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Olivia

 

I dropped my dog last night.

Her name is Olivia and she is a 10 lb.  (obese, says the vet)  chihuahua.

Dropping glasses, a fork, soap?  Sure.   Goes with the normal MS day of ‘less-than-perfect’ behavior of my body.

But my beloved dog… no.

It happened in the midst of a dinner party I gave.   It was time to get dinner on the table.  I reached down to pick her up to reassure her that all these people were ok and she was still safe with me.

And I dropped her on her side.

She screamed and cried noises I had never heard.  She is a rescue dog and submissive but no baby.

I took her to my bedroom and made a cave for her with my chest and arms and whispered as she cried and trembled and seemed so out of her body and not connected to me.

Two friends came back to check on us and I asked them to see if they could find her treats and bring them to me.

Somehow- she perked up.   Re-integrated at the sight of food  (don’t we all?)    and carried on like a champ for the rest of the evening.   She stayed close and was quiet but wagged her butt like she does and responded as usual.

This whole thing made me think about trauma.    When I was married, we went to a therapist for some guidance.   He asked me what I really needed.   I said: ” I’d like Steven to put his hand on my heart for ten minutes.”  Steven did this and I burst into tears.    I scared him.  He didn’t know what to do.   He took his hand away.

All of us have stored trauma.  Not a one of us escapes.  How are we to help heal one another if we have not the tolerance for our own trauma?  Because that is what happened to my husband.   He saw something that was too close to his own scars;  still very secret and in the shadows so he could not have the tolerance for mine when it surfaced.

My experience with my dog last night let me see how fully I could be with her pain.   Because she is a rescue dog,  I can never know the truth of the time I wasn’t there.  All I can do is turn every cell toward her when something activates an old hurt and she shows me the damage done to her in the past.   Last night, I saw that I had done my work well.   I’ve plumbed my depths and faced the shadows and because of that,  NOW I CAN LOVE WELL.   I’m not saying that I didn’t hurt my dog because I did.   What I saw,  though,  was that her reaction was a combination of her history and the present hurt.   

Today we are going to the river to play and let it take us….

Civilized Behavior

 

I love teenagers.

Yesterday,   I had backed my car up to the house and left the hatchback open most of the day as I waited until I had enough energy to bring stuff into the house.

I waited all day into the evening.    And still… the hatchback was open out there.

AND THEN… a little knock on the door and I find my two neighbor kids;   probably 13 and 15.  I’ve lived here for three years now and there has always been an awkwardness between their family and me.   We are culturally different and there is the ever-present adobe wall between us to contend with.  They are a real family;  two boys running, shooting hoops, yelling at each other;   I LOVE this!  Since I chose not to have kids and give my art career my attention, I tend to live vicariously through others.  I’ve never done well with infants but teenagers, I seem to want them around me more and more.

It has surprised me so much that my neighbors and I like each other from afar but we stay just that:   once removed.  I watch myself yearning for a connection there but don’t act on it.  That is why it was such a surprise when I saw the two boys at my door asking if I had anything in the car I needed help bringing into the house.    The seemingly small attentiveness they showed in noticing that my car door had been open so long and breaching those silly made-up barriers that keep our hearts in lock-down,   actually brought me to tears.    Of course, being no dummy, I know full well their parents were behind the kindness here but I got to make them my heros and they were feeling good when they left.  And so was I.

A Small Thing

 

Did you ever notice how one small whisper of a touch from someone can blast your heart open and leave you breathless and wondering how that seismic shift happened from such an insignificant gesture?

It makes me know that absolutely nothing I do is insignificant.  My way of being affects all those I come in contact with and also those I never cast an eye towards.

How can this be?    Is this what it means that we are all one?

Sometimes it’s just so much easier to think I am an island unto myself and tend my garden any which way I want.    It’s mine;  I’ll do what I please.

But really,   if that one touch caused such an effect of opening in me even when I didn’t want to,   I must take care with the effect I may have on another.  It may be you.. you who may need a little more softness and connection in your life today that I give my genuine smile to.    I really hope so..

Sticking My Neck Out

 

I began this blog just one month ago.  I absolutely love the process of revisiting all my artwork from the past and finding one image to complement what I write each day.  The pleasure in this is enough but I was wondering if I was creating in a vacuum as there were so few comments.

Yesterday, a friend looked up the stats on who has visited my site and where you are from.  Turns out that this world-wide-web thing really works!  There have been 245 of you who have viewed pages 645 times this month.  You are from the U.S., Canada, the UK, China Nicaragua, Kuwait, and India.

I am very conscious of wearing existing friendships thin with chronic talk of the gains and losses of living with MS.   I AM SOMETIMES SO BORED WITH MYSELF!  I never envisioned having most of my waking life filled with thoughts of diet, strength, walking, survival, supplements, finding a bathroom fast, and the psychic fortitude it takes to keep to the high road.

I need you all out there.  Very much.   I love people;  find them utterly fascinating, challenging, precious, disappointing, courageous and inspiring.  I used to be so ‘out there’ in the river of it…but now I stay closer to home.  I have marginal energy and my tolerance level for just normal, day-to-day stress is close to zero.  What is a life-lover like me to do?   I muse.   I write.   I do my best to remain visible.  Not just visible but BRIGHT!

My interior landscape is utterly entertaining to me, and now I see that there are those of you out there connected in some way.  My boat has been cast on the sea for a wild ride, captained by just me.  I’m a curious person and happy more than not but sometimes, living in the valley of the waves is a bit much on the girl so I want you to know your presence shows up like a light and it’s enough to have me skip from crest to crest and forget the valley altogether.

Thanks.

XX C.

Intelligent Life

 

 

What is intelligent life?

I know a few people I consider intelligent life. All the animals and creatures I consider intelligent life.   The entire natural kingdom of plants and minerals have an intelligence about them.

What is the defining factor in my assessment here?

I suppose it would be the easy, surrendered trust that we are held…. by that I mean that we are not alone,  we have support beyond what we know,   we KNOW very little and there IS a way to be guided,  supported and nurtured by the universal life force.

The creatures, humans, minerals and plants I prefer to have as company all seem to effortlessly drink from this waterfall available to us.

When I try to decide things on my own without checking in to this vast store of natural intelligence,  I get totally screwed up.   Then I scrap the plan that sounded so brilliant, get quiet and LISTEN.   Just listen.   And ALWAYS from the silence comes intelligent life.  Every time.

The Brightness

 

The river yesterday ran muddy and full.   After the rain and clouds moved over the brightness took my breath away.  Electric blue sky, impossibly scented air and everything abandoned to the opening after the long grey.  I took my blanket and laid it in the damp and yellow drying grasses;  near enough to the water to see a grandmother and young girl hand in hand happily walking the riverbed up to their knees. They saw me and turned around.  I was glad they guarded their time together like that.

I let the sun have me.  Too long, it seems, as when I tried to get up,  I couldn’t.

My legs and arms were weak and rubbery;  disobedient and foreign.

MS and heat just don’t do well together but sometimes my brain just has selective listening to it’s archives.

What to do?

First, let’s try talking to ourself:  ”Cathy, you can do this.   What the hell is happening to me?  There is NOTHING about this that I recognize.  Try again..  Nope.  Not working.”

My knees are muddy from trying to solve the puzzle of standing up with no support.

OK..  I laugh… I LAUGH!  What else is there to do?

Interestingly, the laughing releases some of the panic and muscle constraint and I am vertical; dirty and vertical.

Actually,  what I took away from that day was gratitude for the undeniable changeability of it all..  mood, weather, muscle capacity..   it really is the only thing we can count on..  The only thing.

Past is Present

 

Today is Memorial Day.   I am thinking about dirt.

My grandmother was a suburban shaman of sorts. She ran the cocktail party circuit with the best of them but never took it on as an identity. In fact, I think she abhorred the whole lot.

When she died, I was already living here in New Mexico. I returned to Michigan for her funeral. I took a private moment and walked in her beloved garden. Roses, raspberries, lilies of the valley in the shade under lilac trees. Her favorite were the peonies. I dug up a scarlet one and took it home on the plane. It was in my lap the whole time as I looked out the planes’ window and mused about legacy.

After I got home I planted it. I knelt down and dug a hole. Suddenly this strangely compelling urge to eat some of the earth around the roots of the plant overtook me. I didn’t know what was happening. I followed where I was being drawn to go and swallowed some of the dark, musky earth. It tasted somehow familiar.

Fast forward ten years to present day and we find an artist (me) using earth as her medium to create with. What I notice is the continual unfurling of the intelligence of the earth in me; things I know my grandmother knew are now finding me and being expressed through my art instead of a garden. It is interesting to me that this was never a ‘decision’ but a ‘calling’ and I was fortunate to hear. This legacy I experience is a very alive and vital thing. It has no beginning and no end in sight and helps me feel softer inside exactly because I can’t figure it out, have no urge to, and know without a doubt that it carries nothing but goodness and a prayer for me to BE more.

The Honey Guides

 

THE HONEY GUIDES

Once upon a time there was a girl who had a secret place.
It was up on a hill covered in long grass.
Sometimes she would snuggle down and make a nest for herself
when her parents were bugging her or if she felt alone.
She never really fit well anywhere.

She was well liked though she belonged to no group.
Her best friends were Nature Spirits.
They would whisper and sing softly in her ear.
Her fledgling heart was always soothed.
As she grew older she returned again and again to her grassy hill
and the Spirits who tended her so long and so well.

One day she noticed that far away across the river, in a little cottage
Smoke was rising from the chimney.
In all these years from her secret spot she had never noticed this before.
She became curious and decided to pack a little bag
And make the long journey to the cottage.
She was cold. Perhaps she could find some warmth by the fire.
She walked for days, for years and a lifetime.
As she finally approached the cottage she heard laughter.
I sounded like a party.
She timidly knocked on the door and all the noise inside stopped.
The door creaked open and in a blaze of light and warmth she saw a table.
It was set with crystal and silvery things.
There were many places set at this table.
From each chair came a welcoming smile from the most radiant people
The girl had ever seen.
She felt warm and tingly inside as she noticed
There was a special place set just for her.

She sat and someone began to speak.
“We are the HONEY GUIDES. We are here to teach you about sweetness
And nurture and family and love.”
“We will hold your hand while you eat and your heart will grow
And you will always know where to go for food.”
And at that- a beautiful woman with golden hair
Began to sing a heartbreakingly beautiful song,
A blessing was given and the feast began.

The girl understood that her whole life so far was in preparation for this-
Her seat at the tribal table.
She was no longer alone.
She felt her heart grow wide and wider still.
And she saw it was true what she had been told;
That part of The Journey must be made alone
But for the heart to become ripe and full
One needs a hand to hold.

                            - Cathy Aten

Girl and a Horse

 

Today is one of those weird milestone days when I drag myself out of bed, everything is ‘dis-integrated’ in my body and it is raining and I wonder how the hell to do this life? The realities press in like sticky tar and I can’t find the brightness.

When I began this blog, a friend sent me a link to a guy diagnosed with pancreatic cancer who was an editor of the New York Times with a blog of his own and a giant listening audience as he spoke of symptoms, horror, depression, everything we all associate with disease.

When I think of widening my audience for my own blog here, I just can NOT go the way of shared suffering in such an overt way. It is seductive to do it and that shared experience is what makes support groups so vital.

Even, and especially on dark days such as today, the biggest and best parts of me remember the smooth and unyielding flow of SOMETHING larger than my pesky ‘woe-is-me’ self.

The last time I remember that heightened feeling; everyTHING in life is good, happened on Apache’s back. I’ve been going to a place called CHALLENGE NEW MEXICO which caters to disabled people like me. It’s a safe, loving, adept and compassionate oasis where we ride horses whose level of patience floors me.

Carlos is the true anchor of the place. He’s the cowboy who is big enough to hold all the chaos we ‘freedom-seekers’ bring with us and somehow channel it into life altering experiences of peace, perfection, possibility, hope and MUCHO FUN!

He told me once that he knew Apache, the horse, was in many, many people’s dreams after they had ridden him. Today, I remember and dream.

Community

 

 

I attended a workshop once and learned something.   The question was asked: “If you want to know what you truly love in this world, watch what you do all the time with no coaxing”.

I am a watcher.   I have a favorite coffee shop I go to where I feel totally at home and am always greeted by name with a genuine smile from behind the counter. There are, admittedly, many kinds of love but I can safely say I love the people who work there. They are real, funny, compassionate, irreverent, wise, without attitude, curious and diligent in delivering a class act experience. ‘Case you’re wondering, it is THE STATION in the Railyard…

This is what I do there: grab a cup of coffee, read the paper or better yet, a great and shiny magazine and I muse. I watch people; how they relate to one another or themselves. I feel the slight shifts in energy as one person arrives or leaves. I listen to the train blow it’s whistle and feel a prickly thrill thinking about some adventure.

Being there feels inspiring to me. I design art projects. I sketch on napkins. The life of an artist can be isolating at times. I get sick of myself and then I go to THE STATION. I go alone 99% of the time because this particular kind of time is a part of my work day. It might look to the outside world like ‘time off’ but for me, this is vital. I get things done. I get to take the pulse of my town. All the regulars support one another. These people are chosen family. My life is richer because of them and the environment they sustain. I spend so much time watching, registering, gathering information that when I choose to write or make a work of art it just sort of ARRIVES with a good deal of integrity already in it. As the form takes shape there is an ease to the execution because of all that has come before.

I love the fact that I have enough years on me to know the places and people who allow me to feel most naturally myself; no performance.

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