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Together or Apart?

 

 

I remember creating this piece so long ago.   I still love it,  somehow.

Probably because it is so very different than ANYTHING else I ever did.

Where did it come from?  What is it about?

I do know it was a homage to the male and female energies we each carry within us.

It was created during a period when I was interested in the idea of making an image that seemed as if it was either falling apart or coming together but you couldn’t decide which.

The color makes me think of that ‘God-light’ that happens here in New Mexico for just seven minutes at sunset.

The mystery that keeps my attention in this painting is the same one that keeps me from going into despair regarding the challenges I face in my body.

Am I falling apart or coming together?

It might LOOK to others like a progressively poor state of affairs over here in ‘Cathy-land’ but if they could get the full picture of the precious and unexpected changes happening,  not a tear would be shed, believe me!

But I can’t really explain that so I think the only thing to do is to BE it…  whatever IT is…

Clearly this territory defies articulation sometimes.

I am FALLING APART and COMING TOGETHER.

How weird.

And surprising.

And weird.

The Collective

 

 

I had an astrological reading the other day.

He is very astute and has the ability to get out of his own way and not make predictions but just relate what he sees as the symbology presenting itself in a persons’ chart.

What interested me was the metaphor he used for the effects we are seeing represented world-wide
as well as how those same energies affect us personally.

He spoke of a hurricane and how it hits solid ground with a force.

We deal with that onslaught until finally a strange stillness occurs.

We think it is over and relax a bit.

But no…

This is the eye of the storm.

His sense is that we are inside that eye now.  We saw the economy collapse.   Greed unmasked.  Our values shift.   We pull our attention closer to center and release future-thinking a bit.   We tighten our belts and prick up our ears in a slight readiness for what?

We’re not sure…

But we sense SOMETHING coming.   I do,  at least.

My astrologer friend likens this hyper-alertness to his sense that the second wave of the storm will be here at years’ end.   He didn’t have an idea of what it might look like but felt it’s power and effect to be greater than the first wave.

What does this information have to do with anything?

I have had the sense that all this catastrophic fear-inducing talk on everyones’ tongue only makes sense if we return to our own inner landscape and tend to the upheavals there.

Do I have dread?   Is there fear? Has chaos taken hold and dragged me down its’ gritty road so I am scraped and scarred?   And what do I do with these pesky obstacles? Shall I eat?  Buy something?  Hide the pile of bills behind a stack of books?  Make someone wrong for something?  Move?  Complain?  Get sick?  Take a vacation?  

There are always ‘SLIMY GOODIES’ we get from indulgences such as these. (Speaking personally, here..)

 It is SO MUCH EASIER to sit in the middle of the drama of what is happening in the world.  Television makes it colorful,  loud,  entertaining in it’s apocalyptic theater.

For me, it seems the only thing to do that makes any sense at all is to release myself from the addiction of looking OUT THERE for solutions and turn inward to manage my own demons.

Get Dressed

 

 

GET DRESSED

 

Slide out of bed now.

Give all your coveted stuff away.

Nothing becomes you.

 

 

 

                                                                 -C.A. July 2009

Faith and Hope

 

A good friend opened up the conversation on the difference between faith and hope.

Never really thought about it before.

Very separate things in my mind, tho..

Hope feels more like a wish.  Kindof magical thinking.   A desire for……………

It feels airy and diffuse.  Not too much substance behind it but a good beginning.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here but my sense is that hope can NOT take form or substance unless a part of us surrenders into FAITH.

Faith,  for me,  is the KNOWLEDGE that a prayer  (different than hope)  has been heard and is somehow in process but the clincher is that we have no idea what the result will be.   It will most likely NOT be what we HOPED for but we have FAITH that what comes forward toward us is CORRECT for US.

Hindsight has shown me the gameplan..

If I don’t give the universe any direction at all around my desires,  intentions,  goals,  prayers…
What tends to be left on my doorstep is undefined and confusing and not very useable.

But IF I put energy forward in a GENEROUS way without my egotistical foot on the gas and recognize that my desire may actually be met but come in a different flavored life-saver.. well,  then I’ve got a heart with a little more space in it to accept a different result than I thought I wanted.    WHEW!!

Take my MS diagnosis for instance..

I have always been a person who loves solitude AND connections with people.  I have kept a relationship with Spirit at the forefront of my life since I can remember.

Because of the changes in my physical self  (can’t do what I used to),  my emotional self  (need lots of silence and stress-free time),  psychic self  (toleration levels for other people’s drama is zero)…. BECAUSE of these changes I am brought to my knees and have a much more intimate relationship with Spirit.

Now,  would I wish this path of mine on anyone?   No.

Are many of my prayers being answered through this challenge?  Yes.

Do I have FAITH that I am not in this alone?  (God, are you listening?)   Yes.

Do I have HOPE for the miracle of remission?  Yes.

HOPE seems like a horizontal line.

And FAITH a vertical one.

And where they meet is a sweet,  sweet spot,  indeed.

Humans

 

There is a man who sells newspapers on a corner near me.

His name is Terry and I find myself curious about him.

He is so reliable;  stands in the middle of a not-too-busy intersection doing his thing.

When it is searing cold, he is there..  all bundled up in his puffy overall suit.

If it’s hot,  he chooses interesting hats to wear.

Sometimes his chihuahua sits there with him.

His mustache is stained yellow from cigarettes.

I always give him more money than expected and ask how he is.  He says:  ”I’m here.”

I drive by him a couple times a day and he sits quietly looking down at the pavement.   Never waving false hellos to prospective customers or even attempting to catch our eye as we drive by.

I know he is a vet and clearly depressed.   Seems like that should be the end of it…  but no… he’s got my attention.

And why is that?

My guess is that I somehow admire the way he holds his frailty.

No grasping,  no moving outside himself to make a sale,  get attention,  get done quicker with the task at hand of selling the papers.

He just IS.

He sits there in the middle of the road on a crate and waits for the next thing to happen.

Maybe it is that quality I notice.  The lack of AFFECT to make life go a certain way.

Of course,   I am surely lending my own story line to a questionable scenario here but this is how I watch people and end up loving humanity as a whole.

We think we are so all powerful and somehow the chosen species but we are all at the effect of life when it happens inconveniently,  horribly  with no warning and no recipe for a return to what was.

We are all Terry,  sitting on our box in the middle of the street at one point or another.

We might have the where-with-all to cover the scars better but our frailties make us human.

This is the party we’re all attending.

In my own health challenge,  I see what it takes to create a beautiful theater out of the mess.

And,  I guess that is the point of interest for me of late:   how to make a thing of beauty out of something that looks less-than-perfect?

The act of just NOTICING human frailty feels beautiful,  somehow,  because we,  as a culture ABHOR IMPERFECTION.  It frightens us and so we lend a blind eye.   We don’t want to catch it.

My frailty has made me softer somehow.

I like that part.

Treasure Map

 

I AM FEELING SO MUCH BETTER!

I suppose there was little chance I could go through a week at the MAYO Clinic unscathed.

By that I mean that even though the environment was perfection and the experience as a whole more than positive, there was still the pall of the ‘death sentence’ at the end from both doctors.

My heart was moved when I saw their sad and disappointed eyes as they said:  ”You have Primary Progressive MS and we don’t have anything in our doctor bag to help you.”

It’s darn nigh impossible not to take that on,  I tell you……

But here I am,  a couple weeks home and watching myself come back to life,  I’d say.

After negotiating this path for years now,  I do have some things in my kit-bag that have proven to have results in heightening my health and quality of life.

No stress.   REALLY clean diet.   Stay out of the heat.  Conserve energy and leave my ‘type-A-ness’ behind.  Tried and true supplements.  Say NO when I have to . Drink water.   Get help when I need it.

These are things that shift the tide for me.

I know this because I’ve tried NOT doing them.  Often.

It’s just the way I seem to learn.

Stubborn girl.

The point here is that the foundation of my landscape is possibility.  I lose the thread to that and I am done.

Yes,  this is a different life than I had imagined but richly textured with questions,  creativity,  gratitude and promise…

As long as I lift my head high enough to see…

Either/Or

 

 

 

EITHER/OR

 

Either weakness thrives

Or I woo something larger.

More interesting.

 

 

                                               – Cathy Aten July 2009

Order/Chaos

 

Finally feeling back to myself.

I feel GOOD.

I feel life in me and around me and not so self absorbed in my body’s world.

It’s a relief to everyone…  mostly me.

I have always gravitated to a grid pattern in my art when I am in a transition of some sort or emotionally shaky or just plain OFF in any way, shape or form.

I do this intuitively and see it as a sort of pattern in the body of work I’ve created over a lifetime.

Of course,  it makes sense, really…

A grid lends a stable foundation to move from.

It’s elements are perfectly placed so they use the support of their neighbor to remain solid and intact.  They do not insist on existing alone for their own sake as you would find in abstract art.

And so. .right now I watch myself be drawn again to create and also to live inside a sense of order-  clean house,  clear mind,  lots of open space for healing on every level.

It is sooooooooo easy for chaos to get me by the throat.

One catch of my foot on a tree root and I’m down where I can’t get up.

So I put my humility on like a pretty dress, grab my walker and be grateful for the support.

The Holy Grail

 

Joseph Campbell talks about the knights of the round table being given the task of finding the HOLY GRAIL.

In the story it becomes apparent that the grail cannot be found if one approaches the forest and chooses a path set by someone else.

The quest must begin by entering the deepest darkness of the forest where no man has gone before.   One must make their own trail,  face all shadows and fear and only then does the knight have a chance of taking home the treasure.

The treasure for me is a richly connected life.

I see that following worn and well travelled roads will not get me there.

And so I wake up and begin again.  I pick my spot to enter the forest.

Some days I just move guardedly through the shadows and grow weary of clearing the path.   I turn around and go home.

Other days the shadows open into meadows flecked with wildflowers and a sweetwater creek.

This gives me strength and I press on…

Building, Rebuilding a Life

 

I remember a favorite yoga teacher from years ago.   She was 70 at the time and had alot of gravity to her.

She would walk around us as we did the poses and critique.

Very occasionally she would just stop in her tracks and become silent.  Then she would say:  ”God is near.  Can you feel it?”

And sometimes I could.

These days,  as I reshape my life to fit my physical changes I have the opportunity to decide what elements,  beliefs,  habits,  people,  furniture,  food,  prayers,  clothes,  dreams and desires will stay or go.

And how to decide these things in order to create a thriving live for myself?

I go back to that question;  Is God near?

For me,  that means that I get a solid feeling of OPENNESS and LIGHTNESS when I think of a choice between two or more things.

I even do it at the grocery store…  a red apple or a green one?

This is the only way I know to choose well and rightly.   When I do it from my mind,  I can ALWAYS make up a story about why this man is good for me or that medication will heal or this course of action seems right.

I don’t trust my mind.

I am actually bored by it.

It’s a remarkably good tool and I have a good one but it has proven to take me only so far.   And not far enough.

And so,   in humility,  I listen for the whisper or roar of God  (or Spirit)  and stay in the place of not knowing.  And listen.

I’m going to let myself be shown.

Because if I,  in all my ego,  decided to do this road alone I would surely,  surely have a wreck.

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