserable and aching inside before. I think about that today, think about how on other Sundays just like this, I would go home from church crying, and spend the day trying to lift myself out of this depression. Some of that darkness was from the struggle of trying to manage these two heathen children on my own, but my attitude is different now. I used to wish someone was there to help me, to reach out for someone to lean on, but I've gotten past that, on to the realization that I have to do it myself. Sometimes I feel like no one's really there for me, but all that begats self reliance. I have to do it on my own, because it's not fair to ask anyone else to help carry this load, and that's part of my transformation. Sometimes getting what you need is to stop needing it, and learn how to do without. That's what we've been doing, with the eventual goal of being more complete without, to be more complete for.
Anyway, this day I walk outside of the service with these thoughts, and also the other thought that today was different, because the main thing that keeps me coming back to this place is the connections I have to it - my friends - but today I saw none of those connections. Right as I was thinking that, though, I saw one, and he is just who I wanted to see, after all.
Of all the people I have met through this church, Rich is the one I value the most. His name seems to suit him, in spiritual terms. In fact, he's the one who got me to start coming here in the first place, and after I got to know him, I saw why. Rich is a "fisher of men", a sheperd drawing in the lost sheep. He fired me up with the same enthusiasm, and we used to feed off each other, watching the flock from the back pew, seeing who was new, then almost pushing each other to go round them up, inroduce ourselves, invite them to our small group, which eventually got so big it splintered into many other small groups. Now, Rich and I aren't in the same small group anymore, and so we pass each other in the halls, and even in his house, since my kids are there every Thursday night, but we rarely have a chance to sit down and talk.
Today, as luck would have it, the person sitting by him had just left, and I claimed the spot. He was all worn out from giving blood, and as we sat, people kept stopping to talk to him, to thank him for giving his blood, as if he was part of Christ himself. I joked with him about the state of his heart, had it been drained dry, but knowing Rich, it never would be. As I joked, he caught my eye, noting the tears. Nothing much passes by Rich, and I knew I didn't have to tell him anything, but I wanted to. I told him some of what has been in my heart lately, about the transformation of spirit, of God's presence working in my life, about my struggles.
"It sounds like you've been beating yourself up pretty good, " he said, when I lamented about God "smoting my eye", about my failure to get myself out of a bad situation, about how it was finally time to see the signs in front of me. "I'm going to tell you something...for later. This might not help you right now, but I want you to think about it." He told me about the ghosts of exgirlfriends past, and how even though some of those experiences were bad and painful, in the end, he didn't regret any of it, because it got him to where he was today. He gestured to my kids, the older one who was practicing Tae Kwon Do poses in the hallway, the younger one who flashed us a brilliant smile. "And you got these two out of it, which is something you will never regret."
We talked some more. I told him I felt like everyone was judging me for these struggles I had with the youngest, how I felt eyes on me all the time. "If anyone IS watching you," he said, "It's with sympathy, not judgement. They probably remember what it is like to have small children, and have sympathy, or perhaps are thanking God they aren't there anymore." He gave me some real practical advice on my struggles with the heathens in church, a solution no one had ever suggested, but made perfect sense. "Man, I have missed you," he said. "You always had something deep to say, some intelligent remark, some profound statement to make. I'm sad that we aren't in the same group anymore."
Today, though, I thought it was him that was the profound one, the one who cut down to the heart of the pressing questions, and gave me the gift of clarity, and made me feel like the woe and strife of my past life did have a purpose, something I kind of knew but I guess needed to hear again. His idea for next Sunday, too, gave me hope.
Sometimes things do turn around. Maybe God was just waiting for me to be ready, for me to come and lean on him a little, and all those things I wanted, he just laid them at my feet, like a reward for the well-intended.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought,
So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

2010-03-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

RACING

Crisp Saturday morning. I'm standing with some friends, half stretching and half talking. Thousands mill around us, various versions of running apparel. It makes me think of my father, who picked me up this morning all snub-nosed with "You're gonna run in that?"
My father is always tied to my memories of running: feelings of adoration as we watched him from the streetside during marathons, running along next to him during my junior high years, or him on a bike next to me, coaching me as I ran. Memories of riding my bike alongside him, as he went on long runs, admiring the musculature of his thighs, thick and crab-like. My father was a strong man, and took physical fitness seriously. He was there at my first race, a mile in length, when I was maybe twelve. He was there at the end of my first cross country race when I was thirteen. For a long time I remembered my dad as being somewhere in the shadows, but this was the place he was at, the place of races.
Today it's race day, and I am not really sure I prepared well for this. I had the one decent run with C at the neighborhood track, but I was relying on my time with Britney to get me through. I wasn't even really thinking about it this morning, though, as I was having a heart to heart with a girl pal. We found our place where we thought we might be, time wise. I remembered to stretch my calves, always the tightness that would slow me down in a race. We heard the jubilant sounds of the first race kicking off. Then the line moved up. We moved up.
"We're going now," she says to me, as both of us are getting our Ipods on. I thought about the last time I did this race, with my sister. I didn't have any music that time, just our conversation. This would be good, I thought.
I had no idea, though, how that was gonna work out for me. If I had known, I would have lined myself up in a different spot. For very quickly, as we got into it, I turned to my friend. "This is the wrong tempo," I said. "Do you mind if I go?"
"Go on," she waved me on. And I took off, at the intensity I was dancing at those late nights in my living room.
The problem was, I couldn't go as fast as I wanted. There were too many people around. People all around me, moving next to me, people streetside. Too many people all up in my business. This was an obstacle I had to get around. I began a little game of thread-the-needle. The focus became finding the opening, finding the time to slip between bodies in motion.
I started to worry a little about what the people streetside were seeing. I don't know why that was even bothering me. It reminded me of my self consciousness dancing in my living room, a silly idea to even worry about what you looked like when you were alone. So I decided to deal with it the way I dealt with it then. Block it out. Put your blinders on. Come in deeper. Get inside my mind.
So I went in there, to this place inside where it was just my mind, and the music. In my mind, I always decided to be the star. I just decided to run with it. The problem is, I still couldn't run fast enough. I could only go as fast as opportunity presented itself. There were a whole lot of people in my way, too many people, too many obstacles. Gimme more, gimme more...I was ready to go.
I thought about how different this was from last time I did this race, remembered points along the route where my sister had been wanking out, wanting to walk. Finally, at one point, she broke. If I keep it up, I'm gonna be sick, she moaned. "I got to GO!" Go on, she waved at me, head down, defeated. I was stronger than that. This day, I thought about that race and wished I hadn't have stayed with her the whole time before that moment. I was stronger than that, so I should have just rolled with it.
Right after I passed the memory of this, I caught up with S, my best girl pal at work. There was hilarious girl drama this week about this race between her and our doc, who was also doing the race. S had left her a long time ago. I was full of it when I came up beside her, bumping her hip and messing around with her. "Let's go, girl!" I urged. She gave me an annoyed look, huffing with exertion. She was pushing it already. I tried keeping at her speed for a while, seeing if I could push the right buttons in her to make it a race already. We grabbed some water, walked a minute, tried to decided whether this was going to work out for us. I was willing to give her a chance, provided she could keep up.
The problem now was that we were coming up near the finish. I always got excited at the finish. We're not pacing it, we're racing it, I thought, as I neared the final turns. S wasn't feeling it, but I decided I didn't care. I had let too many others set the pace, this time I was gonna fly at my own speed and not feel a bit bad about it. I was tired of being held back.
And so I let it fly, and I didn't give a damn what anyone thought, not the people I was leaving behind, not the ones who were in my way, not the ones standing with cameras at the finish or those who were at the sidelines with bells and whistles. In the end, it was just me, racing to the finish line.

And my dad was there at the end, waiting to take me home.

2010-02-23T16:23:00.000-08:00

CRACKED REAR VIEW

This morning on the way to work, I was thinking about something funny. I was remembering this elaborate prank Jennifer and I had in college that revolved around the punchline of a joke. The joke wasn't even that funny, but was made all the more hilarious to us for that very reason.
The joke was told to me for the first time by Russel John, the improbably redneck I worked with at a summer camp in '96, and I brought it to College Station, after which we worked it into a prank call situation...way past the point of being funny.
So the joke is something like this: This boy goes to the circus, and there is this clown that keeps taunting him. This darn clown just will not leave him alone, calls him names, embarrasses him, teases him mercilessly. It really affected this boy, but he had no idea what to do about it. Every year when the circus comes, this same clown goes after this boy, and he tries all these various things to get the clown to stop, but he can't. He ends up spending years in therapy working on this, and finally perfects his comeback. He goes back to the circus as a man now, and sees that clown, and this time he is ready to show him how all those years of therapy helped him learned the perfect way to deal with him. So when the clown starts messing with him again, he pulls out all the stops, and says....
"Fuck you, clown!"
I was laughing about this in the morning, laughing about an incident involving the punchline and Holly the Ho', laughing about all those college years. I was laughing all day, over other things. Hilarious moments involving me in the parking lot, observed trying not to pee myself with laughter, laughing over lunch, good times in the workplace, smile on my face. At the end of the day, though, there was this conversation, so to speak, that kind of changed my tune. It was a good conversation, but it got my mind rolling as I left work, heading into the traffic and the rain coming down. At first I was fine, playing my favorite tunes and getting deep into Keely Karoake hour like most days drive, but then something broke. And maybe it was just the rain, or maybe it was the deeper damage, but the dam broke and the tears came down.
During this time, there was a missed phone call from Jen, and even though I was on a stretch of road that I don't usually talk, I called her back, because I really needed a girlfriend. I told her what was on my mind, barely able to talk with the emotion of it all. She totally understood where I was coming from, the distorted sense of self that is the remnant of my broken marriage.
"Most people during this time are feeling sad because of what they lost. You're not sad for the loss of your marriage, you're sad for the loss of self you experienced in your marriage. You're sad because you are finally getting away. Thank God you are finally getting you and your children away from that."
We talked about this concept of beauty, the damage to my psyche that was caused by the mental cruelty of this man I lived with for ten years. "All this time, your girlfriends have been trying to tell you how beautiful you are, strange guys in bars were telling you that...I'm sorry it wasn't enough for you. It wasn't enough to overcome the way he treated you."
She told me to go ahead and cry about it, it was part of the healing. As I drove, all I could think about was how I wanted so badly to smash all the mirrors in my house. Hands clenched in fists of rage, wanting to strike out at the memory of him pushing me into those mirrors. "Look at yourself in there. Just look at yourself in the mirror. You're so ugly, how could anyone want you? Just look in there, see it?" And I am mad, not just at him, but at myself for falling into that, for looking in there and seeing what he saw and believing that, for letting that be the image I held in my head as the truth.
And it's all of it that I was crying about, the healing from all of it. During the fall, I was processing this stuff, seeing the sand castles he built in my mind starting to crumble and go back to the sea, the constructs he made to keep me under his control slowly disintegrating under the high tide. I was thinking about San Diego, and an experience that showed me what a liar he was. I was thinking about my parents, and their relationship with me that set me up for later damage. "It's the reason he chose you, honey," the counselor said. "He recognized something in you that was weak and he could prey on."
And prey he did. In some part of my mind, I see that his intention was to make me feel so bad about myself that I would never leave, but that doesn't make sense, in some ways, either, because he placed no value on me. Why would he care if I left, when he didn't care about me when I was there?
That makes me feel like all that time, he wasn't really seeing my true worth, and it makes me angry. It reminds me of the Vanilla Ice Cream guys, and how they saw me the same way - all about what they could get, and nothing about what I could give. In some ways, those Vanilla guys from college had boosted my ego, but they failed to see that there was more to me than this perceived superficial beauty and bedroom skills. None of them ever saw anything I wrote, or engaged me in intelligent conversation, or went riding with me. We never talked about books and ideas and the things that interested me. They never even knew I loved animals. How little they knew me, after all that time of working next to me.
Well, none of them but Ryan. Today I also remembered how I felt when I moved back to Texas, how for some reason coming home made me think about Ryan. In my mind, that was a sad feeling, that coming home emotion, because I thought that no one would ever see me again the way Ryan saw me. Those days were over and done, and I mourned the loss of my beauty, along with all the other pieces of me I left in my past. Over the past months, though, I've started to see that my beauty was simply part of my light that I had been hiding under a bushel all this time. And like Alicia said, it's time to start letting the light back in, and open up the parts of myself that had been closed off from this pain.
When my mom and I were in counseling, we talked about some of these things. She brought up that my sisters had been envious of the way she touted my beauty to them, that they felt insecure because she had been telling them all this time about my "classical features", about my intelligence, and they felt that their worth was unrecognized because of what she was seeing in me. "But don't you think I should have been the one you were telling that, too?" I wanted to ask her, because I never heard a single positive thing from her regarding myself. And it's those broken pieces that upset me today, the fact that those closest around me and who are supposed to love me the best are the ones who destroyed me the most.
This weekend, I was at Jen's house, and there was this man there who knew me during the time I was with him. We talked about beauty, that day, too. I told him how my insecurities, how these sand castles did keep me from leaving, how all I could see about myself was this cracked rear view. I told him how I was scared that man was right about me. Julian looked me up and down, and said, "That's not something you need to be worried about." He told me how hot he thought my pictures on Facebook were, and that made me laugh, the last laugh in fact, because this man I was married to said roughly the same thing. "Funny," he had written, "how that now that we are not together anymore, you look a whole lot better to me."
That makes me want to take some rocks for target practice against the mirrors. It's like we were at the circus, and he took me to the fun house and convinced me those distortion mirrors were my true reflection. It makes me want to come up with a great comeback against it.
Fuck you, clown.

2010-02-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

THE DEVIL INSIDE

It's the patterns that I am after. I want to see how the patterns line up to form a whole. It seems like all those little coincidences have to mean something. Maybe I'm just always looking for signs. Whatever it is, I find it here at the fortune teller's. I know I've been thinking about this a lot, and some of my more conventional friends wouldn't understand. It is hard to reconcile my attraction for the esoteric with the outward expression of my Christian mindset.

I think, though, if you dig deeper, you will find that it is not really that far of a stretch.Personally, this is true, because I've been an open minded seeker of truth for a long time. I've flirted with expressions of spirituality within unconventional means. In order for religion to satisfy me, it must have an element of magic, of deep mystery. I left the religion of my upbringing and tried on several vestiges of faith before I realized that Jesus has enough magic to fill that need.

In terms of seeking the answers of tarot, there is an element of the Christian faith that feels that this is something akin to the devil's work, something that results from black magic perhaps, something incompatible with the confines of faith. Some of my friends think the answers of tarot may be within the realm of a a message from God. Still others may see it as a way of bringing the subconscious into the conscious mind. A way of clarification. A guide, you may say, to the signs. Or maybe it's just magic.

However, when looking back on the history of tarot, one might find that it is not so far off base from Christian roots. It is interesting to note that the first decks of tarot cards emerged from a mystical sect of Judaism, otherwise known as Kaballah. There is a theory that tarot decks were developed somewhat during the invasion of Israel by the Greeks, during a time where it was forbidden to study the Torah. Secret messages or symbolism began to emerge on the cards as a way to communicate the Torah amongst the Jewish people. Many of the early mentions of tarot cards were in relationship to priests, and during sermons. So not so far off.

The question inherent in the seeking of the tarot is, why the step away from faith and reliance on God and turn to another source for divination? Are we just not relying that he will show us the way out of the desert? Why can't we just trust him to reveal only what we need revealed, when we need it? I think maybe the mind just needs a little help to get what's in the background to the forefront, or maybe we get impatient and just want to know now what will be.

At any rate, on this day, there was a card that came up in the reading that had a very interesting interpretation. The woman laughed about it, and said there were about six cards in the deck that indicated the same kind of thing. My friend and I were impressed there were actually cards with that meaning.

Afterwards, I wondered about the meaning. I wondered about all of it, but mostly I got curious about that card, The Devil card. I was curious because it tied into a background conversation I had been having with E, regarding my inability to really control my impulse to reach out to talk to someone. The card in the reading seemed to suggest that there was a stronger temptation, of a more carnal nature. I considered if the card was somehow suggestive not of the physical reality, but the imagined reality, or inner drivings. Or was its meaning simply my shameless pursuit of conceptualized happiness?

So I dug deeper into the meaning of the card itself, from various sources. If you want the truth about something, you have to look at it from all the levels. At least that's the way I work. The fortune teller nods to this. "The problem with you is, " (and doesn't it make you curious when people make such statements about yourself), "you can see things from too many levels, nothing is ever right or wrong." What is truth, except all this vacillating?

So I want to know all the levels to this little Devil. The interpretations vary from source to source, and nobody specifically mentions the word the fortune teller uses. The imagery on the card is of a Pan-like Devil with a Goat Head (the ruling sign of this card is Capricorn - the Goat). The imagery also shows a man and a woman bound to this goat man by shackles. Interestingly, the same images of the man and woman are present on The Lovers card (which, possibly, may be one of the other cards with a similar meaning). On the Devil card, though, the man and woman have chains around their necks and are tethered to the throne. Some interpretations make note of this, saying that the card serves as a reminder that we are bound by choice, e.i. the couple can easily reach up and pull the shackles off. This metaphor is extended across various meanings of this card, interpretations such as freedom from restraints, and manifestations such as obsessions, addictions, unhealthy vices - the things we actually have control over, but sometimes feel like they control us. Basically, though, the card also speaks to the side of us that needs to let go of inhibitions, and "Put convention aside and be empowered by revealing your passionate nature."

The card also has some interpretations that involve tapping into a creative side, or becoming more in touch in the God within. It suggests a throwing off of constraints of the past and moving forward. Lust and temptation, however, are part of the equation, with a suggestion of Pan's draw towards primal urges and release, but with a reminder that this can be tempered with strength from the emotional, mental, or spiritual realms.

It represents a choice, basically, between the appeal of the physical world, or the exploration of higher planes of existence.

I consider both of those.

2010-02-16T15:53:00.000-08:00

RE-BOUND

rebound: to spring back on or as if on collision or impact with another body
b : to recover from setback or frustration

I've been having this circular conversation with a few folks lately. Really, this conversation started back in October. I was sitting in my backyard with my old boyfriend, Noah, who is still one of my best friends. He had just moved back to town, and I was filling him in on all that was going on. Here I am, fresh from the barn in my boots and jeans, telling him about the ins and outs of my heart. I remember being surprised that when I talked about the pain, no tears were coming, because I was still hurting from it all. He was, as always, rational to the point of flaw - he caught himself talking about the neurology involved in my emotions, and we had a good laugh as he realized out loud that I was speaking emotionally, and deserved an emotional response. I asked him, then, when it would be acceptable to become involved with someone else.

"Your relationship is already over," he said, "the time is now."

But I knew he was wrong. I was still processing the pain of rejection and the elements of un-doing in my marriage. We talked about this often, argued about it, discussed it across Facebook chats and dinners out. He debated his side well, but kept his emotional distance from me (smart man). I think we both knew where I was going with it, during this time. He was sensitive to my vulnerability, and I was trying not to make him my crutch. I needed something, and he kept trying to suggest that the door was open for me to seek it out there, but I knew in my heart that to do that now would be selfish and to no good end.

I felt I needed to be sexually validated by someone outside the relationship, to overcome some of the issues in the marriage (you're so ugly no man would ever want you), and also had this strong desire to be emotionally attached to someone else (nobody loves you, nobody will ever love you, because you aren't worth loving). I wanted to prove that this man who hurt me was wrong about me, needed to prove to myself that it was possible to have what I wanted. I needed those words to go away in my head and be replaced with positive validation, and during this time, I keep seeking that outside myself.

One night during this time, say in November, we went out all night downtown with some friends. That was a crazy random night with mysterious connections, but the best part of all was meeting up with Raj, a friend I made a couple of years ago. Raj is a magic man, sagacious and suave. This night out, we sat in the corner of a greek cafe and Raj and I had a long talk...about Truth, Beauty...and Sex...fabulous subjects. Raj touches me deeply on some intellectual level, but this night he also gave me verbal validation for my attractiveness, which helped me feel better. That was a strange night of walking around Montrose with beers and bands and goth kids, and bar hopping and Denise and her sister drunk at their apartment, and then the long drive home with him, with Noah. The night ended in the early hours of morning, with my headlights shining on the street and he and I talking...there was some emotional context to the evening, another fight I was having with my husband, another decision to run away from. I was crying about it, and of course he let me cry on his shoulder. We have grand affection for each other as friends, and that night he stroked my hair and told me he loved me forever and ever, giving me the emotional validation I needed without the hint of sex. I remember asking him that night, "But why? What makes me worth loving?" Tell me, my old friend.

"Because you are a good person, and you never give up. You keep fighting."

********************************************************************
I was struggling with the desire to seek validation without involving someone else, because the time wasn't right. I needed to smooth over the scars and start healing, but from the inside. Mari gave me a number to the hotline, and I had called and talked to some girl, who told me I needed to find that validation inside myself. It's pretty simple, really. No, really, it was a struggle, but something I needed to focus on, on finding the ways to feel good from the inside out. It was work, work on self, work on image, always working, working, working. It was a time of metamorphosis, and I was in the chrysalis stage. My cocoon was blasting Britney. I was focusing on getting in touch with my inner diva, working on achieving self validation for the self's sake. I needed my soul to bounce back before I could be complete enough to seek what the heart desires.

During this time, I was going through the Bargaining stage. The Man and I were trying to work it out. It was an earnest effort on my part, but it was causing me huge anxiety. I talked to Noah about it, and to Raj. They both supported this effort, because they've both had significant relationships hit the dust, and wished their women would have tried harder. They also understood the flip side of the coin.
There were temptations in there, but I was resisting. The Dirty Mexican was working overtime. "You're like a volcano waiting to explode," he said, "and I want to be there when it happens..." Some days I considered. The "no" turned into a "maybe". It wasn't the full picture, though. His attraction was somewhat gratifying but only part of the picture, like Noah's platonic love and our affection for each other. Still I wanted to keep people out of the wake of my broken heart.

And then, the coin flipped. The string broke. It was a fragile marriage, under too much strain. C-r-a-c-k. It didn't end for the traumatic reasons, but for the minor ones in the end....but that's okay. All that time gave me a chance to work through the stages of grief, to process the relationship, so that when the end came, it was with the sigh of relief. Thank God that's over, now let's have some peace tonight....
And then the conversations started. People kept wanting to warn me about the rebound factor. Mostly, though, these were people who didn't know my history or my thinking process. My girlfriends never asked these questions, they knew I had been processing, and waiting.
Noah and I talked about the rebound factor. "See, the thing is, " he said, "Rebound is for people who haven't processed their old relationship, and who get involved without thinking things through. You've already done all that processing. You've been thinking this through the whole way, and examining all the aspects. It doesn't apply."
But still, the question sits there, so I take a look to see if it truly doesn't apply. I find this quiz, this silly quiz that was really more for people half my age, but here's my results:

Your score is 10. Congratulations! You're really ready to start something new with somebody new. Good for you! The danger zone has been crossed and you've made it to the other side a stronger person. You've learned from your mistakes and you've let go of a relationship that wasn't working in favor of finding something better. Well done! Life is to short to dwell on the past... welcome to your future!

Sometimes I talk to Raj during my lunch break on messenger chat. Last time we talked, he wanted to know, basically, if I had acted on my urges to find that validation outside myself. His surprised reaction was amusing. The thing is, though, once I came out on the other side, I realized I had found the validation inside myself, and it was that transformation that made me able to be comfortable with the idea of waiting for the right person, and the right time.
Everyone has their opinion, but nobody knows me more than I do. Alicia and I talk about this one day over a random beer in the feed room. She's seen me suffer and try to pull myself around, and she is cautioning me, in almost the same words as the fortune teller. Go slow...but go.....Alicia's thoughts run all jumbled and in no seeming semblance, but this day she tells me something profound that I listen to intently.

"You've been walking down this hallway, closing the windows, shutting the doors, walking in darkness. It's time to open them back up, let the light back in. You have to walk back down that hallway and open up all those parts of yourself that you shut down to keep the pain out. He can be a part of that, but not all of it. This is still your journey, this is for you, and I want it for you."
So do I, Alicia.

Some of us still bounce back.

2010-02-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

LIKE A FISH OUT OF WATER

For some reason, I've been thinking about fish a lot lately. I have no idea where this has come from. I keep trying to think back to see what started that thought, but I can't remember. Vague recollections of conversations with my son, and an anatomy class at work. The images in my head were there before that, though. Even though I have no idea where it originated, some part of my mind is focused on it, this idea of fish swimming upstream, fish on a line, fish straining their gills against the bright sun.

And strangely, my "assistant" brought this up the other day. He is a very quiet person, but sometimes he starts telling me a story, or an opinion on something I shared with him, and his message is always simple and profound all at the same time.
This day he was telling me a "fish story", in a way. His story was about a fish caught on a line. The fish was pissed. He was thrusting and ducking against the reeling in, even though he knew he was caught. He described the struggle of the fish against his demise, "because the worst thing is to be a fish out of water."
That line struck me.

Then, last night, I was on the porch with my best friend and her husband, and he is giving me his opinion. This would make anyone who knows him laugh, because M is always giving his opinion. It's just that most of the time, we don't agree with it. Same thing last night. I thought he was off base, and he was giving me shit about it. All so typical it had us laughing about it.

Then he throws out some mental bait.

"The thing is, for so long you've been a fish out of water..."

**************************************************

My best girl and I set out down a dark country road, on a quest for grub and smokes. I am laughing and telling her some story, and she turns to me and says, "It's good to have you back."
She tells me she missed this girl, the fun and happy one. She talks to me as I drive into the blackness along lines very reminscent of my conversation with my old college roommate last night. The three of us girls have a history together. She tells me how hard it was on my friends to watch me, to struggle to support my decision in the past to stay in the marriage. We laugh about my line, about how it was either a testament to my loyalty, or a testament to my stupidity. She tells me how different I was during that decision, how the life was just sucked out of me.
"And now, you are coming up for air."

2010-02-11T18:02:00.000-08:00

COME ON GET HAPPY

So, the guys I work with like to talk. Occasionally, I hear snatches of rumors regarding myself. Today's rumor made me laugh, as if I wasn't already. My "assistant" told me one of the guys told him I had gone crazy. Crazy, he says, because every time they see me, I am laughing.

And this seems like a departure from the me of the past, the one who they used to occasionally find crying in the back hallway, or with the long face of a sad life. They aren't sure they know this "me", but they like it. "You always look good," says one of them, "but when you smile, you spark. You look much better with a smile on your face."

And I know the reason why I am so happy, and I know I should just let it be, but you know I have to examine it closer. I really search myself to see if I am just acting happy as a way to cover some deeper emotional issues. Really, should I be this happy right now, with what I am "going through", or walking into? I want to make sure this is a real emotion, and not a "masking" emotion. Why do I feel so good? Why am I not hurting more as I walk away from this bad marriage?

The fact is, I was hurting. I hurt for a long time, but the acute pain of letting go already happened for me the past six months or so. I knew it, too, when I was going through it. I could recognize the different stages of grief as they rolled over me, and named them, one by one. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. I think I finally reached that fifth stage, and that is why I can just let it slide right off my shoulders at this point.

I know some of my friends don't understand why I like Dr Phil, but you know, sometimes he says some incredibly wise things. The one thing he said once on his show that I really paid attention to was this: "The time to get divorced is not when you are hurting, and not when you are mad. The time to get divorced is when you feel nothing. That's when you are ready."

I know I held on to this decision for far too long, but the fact is, I really didn't feel nothing until just lately, the past couple of months. I still felt love, I still felt pain, I still felt rejection, anger, sadness and all those miserable emotions that I carried for so long. I still felt the burden and anxiety of trying to hang on to a sinking ship. I know that during the summer I was just trying to stay afloat, so I wouldn't drown. Then, it was time to act, but I couldn't. I was still in the thick of the process, and I still cared about it.

I know there was a point when my Anger began to cease, that I started to head into Bargaining, and I didn't want to. I saw what was happening - I was trying to re-negotiate the terms of affection to be able to stay in it, even though it was so not right for me. During this time, some of my friends became concerned for me, because they have been ready for me to get out for too long. One of them gave me a number of a hotline I could call, to discuss these emotions with someone trained to deal with them.

When I called the hotline, I talked to this woman for about an hour about these complicated emotions. I told her I was ready to start the healing process, and I was wondering how I was going to be able to heal emotionally from the scars I was holding on to. I told her how I kept running to him to be the salve, even though the injuries were his own doing, and it made no sense. "You can't start healing until you get out of it," she told me. "Meanwhile, let's see what we can do to help you feel better about YOU." She gave me some suggestions, and we laughed about them at the time, but you know, it worked. I had to reclaim some parts of myself that I lost to this. And maybe I am still working on that part, but you know, I am closer to "fine" than I have been in a long, long time.

There are no tears about letting go at this point. There is no hurt in my heart, no anxiety about the future. Sometimes, though, there are still tears, not shed of anger or frustration, but of realizations, and expectation of future joy.

Last night, I shed some, unexpectedly. Something magical happened, and I don't know if anyone will really get this, except maybe Jen. I was about to go to bed when it happened. I started chatting on Facebook with an old friend, a former roommate. This roommate and I had gone through some real shit together, and I would say at one point in my life that she was my "frien-emy" (and yes I know you read this, but you have to admit it is true).

She told me to call her, something I would never have done at that hour, but there we were, on the phone, and she cut right to the heart of it. She told me things I never knew, like the true reason she didn't come to my wedding. She told me things we never discussed, like the good she saw in me. She told me how much it bothered her to see me unhappy for so long, and what her perception of my marriage had been, the things she couldn't tell me until I was ready to find my way out. Her words touched me more than my three best girlfriends words ever did, because they were so rare. She and I never really shared those kind of sentiments with each other, but here she was, telling me the value she found in me, and the value he should have seen in me, and what she hopes for me to find out there. I loved her across those phone lines, and I smiled through our conversation, but when I hung up, the tears came hard. How could I have been so blind to have not seen what she saw, in all those years?

But I'm gonna try. My history is my past now, and there's a new future waiting out there. I'm ready for it, and I am not going to look back anymore. So here's to moving on, and here's to letting go, but most of all, here's to being happy.

Come on, get happy....

2010-02-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

SUNSET

The sky was doing amazing things tonight. The kids and the dogs and I were out in the gully, burning off some energy and discovering new ways of getting our feet wet. Pink and purple whisps of clouds were moving across the sky in both directions. I ran back over to the house to grab my camera to record what I was seeing.
The funny thing about the camera is that sometimes it just cannot record what it is I am seeing. I want to capture it somehow, make the moment last, look at it and savor it later. It seems that the times I want it the most, the perfect shot is most elusive.
Even the dogs were difficult to capture on film tonight. They were just too fast for my shutter speed. There would be the perfect shot, their coats sharp contrast to the green of the grass and the purple of the clouds, and by the time I got the camera at the right angle, the moment was gone.
I wanted to save those clouds for later, but even in the going in for the camera, I missed a few glorious minutes, and suddenly it was fading fast. Time is short, beauty is fleeting, and happiness is epheremal. This is tonight's theme, this, and dogs in motion:

That white blur at the top of this picture is Scout in flight.....

My beloved Rascal. I will miss him so much. We are looking at the twilight of his life right here. I give him only another couple of years. He's a saint among dogs, I've always said....

2010-02-07T14:15:00.000-08:00

HORSE POWER

I can't even remember when I started this love affair with horses. It was sometime before permanent memories started; somewhere mixed in with memories of sitting on my mother's lap listening to her read stories and being tucked in with my sister and brother. It was a part of my childhood legacy.

So, when I was five, I was given the choice between dance classes or horseback riding. Hard choice. ;) There were many, many years of lessons. Never a horse of my own, liked I dreamed, because my family wasn't THAT rich. There were years of horse camp and grooming other people's horses and dreaming of my own.

I knew I would find the right horse one day, and I thought many years of what this first horse would be like. I didn't make this dream come true until I was twenty one, and bought Bullseye my own damn self. Bullseye will always be "the horse of my heart", but, he is gone from my life.

So, my youngest child started asking for a "neigh" when he was about two, and I missed horses. I told Michelle about this lament often - I had ridden with her in high school, and she still had the same horses. Occasionally I would go riding with her, and I yearned. She told me this year that if I really wanted a horse again, "this is a good time to buy". The bottom fell out of the horse market due to the slaughter ban, and then the recession hit. Low-end horses were bottom dollar, people were practically giving them away.

So, that's kind of how I ended up with December. She was a bottom dollar price on a warm day. I chose her with the kids in mind, but it is me I think who is getting the most lessons.

I was thinking about that today when I was riding her. I was musing about the fact that I ride her bareback more than I rode Bullseye in that manner. I love bareback riding best of all, but I mostly always had a saddle on his back. Why does it seem like I do this more with her, I pondered. Well, it's a trust issue....

I tried to trust Bullseye , it's inherent in our story. However, over time our trust got broken. It's complicated. But December, bless her heart, I trust her. She is smooth as silk to ride, and completely unflappable.

Or so I thought. Ironically, five minutes after I thought that very thing about her, she DID spook at something, and at the worst moment - coming around a corner at a canter. Mind you, the arena is mostly mud right now. She sees something out of the corner of her eye, and makes a mad bolt to the right in fear.

But my body responds automatically without even having to think about it. Sit back, center myself, work the reins in her mouth to guide and calm her, heels down for balance, my seat on her bare back telling her to slow down, calm down, and go this way, and this speed....

I think the fact that I don't even have to think about it is amazing. It makes me think there is more strengths inside me that I haven't had the chance to use in a while, but it doesn't mean they have gone away. They've just been dormant, but when given the opportunity, they will come back just as automatically.

I think, that's it, that is one of the powers the horse has - to teach us to trust ourselves.

2010-02-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONAL

So, it's Matt's birthday again. That got me thinking about the last birthday of his I celebrated with him, and what happened that night, something I wanted to write about because it affected me on some strange level, but I didn't feel comfortable talking about for a long time.
And it may be a radical departure from the previous entries, maybe it's just that "angel-devil dichotomy" I have going for me, but I think I'm ready to confess....
Matt is the husband of my best friend. He's funny, he's wild, and his personality is a lot like mine (which is why, we joke, J married him). He also happens to like strippers.
So, it's his birthday two years ago, and he wants to go to the strip club over on my side of town, DB Cooper's Mansion. There's a crowd of us - the two of them, the two of us, Pegs and her man, and some casual stripper friends of Matt's, who are flashing long legs and short skirts.
The night started out slow. We were drinking, chatting to pass the time. I was wearing the cleavage shirt, and unusually flirty with my husband, who was not the slightest bit interested. So, I went to the stage with Jennifer, and we slipped dollars in the thong of Matt's stripper friend, who had managed to get herself a moonlight appearance at the club, since we were there and all and she just happened to have her dance-wear with her....
As I flirted with her while watching her moves, she rolled her head, sending her soft brown hair cascading down my chest, and then she touched me, and it was somewhat titillating....
But then it was time to go. We had to go get the kids. I'd had too much to drink, and after a crazy moment in the bathroom, I wandered out with every intention of finding my husband and making him drive me home....
But, when I came out of the bathroom, and passed by the stripper's changing room, a girl was standing in front of me. She was a hispanic girl, dressed in a leather dress that didn't leave much to the imagination. She had her hips thrown out, and beckoned me over....
"Hey baby," she says, "I want to show you something", and she put her arm around my shoulder, and began leading me off.
"Where are we going?" I asked her.
"I wanna give you a lap dance, baby," she says.
I told her I wanted to find my husband. I didn't feel comfortable going off with her alone (maybe it was that whole gut instinct thing). She walked with me to our table, but he wasn't there, and she pressed on.
"Let's go, baby, I want to dance for you"
So we get in the VIP room, and then she is acting paranoid. She blocks the entrance to the door with a chair, and peeks out to make sure no one can see her. Then she comes to stand in front of me, but instead of dancing, she looks at me, and suddenly leans forward, pulling my shirt down so that my breasts swell out, and starts kissing me....
I have no idea what to do with this. Really, I had no concept of what was happening. All I could think about was, "is this what usually happens in VIP rooms?" She whispers some naughty things, and tries to undress me. She tells me what she wants to do to me.
Then she backs up, and says, "And I charge $200 for that."
What? I am trying to make sense of what is happening, but it looks more and more like I am getting came on to by a ...well, I don't want to make any illegal assumptions...but....yeah, I think she just propositioned me....
And I have no idea what to do with this. She comes back to me, working harder this time. She runs her mouth along my neck and down to my chest, and then...she bites me...in a very personal spot. It was time for me to leave.
I throw twenty dollars at her on my way out the door. She sits down, dejected. "What's this for, baby?"
"For the dance?" I have no idea. I felt like I owed her something. What's the appropriate gesture in this situation?
I walked past her and found my husband, growling and mad. "Where have you been?"
"Let's just go. Let's get out of here."
On the way home, we have a grand fight. He wants to know why I am acting so weird, and when I tell him, he asks me why I am lying to him. This goes round and round. All the while, I am wondering about him, about the times he goes to the strip clubs without me. Is this what happens in the VIP room? I keep wondering, and we keep fighting. He doesn't believe a word I am telling him.
The next morning, I show him the bruise that the bite left on my right breast.
"Wow, I guess you were telling the truth."
But I can't tell him the truth, not really, about how my interaction with her awoke something in me, a hunger, not for women, but for that feeling....that feeling of being wanted.....

2010-02-03T21:52:00.001-08:00

JOB, RESTORED

Okay, this was one of the very powerful signs from my journey through Spring the other day. It takes some background information to understand why this image was so powerful to me.

So, this is the apartment that my husband and I lived in between his first and second overseas deployments, somewhere back like five to seven years ago. It was us and the first kid and the first dog, and it was a hot mess back then. This is where I lived when I worked with Ms J that I mentioned in the previous entry. It was before I moved to the house I live in now, but was two years in this house before I left the job J and I shared.
When I moved to the new house, I also got a puppy, my Scout dog, and he was a terror. One day, he decided to "get himself some religion". I've told this story elsewhere in this blog, but here is a shorter version: I was sleeping in on a Sunday, and realized slowly that the door to my room was ajar, which meant the puppy was roaming loose. I walked into the living room, and...what bedlam. Pillow stuffing and torn littering all over the carpet, and worse of all, my brand new fancy leather Bible, chewed and laying agape across my end table, with puppy teeth marks all over the edges.
The Bible was laying open to Job 42: Job Is Restored
That was the only page that was torn, and I taped it back together. The damage to the spine may be permanent, though, as every time I open my Bible now, it naturally falls open to that page. For a long time, I wondered if God wasn't trying to tell me something. I pondered Job a lot in the past five years.
There are a lot of different ways of understanding Job, but this is the way I understand it, short and sweet: One day Satan and God made a little wager about Job, and God let Satan test him. All kinds of terrible things happened to Job, woe and misfortune. Lots of dialogue happens between various characters on why this happened to him, posing the question, "is misfortune always a divine punishment for something?" Job remained faithful to his God, and in the end, was rewarded.
Job was restored. The Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.

I drove past my old apartment complex on the way to the dentist. I expected the old apartment to look like it had all the times I have driven past it in the past few years - vacant, empty, run down, the whole complex falling apart at the seams.
This time, though, I was in shock as I rounded the turn. All the units had been freshly painted, and there was a new complex name on the sign.
Bought out.
Renovated.
Restored.

That's how I feel.

2010-02-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

SIGN, SIGN,
EVERYWHERE A SIGN

So, I have prayed often for a sign from God, specifically asking him to reveal his will about a certain issue. I'm not sure signs were ever there, but sometimes I wondered if they were just too subtle for me to understand. I started confessing that to Him, too. I told him I might be a little obtuse. I told him I needed like a billboard or something, something very clear and right there in front of me.

So, the morning the big decision was made on this issue, I was driving to the feed store. I kept turning over in my heart why I felt so much peace, and...happiness. I felt just plain happy. So I start wondering, God, is this a sign?

Then I looked out, instead of inward, and I saw this billboard.

Touche.

And you know, then I start thinking, maybe these signs have been there all along, and I am just extremely dense. I mean, really, it should have been pretty clear what God's will was when the minister took my hands one day, during a private session with her regarding some other issues. She looked me deep in the eyes and said, "I know you've been praying for a sign from God. Here's your sign.... Leave him." But still, I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. I had to look at it from all the angles, and that took some time.

Anyways, I start wondering what other kinds of signs are out there, what else have I been missing. I drive circles around Spring, running through it with eyes wide open. Here's what I found:I spent some time in the bank, and on my way out, I heard someone call my name. It was a woman I worked with for three years in my past career as a vet tech for dogs. She had been the receptionist, and we never talked all that much, but we had gone to lunch some. I told her what I was doing in there, on our way out. She understands, she remembers me being sad, even then. She looks me up and down."You look really good, for someone going through all that."She tells me that was because God was working through me."It's because He finally gave you the courage to leave, baby. He did that for you, and He will never leave you now. He's with you."And that, finally that, made me want to cry, but not because I was sad, but because I was so damn appreciative. That tricky God. He gave me what I needed when I needed to have it. And it makes me think of Exodus, and the bible study we are doing at church. I think maybe that is where I am right now.

The story we are studying is the part where the Israelites are wandering through the wilderness, and they became famished. They were hungry for meat and bread, and God made them a promise to care for them. At night, quail flew down and landed at their feet, and in the morning, bread rained down from the sky, and "each was given unto their need". And that's a bit how I feel right now. Like manna from heaven just rained down upon me.

There is more I could say about this, Part II forthwithcoming, more photos to share, but...that would take me too deep in this. And it's a good stopping place. Pacing myself....

2010-02-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

PACING
There was a farmer/had a dog/and Bingo was his name-o
That little ditty was my introduction to "pacing yourself" during a race. Back when I was a "miler", that's the song I used to maintain the right speed for the distance. Three laps of this steady stattaco, and then the fourth lap, let the tune speed up a little faster in my mind, increasing speed by some imaginary 10% at each 100 yard line, until the last straightaway, where I would really let it fly.....
I was thinking about this last night as I started a running program again. I have always loved running, and sometimes I think it is for the same reason I love jumping horses - it's the sensation of flying, I think. It's also a good way to jar loose all those ideas in my head, give them some time to come together to a coherent whole. Sometimes, it's just the focus on nothing but breathing, and that relaxation it brings, that I think is the best part of this solitary sport.

I was a little apprehensive. I hadn't been running for any kind of a distance for over a year. I'd been dancing, but my version of dancing involves some stopping between songs and distractions. This girl from my neighborhood, a woman I know from church, had been running with a group of women and was already at a level I hadn't done since my peak. At the same time, I had a little competitive drive to see if I could keep up.

We met out on a semi-light track in the dark night. She was all business, filling me in on how the running group worked, and leading stretches. She had brought her Ipod, lucky her. I left my earbuds at home, so it didn't help that I had my Ipod with me. So, we decided to talk to each other instead. It was cold and damp on the dark track, the lights from behind the bleachers shining in random half-lit moments.

We talked about some things, the things she never knew but somehow did, the things that hadn't made sense in a long time but now were perfectly clear. We talked about the hard stuff, and she stopped and looked at me. She wanted to give me a hug, and we both thought maybe I would have to cry about that. But no, let's go, girl, it's cool. It actually feels better to keep moving ahead.

Since she knew better than I on how to pace this, I let her set the speed. She started out slow, but steady. I lost count of the laps before she suggested we walk. "How many miles?" "I think about two..." (damn)...we start up again...And it's my eye watching her shoulder, watching for signs to slow down or speed up. I try to think if my Bingo song matches, but no, it's an altogether different rhythm. It's the comfortable pace of conversation, it's the turning of the head, the listening. Running with her was nice, because I didn't have to do the thinking for us; I only had to follow her lead.

2010-01-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

(Self-Titled)

Ah, Melissa, take me back....

So, I had a bit of a thing for Melissa Etheridge. It didn't last forever, but I loved her hard.

I know you girls who knew me in college know what I am talking about....

Yes, I am talking about Melissa, and specifically, That CD. Yes, that one....

Melissa Etheridge, Self-Titled.

Her debut album.

The same one I listened to not just once every night, but three times....three times a night for over three hundred nights....

I had it bad.

My roommates would not come in my room when that CD was on. Mostly because they learned fairly quickly that album made my clothes fall off....especially that ONE song...

Like The Way I Do....it would so be my stripper song, if I ever was one...

In fact, I've recommended it to several strippers, but curiously they never take me up on it...

One night, as sort of a great inside joke, Jennifer and I watched a strip tease given to this song...by our men at the time, dressed in drag....that was extremely hilarious....

At any rate, I had put aside Melissa. I kind of gave up on Melissa when seeing her live the second time, and the last time. It was a night with strange emotional context, which probably didn't help things, but Melissa did nothing to me.

Nothing, especially in comparison with what she did to me the first time.

Yes, it was the only time "that" ever happened just listening to music, and it happened during that song. Seeing her perform it live was just that thrilling to me....

So, I am reading this book right now, an autobiography of Melissa, and it talks about that song, and I realized it effected others the same way.

Here's what it says, in "Melissa Etheridge: Our Little Secret", by Joyce Luck, about that song:

"When Etheridge does "Like the Way I do" in concert (often drawing it out to last ten minutes or more), the effect on the crowd is dynamic: the responsive energy she creates down on the floor snaps and crackles. There's always a point when she and the audience reach a plateau, and the performance becomes almost an out-of-body experience for her. She has described the effect many times to interviewers. She has to take a deep breath to ground herself again."

Ha! I find this hilarious.

That year in college, I wore this album out, but the funny thing was that it was actually Jennifer's CD. When we moved out of the house we shared together, (the old "Pink House"), I tried to give her the disc back. She gave me the funniest look. She was thoroughly disgusted. She knew what I had been up to in my room with that particular disc.

"Uhm, no...you keep that one..."

So, I had to buy her a new copy....

;)

2010-01-27T10:18:00.000-08:00

THAT'S HOW THE CARDS PLAYED...

She asked me to shuffle the deck. I know how this works, how my energy is transferred in this manner to the cards. I also remember that sometimes it just feels right - sometimes a card just jumps out at you. In this case, I kept coming back to one card, and put that pile at the top of the deck. She turns the card over.
"Wheel of Fortune, reversed..."
Twenty minutes later, I had heard her sum up the upcoming changes in my life. The message was positive, but it also revealed some information about two major players in my life that surprised me greatly. Both were confirmations, one a confirmation of fears, and the other of a hope for the future.
The next day, I played the recording the lady had made for a friend of mine. We talked about the message, and I thought about it a lot that day. I was trying to decide what to do with the information presented. I felt torn between revealing it to the other two people involved, or waiting to see what unfolded.
Finally, I told one of them. Curiously, he contradicted what the cards told about him. I thought the cards accurately represented something I already suspected, and it's possible that this person was telling an untruth.
However, if they were being honest, and it really was untrue what the cards revealed about them, then were the cards wrong about the other person? I am not sure I am completely a believer about any of it, but I wonder. If it is possible that what came out in the cards was really my fear about this person, would what it revealed about the other person just be what I hoped would happen?
Only time will tell.....

2010-01-10T18:31:00.001-08:00

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

San Bernadino Area, California, August 09
(Yes, I am still talking about my road trip vacation, so I am a slacker, almost done! )

Have you ever had a moment where all your senses just seem to gel, where a song came on the radio that coincidentally summed up what you were experiencing at that moment from your other senses? That is what this was like for us. We couldn't even talk, held into the moment, the sensation of watching these sublime peices of machinery crank out to the tune of the song that happened to come on the radio, "Shine on Crazy Diamond". It was a Pink Floyd moment like something from a video movie of theirs. I can't recreate this for you, except to say that here are the images we were processing, only their motion was perfectly matching the movement of the song, the lyrics of which I am throwing in here, to give you a sense of what we were experiencing....

Remember when you were young, You shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes, Like black holes in the sky. Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught on the crossfireOf childhood and stardom, Blown on the steel breeze. Come on you target for faraway laughter, Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, You cried for the moon. Shine on you crazy diamond. Threatened by shadows at night, And exposed in the light. Shine on you crazy diamond. Well you wore out your welcome With random precision, Rode on the steel breeze. Come on you raver, you seer of visions, Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine

2010-01-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

BOOKS

"The Shack", by Wm. Paul Young

I recently read a book that changed my perceptions, or illuminated some previously held ones, and wanted to share my thoughts on this book with those around me, including those who occasionally peek on here to see what I am up to.

I just finished this book today and am still digesting it, so I am sure I will have more to say about it in the future. After I finished it, I went back through it and marked certain passages that really seemed to speak to me. In fact, the whole book seemed to be speaking to me, which is something I haven't felt in a long time. I wanted to write about it now while I still had the copy in my hands, and before I send it to someone who I would really like to share it with.

I have become aware that there is a lot of controversy about this book in Christian circles, which shouldn't really surprise anyone (isn't there always, particularly in terms of Christian fiction?). It doesn't surprise me, in a way, in terms of what I read in the book. There are some unusual ways of confronting ideas in the novel, a prime but obvious example that God is personified by a large African American woman with a sassy attitude and penchant for cooking and funk music. There are also some unusual ideas for approaching some questions of faith. The most notable examples that are highlighted in the controversy are the explanation of the trinity, and salvation and its relationship with sin.

This book was recommended to me by my friend Rachael, who had listen to me struggle with some common questions of faith. The same questions I raised, and many of us Christians raise, are dealt with in this book, and answers are offered, although not always the ones you would expect, questions such as:

How does a merciful God allow evil to exist in this world?

Why do bad things sometimes happen to good people?

What is expected of us in our relationship with God, and what can God offer us, and why?

What does God's love mean for us in terms of a relationship with Him, and with others?

How does the Trinity work, really?

How do we reconcile with those who have pained us in our life? How do we reconcile with God for the pain that exists in life, even when we love and trust in Him?

What does sin mean in this world, and does God use it to make decisions about our lives, both here on earth and after?

This is a book about forgiveness, and about how to love. This book may challenge some ideas you have about God, or confirm them. For me, it opened up my heart to accept some ideas I had been fighting in my personal life and relationships, although not in a way I would have expected, nor that all I know agree with. I feel like it helped me grow in my relationship with God and with others close to me in my life, as well as those I don't know as well but who are involved in the community around me that God intended for us to be involved in. I feel it calling me to walk down the dock of faith and trust, even in the absence of certainty, and love in the way God calls us to love, and not just in the way that our society teaches us to love. It's letting go of these preconceived notions, and freeing ourselves to really trust completely, that let Peter walk on water, with Jesus by his side, and right now, that is what I am intending to do.

Faith. Trust. Love.

2009-12-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

CASINO NIGHTS.... AND THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
I had high hopes for Reno. I think I was looking forward to this part of the journey more than anything else. We had made reservations at Circus Circus, and it was going to be this great big fun fest in "the Biggest Little City in the World".
And I don't know what happened, but it didn't happen like it was supposed to. The drive there was not terrible, but maybe because we had stopped to grab some geocaches along the way, it took longer than it should have, and we were all a little grubby, hungry, and tired when we got there. The whole finding the parking spot, checking in, unloading the luggage, and getting up to our rooms in the face of so much temptation (in the form of glittering lights and games for the kids) was grueling. Then there was showering and getting ready for a dinner our bellies were ready for hours ago (didn't see any Taco Times along the way this time!).
Try taking two young kids who don't listen very well to a huge buffet, agreeing to a plan with your husband, only to find him not listening to the plan very well (go figure) and losing absolute control over the dinner table. That was a nice start to the evening.
Circus Circus was our choice because of the great big Midway for the kids, which was crowded and boy, was that a challenge to keep up with everyone in there when we made our way down after the buffet. The kids were super stoked and running all over the place, and I kept losing my husband and/or one or two of the kids, and eventually my frigging mind.
It was time to calm the kids down and get them ready for bed. Good luck for that at a casino hotel! The husband took the money and ran...down to the casino, and left me in charge of the kids, which was a bad idea. I was way too tired and they were way too excited, and this is how that scene unfolded: the phone rings sometime close to midnight, and the front desk is on the other end of the line saying, "Are your children disturbing the other guests?"
How am I supposed to know? "It's possible," I said, "They are disturbing ME!"
Apparently there were two complaints to the front desk about the noise in our room. Butts were kicked and kids were shoved under covers with the threat of death if they made a peep, and when the husband showed back up, $20 richer, I made him give me that and then some so I could go let out my frustration by pulling some levers on the slot machines.
And girl can't get a break. He told me the waitresses would come by and offer you free drinks, but yeah, that didn't happen. I had to chase down one haggard waitress to get a cocktail an hour into it, and I stayed up too late feeding all my money to the nickel slots, slowly....
Anyway, I had these big plans for the morning, back when I was dreaming about this trip, about how I wanted to go find my childhood idol's grave, and read the poem I wrote in tribute for her (the one at the bottom of this blog), leave some flowers, say some words to her spirit. I wanted to cache my way out of Nevada, and all the way south.
It didn't happen like that, either. The town is kind of confusing to me, doesn't seem like the map at all, and I had lost all sense of direction and specifically where we needed to go to get to the cemetary where Mrs Velma Johnston is buried, and, I didn't feel like it anyways anymore. We were all tired, and got a late start, were fairly grumpy and discombulated, and just wanted to get out of town....
Long way down the most congested road I could have found to get us out, and finally we were free...stopped at Virginia City to not find a cache that should have been easy, and wasted too much time here by this big prospector searching in vain for a Golden Nugget that was too elusive for us, only to end up spending too much money in the nearby candy outlet on sweets these hyper children did not need....
That day was probably the worst of our road trip. Part of my disappointment lay in the fact that I hadn't planned very well for this part of the road trip, geocaching wise. I had been counting on the fact that we were going to have the laptop with us, and I would be able to load a Pocket Query from the road to have caches in my GPS unit to find. We ended up not bringing it, and I had only a sparse amount loaded as a precautionary measure. As a result of this, I missed some caches, lots of them, that I could easily have done. We also spent way too much time going after a planned cache that turned out to be too rugged for us, vehicle and/or hike wise, a fact we realized after spending an hour or two in the efforts.
The day after Reno ended on a sour note as we passed up several decent looking hotels, in the interest of making such good time, and then had to settle for the only thing we could find at the end of a long day of driving. It was the worse motel I have ever stayed in, seriously. I was so disgusted, and made everyone sleep ready to roll at a moment's notice because I was completely convinced there were bed bugs that would attack us as soon as we went to sleep and leave festering wounds on the children. I did not sleep well that night. That part of the journey was really bad, but we got to see some fabulous sites along the way, too. More on that later.

2009-12-13T15:48:00.000-08:00

THE THINGS YOU NEVER KNOW....

Back in a previous entry, I had written about identity, and about how we can never really know ourselves fully, because part of who we are is how we are viewed through someone else's eyes, most of which is kept a mystery to us.

Sometimes, our land and legacy is part of who we are. Sometimes, the way people think of us is linked to the part of the world we inhabit, and our place in it. For some, this may mean the place we knew that person in. Sometimes, it is the place they were from, or the place they ended up. It may be where their life began, or where their life played out, or where it ended that becomes an association with the person we know.For some, their place in the world is part of what defines them.

There is a special person in our lives who has a place like this, a place that holds more identity clues than anyone else's place, a place that has become a living entity, almost human like, but more magical. This place shifts shapes over time, some things change place and appearance, but other parts of it remain the same, year after year. Kind of like people themselves, this parcel of land evolves, but the basic nature of it does not change.

We visited this place, meaning to visit the person who inhabits it. The land owner was not home, but the place itself also has sentimental attachment to it, memories of times past. A visit to this friend usually involves a walk around the property, to see both the things that have changed and those that have stayed constant. We visited both, and made our appreciations, and took photos for evidence....

And also got busted, by a neighbor who was taking their job of watching the property very seriously. Ted's response was both humorous and embarrasing, which is typical.

If you stop by here and recognize where we were....speak up...let us know you "popped in" for a visit. Then you might see how we did, as well....meant to send you a postcard of the top pic, too classic....

Then, we continued on our journey, stopping in the place on the left, which is a part of the world we had driven by hundreds of times, but never really got out to explore. This time, we were searching for a geocache, an ammo can out in the Northern California ranges. Our whole family spread out as the sun faded, looking behind rocks born of lava and wind, to find something, a something that was irrelevant in the end, when it was the experience and the exploration that really mattered....the time together, the reason to stop, the reason to check out the land and examine things more closely, like the measure of a family and the human heart, and our place together in this great big world....

2009-12-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's been there a long time. What should be done about it? Should we talk about it? Should we address it? Should we shoot that fucker down?
Tried confronting it head on. It's ignoring me. We'll see where that takes us.
Stay tuned.....

And, speaking of tuned...don't look at those comments on the past few entries. I am fairly sure at least one of them is a virus bot. Only bots leaving comments these days....
Maybe my friends don't want to talk about the elephant either.....

2009-12-06T16:58:00.000-08:00

HIGH ENTERTAINMENT

IN THE UPPER SIERRAS

My sister in law, Crystal, lives in the middle of nowhere. There is no internet, no Zynga games, no malls or shops or social events. There is cows and hay and mountains, trees and rocks and grass. And sometimes an unlucky bug or two....

This day, meaning one of the two days back in August we were visiting her, her man Danny had caught a black widow spider and was keeping it in a jar in the kitchen until he figured out what to do with it. He mentioned this to us in the morning, and the thought lingered.

Midmorning, we were sitting outside watching the kids play, and watching the wasps fly in and out of a nest by the carport, and the men came up with an idea. These were some bad, nasty wasps. Someone said it, "I wonder who would win in a fight between one of those wasps, and the black widow?" And it was on.....

The trick was in catching one of the darn things without getting stung, a task the men gladly engaged in. Then there was the struggle to get it in the jar with the spider without anyone getting hurt. Once those objectives were met, we sat back and watched the action. There was much talk about who the winner would be, but no one was very sure. For a long time, it was impossible to know. The fight to the death lasted about three hours, with kids alternating between watching attentively, and wandering off to play. Us grownups were transfixed.

Even though in my heart I felt like it was somewhat sad and cruel, my scientific curiousity got the better of me. They went back and forth, with each one holding the advantage shortly, then the other one taking it back. The spider injected venom, but the wasp had its stinger handy. The last ten minutes were valiant.

And if you want to know who won......ask me next time you see me......

2009-11-20T16:12:00.000-08:00

CEDARVILLE

We headed out down Fandago Pass, on our way to explore the wilderness with our family, geocaching style. I had the GPSr tuned into a cache out that direction...but as it turns out, it was more a rugged hiking one, and we had the kids with us. I wish I could figure out how to get to that one, I tried it last year as well. Do we have to go over the stream and uphill 0.90 miles, or is there an easier way?
We passed it up, and kept going. I considered what else was out there. I wish I knew how to put in here what my "geocache map" looks like for this area. Even better, I would like to have a topography map when I get out in that National Forest. I get out there and then I get confused about which tiny forest road takes us closer to the caches, roads unmarked and unpaved.

There was an easy cache back the way that we had to pass up because firefighters were napping and having lunch. They deserved a rest. We could just keep going over the Pass until we got in the right direction for a geocache.
And we finally did.

This one.

GCYTE5

Surprise Valley Hot Springs Cache

The first picture is the view from the top. This is the view from the bottom. Kaleb was resting, and it was too rough for him, so AJ and Ted went up the rock formation looking for a traditional sized cache. They are the blue and white specks on the upper left. I suspected I knew where the cache was hidden, and they were not moving towards that area, but I was watching Kaleb and it was pointless to yell or point from that distance. Eventually, they came down, and I headed up, straight to where my "geosense" was leading me. This would be the rock formation on the top middle-right. Once I got close, I had to climb and shimmy up the rock face, but I found it, the elusive ammo can! It was full of goodies, but no travel bugs. I left a geocoin - one of my personal ones, which then got grabbed by another cacher before I could log it in the cache to record its starting point, which was frustrating to me, but I didn't make an issue of it when I found out later.

After this , we began driving back, and had an amazing encounter with a bald eagle. Below. We got several shots. That was a high point of our summer vacation on our Great Western Road Trip.

2009-11-19T18:46:00.000-08:00

VIEWS FROM MY SISTER IN LAW'S HOUSE

Mt Shasta

5000 acres of alfalfa fields.....

2009-11-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART

So, I haven't been doing much blogging lately. Kid has been claiming the computer a lot, and I've been going through something, maybe I'll be able to explain later. However, I was listening to my Ipod while working on my computer at work, and this song came on. I wanted to share the lyrics with you, my few friends who read this thing now and then. This is the most beautiful love song I have ever heard, I think that every time I hear it, but I mean that as a contemporary love song, a modern love song. It reminds me of someone really special to me who is not a part of my life anymore. Once, this song was his song, and now I can listen to it and smile thinking about that time when this song said everything I wanted to say, even with the knowing that sometimes you find out that love was just a wish an empty heart makes. Sometimes you meet people later in life and realize the two of you have come too far away from the people you used to be when you loved each other. That's okay. The person I loved was a person who no longer exists, and that makes it easier to let him go, anyway. When I hear this song, though, I remember the feelings I had once, and it's not a bad thing. It makes me smile with the remembering.

Collecting You (by the Indigo Girls...of course)

I could paint you in the dark
Cause I've studied you with hunger like a work of art
These are very secret days
I collect my information then I stowe it all away
Call me when you breeze through to your appointments
The work you do
Call me, I'm collecting you
The pleading prayer and hairshirt sting
My hair-trigger love and faulty spring
Motivation smokes a name, but I don't like that smell applied to me so
Blindly just the same call me
When you breeze through to your appointments the work you do
Call me I'm collecting you
Turning up my collar to an unseasonal chill you ask a favor, you know I will
The rain comes a surprise we fly across the railroad ties
I feel the danger the foolish thrill oh yes I will
What it will or won't be then
The shutter pre development the ink full in the pen
Mind the mind's eye's trickery
You might picture killer beautiful much more than it might be
Call me tell me what you're up to what you'll do
Call me I'm collecting you
I would be foolish to think that I could turn it off and stay alive
The way I live when you switch on hand on the dimmer, give me just a glimmer
Give me just a shadow hope around the edges, agony and rapture forever uncaptured
Take these secrets to your grave
Drug across your landscape and buried in your cave
You're piling up and out of sight
But trying to add it up just feels like counting shades of light
Call me when you breeze through to your appointments what you must do
Call me I'm collecting you
Hang it in my window let it complicate my view
The separation the glass of you
But I can paint this picture any way that I see fit
The art of pain the subject sits unmoved

2009-11-11T03:55:00.000-08:00

2009-11-10T17:08:00.000-08:00

2009-11-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

A SLICE OF HEAVEN

We were driving along a forest road in Northern California, one that started wide and smooth and got continually rougher the deeper we went into the mountain. We were going after a geocache, just the husband and I together on a brief respite from children, who were with their "honey" - his mom. This road was somewhat familiar, we had come up it many times but always got a little lost when the road became more treacherous, and somewhat vague. We luckily caught all the right turns this time, and not too far up or dangerous, the coords led us to a parking spot in a clearing, here. It was so nice here that we spent a little while just resting and absorbing. In some ways, I think I could stay here forever.....or maybe visit often.

GC1J6T5

2009-10-25T16:11:00.001-07:00

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP

Scenes from Oregon

Upper Klamath Lake, via Moore Park

View from outside my brother-in-law's place

Moore Park, Aerial View

2009-10-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

The DAMNED HAM Sandwich...

and other tales from the road....

So, back when we were heading into St George this summer, Ted's grandma was planning ahead. She doesn't like to cook often, and figured she would be efficient when it came to preparing food for the few days we were going to be bumming around, give or take. So, she decided to make a twenty pound ham. That should last four adults and three kids quite some time, especially when paired with potato salad, jello, and rolls. This was dinner the first night, lunch the second day, and dinner the third night.

Meanwhile, I was going crazy with a lust for Taco Time. Did I mention before how much I love Taco Time? I had no idea there were so many in Utah. One was practically flagging me down the moment we drove into town. We passed it and passed it, circling like hungry buzzards, until we finally swooped down the evening before we left, hiding crisp meat burritos in the console for later.

And the morning we left, bless her heart, that Bonny pulled out the ham one last time. We had to make ham sandwiches for the road, she insisted. I made us six sandwiches, sure that I would never again eat ham.

That afternoon, though, somewhere in the backcountry of Utah, miles from the nearest small town, the damned ham sandwiches were dealt with. They were exactly what we needed at a certain point. But darn if hours later, and us famished, we pulled into the first small town, and saw....Taco Time!

We'll have ten crisp meat burritos.....

2009-10-21T17:56:00.001-07:00

JUMPING THE SHARK

Ever have that feeling you want to skip right to the end?

I've been trying to write the stories of our two weeks on the road back in August, and here it is October. I haven't had much time for blogging. I do want to share the very best part of the trip, though, before I give up. There were so many fun sights, but Northern California and the Eastern Sierras were my favorites. Here are some pics:

This was outside Independence, California. We took a little nature hike here.

Found this herd roadside and had to stop for pics.

2009-10-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

SCENES FROM THE ROAD

That darn blanket. I meant to pack both of the boys' fleece blankets, but somehow ended up with only one in the suitcase. Which meant they fought over this one the whole trip. Which is somehow easier than just sharing it, for them.

2009-10-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

Outside the BLM Wild Horse Corral

Burns, Oregon

So, this is the closest I have come to the wild horses in Oregon so far. And I didn't even see one, just this statue. We had pulled right up to the gate of the wild horse management area to look for a geocache. Funny thing was, for some odd reason I did not have the coordinates to this one loaded in either GPS. I had the hints printed out, though, and by using the hint, and searching for a good twenty minutes, I was finally able to find it. Yeah!

This reminded me, though, of my fervent wish to get closer to the mustangs that live in this area. Mustangs are near and dear to my heart - just listen to the tribute poem posted at the bottom of this blog - and I've been following their management by the BLM for over two decades. Lately, the management of the mustangs have been facing some dire issues. The recession has hit the horse market fairly hard on the bottom side. The high priced luxury horses are still moving, but the low end has suffered from the economic crisis coupled with the end of horse slaughter in two big markets - California and Texas. The market is saturated with broke down, outlaw, and cull horses no one can sell, and the people who would buy these horses, the cheap horses, are also the ones who would adopt the mustangs. There are 30,000 mustangs sitting in boarding stables across the country that cannot be adopted out, and there was talk of euthanizing ALL of them until our new horse hero emerged. This is an issue that strongly speaks to me, and I wish I was in the position to do something about it.

On my "Bucket List", there is only one thing - to ride with the wild horses. Someday I will do it. I will saddle up a trusty mount, ride out to one of their ranges, find a herd, and ride among them. The gloriflying moment of my life will come when I am galloping alongside them, hair flying, lifting up my arms to God, in unison heart and soul with these creatures that have spoken so much to the depths of my heart. I want there to still be some wildness left on this earth, some place where horses still run free, and I want this for America, for America to keep her wild horses.

On our trip, we passed by three wild horse management facilities. This one in Burns is an area they bring them to when they are rounded up to prepare them for adoption. Some, like the ones we passed in Nevada, are actually protected ranges for them to live on. Someday, I would like to adopt my own wild horse, but this will have to wait until I have a proper enclosure and time to spend working on gentling it. These are the dreams I have in my life, dreams of wild horses and thundering hooves, and a gentleness inside a fierce and free nature. I hope that someday these dreams do come true.

2009-10-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

AT LAST...OREGON!

This is what the "back side" of Oregon looks like - coming in from the eastern edge. The secenery was like this for about two hours. We found a geocache or two along the way and also really came to understand why Oregon attracted a lot of Scottish immigrants. They felt the landscape reminded them of home, and was a good place to raise sheep. However, I do not recall seeing any homes or ranches along this stretch...a whole lot of nothing in the middle of scenic nowhere....

Indigo Girls - Love of Our Lives, Live @ Charleston Sound Studios

2009-10-07T10:42:00.001-07:00

I love the newest Indigo Girls album, but this song in particular. It reminds me of my family right now, in particular a conversation I had some months ago with my father. It especially reminds me of my parents, but maybe all of us in some way....

2009-10-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

GHOSTS OF FRIENDSHIPS PAST

A strange thing happened in Idaho. It was not unplanned, but there were some surprising insights gained from these events.
When we had really started planning our route that covered a tremendous 3500 miles across the Pacific Northwest in a two week time span, destination Oregon via St George, Utah, I had noticed that one path we could take would put us within breathing distance of two people I had not seen in a very long time. So I made contact, and plans to meet up, with an old friend in Boise and an old boss in Nampa.
I really didn't think much of it at the time, just that I was excited to see these people I had not seen in a long, long time. L and I met through my best friend, J, back in the nineties, and I had always really liked her. She kind of knew me "before", though, before all this life changing shit happened to me and I became a person I don't know that I would have recognized. Physically, I am somewhat the same - several old friends remark when they see me that I look exactly the same as I did in high school - but there are so many changes inside my soul and, in my perception, to my youthful looks, that I rarely feel like that person L probably knew in the day.
L herself has changed a lot since I had made friends with her, as well, but even though her appearance seemed to have changed drastically, I recognized her readily when she arrived at the park we agreed to meet at in Boise. I don't even know that talking to her, I recognized either one of the people we used to be in the conversation, except in the parallel care and concerns we had for our shared mutual friends. My mind was sparked by talking to her, though, and I really enjoyed it and didn't want it to end. However, the boys were restless, and we spent probably less than an hour with her, though I probably could have spent the whole weekend getting to know her again.
Then, we went to Nampa, and spent an unexpected THREE hours with my old boss. None of us antipicated this visit would run so long (I had been promising T only half an hour before we could get back on the road, since he was anxious to get to his mom's this night). However, neither of us made a push to get going once we got there, and K slept through the entire visit. Part of this was because Shauna (the old boss) and her partner Mark are just some of the most darned interesting people you will ever met. Shauna is industrious and intelligent, and Mark is laid back and always curious about other people.
I worked for Shauna during the "after", during some really hard years in my life (I think it was exactly two years I was in her employ), and during some years that were difficult for her, too, in my opinion. At the time, she had been trying to keep her alternative health practice for animals afloat in a tiny agricultural town with a dozen other vets, and she had recently lost a business partner and lover, and a trusted friend and office manager who had screwed her over. During the time I worked for her, she had started dating Mark, and at the very end of our working relationship, had a child with him, who was a baby last time I saw him. Now their son was a vibrant, smart young child with many interests and talents, although he was very busy when we saw them.
Shauna and Mark have been very busy and apparently successful since moving their businesses to Nampa. She works out of her home, showing me her the clinic they built in stages that now includes two exam rooms for pets, and another for horses, with a large reception area. They have renovated their home with extraordinary results, and grow their own vegetables and hay. Mark took Ted for a walk, and then Shauna took me, and showed us solutions they had tried for various irrigation and weed control techniques, and it was all very fascinating. They were both in amazing health and condition, and we enjoyed fresh, natural flavors at their house, in the strawberry lemonade Shauna whipped up, a fresh bunch of grapes, nuts, fruit. It was very nice.
And then we had to get on the road, and I thought about this past year, and how I have confronted many ghosts of friendships past in the last twelve months or so. I tried to apply the filter of their experience and wonder what they saw in me. It's been these two, and two months ago, a coworker from the zoo I worked at when I met Ted, and an old professor, a boyfriend or two from way in the past, so many people with their own perceptions of me, most of which I would never know. It is a funny feeling to keep plugging yourself into that time and place, that you who you were at that distinct moment in time, when you were just slightly askew of who you are now. It is all very heady and filled with mystery, the mystery being really who you are as a person in this world, which we tend to think is who we think we are, but is really the combinations of all these perceptions. Who you are has less to do with who you are but more with who they think you are, which is not necessarily the same.
And I think I have the answers to this, but then they swirl around me , questions draped in purple silk and opaque veils, because even though I know myself more than my friends seem to, I will never know what it is I don't know, and therefore can never really know myself. Like I have said before, you hear observations other people make, and you have your own perceptions, but you will never know the things that are left unsaid. Maybe those are the heart of it, the vulnerability that exists within a friendship. But the outside of a friendship is wrapped up in the things a person does say, and in this case, it was hey, I am coming through, and I want to see you. I am so glad these two women accepted, because they were so amazing to meet and spend time with again.

2009-09-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

TWIN FALLS, IDAHO

It was an accidental destination, so you can't blame us for not knowing our way around. We had no idea when we left St George how far we would make it that day, and turns out this was just far enough. An hour outside of town, I was using my phone to google hotels in the area that fit our requirements - a pool, internet access, and under $100 a night.

So we found ourselves at the Best Western (well, after driving the wrong way for a few miles), and chilled out for the evening, long enough to have a swim and too short for dinner.

We had driven across that bridge in the back right of this picture to get into town. In the morning, we wanted to get down here, down by the river that flowed through the gorge right at the entrance to town. We tried several little side street entrances, and kept ending up in neighborhoods with houses that backed right up to the gorge, but no way down. We were peering down, watching the base jumpers going off the bridge, when a hiker came by. I guess she could tell from our bewildered expressions that we were tourists, and even though she did not appear to be a local, she knew the area well enough to tell us how to get to the right road that would lead us down.
She also offered a golden nugget of information that was the best advice we got on our whole journey. She told us about a place to stop along the road where we could get out, climb over the culvert, and take a hidden path up behind a waterfall. That was the most amazing thing. Water splashed down in front of us in a rumbling show of force, spraying us with mist as we walked along a cavernous trail to the other side of the falls and back again. We kept thinking there would be a geocache hidden back here, "and if there isn't, there should be, " says Ted, but we were three miles outside of my "pocket query" (a list of geocaches from a customized search), so I had no idea. We peeked behind the crevices just to see. After we were home, I looked at the map, and I am fairly certain there was not, but there were some in the park down at the base of the hill by the river that I could have gotten.

This waterfall, and the pictures we got from it, was one of the true gems of our journey.

2009-09-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

OGDEN, UT

Ted says, "I want to move here"

2009-09-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

SALT LAKE CITY

TOUR OF DUTY, by CoolCache

Best (and Only) Geocache we found there

This was probably the best cache find of our trip out west, and I would highly recommend this cache as a "must find" in the Northwest region. Check out the cache page here.
From the description, I thought this would be a fairly straight forward cache on the grounds of the Little America hotel. We parked in the hotel parking lot, but that was not really neccesary, turns out. The cache is actually out at the street level, ten feet from a major road, and very accessible, but awfully well hidden. It took me quite a few minutes to figure out where two large ammo cans would be hidden from everyone's view here.
I had this travel bug to drop off that was sort of special to me, War Bride and Soldier. This travel bug is in dedication to the women left behind in war, like myself.
The cache itself was a dedication to the troops overseas, in particular geocachers who are serving over in the Iraq War. As my husband was leaving for the war ten days after we returned from the trip, it was a "must-do" to find this cache before he left. As you can see, the War Bride travel bug fit the overall theme of the cache, and our trip, perfectly.
In one of hte ammo cans, there is a scrapbook of geocachers serving overseas, in their uniforms and doing the types of operations they conduct on their tour of duties. I am going to have to get Ted's pictures taken to submit for this scrapbook. It was a real honor. A miniature version of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was attached to the lid of one of the boxes. I was disappointed not to find more travel items in the cache, but I think I traded mine for another. This cache has moved an amazing number (1015) of travel bugs/geocoins.
Then, onwards, we had to get out of Utah before it was too late to make it to Idaho this day.

2009-09-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP

Back Country Utah!
And GrandFather Caches
We were finally on the road, feeling the wind through our hair, making great time up the highway towards Salt Lake City. The rate we were going, we would be there by noon....so, we took a detour.
Now, I had been studying this area on the map for a long time. Specifically, I had been trying to figure out if we could get close enough to get a chance at some "grandfather" geocaches, some of the oldest caches hidden. I had been working on a list of the 100 oldest active geocaches, and had stumbled upon a few that weren't particularly too far from the highway we had to take on up to SLC, and on to Idaho.

So, we were making such good time, and were all feeling adventurous, and that is how I happened to earn finds on two of these one hundred oldest caches, Pony Express Stash and Clover Springs Stash.

We found the Pony Express one first, after stumbling upon the right county road, luckily. Here is my log for it:

August 8 by hardings (1620 found)This cache was so fabulous. I grew up loving stories of the old west, and being a horse lover, the Pony Express always interested me. We enjoyed the plaques along the way to this one, and the hike. Was a bit of a tough one for us Texans! Thanks for keeping this one going, it was incredibly awesome to find two grandfather caches today and we enjoyed the history. Left Red Jeep TB.

That was a fun hike, about 0.11 straight up a hill, with prickly desert plants all around. In retrospect, the terrain actually reminded me a lot of Austin. We spent a lot of time exploring the Pony Express station "remains" and plaques. Then we drove next to the Clover Springs camping area, which was about thirty minutes away, if I remember correctly. This time I went by myself to find the cache, which was only about 250 feet from available parking, albeit straight up and devilishly well hidden. Here is my log for that one:

August 8 by hardings (1620 found)We made a side trip just for this one. What an honor to get one of the grandfather caches! It was a short hike, but the uphill about did this Texan in. Actually walked right past it a few times, it was so well hidden, but just right there. Way cool. Thanks for keeping this one alive!

We had so much fun driving through this part of the state. I would recommend these caches to anyone, even those traveling with small children like we were. On the map, it looked like this area would be remote and inaccessible, but it really was not. It is such a pretty area. We had such a good time, but boy, were we famished by this point! (Damned ham sandwich story forthcoming). Luckily, the first town we pulled up into had a TACO TIME! in it - we brake for Taco Time. Turns out too many times on this trip. It's those crisp meat burritos that drive us wild....

-delay in blog posting due to any number of issues, which I hope to correct soon-

2009-09-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP
St George, Utah...Act 2, in which we ended up going to the Rosenbruch Wildlife Center

We stalked our quarry
Through the forest
While thunder boomed in the distance
and night darkened

The animals flash heads up at us
Appear to come alive
Run, charge, eye to eye

We point at the animal
Angle our weapon at them
Finger trigger presses down
And then that sound,

the polished sound

Of a refined gentleman

Educating us on habitat

And diet, and relationships to others

And we learn what threatens them

Those foreign species

From woods altogether unheard

And now still, in death,

Telling their stories through flesh

2009-09-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Dinosaur Tracks at Johnson Farm

St George Utah
We ended up taking a two day hiatus on our journey in the little town of St George. This stop was primarily the reason we planned such an extensive road trip, as T wanted to see his grandparents from his (step) dad's side of the family that he hadn't seen in the fifteen years since his dad died.

St George was a nice little town, but the way the streets were laid out was driving me crazy, and resulted in us getting lost, a lot. It should have been very simple. Each street was named with a number and a compass direction. Streets running north and south intersected with streets running east and west, each with a number, usually increasing or decreasing by degrees of one hundred, like 100 W, then 200 W, etc. How could that possibly have been confusing? I have no idea. I think part of our problem was that the street the grandparents lived on was a 40. We would go from 200, to 100, and then the streets would hit the other direction and start going up again, 100, 200, etc. Where the heck was 40? Turns out we were on the wrong side of the highway when we first came into town (my fault), and that the streets started up again on the other side. However, this continued to confuse us the whole time. It should have been an easy pattern to figure out, but the deviations were unnerving. It must have been the work of some Mormom engineer whose brain works completely different than mine.

While we were there, there was a cousin (?) staying there as well who was a few years older than our oldest son. We took him with us on our excursions to discover some of the interesting facets of the town. The Dinosaur Tracks at Johnson Farm Discovery Site was one of those places. In this particular region of the country, many distinct and unusual dinosaur fossils had been found, and were on display at this museum. This included two noteworthy artifacts - the Sitting Dinosaur imprint, and the largest single track of a dinosaur walking that had been found. People come from all around the world to study these historical remnants.

The Sitting Dinosaur imprint is unique because one can see where the pubis bone rested, and the tail as well. It is the only one like this in the world, and has helped scientists understand dinosaur behavior and body use better. There were many different dinosaur footprints at this museum that had been found right in the general area, as well as some other parts of Utah.
As much as our kids like dinosaurs, we learned from our visit here that they actually prefer to see life sized replicas of dinosaurs, and their bones, more than they are interested in their footprints and impressions. They especially don't have the patience to hear us read aloud from the information kiosks why the items we were looking at were unique. Frankly, their interest in the entire place lasted only about an hour, and mostly revolved around the videos playing in one room, the interactive display where they could "search" for dinosaur eggs, and the gift shop.
The best thing about going to this museum was that we earned another geocache find, a special one called an "earthcache", from answering a question about what other kinds of animals left tracks here. This answer was not readily apparent when we walked up, but something we had to keep an eye out for when looking at the exhibits.
I think I found the site more interesting than the children did, but they were very happy with a small token from the gift shop and ready to move on to the next sightseeing stop.

2009-09-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

GREAT WESTERN ADVENTURES
Slow Death of the Pocketbook
It's a small trading post, established 1850, perched at the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon. Two Native Americans sit outside, drinking a soda, and watching the people walk by...into the much larger, modern day trading post next door. filled with several native crafts and tourist type knick knacks, with a deli in the back. There was a virtual geocache at the end of the parking lot, and after spending some time there, I spent an even greater time period shopping inside the doors. Pottery of every type imaginable, with many different textures and colors, lined the shelves, most with steep prices reflecting the degree of craftsmanship. Dream catchers, moccasins, beaded necklaces, furs, and coffee mugs with western designs grabbed the eye. Torquoise necklaces and totem animals gleamed from display counters. Showing economic restraint in the face of such temptation was very difficult. I finally fled the store after purchasing two small vases and a little souvenir for Kaleb (AJ had gotten one at the Grand Canyon store), considering myself very lucky not to have broken the bank in that place.
Then, as we were making our way around the twists and turns of the Marble Canyon area, we saw many little stands, flea market syle, out along the highway, or down a dirt road off to an overlook. Many stood empty, but a fair enough were doing a bang up business out there, selling crafts off the side of the road.
We watched cliffs in the distance come closer, and followed the weave of the road as it struggled to stay next to the winding river. There was a man in an old RV we followed for some time before being able to pass him, with all the curves, and T got frustrated because of the view we could not fully see. We got in front of him just in time to get some nice views of the Vermillion Cliffs, which might have been my favorite spot along the drive.
As the road and river curved steeply to the west, we came upon two very interesting virtual waypoints, The Navajo Bridge and Cliffdwellers. The historic bridge was a sturdy steel bridge constructed in the late 1920s, and had a nice interpretative area and gift shop.
The Cliffdwellers was nothing formalized as that, but a trading post set up in the shade of one of the boulders that had shelters carved into them was doing a booming business, and got some more of my cash. I was hoping now just to get out of Utah so I could stop spending my money on Native American crafts. T kept teasing me about this, since I had been giving him such a hard time about pre-trip budgeting, and AJ kept pouting about things he wanted as well.
I thought initially that the Cliffdwellers abodes had been inhabited by Native Americans, but the sign nearby one of them told a different story, which I found most interesting. A woman traveling solo by automobile in 1928 had broke down at this location, and was so interested in the property that she bought it, and in the 1930s, invited friends to come live there and turn the boulders into dwellings. So it was a white girl thing after all, who knew? The automobiles at the time were manufactured with the gas tank in a location that would run empty if the cars made their way up the canyon road in the normal fashion, so travelers during that era had to drive their cars backwards up the incline to avoid running out of gas! Based on this information, I would say that woman traveling solo who bought the property sure had a lot of courage.
Both of these places had a great wind factor, and with the air being much drier than we were used to, we kind of wanted to stay inside the car for a while. After a much needed caffeine break, a driver switch, and a couple of pathetic attempts to get some more geocaches on this leg, we slowly made our way into St George, Utah, where we promply got lost.
Personally, I was very glad to make it out of Arizona without losing all my money to the Navajo, and to reach our destination, and a bed. Now, on to Utah's adventures...

VERMILLION CLIFFS

2009-09-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

2009-09-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

Great Western Road Trip Adventures:
Grand Canyon Style
As much as I enjoyed the Grand Canyon, I must admit our trip did not go as I planned. There were many things I would have changed, mainly revolving around the interest of time.
For instance, check out our hotel, the Best Western Grand Ca nyon Squire Inn. It had all these great things to do there with kids (like the Family Fun Center, and bowling), only we were so tired from traveling all day that we did not have the energy to engage in it fully.
Then, when we made it to the Grand Canyon, we spent so much time checking out every overlook along the way (Ted's idea) to the Village that the children were worn out by the time we made it to the line for the Red Line shuttle to go out to Hermit's Rest (my idea). All the geocaches along this side of the park were either scenic virtuals that we could have reached via the Red Line, or lengthy hikes down the trail into the Canyon. Both would have been nice, but the shuttle bus ones would have been the only ones possible with the kids.
We ended up lunching at this diner type restaurant inside the Grand Canyon Village area. The decor included menus from the 1940s and '50s framed on the wall next to us, and we laughed over the prices and the language used (Riding Mounts All Types 1.50/hr). The children each picked out a souvenir, and Ted bought a hat with an elk on it. (Earlier that morning, he had spotted a huge bull elk sauntering across the highway, and had been tripping out on it all day).
We had spent quite some time in a converted studio that now sold souvenirs. I picked up an interesting book in the gift shop, and want to tell my friends about it later, so next time you see me, ask me the story about Glenn and Bessie Hyde, who disappeared in the Canyon on their honeymoon in 1928...
And then we were off, with sleeping kids, around the eastern side of the South Rim and into Utah...

2009-09-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

My name is Keely, and I am a Farmville addict.

2009-08-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

GRAND CANYON #2 - PEOPLE PICS

2009-08-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

GRAND CANYON #1 - Straight Shots

2009-08-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

CHURCH OF THE HOLY DOVE
So, we're driving down a small Arizona highway. It's raining outside. T tells me this probably means geocaching is out for now, but I am still kind of tracking upcoming ones with my GPSr. I see that we are coming up on one, but figure we won't be able to stop for it...until we see the door, the door of the Church of the Holy Dove. Wow.
We zoomed past it, but were so intrigued we turned around and came back. The door, which you see in the first photo, was unusually small, and took up the entirely of the front of the small building. There was a geocache somewhere behind the church, but the rain was coming down, so we ran out of the car and in through the unusual door. As we shut the door, a woman in a pickup pulled up and parked next to our vehicle. She came into the church, too.
Turns out she is a local, and frequent visitor to this holy place. She pulls her windbreaker off and begins telling us the history of this unusual place. She indicates a guest sign in book, and tells us to write a little prayer in the notebook by the altar and leave it for the next guests to share. She often comes here, she says, to celebrate her faith. Sometimes she has company, but mostly she enjoys the place solo. This woman has been helping with the wildfires in the west, and tells us of her job refueling the helicopters that bring the water to fight the fires, and of eating her meals in the town outside of the Grand Canyon we are headed to next. She shares history of weddings and baptisms that have been held in the place. Then she writes down her own prayer and leaves us to enjoy the place alone.
The inside is remarkably roomy, and stark, but fills one with a sense of peace. One does indeed feel closer to God in a place like this. The children check out the altar. I read the verse that the Bible on the altar is open to, and write a prayer in the book. I notice that the woman's prayer was one of thanks for the rain, and left ours asking for a safe journey and strength for our family.
As we left the sanctuary, the rain had stilled, and so had all our tension from the first day of our journey. We all felt at peace and calm. I was able to go behind the church and to the side to find the geocache, which was an ammo can filled with trinkets and holding a sparkling gold keychain travel bug, which I was excited about.
We all climbed back in the car, feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the next couple of hours of driving before we reached that night's destination. That calm stayed with me the rest of our trip, though, and so did the appreciation for this tranquil stop on our crazy journey.

2009-08-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Great Western Road Trip Ramblings #1

It is hard to know where to start with a journey of this magnitude. The planning and plotting along was tedious and timeworn. It's generally best, though, to start at the beginning, and so in this case, PHX, where four people - two small and two big - stood waiting for their ride. No, it was not the Winnebago they had conjured visions of, but a steel grey Santa Fe that would carry them on this epic journey to the Western frontier.

This family of four loaded four suitcases and four carry on bags into the back of this Santa Fe, and took off, heading north out of town on 17, Flagstaff bound.

The first stop was unexpected, a sudden need for drinks in the town of Black Canyon, which was remarkably hard to navigate through. T went inside the store for liquid refreshments, while I watched the compass of my GPSr unit align to straight across the street, 500 feet, for a chance at our first geocache of our journey. Here is the online log:

August 5 by hardings (1609 found)This one has the honor of being our first Arizona cache find, although sort of accidentally. We were actually looking for a place to get sodas and I checked the GPSr to see what was nearby, and voila! Was quite a climb for this Texas crew, real close up look at cactus. Lid of container broken and a piece fell off when I opened it, but contents in good shape. Thanks!

Finally, we got on the road again, stopping next at this place, the picture of which sums up my ideal scenery when stopping to find a geocache:

I was so excited to look for this one, but not so excited not to have found it, especially before the thunder and impending rainstorm chased us out of the search area.

Who knew Arizona could be so green?

2009-08-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

LURE OF THE OPEN ROAD

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP 2009

begins here...