Rowing Rhinos

In some fantasy I made a pact with Time. Time agreed to extend my moments of delight and to shorten the difficult ones. 

Proof of the pact showed up Friday afternoon wending my way back from an errand in Berkeley. My preferred main drag from Oakland to Berkeley and back is by way of The Warren Freeway also called "13."  Part of 13 is called Ashby Avenue. On the part of Ashby between College Avenue, which is a main drag for exotic shops and a variety of ethnic restaurants, and the iconic Claremont Hotel - all white and crystalline doing its best to imitate a Swiss ski chalet, there it is a rather magical strip of road. Both sides for a bit sport houses; further south there are collision shops and the Transcen-Dental office with a Transcen-Dentist! (Gotta love that, right?) 

While chug-chug-chugging up hill Friday through afternoon traffic which begins, I think, at 12:01, I spied something new on the fence of one of my favorite Craftsman Style dark redwood houses. It was a framed photo about four feet wide by three feet high of a human rowing a row boat with one unusual occupant: a Regal Rhino looking straight ahead. The voluptuousness of the rhino's armored flesh indicated that it was well cared for and not wanting for food. Oddly, the boat wasn't tipped toward the prow.

Friday was a turning point weather wise. We'd been enjoying June Gloom to its fullest with lows in the 50s.  Friday was also Summer Solstice, so I was already inclined to lean into the light and enjoy as much as I possibly could enjoy of this longest day. It was a very warm afternoon, with just enough breeze billowing out of the deep shade of stately redwoods in back yards, front yards and side yards to make it tolerable with the windows down. 

I sat gawking at the photo as it was directly in my line of sight. The background depicted a gray bay with monochromatic ice-covered hills - maybe a fjord the duo were rowing across. I was mesmerized with my head turned toward the cool picture on my left - even as I attended to the car in front of me which kept slipping backward a bit every few moments during the elongated red light - extended on account of my pact with time to extend delight. I took in every detail I could and marveled at the oddity of this human and ancient being engaged together in crossing a fjord. What were the circumstances of this event? What prompted the quest? Where was the photographer standing? 

Gregory Colbert presented to the world a marvelous collection of photos and movies called Ashes and Snow. This rowing rhino pic reminded me of Mr. Colbert's photos - odd pairings of people swimming with elephants, women petting jaguars, a child reading to a kneeling elephant. 

Is the photo on Ashby inviting all of us to be personal escorts a là Noah? Are we meant to pause and consider being personal saviors to animals which may go extinct as sea levels and temperatures rise round the globe? Shall we all build an ark or at least get a boat to row? (It does feel as if I'm getting a little dinghy!) 

I want to know more about the story behind this display of beauty that unexpectedly presented itself to me on the ride home. 

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The other sure fire way I'm certain my pact with Time is being honored is that my daily meditation feels like an hour long deep and refreshing rest when I'm only sitting for about fifteen minutes! Such a deal! What does Time require of me? 

Well... She said I must be absolutely present in every moment - a skill I'm cultivating but certainly have not yet mastered. 

Time is a feminine feature of the world, did you know? You can tell by her elasticity and ability to contract graciously during - say childbirth's hardest contractions. She must know of the feminine experience intimately to do that. How many women do you know who have said of something unpleasant, "Oh, it's just like labor, you'll forget it as soon as it's over?"

So, Time and I made this agreement and I'm practicing presence. I still wanna know what the heck that photo of rowing rhinos is meant to signify and why someone posted it on the fence. Was it just so I could enjoy it in traffic on Solstice? 

Thank you, Universe for the catchy-eye-candy of rowing rhinos. It's a catchy phrase. Thanks for that, too. And thank you, Time, for the long cycle of red light so I could enjoy it!

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Summers are meant for languid enjoyment of light filled days. 

In 1989 I became godmother to an eight-year-old young woman from the Cree Nation. Reina and her mother Peggy were in town from outside Edmonton, Canada to see my teacher Rosalyn Bruyere, renown healer.   Reina and I hit it off splendidly in the waiting room / reception area of the Healing Light Center in Glendale California. Our friendship blossomed and lasted over decades and through letters and frequent packages I sent her in the far north. Her descriptions via phone calls allowed me to see in my mind's eye the midnight sun in summer and the darkness of winter and the toll it takes when you do not have a speck of light or warmth for an exteeeeeeeeended period of time. 

Perhaps Reina would relate to the photo of the ginormous regal rhino, horn to the skies, being rowed across a nearly frozen fjord. I wish I knew what became of Reina. The last package came back. No trace of her. No new number no forwarding address. I'd like to think it is she who rows the rhino. 

To happier shores! Good Soulstice!

Tummy Troubles

Izzy first came to work with me when she was eight.

Diagnosed with Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis, she and her mother showed up at my office full of energy and bubbling with joy. Izzy had recently spent nearly two months in hospital, right through Valentine's Day and her birthday, so they were particularly delighted to be out and about.  The family was referred to me by another of my clients whose child had made significant progress on a similar journey.

One of the diagnoses we serve at The Painted Turtle Camp in Lake Hughes, California is Crohn's disease. It can be debilitating and embarrassing for young ones especially during adolescent years if a colostomy bag is required when part of the intestine has had to be removed or it's just taking a rest so the colon can heal from a surgery.

Izzy's hospitalization was difficult for the whole family, as mother, father and younger sister spent many, many hours there with her, but still had to feed pets at home, run carpools, go to school, and work.

One of the therapeutic techniques of particular import for children, well for anyone who's had a life-impacting event, is to create a coherent narrative. In Izzy's case, she was eager to dictate her story of the hospital experience and to illustrate the days spent there with wonderful pencil and later colored-pencil-filled-in drawings.

Rabbits figured big in her drawings... as if every family member was a bunny with long ears. She showed the doctors, nurses, dietitians, family, and visiting friends all as bunnies. The birthday and Valentine's Day drawings were particularly colorful and poignant. She drew herself lying down with lots of people all around her, but looking very alone and tiny in the middle of the bed. The words to that part of the story included her love for the chocolate candy someone brought her, but of which she was allowed only a nibble - like a bunny.

Over the course of our work, we employed many different games and self-help techniques - some of which were for sensory awareness. When the body hurts so awful much, there's a wisdom that kicks in. We vacate the premises. Part of the hospital stay was to try different medications to ascertain which drugs helped the pain abate and which ones were too numbing or stupefying. 

Our smart bodies are good at something called "localized dissociation." When the pain is localized and just too much to be with all day long, the body cleverly retracts awareness from the site - sometimes. Other times it seems as if we'll never be rid of the pain. Localized dissociation can be a good thing. It can also need support when we want that part to come back on line, or back into the mainstream of our ordinary awareness of body. Any part where consciousness cannot reach cannot be fully alive. Pain and all, our most healthful state is to be aware of all sensations.

Some of the games we used included exercises from Brain Gym by Gail and Paul Dennison. Standing with feet crossed, crossing arms thumbs down, interacting fingers and bringing the knuckles up under the chin, rolling the eyes back and curling the tongue to touch the top of the inner upper front teeth where they meet the gum line, and inhaling and exhaling deeply three times can recalibrate the connection between our left / right brain hemispheres, giving us an upper edge in focus and attention out, and leave us feeling refreshed. There are other games in the delightful book which are useful to kids of all ages - nine-month-olds to nonagenarians. (Babies and toddlers may need outside help.)

Games to listen to the body's sounds was an essential one for Izzy. When gurgles hurt, we tense up automatically hearing hunger pangs announce it's time to eat. Differentiating the good sounds from the painful ones was one of the most important interventions we got to do. She learned to mimic the sounds of her tum tum (her words) with her mouth as if to sing along with that part of the symphony.

The name of the book she wrote is called, "Tummy Troubles." The set of games in a box I sent home with her was called "Tummy Troubles To Go."

She chose one every time she was feeling edgy, nervous, tense or upset and also one at bedtime, just to help her go to sleep. Her Book was also part of her bedtime routine.

Overtime, Izzy was able to feel comfortable in her body even under conditions where she used to have tension, like school. Her book helped her to reintegrate when she shared her funny bunny pictures with her classmates and teachers who had really missed her when she was away. 

Tummy Troubles may always be a part of her story, but they do not have to be the central focus of her life. 

Trance-Ended

Jim Kwik is one of those fast-paced and brilliant marketers who has a wonderful program to offer us: HOW to LEARN more QUICKLY. (Kwikly?)

Because I cannot resist a PUN, one of his word-play offerings caught my eye. 

He broke down Transcend into Trance and End. I love the idea of ending the trance in which I and many of us find ourselves living that makes us repeat ad nauseam the put-down mantras of our past: I'll never be smart. I'm too dumb to understand this (your subject here). Maybe next lifetime I'll be good at (your wish here).

My personal trance seems to be: Nah... visibility is not for me. Publishing a book is dangerous. 

I'd like to end this trance, but fear what will happen if I DO complete my nemesis of a chapter: Chapter EIGHT! Chapter Eight has got me stumped, so, if I don't finish it, I won't have to struggle and get this dang book OUT, right? Seems a cosmic joke that I'm struggling to give birth to a book about getting stuck during the birth process that left me with an imprint of hopeless helplessness!

It's a losing proposition. As someone I love says: You miss 100% of the shots you don't try. (Don't ask me about those Warriors, please! I was knitting while watching Saturday's basketball game between the Dubs and the Raptors. From willing them to MAKE those three-pointer and free-through baskets they were trying for, my tension got SO inTENSE, I had to undo some of the knitting so the hat I'm making wouldn't end up being a head-ache band!)

The shots I'm not trying are Chapters 9-12. What would happen if I did walk away from the not great eight? Nothing. Except...  the incentive to finish the book might return. What a concept! 

EMERGENCE is a unique perspective on how our coming into the world marks us. Emergence shares simple tools for undoing the Fight, Flight, and Freeze that may have been locked into our nervous system when they couldn't be expressed. The bound energy of those Three Graces, F, F, and F can persist well into our adult years. Unresolved birth trauma can make navigating life much more difficult than need be.

I'm ready to emerge into the world as an author, but for the fact I've not yet ended the Trance; I've not yet Trance-ended the messages of helplessness I took to the marrow way back when I came into the world. 

Who's gonna guide me out of the trance? Who's gonna help me find the way past Chapter eight, which maybe is too close to my own birth story to be able to see my way through it. 

So many modalities. So many great results over decades! Finishing touches make the day. Where's the glitter? Where's the bow on the package? Just a little further... wait! I can see the light at the end of the proctoscope... and am hoping it's not the light of an on-coming train!

If it isn't one thing, it's your mother. 

Mom and I were up there on the ceiling of The Stork's Nest Lying In Hospital for Women in Inglewood, California on October 6, 1948 - looking for each other. Both of us out of our bodies looking down on the inert woman who'd been given morphine and ether and the bluish looking baby as she came out of the woman. Maybe our spirit selves shrugged our etheric shoulders. Maybe we made a Bee-Line for the bodies that we wanted to live in. Gee,  wonder if we got mixed up? So many times, it felt to me as if I was the mom to my mother and that she was my child. Hmmmmmm.... Nah... meant to be. I was the baby. She was the mom (most of the time).

Oh, dear, I'm getting so sleepy. Is it the conjuring of ether? SO sleepy as I write. wow!

Nodding off. wishing I could talk with her, now that she's gained a much broader perspective of the world. I do believe, that when we die to this world, we find ourselves in a world of pure consciousness... where there is no up/down, Left/Right.. Only awareness of concepts and directions. When my eyes close, I'm inside the computer and keys from an old Underwood Typewriter are striking me with all their metal arms. They are springing up on me randomly, without pattern or predictability. 

Awake now.  Perhaps 5 hours sleep is not enough for a groaning girl.

Noise and Mama's Back

Okay, google. 

That's what Mark says to his phone or tablet.

OKAY, Mark... when are you going to google how to turn the sound down on your phone? It beebs and chirps and squeaks and farts at random times when you're getting messages, emails, notifications and just because it's willful and rude and it's very L - O - U - D. 

I keep mine in silent mode during the day and put it in another room when retiring to bed for the night. I cannot stand the light of the screen, or the buzzing, or any other noises it makes, so I just put it out of sight, out of range of hearing, and out of mind for a full six to eight hours. Aaahhhhh. Silence.

Yours on the other hand, darling is in squawk mode 24/7.

Unaccustomed as I am to anger, I will NOT be angry about the noises that disturb my sleep, but I will be proactive to remind you that your office is a far superior place to park the noise-maker for the night.

Blowers. I hate them. 

Are you plagued by blowers in your neighborhood? Mercifully, we are not, but have seen gardeners using the infernal and ridiculous  machines on city streets, in parks, on parkways, and in front yards of homes in the hood slightly removed from ours. (No one on our street has the kind of yard that warrants that kind of maintenance, so it's a drive to find blowers in use.) Did I mention that I hate blowers?

When we lived in Studio City, our gardener of twelve years died of liver cancer. He was not a drinker. His liver gave out because he wore an infernal gasoline powered blower on his back and daily breathed in tetrahydrozaline, the compound that makes gasoline smelly. When Mike  died, and I found out the cause, I banned the use of blowers on any property where we lived. Period. Blowers only scatter dust, leaves, grass clippings and NOISE. They do not clean up anything. A decent broom and pan would be embarrassed to do their job so poorly. 

Blowers don't care. They barge in and take over an afternoon just wreaking havoc on quietly napping babies and seniors. A siesta is  sacred time. Hanging a "Please do not disturb" sign on the front door does no good. Blowers don't read and their wielders don't care or don't get close enough to heed the plea.  Gas powered motors pollute. Give a hoot. Don't pollute!

Another source of irritating noise is the motorcycle. Have you been dozing by a warm spot in your cozy home only to have your cozy dozy time blown to smithereens by the testosterosa trick of revving the engine whose muffler is hooked up to a megaphone? The caterwauling of a Harley Motor could wake the dead. Here's what I propose:

Choose electric. Electric engines are quiet. True, they only defer the burning of fossil fuels upstream, instead of in your very own engine, but maybe solar or wind will wend its way into our energy stream soon. But for now, the electric motors or even hybrids are much kinder to our ears. 

Harley Davidson says they will be promoting electric engines on their 2020 models. Staunch supporters of the old-fashioned way of doing things relating to motorcycles may squawk, but being kind to the environment is not a wussy thing to do. Anymore, those who ignore the signs of climate crises do so at their own and everyone else's peril. No longer can we pretend that taking the blood of The Mother out of her veins and burning it to make clouds of carbon that change weather patterns is a good idea. 

It is NOT nice to fool Mother Nature... said the sellers of New, New Nucoa, The Margarine larger in Vitamin A; New, New, Nucoa in one, two, three pats a day! (or was it Parque? Parkay?) That was the 1960s. Any way, even today, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature! Watch out. She's trying to get us Vermin Beings (or are we really human?) off her back! She's becoming the big bad wolf. She's huffing and puffing and trying to blow our houses down with wind gales that spin and pour water and create floods and drown as many of us and our unsuspecting fellow creatures on the planet as she can. Eerily, she hasn't (recently) shaken her back to be rid of us. I suspect when she does, it will be chalked up as San Andreas' Fault. Mother Earth... it's not nice to try to fool us either! Your'e the one who's trying to get rid of large swathes of the population. Don't point fingers at fault lines. They might get angry and become quite shaken up about things. So Please, Mama Earth, If we promise to be good and promise to reduce our carbon footprints and promise to reclaim as much of the carbon that is being released by the frozen tundra thawing as we can, will you, please, pretty please with carbon-eaters on top stop trying to shake us off your back? We'll be the best children you ever had. We'll try to curb our hubris, greed, and ignorance. Really we will. 

Noise reduction is just a start.

Thank you, Mama!