Flowing Like Water

Sometimes a gift can be presented to us from what may seem at the time unlikely sources. I was married for 16 years and that rather abruptly ended quite a few years ago now. I experienced an earthquake standing on what I believed to be solid, unshakable ground. One of the many things I realize that I have learned from my ex-husband is to be like water. He often advised me to do that when we were married and I poo-pooed it at the time. Now. Now I get it. And it was a wonderful gift he gave to me. It actually helped to get me through some rough waters. Talk about rocking boats.


The healing process which unfolded originated with my keeping a journal of my thoughts and feelings. After a long while my private record gradually morphed into a blog. I titled my first blog "I'm Well Thank You because whenever someone asked me how I was doing my response was "I'm well, thanks" and it was some time before I could say that and mean it. For a long while they were simply words. Then one day when I spoke those words I realized that I actually meant it. Wow. What a powerful feeling. It seems like yesterday but it was really much longer than that.


This blog was a means of self-expression for me during a time when I was lost and looking to get in out of the fog. Being able to write about daily life in some form became a reason to get out of bed in the mornings. After a time I began to consider making my blog public and so that too happened, almost a year ago now. I began writing here at I'm Well Thank You and I've enjoyed it very much.


Now the time has arrived for me to take another step on this journey. I've met so many delightful people along the way and I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for stopping in from time to time to say hello and help me to feel a part of this wonderful, magical world of blogging. It has been a joy. When I get my new digs it will begin again!


It is time for me to pull the boat out of the water and go on-shore. Drifting is healing in and of itself, but I've covered the entire lake and then some. On to new shores and unexplored territory. I love exploring because I never ever know where it will lead but the adventure of it all is well worth the challenge. I am "homeless" as of this time but when the new home I am creating is finished I welcome you all to knock and come on it. This is not intended to be a solo event. I am beckoning you to walk along the shore with me. Let's check out the landscape and explore new horizons.


Together.


Have a beautiful day!

unconscious mutterings week 350

I just love Unconscious Mutterings. It is so much fun to play this meme. LunaNina posts the prompts each Sunday and then invites us to play, and I look forward to it each week. This weeks muttering prompts are ~

1. My treat :: let's go out for dinner! and eat something we've never eaten before!
2. Bell :: dinner and how much of a chowhound I am
3. Five :: fingers on my left hand
4. You’re crazy :: yeah, you're damn right and I love it so live with it and embrace it
5. Disgust :: puke in the halls at elementary school
6. Tempest :: one of my favorite movies with the dark skies and one of my favorite words
7. Bummer :: chewing gum which has lost it's flavor
8. Brim :: full cup o'Jane
9. Hose :: garden and water
10. Lollipop :: cherry and ummm ummm good til it's gone

If you would like to join in Unconscious Mutterings, just visit LunaNina and have at it!

The Joy Diet ~ Desire

Oh....this has been an interesting menu item for me this week. I have stumbled. I have stubbed my toe and it was a big one too. Perhaps I paved the road for it. I was a bit uneasy with the word itself and reading the chapter didn't alleviate any qualms.

I learned that I have an extraordinarily strong anti-desire squad living in my head.

"Adherents to Eastern religions also get skittish about desire, because of the premise that attachment to desire is the cause of suffering. Stop wanting, says the simplistic interpretation of these traditions, and you'll stop hurting....

This equation of desire with punishment and pain is understandable but misguided. It doesn't do justice to the key role desire plays in the very same traditions we may think are telling us to resist it. Consider the Buddhist story in which an acolyte asks his guru how to achieve enlightenment. The master responds by shoving the young man's head under water for two or three minutes, then pulling him out and saying, "When you want enlightenment as much as you just wanted air, you'll get it." The islamic poet Kabir wrote, "When we invite the Guest into our lives, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work." Jesus seems to have been talking about the same kind of longing when he stated, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Aching, longing, hungering, and thirsting are the signals by which our authentic selves call us toward our destiny. To eradicate our awareness of the sensations is to lose our place in the universe."

Martha, I have a problem with your premise. I am having some difficulty getting around this one. I am not flowing like water here. I do believe that desire and want brings suffering. I have learned to want nothing more than what I have because that is what I have and it is good enough. It is less, materially speaking, than I have had in the past but in the past I never had enough. I was longing for more more more. Having a desire or longing for enlightenment is, in my own mind, way different than having a desire or a longing for a bigger house, a newer car, a different job, or a place on the lake in the summertime. Enlightenment is sought. I seek enlightenment but I do not desire it.

This bewilders me. I've been searching for reconciliation.


de⋅sire 

–verb (used with object)

1. to wish or long for; crave; want.

2. to express a wish to obtain; ask for; request: The mayor desires your presence at the next
meeting

–noun

3. a longing or craving, as for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment: a desire for
fame

4. an expressed wish; request.

5. something desired.

6. sexual appetite or a sexual urge.


Synonyms:1. covet, fancy. 2. solicit. 3. aspiration, hunger, appetite, thirst. Desire, craving, longing, yearning suggest feelings that impel one to the attainment or possession of something. Desire is a strong feeling, worthy or unworthy, that impels to the attainment or possession of something that is (in reality or imagination) within reach: a desire for success. Craving implies a deep and imperative wish for something, based on a sense of need and hunger: a craving for food, companionship. A longing is an intense wish, generally repeated or enduring, for something that is at the moment beyond reach but may be attainable at some future time: a longing to visit Europe. Yearning suggests persistent, uneasy, and sometimes wistful or tender longing: a yearning for one's native land.


I'm not sure that I associate desire with contentment or peace. It leaves me with dissatisfaction and unfulfilled urges. It doesn't feel good. I recall wanting something so badly that I couldn't think of anything else, it consumed me. Looking back years later I realize that had I gotten what I wanted it would have been hugely wrong for me. It's about tuning into our center and listening to it. Hearing it's call.

When I realized I was struggling with this desire concept I thought I would try to awaken something, anything in the way of yearning, by using my senses. The first exercise in that was baking bread. As I kneaded the bread, and had my hands all sticky with the dough, I paid particular attention to how it felt in my hands. It was wonderful, pliable, warm, resisting. It didn't create any desires though. Or maybe it did. I want to make more bread. And I want some different music to listen to while I'm making it. Damn, consumption. See where this is leading? One thing turns into another and before you know it, the house is full of STUFF.

I have lived 55 years. For the better part of those years I struggled with wanting. Something else. Something more. When the bottom fell out and I needed to find my way in the dark, I didn't desire a flashlight to see more clearly, I learned to feel my way in the dark. It took some time. When my car stopped running I didn't desire another car, I took the bus and learned to like it. It took me some time to learn to like it though. Like forever it seemed at the time.

I am a flawed human being. I love my flaws. I am a gifted human being. I love my gifts.

I also have my very own bubble that no one else gets to see or hear or taste or know in any way. It is a unique bubble. It's a Becky bubble. Only I get to be there. I feel safe, loved, beautiful, horrible, impatient, mischievous, cruel, spiteful, jealous, fantastic, triumphant, insecure, angry, ugly, joyful......and more. It's a special place. We all have one. Every single one of us has a bubble that we get to call our own.

That is special. To inject some yearning into it, well perhaps if I bake enough bread. Gee, I don't know. It's an adventure in the making. Nothing. Truth. Desire...



To feast on the menu of The Joy Diet along with a group of beautiful individuals on a journey to somewhere special, visit The Next Chapter. It's never too late to join in!

Have a beautiful day

Desire, Baking Bread, and Neighbors

I recently discovered this website ~ The Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is the first producer of free electronic books (ebooks) and was produced by tens of thousands of volunteers ~ it's amazing. It was an accidental side-trip for me one late night, and I became lost in there, it is like an on-line library and it's great. One of the books that caught my eye is the eBook, Vocational Guidance for Girls, by Marguerite Stockman Dickson (RAND McNALLY & COMPANY Chicago New York 1919)

It has Chapters titled Woman's Place In Society, Running The Domestic Machinery, The Girl's Inner Life, and Marriage. I was intrigued and read on...


"Vocational guidance has for its ideal the granting to every individual of the chance to attain his highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide."

Well, substituting the word "their" for "his" I don't disagree. But then, it depends on what the vocational guidance consists of and the direction it takes. The ideal of "aspiring to grant to every individual of the chance to attain their highest efficiency under the best conditions it is humanly possible to provide" sort of translates to wanting to lift people up. A bit dated, yes. It's an entertaining read and worth it just for the photographs.






One of the photos is of a woman baking bread, and it made me want to bake bread. I'm currently reading The Joy Diet and one of the items on the menu is Desire. I ran into some trouble with this one. Martha hasn't convinced me that desire does not lead to suffering. I don't subscribe completely to what the Buddha preached about suffering basically stemming from our wants and desires but I lived with someone for 16 years who read about, wrote about extensively, and even practiced in many ways, Buddhism . We had late-night discussions about wants and suffering and enlightenment, and the Zen path. I guess it influenced me because I find that for the most part I've stopped the wants and desires but it came after a huge mid-life shake-up (divorce). When I began to read blogs I started with political blogs, got bored with the flying insults and moved on to foodie blogs which I still read a lot. After that I advanced to design blogs and had to stop because it was everyday "I heart these shoes and this dress and this purse and oh, let's drool over this person's home decor for a few days..." Design blogs are beautiful and inspirational but just not my thing. A daily coveting of things that don't matter in the least and aren't essential to happiness in my view. I understand that it's fun to search new things to want everyday but I don't see it leading to long-term happiness. Where does the search for and want for material things end?

Sometimes I feel a bit dead. It isn't like a withdrawal though. It's more like having reached a state of calm. I feel as if having learned to be satisfied and content with less and actually enjoying it, I'm not sure how to reach that place of desire that Martha writes about and tries to convince me that I need in order to be my true self. Not cynicism really, but wonder. About how to do it and keep my balance. One thing I thought I could try is to begin by exploring my senses. Listening to something really beautiful, or eating something delicious....touching a mixture of flour, yeast, and water? Hmm. Baking bread means getting my hands into dough and kneading it and getting sticky with it and no matter how many times I wash my hands it isn't enough with all that gooey batter stuck to my skin half-way up my elbows. I have a recipe for Potato Bread that is my favorite but I tell you, it is the messiest, stickiest, most impossible dough to work with in the whole universe. It gets stuck to everything and no matter how much flour I add it is still sticky and I always think I am adding too much. It turns out delicious every time and I want to eat both loaves all by myself. It has been years since I made it. It is from the Tassajara Bread Book. I was thinking of trying Suzanne McMinn's recipe for Grandmother Bread. I'm hoping it won't be as devilish a dough as the potato bread. This all ties in with a Wishcasting Wednesday wish that I made a few weeks ago. I wished that I would reach out to my neighbors and it has come down to baking bread. What was I thinking? I must have lost my mind.

Ok, this began with a desire (yes, there's a desire) to reach out to my neighbors and it has come to my believing that I have few desires or that desire and I are strangers and we need to get re-acquainted. What is my truth?

I still have things in a storage unit that I haven't even looked at in years. I think I have mistakenly linked desire with material things so this chapter is a tough one for me. I have some work to do here.


Yeah, I remember that guided meditation and the whole toad-animal token thing. Whatever. I mean I do desire, but mindfully. If that makes any sense at all. I found a comfortable place in walking myself back from wanting something. No risk that way, but I am satisfied.

Oh bake the damn bread Becky and then give it all away to people you don't even know but smile and wave to a few times a week. But in fairness I do chat whenever the opportunity presents itself. The neighbor thing and desire are now linked by bread baking. I simply want to see this through, enjoy the process, and get to know my neighbors a little bit better. If I can put myself in closer touch with desire and aspirations by exercising my senses more (kneading bread) it will be a good thing. I think. I'm confused. Oh...it will be fun!!! Yeah right. I need to go start that dough now.

Have a beautiful day!


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15595/15595-h/15595-h.htm

Wishcasting Wednesday

What do you wish to complete?

You can be a maker of magic and a tender of wishes. It’s easy. Answer the wish prompt above on your blog and then add a direct link to your post in the box below. Support wishes by visiting other participants, leaving a comment saying “As (insert name) wishes for her/himself, so I wish for her/him also.” It’s that simple. There is great power in wishing together.

Our wishcasting host, Jamie Ridler, has asked a fabulous question of us this Wednesday. I love this question! Wishcasting is fun and motivating for me. We all find ourselves wishing for something at times. One of my favorite sayings is "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

If isn't enough to merely wish for something if we really really want it so bad that we feel we cannot live without it. Now that is approaching the danger zone, at least for me! When I wish for something I know that I am the only person who can make my wish come true, and that it is a process, step-by-step, of creating the vision for the wish (essence) and then taking the steps to bring that wish into my world in it's form. It can take days, months, even years, but if and when that wish comes true, oh how happy! Completion of the process can bring fulfillment, love, contentment, and more.

I wish to complete my wish of reaching out more to my neighbors. I have been working on this wish for several weeks and it is coming closer to fruition. A simple wish but one which will bring immense joy to my life. Growing up in a rural area, my neighbors were few and very far between. Living in the density of an urban area, although on the very outskirts of the city, I can almost reach out and touch my neighbors and that is what I wish to do! I have decided on which of my gifts I will share with them and it is bread. Everyone enjoys a loaf of homemade bread, and not only will making and baking the bread feed my soul, the sharing of it will feed other's also.

Wishes are awesome things. Sometimes the power of the thought brings them to us, the attraction, if you will. Other wishes need some nudging to make their way to our hearts and our hands. May all of my wishing companions on this day realize their wishes and enjoy!

Have a beautiful day!

To join in the magic-making of wishes please visit Jamie Ridler Studios or click on the wishingcasting badge above!

photo source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15595/15595-h/15595-h.htm

Ruby Tuesday

For this Ruby Tuesday I decided to photograph the remaining color in the yard and garden. There are a few blooms left for autumn show, and some red leaves are also beginning to make their appearance in the upper Midwest landscape. Just a few ~

Most of the October color in the landscape will be found in the leaves on the trees, at least here in SE Wisconsin. To view some beautiful Ruby Tuesday photos, please visit The Work of The Poet!


And, don't forget to have a beautiful day!

it's only a game

The big day has arrived. Monday night football and one of the oldest rivalries in football history. I'm not sure which is older ~ that between the Packers and the Bears or between the Packers and the Vikings. I grew up in Illinois and my dad didn't have time for sports, being a farmer, but my younger brother has been a Packer fan since forever.

My baseball team has always been the Cubs, hands down and I still have all my collectible Cubbies souvenirs from all of my trips to Wrigley Field as a young girl. I don't consider myself a true Packer fan because I'm not invested in the team at all but I am interested in tonight's game because I really like Brett Farve. His story, journey, and passion for the game have captured my interest.




Living here in Wisconsin as I do, it is difficult to escape the ridicule he endures from the sports broadcasters and media. These guys can't seem to move on from "he retired, he quit, so he has to be in this for revenge against his former team." Guys, I have some advice for you ~ why not just take Brett at his word and move on to something more important, like, say....the skills of both Aaron Rogers and Brett Farve and what an historical match-up this will be? Enjoy the ride.




I see no healthful purpose in beating this already dead horse about what Mr. Farve's intentions are. Perhaps he simply loves the game and wants to continue to play. Perhaps he never really wanted to retire but in his heart knew that upper management at Green Bay no longer wanted him as lead quarterback. Perhaps he made a foolish mistake in retiring when he did. Maybe, just maybe, he didn't want to leave Green Bay but believed in his heart that he had no other choice at the time. Who knows. Who really cares? It would seem that these testosterone-laden broadcasting hunk wannabes are stuck in a time warp and just can't find their way out to see that whatever is in Brett's heart is his own business and to try to second guess that is insanity. Utter insanity.



Tonight's game will be entertainment at it's best. Whether you are a football fan, a Packer fan, or a Viking fan, just enjoy the sport of it all. Forget about who has what in their heart, whether it is revenge, love of the game, spite, jealousy, anger whatever. One of my local TV stations plays the opening music from some daytime show, Days of our Lives, and calls the spot "Days of our Farve". I don't find it particularly funny. What is this need to make mincemeat out of someone who, for the first time in decades, led the Packers to the Superbowl twice and actually won?


I think of Brett as "America's Quarterback". He is iron man on the football field. The comeback kid. Whatever his motivation for returning to the game he loves, you gotta love his story. He has taken so many hits, played in pain and with serious injury, made it through drug-dependency treatment, and more.



I don't care that he retired and then came back. I don't care that he is quarterback for a bitter rival. The point of football is that it is a sport. It is entertainment. Let us remember our good sportsmanship and cheer those who represent the essence of greatness. Those who persevere under the worst of odds. Those who keep going because of a deep commitment to doing something they love.

And most of all, remember this: It's only a game.

Enjoy, and cheer the winning team while giving a tip of the hat to those who walked onto the field to give us all a great ride for one night. And, you go Brett!!!

We've got your back guy! Thanks for a great ride!




Brett The Man


none of the above photos are my own, obviously. I simply Googled Brett Farve images and copped them from various places. My thanks to the photographers who actually took them.