Musing about Jack and the Beanstalk?

I’ve been thinking about the children’s story Jack in the Beanstalk this morning. Not really the whole story to start with, but the beanstalk itself. Well, and all the big broad leaves that branch off of the stem. I have set myself a task that is born of my belief in Addictions Nursing and especially withdrawal management or detox. The importance of all of this is that it involves daily writing from my own experience, it involves paying attention to things both when I am at work and sometimes in the community and it involves research. More specifically reading research. Interesting but extremely labour intensive reading. 

What is the connection between Jack and the Beanstalk and this extremely interesting project which really seems to have a life of it’s own? I feel sometimes like Jack, climbing up the thick stalk grasping stems and standing on the great broad leafs of the storybook beanstalk. And the giant is looming over me threatening to stomp out not just the beanstalk but me.

So I just keep climbing, always knowing that I can turn back at any time. Knowing that I can let this ‘thing’ beat me, yet depending on my intention and intensity about the whole thing. Finding a nugget of information, like a lovely fresh green bean to be savoured, is my reward each day.

"Jack sings 'I fear nothing when I am in the right. 

Whoever pushes me around will find me full of fight'”

An English Fairy Tale

The Other Side of the Desk

Memory does not always come in words
but wafts through the air in emotion and feelings glowing with remembered kindness, laughter and respect.

Being the watcher of the emotional memory,  brings tears to the eyes with exquisite heartache.

Being the watcher of these gentle and painful soul connections is an honour that many nurses share in hushed silence.

Taking the hand of a lost mom or dad, brother or sister
is humbling and powerful.

Memory does not always come in words
but wafts through the air in emotion and feelings 
like the fleeting aroma of lilacs or roses in full bloom.

“Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”

~ Thomas More

A Special Fascination

I’ve been thinking about my brain today. Actually I think about the brain - any brain - alot. I would love to be able to see all the blinking and flashing of synapses and neurotransmitters in people walking down the street or standing in line at the grocery store or sitting in a movie. Do you suppose, if that were true, brains would be allowed to blink and flash in movies? Kind of like having to turn off your cell phone? A silly aside.

Right brain and left brain - our brain is literally separated into these two halves. Connected by the neural tissue of the corpus callosum, ‘messages’ are passed back and forth from one section to another. The right brain thinks in a colourful, sometimes artsy way. Creative, seeking meaning and depth, fun, fancy and beauty in life. The left brain is all business - ‘just the facts ma’am’, bulleted ideas and numbered steps (and rather bossy about it). This corpus callosum thing is the connection between the two halves.

And our ‘two’ brains run our lives and do it well as long as we don’t interfere with our whims and wants, with lack of sleep or with foods and substances that cause rewiring. We can’t see the blinking and flashing, but we do get to see the behaviour that results from all that activity and feel the feelings that also result from brain activity. My very own brand of epilepsy is a result of a bit of wonky brain activity that first interested me in brain chemistry and structure. What I’ve also learned is that it’s no wonder that folks do some very strange and sometimes fatal things because of brain activity gone awry. Our personal will does not seem to have a structure - a different sort of connection.  An invisible connection with each other, with nature and with the Universe.

“The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining,

just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.”

~ Corliss Lamont

Slipping into an Enjoyable Evening

Things slipped sideways on me today. Thus this very late blog post! But once any slippage was halted, I enjoyed a lovely dinner with niece Karla and her friend Keltie just back from a hike on the West Coast Trail.

An adventure to be sure!

Connecting with nature and other hikers, their stories told of the thrilling - and nerve wracking -  danger of their own potential slippage on rocks, ladders and slick mud. They both were tired but happy with their achievements and will return to the mainland tomorrow. Thanks for the visit, ladies!

“Life’s a climb.But the view is great.”

~ Miley Cyrus

On My Soapbox

I’m feeling humbled tonight. This soapbox rant is not about connection, but disconnection. Disconnection from the disease of alcoholism and addiction, and disconnection from one level of society and another. Today, someone asked why we do the work we do in detox. Working with a marginalized society - a ‘demographic’. Those words take the humanity out of the people that we care for. The folks that get well and those that pass away from this life. Why do we do the work we do? For someone’s brother or sister, mother or father, friend or relation......someone loved and cared deeply for. Some would call it 'cleaning up the trash', sweeping the streets, keeping the dirtier side of life away from view. I call it giving life a chance. Giving one life a chance when chances seem to have run out. For the two individuals of our little ‘demographic’ that have just left this world, not in an alley or park, but in a home and in a hospital bed - please forgive this little rant of mine. I know that at least one of you would grimace at me and then quietly smile when you didn’t think I was watching. To you both.....rest in peace.

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

~ Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories

A Midnight Trek

Clorinda opened the closet door very, very carefully, ready to jump back into bed at even the slightest sound. 

Opened just a crack, the dark insides of the closet were silent and ominous as only midnight stillness can be felt. 

Nightmares had troubled Clori’s dreams with bounding red elephants with floppy grey ears. 

Nimble for their ungainly size, they also seemed just plain silly and didn’t match a good scary nightmare! 

Edging the door open just a teeny tiny bit more, the hinges squeaked and made Clori jump, her untidy blonde pigtails flipping and bobbing.

Cottony Pooh Bears on her long nightgown swung dangerously from their perches in the clouds.

Trusting her instincts, Clorinda pulled the door open wide so the light from the full moon shining into her bedroom spilled it’s rays deep into her closet.

Imagination and reality came together when she followed the moonlit path into the deepest corner.

Ophelia, her beautiful red silken elephant that her grandmother brought her from Thailand, lay discarded on it’s side where Ophelia had been unceremoniously thrown in a temper tantrum.
Now Clorinda climbed back under her covers, and with beautiful Ophelia tucked under her arm, scary nightmares wouldn’t scare her, and her parents wouldn’t even know she had gotten out of bed.

“When a Child Loves You for a Long, Long Time, Not Just to 

Play With, but REALLY Loves You, Then You Become Real.”

~ Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit