Gypsy Wagon

Today I was on my way to see this baby but turns out I was supposed to be at my job. Details. I can't wait to see her in person.

This Is Where I Leave You

Another movie about family, their dysfunctions, their humanity, and the way we all just keep on "growing up". Jason Bateman sorta plays the same guy in each movie he's in. In this one, which is threaded with quiet humor but not really a comedy because there's so much family drama in it, he's pretty sweet, just as he is. But there's this one scene where he's lying on the ice in a rink with Rose Byrne and she said something to him, and to me, that made me stop and write this down.

JB-I've spent my entire life playing it safe just to avoid being exactly where I am right now.

RB- You know, where you are right now is in a cool rink on a hot day listening to a Cyndi Lauper classic, underneath disco lights. Cut yourself some slack, Jake. Anything can happen. Anything happens all the time.

Like tonight when I went to take a hot tub in my emptied house and realized that the electricity is turned off and finding out the "children" thought they had paid the electric bill but paid the water by mistake. Like realizing that I thought the whole city hall shenanigans around my lot line adjustment were over but found out it's only the beginning of the end at the bank getting 3 drawings notarized with my neighbors.

With all the "hurry up and wait", I am so many different people these days. The one getting all her ducks in a row. The one relentlessly romantic by herself. The frustrated one. The one who cries sometimes alone at night but laughs at and talks to playful beautiful crows in the day. The impatient Aries who is often the oblivious one. The older woman watching everything unfold. Still, there's this one that sits with my Self more constantly these days. The me that understands that all the moments, the dilemmas, the wrong turns, the traffic, the joys.... all the ways and the "ones" that I am, they are all blessings. She's the grateful one who continues to teach me about who we all really are with lessons on the source of happiness.

And then, of course, there is the one that will digress regularly.

Another really good part of it is where Deborah Monk and Jane Fonda come out to the entire neighborhood and family with a luscious kiss!!

Hurdles

Launda Wheatley  - Artist

Last January my life changed in a moment. With a few words the image I had of the future, the work it would take to get there, the sometimes daily renewal of the commitment it would take to create it, became a moot point.

Then, as life does, she went on. The shattering didn't unshatter but all the pieces drifted back and began to find their new places. Some of the dreams were gone, some took up different places within me, some were created as new. Some, I believe, are still falling and will eventually find a home.

In May I began to move forward toward one of the rites of passage as we get older. I started to prepare for a different way to be in the world. As a daughter this happened when my parents passed. As a mother, my identity as a mother changed as he became his own man. As a working woman, I really love my job and the people I work with. Still, now I'm coming to a time when my job won't be the basis for decisions about my time and energy. Like a cannon I shot myself toward retirement no holds barred. And then the whole process skidded into a limbo of various holding pattern, starting in May, until a decision I'd made 20 years earlier could be settled and sorted out. Serious flexibility training and the creation of a super hero teacher of letting go and trusting, again, that every moment is perfect.

The last couple have days have brought news that the hurdle has been jumped and the process has begun with all the force it can muster. Where I was pushing from behind before, now I'm holding on for dear life. Exhilarated and terrified all at once, there is this amazing light shining at the core of my imagination.

I'll always be a daughter, a sister, a mother, a working woman, but now I will also be a woman who spends her days creating beauty within the end of the story of her life. That feels perfect to me.

Hmmm, I wonder what will happen next.

Baboon Peace

I read a great blog called io9. Today I read about how a baboon troop became more peaceful after the death of it's most violent alpha males. Fascinating. Read here.... io9 blog

Bio Light

As a person that learns so much through the visual, although I'm not sure if that's just true for everyone, I love National Geographic. I get to travel entire worlds and see life as I have not imagined it.

Photograph by Taylor F. Lockwood

Brazil—Dozens of bioluminescent mushrooms sprout on a dead log, green stems glowing in the light of a full moon. This species—Mycena lucentipes—grows on the wood of flowering trees in the rain forests of Brazil and Puerto Rico. Its edibility is unknown.

Etsy Artist From Germany

Little pixie Matze OOAK made by Tatjana Raum

Click on the picture and it will take you to her site. Magical work.

Conversations

So I have these conversations with people/beings in my head. Therapists, friends, spiritual celebrities, regular celebrities, beings completely unknown to me, shapeshifters, ex's, etc. Recently there was this conversation about the question "why" and whether or not it's a word that inspires a tendency toward defensiveness. The players in this conversation varied, kinda like in a dream. You know how that goes. I think, at first, it was an ex, then it was my therapist, then it was Pema Chodron, and then it was Ce Lo Green. Of course, sometimes the conversations have to do with making decisions, even daily ones, like getting going in the morning with all the various reasons to get out  of a cozy, warm bed.... or not.

Often I am sincerely delighted by the depth and humor laced throughout the talks. Sometimes they are like debates and these I'm usually enlightened by and can regularly change my mind or direction based on the arguments presented. Still, many times there is no conclusions drawn and I am still left in a quandary, although a much calmer one. These are the times that I find contentment in the knowledge of the existence of Mystery.

Lately there has been a vast amount of talking about the upcoming Retirement and where I will plant myself, or if I will plant myself at all. Some of my advisers have reminded me of my beginnings as a rolling stone while others have taken me through the memory lane of times living on the land in complete solitude and discovering the joys of roots.  Mostly, all of them tell me that whatever I choose will be perfect in the moment of it's choosing and that nothing is set in concrete. Good to know.

Sincere gratitude to my head and the voices that reside there. Thank you.

Photoplay

Took some pictures with my phone on one of my sunnier Autumn walks within the city and tonight after work, with the rain singing to me outside my window, played with the photos and found it calming and way fun.

White Berries Getting Surreal

Looking Up Through Autumn Leaves

Halloween Bats On A Beautiful Door