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#Reverb12: Day 5

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reverb12 Kind and gentle reader, this week has been nutty goo goo. It’s the last week of classes here at Colorado State University, so I have been in the thick of grading, meetings, tying up loose strings and putting out fires. A few things had to be postponed, which is why I haven’t reverbed for two days, and why I’ll be publishing multiple posts today as I catch up. Yes, I could just skip them, but like I said before they are way too much fun.

Worthy

The full prompt is: Who have you taken for granted? Write to them a handwritten letter expressing how you truly feel about them. Then mail it. (Author: Linar Studio)

This might sound like a strange answer, but I have taken my body for granted. When I first started working on this prompt, I had every intention of writing the letter, scanning it, and sharing it here. But I wasn’t too far into it before I realized that it was too personal, too private, and way too long to share.

My body is a precious thing, but I have for so long ignored and denied and abused it. It is an awful, ugly, messy business. The apology has been made more than once, earnestly and wholeheartedly, but as with any relationship where trust has been broken, the restoration is going to take time. I have to prove that I’m not going to break my promises. I have to stop saying “I love you” and start proving it.

Brave Belly

Letting Go

The full prompt is: For next year, I’m letting go of…

  • Busyness. I have no idea how I am actually going to do this, because I am a doer, I go go go, I want to do all the things, do/be more, do/be better–but I am finding that way of being is no longer sustainable, healthy, or even productive.
  • Smashing myself to bits. Again, not sure how this is going to work, because I’ve been trying already, but it needs to happen, so I’ll keep trying.
  • Letting what other people say or think (or what I think they think, even though I can’t possibly know for sure) stop me. If I have confidence, an open heart, and am doing the work I feel called, compelled to do, it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. I am not trying to be popular or to fit in or get rich, that isn’t the point at all, so I can let go of caring or worrying about it.
  • Stuff, lots and lots of stuff. I mean physical things here, the clutter and nonsense and mess that has accumulated in my life. If I don’t use it or love it, I am going to let it go, clear out some space.
  • Shame and regret. These have never served me, never added any value to my life, so buh bye.
  • Judgement and criticism. This one is quite possibly the stickiest of them all, maybe the one at the heart of the rest, but I am going to try.

Don’t Forget

The full prompt: Five things you do not want to forget from 2012? List out 5 things you do not want to forget from this past year, and write a bit about why you do not wish to forget…

dexterwithlittled If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you know my Dexter is dying. There’s a good chance he won’t make it into 2013, (although, I am happy if he does). Right now, in this season of goodbying, I am trying to memorize everything about him.

  1. The way he runs back and forth across the kitchen and down the hallway when I am getting his breakfast ready, whining with excitement, tail wagging the whole time.
  2. How much he loves his Little D. How he carries him around in his mouth, looking just like his real baby might, following me down the hallway in the morning to my desk, where he rests by my feet, chewing on Little D’s bones (the beans in his feet). Or how he lures me into the bedroom when I get home from work, gets on the big bed, Little D in his mouth. He runs in circles, shakes him, drops him or even throws him off the bed to let me know it’s my turn. I pick him up, whisper “ready, set, go” while Dexter crouches and stares intently at his boy, catching him and having a little party when I finally throw it.
  3. How when I pet him, he pets me back. He reaches out and rests his paw, curling his toes and pressing them into my arm. If I stop petting, he pats me this way a few times in a row, “more, Mom.”
  4. How I can tell him something and he knows just what I mean. Like “where’s your toy?” (his ears will perk up and he’ll go find it) or when I get ready to go to work and I say “I’m going to work, you have to stay here with Sam” (he’ll run and get in his bed, knowing he’s not going with me), or I can ask “where’s Dad” and he’ll go find him. He knows so many words, understands so much for a boy who can’t speak English.
  5. All the normal things we do, routines we have. Our walks, at almost the exact same time every day, to the same few places, on the same trails. Cleaning up the yard, patrolling the neighborhood, checking for deer or beaver or foxes or cats or other dogs or people doing weird stuff that people shouldn’t be doing, watching out the front window, taking out the trash, yelling at the trash collectors and mail deliverers and little kids walking to school and people walking dogs, sharing food, sitting on the couch watching tv, taking naps, hanging out in the backyard, brushing our teeth, meditating–all of it.

Reading

The full prompt: What has been your favorite book (or books if you can’t pick just one) that you’ve read this year?

somanygoodbooks

Dream Destination

The full prompt: What was your dream destination in 2012 and why? It can be a town, city, country or region — real or imaginary — and doesn’t matter if you actually got there or not!

My dream destination wasn’t so much a place as a state of being. I longed this year to get to a place where I would be utterly and completely confident, wise, compassionate, healthy, strong, sane, awake, and at peace. I’m sorry to report, kind and gentle reader, I didn’t quite make it. Maybe next year?

#Reverb12: Day 4

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reverb12There’s an odd magic happening with the Reverb prompts I’m using. Checking five different lists, one not even from this year, you’d think it would be a random collection of things, but it’s not. As I work my way through, they weave together, connect and support each other, giving a universal answer, telling a single story about the year I’m leaving behind and the one I’m entering into. They reveal things to me I hadn’t considered or seen, give me the space and opportunity to reflect and contemplate. Magic.

Fear

The full prompt is: “When were you most scared? Why? How did you respond? How do you wish you would have responded?” (Author: Mary Churchill).

Two things come immediately to mind: Dexter’s “bloody scare” and the World Domination Summit prefunction of sorts party at Kelly Rae Roberts’s Studio, (I talked about that second one just the other day).

bloodyscare

Before Dexter was diagnosed with cancer, we took him in to have a nasal scope, to rule out something stuck in his nose that might be causing his symptoms, and for a biopsy if they didn’t find a foreign object. It’s always stressful having your dog put under anesthesia, and it’s even more nerve wracking to know that the procedure might find cancer. It ended up being even worse then that, because when they tried to wake Dexter up after, he started hemorrhaging profusely from the biopsy sites (multiple tiny tissue samples that shouldn’t have caused such a bad reaction, but did), and the only way they could stop the bleeding was to sedate him again.

When we went to pick him up later in the day, they wouldn’t let us take him home, and suggested it was probably best if we didn’t try to see him, (we agreed, getting him excited and then leaving him again wouldn’t have helped). We had to leave him with the emergency vet overnight, and when we left him, they weren’t sure what was going to happen, which meant I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. It was one of the worst nights of my life, and I was so scared I could hardly sleep, couldn’t eat, had to force myself to drink anything, felt sick with worry and panic. Things worked out okay (other than the fatal cancer diagnosis), and we now refer to it as “The Bloody Scare.”

P.S. I forgot to answer the last part of the prompt! I reacted by loving Dexter something fierce when he came home, accepting his cancer diagnosis with grace, so happy to have him back, to see him again after not knowing if I would, that instead of resisting his loss, I opened myself completely to it, grateful for whatever time we would have left together.

Place

The full prompt is: “What places anchored you this year? Or were you in search of new places and spaces to call your own and call home? Describe the place you love and why it means so much to you.”

beachgrassWaldport, Oregon. Half my heart lives there. Every other year, we try to plan a month long vacation there, and the rest of the time, I dream about it, miss it. I’m not sure I could ever again live year round with the gray sky and rain of the Pacific Northwest, but it still is home to me. I love everything about it (in my dreams it is always summer)–walking and walking, hiking, looking for shells and agates, gazing at the sky and listening to the waves, eating good food, taking long naps, renting movies at Waldport Video, being at ease, laughing, spending lazy afternoons reading books or listening to the radio. My heart breaks a little when we have to leave it, but I also love my little house in Colorado, my bed, my studio space, my garden, my routine here and my friends.

Music

The full prompt is: “Did you discover a favourite song or musical artist in 2012? What is it? Where did you discover it? Does it hold any special meaning for you? If you do not listen to music, how about your favourite book or author? Or artist across all mediums?”

My favorite new artist is Yuna. Her voice, style, lyrics, sound all are so spot on perfectly lovely. I wrote all about her when I first discovered her, and shared this video.

Beauty

The full prompt is: “How have your standards of beauty shifted in the past year?”

thanksgivingsky08The shift has been from perfection to wabi-sabi. In our culture, if you are a woman, perfection of body means straight and white teeth, skin that is slightly tan but has no wrinkles or blemishes or scars, all over tone, no cellulite, big boobs and small waist, young and fit, blah, blah, blah. Our homes are supposed to look a certain way, our families and children, our relationships and our work, our lives are suppose to look a certain way. We can never measure up to that standard, so in the last year, little by little, I’ve let it go.

I’ve surrendered to the brilliant mess. Things broken and dirty, old and dying, loved and worn, alive and full of joy, imperfect and impermanent. When I talk about beauty, I mean something more like the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is all about accepting transience, and about knowing what is beautiful is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Something is wabi-sabi if “an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing” and this view “nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect,” (Wikipedia entry on wabi-sabi).

Celebrate

The full prompt is: “How are you going to celebrate your self this festive season?”

eyeiI’m going to honor myself. Ask myself what I want, what I need, what I’m craving, what I’m truly hungry for, what I want to stop doing, what I want to let go of. I am going to ask, really listen, respond. I am going to do what the brilliantly compassionate Sunni Chapman suggested on Facebook today, listen to my heart and be truly, madly, deeply alive:

In the quiet of your heart, lies every answer. Take it up with her first. Mind will always offer a second opinion. Thank it for it’s opinion, and go back to the truth that moves you. If it doesn’t move you, it’s not alive… and all you’ve ever wanted to be was truly, madly, deeply ALIVE.