reality for pausing: at mema's

Thursday, July 23, 2009

at mema's

well, we got to ft. collins.

the trip was basically the same old story for us with different scenery: leaving vallejo in the morning and then driving until much too late because we couldn't find a place to camp. it's our curse. we wanted to camp in nevada and actually tried stopping at an amazingly decent time for us (5pm). however, due to various unlucky circumstances that seem to follow us whenever we try to camp (bad weather, campsites that no longer exist or were sold, state park gates closed so we can't get in, missing a turn because of bad signage, dreadful roads) we weren't able to find a camp site until, finally, snark pulled over on the side of a road. just inside the colorado border at about 2:30am, we set up the tent with the car as a barrier between us and the road. even that early in the morning, large trucks passed by, their lights shooting through the gauze of our tent window. we were mostly too tired to care. (photos of the trip to be posted this weekend.) the next night we did find a beautiful solitary place to camp, near leadville. after some troubles, we arrived and set up the tent before dark! hallelujah!

anyway, now i'm spending a wonderful few days with mema. since i've been here, i've gone with mema to visit with three incredible women in their 90s--lucid, strong, feisty women, so easy to fall in love with them! i have. we exercised and ate cake with theresa who turned 90 a few weeks ago; discussed pema chodron's thoughts on compassion with lizzie who is 95; and ate dinner and played skip bo with maxine who will be 95 this coming monday. what fantastic women to get to know!

today, mema and i piled up a four foot heap of weeds, as we yanked the ever invasive bindweed and dandelions from her front and back yard gardens. why i love doing this is a mystery. there's just something immensely pleasurable about disengaging the roots of weeds from the vegetable plants we're trying to cultivate!

1 comment:

Da MaMa said...: glad you are having fun! plan on visiting Bisbee again in Oct!! Can't wait! Love u; July 24, 2009 at 1:12 PM

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about this blog

Originally, I created this blog for family and friends to stay updated with our location and happenings while we were traveling the country. But only a few months after I began blogging about our travel adventures we drove into the sweet, slow town of Bisbee and ended up staying. We actually moved five times while living there, thanks to generous neighbors who asked us to long-term housesit in between our rentals. We are on the move once more, and so it seems we are habitually in transition.

Traveling and moving so often stirs up questions for us about what we really need to feel content, comfortable, and energized about life; it emphasizes for us our relationship and attachment to things--ours and other people's things that fill our living spaces; and it encourages me to appreciate the value in staying put, while realizing that frequent physical change underscores the uncertainty and occasions for choice that exist in all moments of life.

MARCH 2011

After a three-month pause for reflection, I'm coming back to this blog with a renewed perspective on what I want to share. I stopped blogging because with so many transitions happening in my life (moving, traveling, moving, and moving again in only a few months)--and, well just ordinary life happening--nothing seemed particularly notable for the sharing. I was feeling tired, overwhelmed, bored, dispassionate, stressed out, worried, weighed down. What did I really have to say? We all feel that way regularly enough, and who needs to hear more?

Pema Chodron touches on this in an article I just recently read in the March 2011 issue of Shambhala Sun: "When we look at the world around us--our immediate world and the bigger world beyond--we see a lot of difficulty and dysfunction. The news we hear is mostly bad news, and that makes us afraid. It can be quite discouraging" (48). Sometimes it takes unthinkable effort to stay encouraged by life when surrounded by so much obvious sadness and negativity--and it's difficult enough to summon the energy to reach beyond the anguish to share the beautiful moments. Maybe we even convince ourselves that the ordinary pleasures of life are insignificant in the face of such suffering. I don't understand the tricks of mind that I play on myself, but I know I repeatedly lose my vision for pausing in everyday reality, for seeing the smallest moments of magic.

Chodron tells us, there is a "basic queasiness that leads us to all kinds of self-destructive and other-destructive habits" and a "whole chain of events that emerges from our fear of uncertainty, of not knowing what in the world is happening or what is going to happen" (49). I feel an urgency to interact with this chain of events; to interfere knowingly--though perhaps innocently; to respond to my abounding fears and uncertainty with intent. I want to return to the primary assumption of this blog--a reality for pausing in: to not overlook or disregard the small points of joy, but to connect them; to appreciate the magic that is present in that which is obscured by routine; to actively express gratitude and to meaningfully alter the "chain of events that emerge" from my thoughts and practices, my surroundings.