14 April 2015

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.   [C. JoyBell C.]

I think this is what’s been happening in me. Living each of my days to the fullest, even when the fullest is NOT fun.

I love my hospice people. They encourage me, explain things so I understand what’s going on in my body, and NEVER EVER NOT ONCE have they made me wish I’d just kept my yap shut.

This pain is painful but it’s also something else. It’s a deepening experience of humility. The realisation that this is as much part of Life as anything keeps me from too much moaning. Still, my secret spot has been found. I admit to feeling arrows are BEing thrown at my right shoulder. Even when I know better.

Thanks for listening.

I love you, Currie

13 April 2015

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.   [C.S. Lewis]

Is it that simple?! I don’t know but it has taken me 4 hours to just get up and DO this. To BEgin it anyway. BEcause, you see, oftentimes it’s as simple as just starting. This is about the worst pain I’ve experienced, and it’s silly. But don’t tell Pain I said so, please.

Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?   [Ally Condie, First Day]

Staying BEhind, or staying in both reveal their magic to me in myriad ways. Pain seems the WHY of it at Present. Pain that’s just “stupid.” Pain that doesn’t  seem to  let itself make sense.

I love you, Currie

12 April 2015

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?   [Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995]

MayBE that is a grim opening. For me, it’s clearing the Path. Things are in one of those BIG CHANGE moods, and I find myself having to work 3 times as hard to DO half what I want to DO.

But I wonder, often, how it is that with all the brilliant people who have lived and moved on this Planet of ours, we’ve just never seemed to SEE the most glaring and obvious points of contradiction.

Before you can live a part of you has to die. You have to let go of what could have been, how you should have acted and what you wish you would have said differently. You have to accept that you can’t change the past experiences, opinions of others at that moment in time or outcomes from their choices or yours. When you finally recognize that truth then you will understand the true meaning of forgiveness of yourself and others. From this point you will finally be free.   [Shannon L. Alder]

Somedays more than others, I struggle with what I can Let Go, or work out another way of DOing. It’s just that I don’t want to waste the minutes, NOT one.

I love you, Currie

11 April 2015

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. it's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.   [Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain]

Dogs are generally wiser than we are. This is something that might BE impossible for some to wrap their heads around. That’s okay. Agreement’s highly overrated.

Chester's playing filled the station. Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out from the newsstand. And as people listened, a change came over their faces. Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city's rustling were rested by the cricket's melody.   [George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square]

I think many of us are scared of silence. Of the places where hush and pause are prevalent. I know it makes me talk too much, wearing my anxiety like a jaunty little cap.

Listening, loving silent spaces, and letting Life BE Life, make us ourselves.

I love you, Currie

10 April 2015

My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.   [Steve Goodier]

We got down to some important business on the physical as well the “affairs in order” work yesterday. Had to make an urgent call to hospice. There is this matter of a cough that is making my body feel like it has been bunjee-jumped-on. I lose my breath. It is all rather unattractive, too. Makes me wonder, during this rare time of windows open at night, if I am disturbing my neighbours.

Getting those things moving, coming to a variety of places of Peace with how things seem to BE hurrying themselves up BEfore I was ready. [you know, it was one year ago today when I wrote my Gratitude and shared about the cancer… you’ve all been such remarkable encouragers and kind thoughty friends]

Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.   [José N. Harris]

Life’s precious. Dive in!!!

I love you, Currie

9 April 2015

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.   [Elizabeth Edwards]

This is part of why Resilience found me and BEcame my word for 2015. I’ve done some mind meandering lately [a benefit to pain that keeps me on the bed a lot of the time] and discovered there is more there to understand than I assumed.

Reality, for me, is still shifting, holding me sway, giving me pause, and most of all clearly saying that Life is and CAN BE whatever I make it. Inside of me there is a troubling connection to those words “Life is what you make it.” And then I wrote that. I told YOU. I didn’t hide.

My Life is more and more what I am making it. It’s sometimes heady stuff when people sort of slip and slide in and then magically vanish. My love of Time Together getting a little nagging from the Body and its exquisite pain.

I keep finding room in me to BE more and to BE less. And in that room is most every ME I have ever been.

That’s good.

I love you, Currie

8 April 2015

So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.   [Sue Grafton, O is for Outlaw]

Even if I try really hard, there’s a LOT of what I once knew that escapes me Now. That is inconvenient in myriad ways. At least until I realise that memory, information, and even simple statistics are no more Present Tense than what I see and feel and hear and touch and taste.

This stretch is harder than ever to navigate. I feel how distinctly my part is NOT to attempt control. How in this I must BE submissive in a way I never understood until Now. Sometimes I just canNOT help myself. I want to get in and fiddle with things, like if I just DO this or that one thing, everything will change.

I may have people lying to me, but since I don't really know the truth, I can't be sure.   [Sue Grafton, C is for Corpse]

Ahhhhhhh…

I love you, Currie