a handful~

"What can you ever really know of other people's souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands."
~ Mere Christianity


i don't know about anyone else...but...so often i think i know what is in someones..."soul"....what makes them react the way they do...or i assume i know what they might be thinking or feeling. i predicate all sort of opinion, reaction and choice upon those assessments....~ i allow it to alter my own feelings or emotions of the moment, or on any given subject~ or within any relationship.  i will think all too easily" i know what they really meant"...and sometimes i even think i understand better than they understand themselves~this sort of flawed perception can change the foundation of a lifetime, and can sometimes hold me prisoner in a murky sea of oversensitivity and assumption.

since i was a small girl, i have had the habit when riding in a car at night, especially as a passenger, to look into the windows of the homes and apartments along the way~ peeking into the lighted open windows as i whisk by...wondering who is within...who they are? how long they lived there? who do they love..how will they die?... what are they like?....what is their life story?....and a myriad of other fantasy wonderings~  this is a creative thing...a whimsical speeding by car in my head storytelling....

deciding upon the life and composition of a soul in this way is harmless....however, when i transition this to my real life, and my actual encounters, those casual and deeply meaningful, it no longer is an extension of my active mind, but a presumptuous and serious error that can cause damage and discouragement to myself and others.

we cannot know the mind of God, nor can we know the essence of any soul, and exactly how and why God has knit their fibers to become the tapestry of who they are and how they are, in His eternal plan, meant to be~

as C.S. so wisely said....the truth is, it is all i can do to hold my own soul and fate...in my own hands. should i need to grasp at another soul... with those same hands..it should not be in expectation or assessment....rather,.....it should only be...as a gesture...... of extension of acceptance and grace~ <3

independent of any other thing....

4th of July....Independence Day....always has been a day of import and remembrance in my experience~my early 1960's elementary school experience....lavishly immersed in the era of John Kennedy Camelot enchantment filled my little child's heart with wonder and pride to be an American....and the holiday manifest even better than that in my usually deeply tumultuous and troubled home life~

it was a holiday of import to my family....and the one i loved most~and here is why: there were no expectations of gifts and presentations harbored by my mother within which i could (usually) by her estimation, fail with what she perceived as malice of intention on my part......no religious conflicts between my convicted by God to love God heart and my parent's atheistic proclivities~ the food was traditional and delicious.and i didn't receive any dirty looks about indulging in a second hot dog nor was i told i didn't "need" to eat that cookie or cake......and we had company over...a welcome relief .and not our "normal" family dinner......as i knew i would not be abused verbally...my face would not be slapped for an innocent slip of the tongue...nor would i be sentenced with punitive banishment in front of any gathering extended between we 4..(although i knew to be on very most perfect behavior or there would be hell to pay once the crowd had departed).. and usually decorations were purchased, tables decorated festively..the knowledge that summer was ahead and the pressure of school and homework and feeling like the oddest child in the classroom was blissfully postponed for what seemed as though it was an eon ahead...i was proud of my mother in these moments as she displayed her prowess as a highly accomplished cook and hostess....and there was the best part of all....the home ignited fireworks!

we didn't have big public firework displays in our little san francisco peninsula town....but rather some amazing huge package of personal fiery delights purchased by my father with great pride. it brought tears to my eyes and bittersweet  feeling to my heart even as the most tiny girl...because i knew that he grew up so very poor...and i could sense that gave him the most wonderful feeling to be able to provide the biggest and best display for his children~

my brother and i would anxiously wait until the first hint of nightfall.....watching the clock minute by minute and begging my father with our hopeful rationalizations to let us light off just one snake...or smoky joe....a sparkler...something .....we could barely stand the anticipation and then finally it would be "dark enough"...and we would venture out into the street with our treasures....and one by one light, gasp, exclaim with disappointment or delight depending...judging the worthiness of each firework upon the sound and the height of the flames and sparks...we were allowed by him to even strike the matches..and  were literally playing with fire..and it was nothing short of exhilarating ~  and all around my awareness floated an unusual feeling of well being and happiness that remains with me to this day as i stand under or a midst any fireworks display ~

and when the night was done...the company vanished...the spell of wonder and the still of my usual anxiety ridden awareness lingered softly...an empty torn, and tattered by fire remnant of one firework or sparkler able to been seen in the streetlight shadow from my desk to my bed.....a relic to remind me through the next 364 days...that a magickal night awaited me in my future....and hope and happiness...was possible ...always~

more to follow~

short but bittersweet~

it dawned on me just now i do not have to craft an epic essay to blog here...sometimes a thought about a feeling or set of feelings alights to my awareness and i need to write it down...and this is a good a place as any  :)

i was considering a very abbreviated version of what i am about to write  as a FB post...but held back...but the whole Father's Day Weekend thing has sent my mind and heart spinning in this wee bit of delicious solitude i have this afternoon....so many memories and regrets and associations are flooding me and have left me with the following...in the wake....~

i never thought i was going to be one of those people who hated growing older...but i find myself exactly one of "those" people....i think this is partly from working with patients every day who are aging, declining...and who say to me.."don't get old!"  as if i, in my youth, would not know to avoid it if i could by any other means than an early demise...::soft smile::

i also feel i have not given and learned and contributed all that was my destiny....i could have been so much better...in every aspect of my life.through all these years i have lied, manipulated, gossiped,  shirked duties, hidden myself from certain responsibilities, failed people who trusted me to be this or that..or do this or that......hurt wonderful people..(and not so wonderful)...i am  disappointed in myself overall, and want more time for redemption of my failings and squanderings...

i am sure my family and close friends noticed as 50 approached that i was having some sort of crisis on the matter...as i started proclaiming myself "staggeringly close to 50" at age 46.....my choices and behaviors, not all of them good nor healthy, began to change then, as did my attitudes and perspectives~ i started to buy clothing, reflective of nearly only denim and black and similar to what i wore in my so called college days...grew my hair to nearly my waist...made it an even deeper black...increased the dimensions of my already abundant eye make up/eye liner....and obtained several slightly "edgie" piercings...(just ears everyone...relax lol)  now, six years later.i am more comfortable in these things than ever.....i am even ever more swiftly moving toward 16 in my own personal reality of the world...and honestly, i don't want to stop... various people in any day will tell me how young i look..and i gloat and bore everyone with the times in recent days i have been "carded"...but...it is all a bit of bravado..and i am, of course aware...of who i really am, how i look (ugh..photos and magnifying mirrors) and how my heart and soul and spirit are manifesting as i leave genuine youth behind, forever.

.i know how old i am...and most days when my heart swells with love for the precious beloved people in my life, i want to conjure at least 20 years to the surface from my body and lifespan to date, and rip it off and into shreds to be free of it...and then after this fantasy i am left to know...this is not possible..and usually my heart sinks as in spite of my faith in my Lord and my eternal hoped for destination. it sinks because i want another chance..at love..at life..at making the right decisions and loving the people i love so much better than i have...i want to give more, do more...be more.....i want to hold on to temporal treasures of human life and not age within it...for enough years still that i do not need to feel the daunting presence of the inevitable~

and then there are moments such as today...with the aforementioned memories and experiences flooding...life long friends appearing to reach out and share a past recollection, and i am blessed beyond measure and grateful that i have enjoyed life for every single year that to date, i have. and were i not to see another...i would have been gifted in life and love, greatly. <3  sending out gratitude  in a spirit of all things ....past ...present..future...to all who read here*  xo*<3 more to follow....~

vacancy signs

well...it has been 9 days since i began my weight "management" program at uci...and this week has yielded a loss of 6.2 pounds. yes.... ".2"....i am grabbing it..holding on to it as part of my total... and not rounding down...although rounding down is the objective of this journey~


  i have to admit i am feeling more energized, all my blood pressure meds have already been cut in half,  and i am now walking more and taking stairs..proceeding up ramps, and even standing without feeling as though i need to pridefully pretend that i am not embarrassingly short of breath...so this is a very good thing.


 i have  had a few  remarkable and relevant epiphanies ....newly cleansed of so much excess fat and sugar.... which is the surprise that of all foods the one i continue to deeply crave...is bread. i am nearly obsessed with the lack of it....and i am not sure i could be trusted to be alone in a room with a fresh loaf....that and a reeses.....who would have thought that my highly cultivated gourmet pallet would have such pedestrian yearnings....


the other interesting phenomena during this past week on the regime, has been the fact that i feel...vacant. i can consume ounces upon ounces of liquid, veggies, fruit and the small entrees the program provides, and be more vacant feeling at the end of the "meal"...than when i started. it is a gnawing sort of vacant that churns and grows and becomes a glaring neon light inside me until i find a distraction from it in some activity or conversation ~  i am wondering if this vacant feeling is the place that i have been filling up with addictive food....and perhaps is in my spirit..... more than in my gut?....?


i have received an outpouring of support and encouragement..in openly spoken ways and small quiet ways that have contributed to my success in surviving this first week.....even from some unexpected sources for which i am so grateful and humbled..although i admit,i am a little sobered when i realize that not one person with whom  i have shared that i am doing a program  quite this drastic...has asked.."why?"  lol ....


and so i willingly endure and leave up my vacancy sign....and wonder what and who might come to reside to fill the space with love and light...rather than sugar and fat....   ~<3 more to follow....~

let us too surrender.....~

today, i am especially pensive about the subject of human love. my being pensive, and my thinking about love, are not at all uncommon obsessions for me, but today the energy of it just seems quietly deeply intensely introspective.

over 25 years  ago i first read the book "The Road Less Traveled" by Dr. M Scott Peck ( have read it several times since), and was immediately drawn to his wisdom regarding the spiritual quality of a life well lived, in balance with the undeniable realities of human existence and relating, and intrinsic angst.

one of the most enduring and useful statements from his book which i have retained for all these years popped into my brain this morning as i awakened with an uncomfortable undefined anxiety...and i have been mulling around it all day...... and that is his definition of "love".....and Dr. Peck states it in the following manner:

"I define love thus: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. "

the complexities of emotion and thought and visceral feeling relative to love are so vast, i have found this statement through the years a beautifully succinct and accurate barometer of all that i call "love". today especially, for a myriad of reasons that are not relevant to this sharing, i am reflective in measuring myself against those words, and scoring an "epic fail".

granted, there is an inherent subjective quality to what is spiritual and what is "spiritual growth"....i can only speak to what those two words combined mean to me, and i think they simply  mean....facilitating the beloved to find their own way...their own truth...in confidence and peace and know that doing so will not jeopardize the love between the us, even though it might need to eventually (or immediately) change, alter,  become more intense, or more remote, depending upon multiple and varied factors through time~

the word "extend" is interesting to me in this definition. loving in an extending way is not  comfy. it is terribly painful and difficult a lot of the time to push through my tendency to be as i have always been. recently someone i respect stated to me that i cannot change, cannot really change, and perhaps this is true~ but i can keep trying to extend to the limits of what my true self will allow, knock down my own walls, extend my vision, extend my comfort level, extend my vision to see beyond my own visceral sensations. extend out of what i want for myself or what i even want for or with them. i can and want to do this for those i love. i feel it is what God expects of me, it's part of why i am on the planet ..... and i have to remember it is only to have a willingness, that is the magick key to unlock my capacity~

i think i am feeling ouchie and anxious and pensive today because it's just sooooo very damn difficult to keep this focus on "love"...and not confuse it with feelings of possessiveness, or self gratification/actualization/ego et. al~............, be it through my eyes as a child toward my parents,(even though they are dead)  my daughters, (even though they are now grown and on their own...in fact perhaps especially so because they are!)...my brother, certain  friends, and the exquisitely thorn-bird style intense in the way i experience romantic love, and the way that is complicated by sexual feelings.

 i have found it can be equally difficult to keep the awareness that love, when articulated by this definition, is not about some strong feeling i have for the person i love, it isn't that lovely heady delicious intensity junkie elixir of swept away feeling, or even agape care/concern.....nor the things to which i am compelled because of those strong feelings...but the truth is, nonetheless...i am tempted to want it to be both the feelings and the compelling~

the nurturing part is easy for me, sometimes nearly neurotically so, but i know at the highest proper form nurturing does not mean it's ok for me to want to create and offer provision as a manner to control or impose, even if i truly do feel what i see, sense or think is important to the well being of the person i love~and it is just tragically wrong for me to nurture because i want to solicit or secure someone having loving feelings....for me~

i think in it's pure form "nurturing" in love, is about offering gracefully, and not pressuring....certain tangible things. nurturing is also about providing an emotional environment between two where there is peace and no contention and everything is held and offered lightly without strings to bind anything in any way....and sometimes...nurturing is just about standing back..with a willingness to not speak my thoughts or opinions or issue my caveats....or speaking my own feelings or need.

and so.......my mind and heart...spin on....and as i write there is no conclusion to this conundrum of the ages....<3 ...undoubtedly ,more to follow on all this...although i know not, when.<3

observance of an anniversary~

april 17th...a day that will live in infamy..perhaps i over state...as it was not nearly as destructive  as Pearl Harbor  but "infamous' in a personal manner of speaking this was the day, that 57 years ago, my parents wed.  reflecting upon their union is nearly the only space where my negative, sarcastic and hopeless aspects of self...flourish. it was truly a match made in hell...and there is a certain camaraderie in "hell"..i would imagine by it's inhabitants...and that did too exist between my mother and father...but it was not at all "light" based...but in nearly every aspect was an offspring of darkness.


it's true...i was not privy to whatever moments they shared that might have been genuinely loving or tender or supportive and reflective of "love"  ...and i am certain there were a few...i was witness to more than several times where they strove to make the other "happy"...but usually this was in the provision of material things or other tangible measurements. and in the times in between their bond was profoundly destructive and long suffering...the operative word being "suffering"...


i had the good fortune, and misfortune, of having a very adult type relationship with my father from the time i was a very little girl. this arose mostly from his complete lack of companionship from my mother due to her mental illness. nothing commonly known as inappropriate ever occurred...but he did tap into my sensitivities and intuitive gifts to draw me close...and i knew far too much of his agony and angst in his marriage with my mother....i never did just get to be a "child"....observing and feeling safe within their marriage...but rather a pawn who they both moved deftly on the chess board of our family dynamic~ and i played my part well and willingly to be my fathers sacred confidant....dangerous dangerous emotional stuff...




i have never in all my observances, known two individuals who were so poorly suited to one another. my father was a devout man of honor in his way....but weak  and grossly unprepared from his own upbringing of neglect and abuse to cope with the likes of my mother and her Machiavellian pathological proclivities..born of what i am sure was her own experiences of abuse......tortured souls....both. so so so very sad.


i'll spare any reader here the grim details of their life together....but suffice it to say they lived within misery, and called it normal. what misery they did not create, was perpetuated upon them by some unknown but deeply felt malevolent energy source.......and left both their children reeling into adulthood with a sole similar mission to never ever duplicate that which we had known of "marriage" and "family"....


and fortunately, divinely so, truly by the grace of The Lord God Almighty....we were both led to our place within the palm of God's hand....and i would chose my destiny again with all it's horrors, and i know my brother would too....to find in the Father and Blessed Mother of Jesus...the parental figures, and abiding examples of true love we lacked as children....ultra idealistic and  examples of immaculate perfection...but they drew us out of our upbringing and onto the potential of living on a higher plane....
....
i guess in this way i do thank my parents for their unwitting sacrifice for our eventual salvation...i do not know why God plucked me up as He did...but He did....and my beloved brother too...incredibly loving and generous people have been brought into both our lives since we were small, and as someone i was conversing with recently said to me..and he was very correct...in these ways i have led a "charmed" life~ ...Heaven illuminating our path out of the darkness and symbiotic agony of our parents' bond.... ...i do hope with my deepest heart that wherever the awareness of their souls do now reside, they know i am grateful they did have a union and although i don't understand why either of them chose to exist in that union until death they did part...i am grateful in my way....and.i have certainly had my own failures when it comes to love and marriage and life in general.....so in this way i do have an empathy i once lacked....


i hope ..they feel my sincere heartache for them....and my prayer for their eternal "rest" in peace....on this their anniversary...and every day~ 

new wanderings...

months and months have passed....and i am now on the other side of what felt as though it would be the endless purge, sort, relocate, anguish, adjust, accept and dwell in the past interval of these recent times of my life~  perhaps i can now start chronicling my thoughts and experiences and lessons and eternal conundrums...here?.....just very possibly~  <3