Living in the Moment

Calm and quiet 

after a day filled 

with energy and life 

each piece from early 

to this moment cherished 

for each separate moment. 

Living in the moment is 

like sliding shining beads 

on colourful yarn. 

As days and weeks pass 

a tapestry evolves that is 

a life shared and lived.

“Forever is composed of nows.”

~ Emily Dickinson, poet

1830 ~ 1886

Carpé Diem?

Setting up new life and living

with wrinkles and silvering hair;

with excitement and trepidation,

a question slips into my thoughts ~ 

what makes me think 

I’ll step out of my dreams?!

Outside I may look like an adult

but my insides are only three!

But ~ I’ll stand still slowly,

with one breath, one step at a time

I'll set up new life and living

with wrinkles and silvering hair.

“Keeping up the appearance of having

 all your marbles is hard work, but important.”

~ Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

 

A Sense of Place

There is a place living 

inside each of us 

without borders or street signs

only recognized by feelings

of possibility and home

There is a place living

inside each of us

without lines or rules

only recognized by feelings

of openness and slow walking

There is a place living

inside each us

to be embraced as

a place of belonging ~

the place where we choose to become.

“I believe home is where the heart can be open and loving 

with a sense of security. It must not be a place of fear.”

~ Author: Marilyn Barnicke Bellegeem,

*Inspired by the CBC Tapestry episode: Can you belong to a place you’ve never been before?

Interview with Pamela Petro by Mary Hynes

Episode aired February 25, 2022

Newness ~ 2

Feeling life and strength

coursing through

my muscles, when

society stereotypes 'age' 

as weak and weakening, 

is feeling possibility 

~ a mid February joy.

“Aging is not ’lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

~ Betty Friedan

Quietude ~ RELIEF ~ Theme for August 2021

Re-doing everything………..

Eyes opened to ……..

Living again in…….

Imagining what it is still……

Empathy gone missing….

Floating on the……

“For fast acting relief, try slowing down.”

~ Lily Tomlin

Rhythm and Blues ~ 2

Bob Marley

 

B.B. King

 

They decorated my Sunday morning

with energy and joy in music

switching on the snap of my fingers,

and a funny shuffling dance in slippered feet.

(insert: confused feline stare:

“she’s gone loopy!”) 

With their music in my head

over snow and ice I went 

with energy and joy in life ~

my Sunday afternoon was full.

“I could see the blues was about survival.’

~ B.B.King, Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B.King

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain,”

~ Bob Marley

Sunset on 2020

A long road behind us,

rounding a bend

on our unasked for journey,

the sun edges to the horizon,

only time and distance ahead.

We will keep on walking and living.

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”

~ Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Embracing

Cherishing each other

once we are separated ~

keeping our distance,

the glow of togetherness dims

and yet

we are told 

to cherish each other

protect each other

not everyone feels

the dimming but 

feels the angst and pull

of being unable to touch

and waiting

but no one is waiting 

because

Breath keeps on breathing

Love keeps on loving

Life keeps on living

while we cherish each other

from the distance of

outstretched arms until 

our arms become an embrace.

“The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.”

~ Nuala O’Faolain, My Dream of You

The Magic of Chaos

Creative choices are

beautiful commitments to dip 

into the chaos of living

slipping past what is expected,

outside of shoulds and shouldn’ts,

have to’s and must do’s

for the sake of creating with

texture, colour, music and dance

while shoulds and shouldn’ts

have to’s and must do’s

stand unhappily off stage 

to watch and learn about the 

choices of living creatively.

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

The Philosophy of Trees

This next writing is from Friday, February 1st, and was the writing group assignment for this month. The topic was simply ‘trees’. Each of us wrote very different pieces about trees. From fantasy to real life, we were, as always creatively different. From laughter to poignancy we read and listened to each other with interest. Always interested in the philosophical episodes of Star Trek and watching the violent destruction of trees in the movie Lord of the Rings, I mused about the Philosophy of Trees in my short essay below.

The Philosophy of Trees

One may think that trees are not sentient beings that can even formulate something as grand as a philosophy. And maybe they are not. After all, they have no language of their own that humanity can hear. Like a musical instrument they do translate the music of the environment. Birds of all sizes nest leafy or needled branches. Squirrels scramble up gnarled or smooth trunks, race in and out of branches, raising their young in cosy hollows. Bugs and insects range all along the surfaces of trunks and branches, homes found especially in fallen tree trunks. From the still living roots, new shoots spring up beginning the life of a new tree. In a deep forest where humanity’s noise cannot be heard, the orchestra of forest life plays without stop, only the players varying as they go about their life. The trees of our forests have given us our homes whether we are grateful or not to them for their lives. They have provided fuel for the earliest fires in our existence. When the trees of the forest, or of our city streets breath in and out, they breathe out oxygen and absorb the carbon dioxide that the rest of the world exhales. Make no mistake, trees are not benign martyrs that only give. They will strike back, or die, when they are taken for granted. Roots will wrap themselves around underground wires and sewers. Trees will grow up through cement blocks and pull eaves-troughs from homes. Trees will survive from their seed and from their roots. When I reflect on all of these things, I believe that the philosophy of trees, where trees are sentient or not, is service and survival. Service to all of life from the tiniest insect to the grandest mansion, to inventors and makers of paper and the shade we love on a hot summers day. Survival to continue the cycle of life that we all enjoy. The greatest service just may be that trees make us smile, the loss of their beauty and grace felt when they reach the end of their life span.

“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.”

~ Richard Mabey, Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees

Beneath the Sea

Eelgrass meadows wave

in low salt water tide lines.

Watery shelter for a living sea.

“The world’s finest wilderness lies beneath the waves……”

~ Wyland, Marine Life Artist

Ripples

Centred and calm

going deep into my heart ~

listening for whispers of hope,

finding the still place within

grateful for memories of living

that ripple and pool gently 

around deep, gnarled roots.

“I know my roots and I cannot forget the journey I made.”

~ Maria Sharapova

Plastic, Plastic, Plastic

One does not have to browse through Facebook long before we are shown the damage that plastic is doing to the oceans and the life within her depths. There are a lot of tragedies in this world that I have seen on TV, on Facebook, listening to conversations,…..there is just an overwhelming amount of tragedy in this world. I turn off the news, do not read the newspapers and seldom do a lot of browsing on Facebook. I know that tragedy and sadness is out there, it will occur and in my part of the world I can do little to alleviate it all. It is too, too much.

Then I saw the contents of a whale’s stomach, and then another one. Then I saw whole beaches piled high with plastic and other garbage. Before all of that I had seen a photo of a turtle who, as a hatchling, got tangled in plastic until it was just a part of the poor thing as it grew up, damaging it’s natural growth. Quite some time ago, I started buying my own plastic ware so I wouldn’t be throwing out all these disposable containers from the stores. Then, I started buying glassware, much to the chagrin of those who were afraid of glassware breaking and having to be replaced. On Monday at work, I chatted with a colleague who has been actively changing her shopping habits to avoid the use of plastic.

Today. Well, today I went shopping. My first purchase of something new, just for me, since January of this year. I hadn’t gone out with inundation of plastic in my mind, but as I travelled the city, each transaction I made involved some form of plastic. Purchases made were wrapped in plastic and paid for with plastic. At the bank, I signed a cheque with a pen made of plastic. To ride the bus, I pay with a bus pass made of plastic. I purchased groceries - meat on styrofoam (an early form of plastic) and wrapped with plastic, double bagged in plastic. The nuts and seeds I bought - in plastic bags. As I passed a shop on Cook Street, I purchased a set of marigolds - also in plastic. Back in the grocery store, because I missed one thing on my list, I had a choice between rolled oats in a plastic bag or another brand in a paper bag. The one in the paper bag cost more. But by this late in the day, I was done with plastic!! We just can't keep throwing it into the abyss that we have created!

A kit. That’s what I need. A travel kit with clean bags and containers - some of which will be reused plastic. I will continue using the plastic containers that I have but avoid, as much as possible, buying anything plastic. I know my small commitment to change my relationship with plastic will not clean up any ocean - or even a pond. Because our building has a good recycling program, that includes soft plastics and styrofoam, some of my concerns are alleviated. It is always, on a daily basis, in each little corner of the world that we can change our culture, our way of living. No memos, no task forces, no committees, just daily attention and mindfulness. 

“I’ll tell you what scares me is plastic. Plastic bags and 

plastic bottles. Why does my water have to be in 
a bloody plastic bottle? The landfill and the ocean; 
and I don’t know, I’m just terrified with 
the proliferation of plastic.”

~ Helen Mirren

Just Keep Driving

A Texas Highway in much lighter skies

The road was empty, black and shiny. Wind whipped rain in thick sheets in front of my eyes challenging the strength of my windshield wipers. It was north Texas in May of 1988. I was driving to Lubbock to meet my new co-workers at St. Mary of the Plains hospital. I was driving toward a new direction in nursing. Turning back to the safety of home and family in Canada never entered my mind. Finding safe haven in this wild, black storm was definitely on my mind, but the little town of Happy was rolled up against the weather and the night. No cell phone, no radio in my little car and no knowledge that I was driving through ‘Tornado Alley’. At the edge of a tornado.

I only knew that Lubbock was closer than even my uncle’s in Colorado, much less Canada. Stopping on the road until the storm passed was not an option, although that thought washed through my head as fast as the rain washed across my windshield. Stopping on the road had the potential of picking me up and sending me to Kansas or Oklahoma or into a very watery ditch with no assistance in sight.

Why am I retelling this story? One I have shared more than once? I have felt in the past few weeks as though I am back in that little car in the middle of a storm. Not knowing for certain what lies front of me and seeing how far away in years I have come, puts me firmly in the seat of my own tiny life. The spot where my size eight feet are right now only takes up a small rectangle on this earth. The storm? All the what if's and could be’s and should have’s crowding around me, each one clamouring for attention. When I put myself back in my little car in May of 1988, my final decision was to just keep driving. To stop on this metaphorical road could mean being blown away by unknown forces in our society’s support systems. And this is fear. Fear that can paralyze and only lead to more clamouring thoughts. So today, I’ll just keep driving, learning and living.

“Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. 

They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.”

~ C. JoyBell C., writer, philosopher