Introspective Breathwork

Introspective Breathwork

The urge to interrupt him before he had finished was overwhelming. Almost overwhelming. Marjorie had to remind herself to take a deep breath… slowly so no one would notice. At least she hoped no one would notice, but was not certain that she would care anyway. Their conversation had started on a pretty upbeat note, but as she heard Conrad talking the note changed a bit. Flat in a very minor key. With a grimace, Marjorie thought that if Conrad was a piano he would need a serious tuning job. Deep breath! What was going on? Marjorie let Conrad finish his opinions and ideas…which kind of took a rather long time. So many deep breaths that she was almost dizzy. Marjorie and Conrad had been friends since childhood. Had each gone their separate ways, maintaining contact at least annually. Their lives had been different enough that they had developed opinions and honed their beliefs, some of which were similar and some were absolutely opposite. ‘Acceptance is key to all my problems today’ was a line from some AA friend of Marjorie’s that she kept in mind while she visited with Conrad. A friend of a lifetime need not be thrown away because of the need to have the ‘right’ opinion.

“..we are not conscious of most things 

until we ask ourselves questions about them.”

~ David Eagleman, Incognito:  

The Secret Lives of the Brain

Listen

In the morning, we need our own thoughts to hear our souls speak.

Acceptance of wisdom blooms from the soul softens daily noise.

“Inside us there is something that has no name, 

that something is what we are.”

~  José Saramago,  Blindness

Author's note: Edited February 20, 2024

Scraps or Souvenirs

From scraps tucked in drawers

hung discretely in closets

nestled cozily in boxes

pushed carefully under beds

the pieces of our lives

accepted by our hearts as precious

travel with us from home to

home.

“Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how 

will you ever prove it wasn’t all a dream.”

~ Ashleigh Brilliant, author and cartoonist

Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Dystopic. Hopeful. Alive. Three words that come to mind when I sit down to write this review. When a flu pandemic decimates a majority of the world’s population, only a few survive. They survive in bands, communities or on their own, travelling through an unfamiliar world with no internet, no telephones, no vehicles, and most importantly no electricity. Every convenience we enjoy today, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, are no longer active.

Parallels run through this story set in the Great Lakes area of North America. In the opening, Arthur Leander, a famed Shakespearean actor playing King Lear, dies of a heart attack on stage in mid sentence. Jeevan Chaudhary, an ordinary man training to be a Paramedic, rushes to try to save his life. This pivotal moment, with characters that will be followed throughout the story, is minimized by the massive pandemic that collapses civilization as we know it. Also on stage at the time of Leander’s death, is an eight year old actress, Kirsten Raymonde, who grows through Year Twenty in the post-apocalyptic time, her own surviving family an older brother, learns by experience. A brother who dies, leaving her on her own. She carries with her two graphic novels, never published, written by Arthur’s first wife, Miranda. The story is of an alternate life on earth and those people sketched are from her personal life. 

Kristan joins a roving and disjointed Symphony. They perform Shakespearian plays in the tiny communities that sparsely dot the land. Their motto, painted on the side of their horse drawn vehicle, is a quotation from a Star Trek episode: Survival is insufficient. One very closed community is led by ‘the prophet’, a very unpleasant character who is introduced near the beginning of the story, but the reader does not know where he has really come from until towards the end. Another character, Clark, although not a specifically a leader, establishes a ‘Museum of Civilization’ in the community that grew up within an airport. In the early days of community, a young girl frantically searches for someone who has Effexor, the antidepressant prescribed to her. This brought me up short as I have my own medications to take daily to live life - and not just survive.

Acceptance of this dramatically changed life comes with great difficulty to everyone. Emily St. John Mandel takes all of her characters through learning, not only to survive, but to live and love in the moments that followed. She showed us that hope was in babies born, in the automatic building of community, and in the belief of the travellers that art and music must and will continue. Kristen, her friends and fellow travellers walk carefully through the destruction, see beauty of nature growing up over houses, rusted cars and buildings. See the simple beauty of deer in this new world, yet always alert for dangers from other ‘feral’ survivors or their surroundings. Their survival becomes anything but insufficient.

“Survival is insufficient.”

~ StarTrek Voyager, Season Six, Episode Two

Title:  Station Eleven

Author:  Emily St.John Mandel

Publisher:  Harper Avenue, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Copyright @ 2014

Format: Soft cover

ISBN: 978-1-44343-486-7

Type:  Science Fiction

A Prairie Girl

A prairie girl

I miss the brilliant white snow

a bright sparkling blanket

thrown across quilted farm land

I miss the wide blue sky shadowed in winter by 

clouds stretching horizon to horizon,

landscape broken only by fence posts, scattered trees and bush

I miss the silence of those winter mornings

train whistles echoing…and echoing…

When I hear the fine pitter patter of rain

tickling this still green land with fine mist

drenching a multitude of trees and grasses in need

hear city traffic muted outside my window

see multi shaded red-gold leaves decorating the landscape

feel the silence that is an early city morning

acceptance settles on my shoulders like a soft cozy blanket

the brightness of snapping cold prairie winters a distant memory.

“One can follow the sun, of course, but I have always thought 

that it is best to know some winter, too, so that the summer, 

when it arrives, is the more gratefully received.”

~ Beatriz Williams, Along the Infinite Sea

p.s. - It's not even winter yet!! 

         Autumn not officially ended til November 22nd!

On a Mountain Top

I stood at the top of a mountain looking over a land that I loved. ~ In sadness I saw the horizon was still shrouded in fog and in cloud.

I turned away from the scene in the distance ~ in surprise a whole range mountains surround for accompaniment on a journey I thought lost. 

With a great sigh of relief and acceptance, 

many nursing explorers and builders stood firm

involved in their own march with their standards

I stood at the top of a mountain

looked over all of the land that I loved

always standing still slowly to learn.

“Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of mankind.”

~ Ron L. Hubbard

Ultimate Downsizing

Exciting passages into this next

  Stage

    Chapter

       Phase of life

had seemed very distant ~

the search pointless until I 

 put my mind at ease

  allowed my heart to slow

   encouraged my soul to blossom.

The search became full of purpose

  wandering through childhood lessons

     remembering exciting times in my youth

       watching, from a great distance, my joy in simple things

learning that there is always more

   always purpose within each day with

     creation of my wants from the needs I have gathered

       acceptance of the peace that follows in this most ultimate of downsizing.

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. 

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. 

Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.”

~ Alan Alda, Things I Overheard while Talking to Myself