Farmhands

I'm reading Vilhelm Moberg's first novel The Emigrants, the first in a four-book series about Swedes who emigrated to the U.S. and the start of my research for the Story (see my last post). Currently in Moberg's book I'm reading about farmhands in Sweden, who were usually in a year-long contract. Life was brutal.

Reading books about what life was like 150 years ago creates ambivalent feelings in me. On the one hand, I long to be more connected with the earth and daily survival, pre-industrial age. But on the other, I feel grateful for inventions of convenience and human evolution that mean I don't have to spend an entire day doing laundry, or clearing stones or stumps from a field to till it, or suffer persecution because someone who is religiously zealous is spreading rumors about me.

Today Don and I spent time clearing and burning sticks that had fallen in the ice storm, and cutting and stacking wood for the wood stove. Don has a chainsaw, and we only had to do this work for a couple of hours. On the one hand, we got to be connected with the earth and daily survival. And on the other, right now I'm sitting in the family room typing on my laptop with the woodstove supplementing the heat from the gas furnace.

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A story

This is a shawl Lesley wove, and gave to me. Oh bliss.

There is a story to be told, and I'm going to tell it. It might take the rest of my life!

It's the story of four women. My grandmother, who was born to Swedish immigrants in Chicago and became a successful New York artist and designer. My mother, a brainiac New York musician who submitted everything to her minister husband, to Christ and the church. Me . . . hmm, a woman with too many creative outlets. My daughter, a child of punk rock who is becoming a New York designer. Four generations of women with creativity in their genes who face struggles within and of their generations. I started researching Swedish emigration yesterday. It has begun.

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Consciousness

Thanks to this Presence Process life continues to be interesting.

This is week 4, the week we look at pain in our life without covering it up. Physical, emotional or mental pain.

Yesterday was a doozy.

The whole day I had a splitting headache. I rarely have headaches, but when I do, I take an ibuprofen or two, and that takes care of it. In The Presence Process Michael Brown encourages us not to cover up any pain this week, but to focus on it and see it as a messenger, a friend. I obeyed, and without ibuprofen, it was a challenge to get through a day meeting with students and answering emails.

After Don left for work in the morning yesterday, I looked for my car keys for 30 minutes, including through the trash (coffee grounds and all). Nowhere. Where could I have put them? Thankfully Lesley’s car is in the garage, so Don called and re-insured it for the day, and I drove it in to work. Guess what, Don found my keys in his coat pocket at school and doesn’t even recall putting them there.

One more anomalous thing happened yesterday. Online I had ordered wild caught salmon from Alaska night before last. I always order 8 pounds in order to get free shipping. Got an email confirmation yesterday that I had ordered just one pound, and the shipping was $20. I paid far more for shipping than for the salmon. I called Alaska, and it was too late to change the order, it had been shipped!

The amazing thing yesterday is that I did not get upset about any of it. (Maybe my head hurt too much to get upset.) I don’t pat myself on the back. But I feel grateful to teachers like Michael Brown who are sharing what has worked for them to become more present.

I may get upset about something today. I don’t know. But I can feel the habit of responding and not reacting starting to take hold.

Here's a quote from Viktor Frankl: "What is to give light must endure burning."

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Human Exchange

Ok, so if this is about human exchange, why the animals? Read on.

It’s been a tough week for me in some ways. I’m nearing the end of week 2 of something called The Presence Process (a book by Michael Brown) that takes 10 weeks, one week for each session. It’s not a complicated process at all but is meant to help you see how and why you react to things with upset, stalking them and really looking at them to understand yourself and how you react to things out of past experiences. The point is to learn to respond (implies responsibility) instead of react.

Well, just as the author forewarned, things have popped up and seemed exaggerated while going through this process. When you’re really paying attention to the things that get your goat, you realize how uncomfortable you become when your ego is bruised. That woman who was rude to me on the phone, who does she think she is? That comment I left on a blog post seemed to be totally misunderstood – how can I communicate it better, and how could he have thought that of me?

This Thanksgiving week, having a relatively compact house full of 10 adults, one baby and two dogs for four days stretched me to my limits energetically. When others don’t “do it” just the way you do (and why the hell not?), first you get that internal upset, and then you say “and why does this bother me?”

Thankfully we had a gorgeous week with temps in the 50s, very unusual for this time of year. This meant we could go outside and play. Don and the kids played ping pong in the garage, basketball and foursquare on the driveway, and we all went for a lovely walk Friday (but no Lesley, how we missed her). We wandered through the barn (where we found kitty Bishop in her secret hiding place), took Rusty the Brittany Spaniel for a walk through the woods and by the pond. (Above may be one of the last photos of Rusty, a 14-year old who is now blind.)

Animals are consistently faithful, responsive, loving, forgiving. They don’t have egos. They have personalities, but not egos (although some domesticated animals do seem to take on human emotions).

Watching Rusty romp on the path made my heart long to be that free. Free from previous hurts that make me see new experiences through a projecting lens that need not be there.

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You, Darkness

You, Darkness

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them!

-powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

Original language: German

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926 /Germany)

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Snowflake reflections

Snowflakes were 2 inches across today briefly, now it's stopped. Click on image for larger view.

"And may the melting snow drop like tears
From my motionless bronze eyelids,

And the prison pigeons coo above me
And the ships sail slowly down the Neva"

- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), excerpt from "Requiem"

Please go to the embedded link "Requiem" and read this poem about Stalinist prison camp life in Russia. This was part of the reality of Akhmatova's world which she did not fear to write about. Her husband was killed in one of the camps. This poem was not published in Russia until after her death, and of course after Stalin's death.

This was part of our world in the 20th century, one of the most horrible centuries in human history.

I don't publish this to depress you or me. I don't live in the past. I just don't want to forget how hard life has been for some.

Be sure to check in at Paris Deconstructed, where I publish a new post once or twice a week. (I had taken a hiatus but decided I couldn't stay away!)

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Fall flavors

Is there anything better than yogurt with:

• blueberries
• black raspberries
• mandarin oranges
• grapefruit
• and just a wee bit of Don's blackberry sauce?

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