reality for pausing

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Just returned from my favorite yoga class on Sunday evenings! Last week I fell asleep on the couch and never made it to yoga, which I was damn sad about, but what can you do, except take it in stride? Especially when your partner-in-crime catches the moment on photo, and you look absolutely ridiculous, cocooned in blankets with your mouth hanging open, dead to the world. Of course, when I say "you" I really mean me.

This Sunday I was smart about my exhaustion and fell asleep early. I woke up, ate breakfast, walked the dog, and fell back asleep after I got home. With this schedule, I was up again by 1pm with plenty of time to make it to yoga class!

My Dearest Snarks-Alot has a hurt back and has been out of commission during the last few days. Earlier in the week he bought some lapidary equipment from a family in Safford who was moving to Hawaii. Among his treasures were a wet saw, an 18 inch slab saw, a cabbing machine, and a bunch of other rock stuff that have names, which I do not know. Lifting the slab saw on to the top of the car did him in. He's a gimp for sure, and can barely sit or bend, and is moaning all over the place. It's real-life back trauma, folks. Poor guy can't even play with his new rock tools that caused him all the trouble in the first place. He's got to return to his normal self soon, so he can finish putting all the machinery together and get to work making a racket as he cuts and polishes his turquoise and azurite into curved, glossy jewelry.

This is the beast that broke the boy's back.

On top of his back woes, he's currently in bed with a headache. I guess his head and back are ganging up on him, reveling in their achy comradeship as they ail together.

Vdog found herself a funny bed this afternoon:

Our cilantro plants and dill plants have aphids. We've had to sacrifice them for the good of the other baby plants. Here's a photo of our beautiful, soon-to-be-dead cilantro.

4 comments:

Courtney said...: Poor poor Snark. (That's the second thing I wanted to say; the first being: That's an awesome picture of you on the couch! You have an amazing ability of being one of the most gorgeous women I know and can be so genuinely spaced out in some pictures. It's like you give your whole body over to exhaustion, and it's beautiful and funny! And even more beautiful and funny because you are so self-possessed and everyday glamorous in the pictures in which you're awake (and sober!).); December 21, 2009 at 3:47 AM
Da MaMa said...: Hi Julia...and Ree Ree and Annie girl! WE will miss you this Christmas! You xmas goodies will be mailed after xmas...so be looking for them!!! Hope you get your rest, and Ryan's back is better. Will call....Love you; December 23, 2009 at 6:31 PM
mavina said...: I am puzzled by whatever it is that I am doing to suddenly blot away what I wrote...the first time which was quite the commentary, and blip it is absorbed into cyberspace to a place I know not of.
But what I said was...before I got so rudely interupted by who knows what, that I can hardly wait to see what kind of creations come from that machinery that is doing all the havoc to RRR...and also that the pic of you makes me think that the ghosts of Bisbee have perhaps taken notice of your posture and invited you into a romp of the spirit world of the sleepy town. I guess that is the basics of what I want to say and will send it off before the power of who knows what takes these words away!!; December 23, 2009 at 7:13 PM
sassy said...: Mema,

Here's a little tip that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't:

If you lose your text, try pushing the control button and z button at the same time; the text may reappear!

It works every couple of blue moons...; December 24, 2009 at 10:31 AM

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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.