At the Edge of Intention

It is easy to say ‘set your intention’ to someone who has a dream in their heart, a wish in their soul and no roof over their head. A dream as basic as wanting to pay the rent, to finish a high school education or as complex as changing a life time of habits. Those habits may be destructive - active addiction, violence, deceit, ~ or maybe just a different job, learning to ride a bike.

Looking into hesitant eyes blue or brown, hazel or gray. Hearing tempered excitement about plans to live a different life. Whatever directions have become tore and tattered in the intent to explore and have adventures assuredly are lost in the chaos of that previous life. And ‘that life’ may have started in childhood, adolescence or even in later years! 

It may be easier to be dismissive and say ~ 

‘You’ll never make it.' 

'There’s too much water under your bridge.'

'You’ve done and said too many bad things.’ 

And if I think those thoughts, because I have, I keep them to myself. Although I may think I know, I do not. It is not mine to see into someone else’s future.

So one more time, I say “Set your intention to do and be. Then make plans, and take steps in the direction you have chosen. It is never too late to move forward, to make the changes that you want to make. To find the people that will help you to take the next steps.”  I am privileged to stand at the edges of these dreams where miracles begin in small steps.

“We live at the edge of the miraculous.”

~ Henry Miller

Intentional Sculpture

Sculpting my footprints,
trailing steps along the beach,
intention sculpting my soul.

Intention - Repost from February, 2013

My Intention was to pen a new post for tonight - financial goals and work offered changed my course for a few hours!

Set your intention.

Goals for distant horizons are important.

Intention ~ the anchor preventing 
stray hurricane winds or

unwelcome undercurrents from 

creating unintended drift.

“A good intention clothes itself with power.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Outside Intention

          Outside Intention

The door knob was set firmly in a solid dark brown oak door. Solid except for a tiny peephole that Agatha had to climb up to see through. When no one, especially her parents, was looking, she would carry her little wooden stool out from it’s hiding place in the hall closet and put it up against the door. She had been doing that for a really long time ~ at least since her birthday last year. She could see green fields and softly rounded hills. Tall trees and a lake. Maybe it was really an ocean like the one she read about in her book about Riding On the Ocean. Were the trees really part of a magical forest? Agatha never once thought of opening the door. The big oaken door was reserved for guests. At least that’s what she had come to believe. It was always the head maid, Serena, looking more stern than serene, that opened the big oaken door with the shiny golden knob. 

The other maid, Glyndel, polished all the golden brasses and silver in the house, including the big golden door knob. Agatha would be allowed to polish the doorknob but was warned never, ever to open the big door. “You’re too little and you never know what or who will be on the other side of that door. If you want to go outside, Cook will let you out through the kitchen door.”

So she polished and polished til she could she her face in it. It was all curvy and funny. But more than that, as Agatha grew she kept a secret desire in her heart to just turn the doorknob and see what it was like to feel the click, feel the big door swing slowly open. She really was bigger now, because she didn’t have to stand on her tiptoes on the stool to see through the peephole. And so, one day, while she was polishing the doorknob, and Glyndel had gone to the kitchen, and with two hands, she turned the shiny golden globe ever so carefully.

Agatha was so surprised when the door opened that she quickly closed the door and polished the doorknob furiously. Now that she had opened the door, she wanted to open it again. She wasn’t too little and now she wanted to see the front outside, not through a peephole but through a wide open door. The secret desire to just turn the doorknob had been satisfied, and had grown just a bit bigger. To see outside, to find magic, and whatever or whoever could be on the other side of the big brown oak door with the shiny golden knob.

"There is always one moment in childhood 

when the door opens and lets the future in."

~ Graham Greene

Planning with Intention ~ Intention ~ Theme for April 2014

April in Victoria. Springlike - today. Will the rain come down again soon? And what does it matter - the weather?

I have lived my life waiting for the weather to change while my life keeps on being lived! Wake up, get up, go to work or play ~ whatever has been planned for me or by me.

But what if nothing has been planned past my first cup of coffee? I do believe that I confronted this question when I realized, about ten years ago, that pending (and still pending) retirement would mean ~ no schedule.

No schedule planned by some other entity, mainly an employer. Figuring that out has not been the easiest task, but it has been fun and led me down many paths, some dead ends, some winding, some gathering interest and motivation.

What will be my intention for each day when I get to decide what to put on my calendar? Or could I decide that now?

This month will be discussions, poems, maybe stories, muses about Intention.

What is it? Is it important? Does intention make a difference?

“It takes a deep commitment to change and 

an even deeper commitment to grow.”

~ Ralph Ellison

Some Final Words about Epilepsy

Epilepsy is not a final blow to one’s self
but can be a building block for developing one’s self.
Accepting the presence of this disorder,
allows work and play despite changes and challenges.
Accepting boundaries and limits set by this disorder
defines actions for healthy living.
Epilepsy can be fatal, destructive and and tear down lives,
but not necessarily:

Some historical figures with epilepsy are:
Alexander the Great (356-323BC)
Aristotle (384BC-322BC)
Alfred the Great (849-899)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)
Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896)
Edgar Allen Poe (1809 - 1849)
Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881)
Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)
Bud Abbott (1895 - 1974)
Richard Burton 1925 - 1084)

“I want people with epilepsy to know that there are ways 

in which they can play a role in their own recovery. 

It’s all in how they approach what is happening and 

how they can use that as a catalyst for their growth. 

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that people are 

willing to embrace you if you share your story.”

~ Danny Glover 

(diagnosed with epilepsy as a child but grew out of it.)

The Challenge Came Later

“You have epilepsy.”
This diagnosis was not tossed down like it was a challenge.
I most certainly didn’t hear it as a challenge.
My memory of that day in 1967 - or was it late 1966 - is that I was sitting on a stretcher, a hospital gown on, Dr. McDougall standing in front of me in his white doctor’s coat to deliver this information to me. Is this an accurate image in my memory?
I have no idea. Unfamiliar post-ictal haziness didn't register much.
Epilepsy merely became something outside of me ~
that had nothing to do with me.
A seizure, when I had one, was epilepsy's only indication of it's presence.
And I didn’t see any seizure. I could only feel the after effects.
I couldn’t even see the effects on my family.

The challenge came ~ but not until 1978, ten years later.
The challenge came from the outside
from the successes of others with a different disease.
I grabbed it like a dare in a school yard game.....
if you can get better, so can I. So there.
Do I still have epilepsy?
Definitely ~ and I have the Electroencephalogram (EEG) from last year to prove it. But over fourteen years have passed since my last grand-mal seizure (tonic clonic in today's clinical terms).
Does epilepsy affect my life?
Definitely.
In the boundaries and organization of my life ~ and life is pretty darn good.

Repost from 30Mar2013 - The Fit of the Shoe

I was out late tonight at Hermann's Jazz Club so, logically, am late posting my blog. This is a repost sans photo and with a couple of tiny edits.


"Walking a mile in another person’s shoes is a lovely aphorism for empathy. In this world of complexity and details,  technology, religious dogma and secularism, it is not that easy to figure out what kind of shoes each of us wears. Only that each of us has shoes - or not!

After listening to the various stories about the epilepsy of others, and the families that support them, deciding to pay attention to the fit of my own shoes seems important. Then whether I have a mile or only a step to walk, I can be as successful as possible and better able to share what I have learned with anyone who may wish to ask.

This doesn’t mean that all of those ‘others’ are ignored, but that decisions they may make and actions that they take can be respected. The ‘shoes’ they wear will have a different fit than mine."

“One must know oneself.  If this does not serve to discover truth, 

it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.”

~ Blaise Pascal