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Power vs. Force

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I am a very poor dog trainer.

Olivia is confused.

She loves me and wants to protect me from all harm.

Her giant spirit in a little, little package pulls out all the warrior paraphernalia when men approach my door.

If the man wears a cap.. forget it.

Yesterday, David came by.

I met him on my first trip to New Mexico in 1989.

He loves rocks and fossils and is the perfect roadside geology man.

If dinosaur bones get you all atwitter.. he’s your guy.

We began our 20 year friendship watching the world with witness-glasses and enjoying an easy commentary together.

We still do that witnessing thing and still enjoy one another in a ‘chosen family’ sort of way.

He is a painter. Has always gone out into the wilds and moved the pleasure of his intimate connection with nature from his heart to the canvas.

Yesterday he brought me a few paintings to see.

They were spare and and ‘haiku-esque.’

So accomplished in the removal of EVERYTHING non-essential.

The two of us had not seen one another in quite awhile.

So the movement within us both was apparent.

He is far less than I remember.

I am emptying out as well.

What I SAW yesterday, was a man approaching my door.

My friend.

He looked quite the same.

But he was less.

Olivia sensed him and knew he was good.

I had prepared him to be patient as I had my dog at the door, on the lead and ready to make the corrections I am learning to train her away from barking and nipping at strangers.

She wagged and squeaked and wriggled as I opened the door.

No barking…

She had no need or desire to protect me from this person.

I just stood there as he came in and watched the two of them enjoy the recognition of a mutual ’something-or-otherness.’

My sense is that she noticed his pure heart, emptiness and lack of type A ‘I want a particular outcome and I’ll do anything to get it’ kind of human tactic (read: Cathy in the dog training process).

He has POWER in this instance.  A quiet and undefended approach.

I think I see that where she is concerned, I am mistakenly going after FORCE.

Little jerk here, a push-away there..

YUK..

Something about this equation is wrong.

Today, I am going to try to translate what I learned from their interaction into my dealings with my health and well-being.

Instead of attempting to force feed my body with health enhancing activities by rote, I will court spaciousness.

I will let that innate thing come forward without the costuming of effort.

Those clothes are worn and tattered anyway.

Familiar at best, but threadbare and spent.

I am tired and bored today with the ever-so-purposeful-and-incessant-hand-on-the-tiller navigation of life.

The intelligence of emptiness .

This is intriguing territory to me.

The Ride

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Havin’ the ride of my life over here..

I sold my home and need to find a place to live before the end of the month, pack and move and stay OK in the midst of it all..

Funny, how part of me thrives on this terrain; unpredictable and full of all possibility.

I see that life opens up so purposefully when I get out of the way.

My attachments are few as I traverse this MS landscape.

Things once cherished drop away making way for the new, unknown, untried.

My ’stuff’ holds no elan.

I decided to have a big ‘Cathy’s Giveaway’ sale instead of expending the energy to have people tromping through my home in a moving sale.

I’ve had ssssssssoooooooo much support over the last few years that it will feel great to just say: “I want you to have this.”

The energetic difference between a desperate and tightly held fist and a soft and openly generous one is a garden I want to tend.

It interests me the things I am choosing to keep around me; favorite mugs I love the feel of in my morning rituals, my art, shells and rocks, a branch covered in white holiday lights I use all year, my grandmother’s photo at age 20.

Simple things. Beautiful things. Heart things.

‘Stuff’, BE GONE!!!!

I want clean lines.

Nothing to obstruct my gaze.

Space, light and a bit of substance.

This will be my new estate.

My new place TO BE.

To BECOME… and keep becoming the woman just now drying her wings.

She needs sun and air and horizons to seek.

To expose her underbelly to the gleam off the lake…

Ordinary

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My life is moving very fast.

The public speaking seminar I just completed was wonderfully inspiring and intense.

My home has sold and I need to find a place to live within two weeks.

I know what to do when the anxiety of ‘too much’ rings my doorbell…

I return to the earth.

Start at square one..

Get dirt under my fingernails.

Sit on it. Smell it. Notice it. Let it take me.

I created the piece shown above from earth I gathered on a trip to Utah.

I travelled solo and was happy just spending a few days lookin’ around and driving..

Wind- in- my- hair kind of thing.

The kind of days when you just look up to where you think God might be and say out loud: “LIFE IS GOOD.”

The day I gathered the materials for this piece, I was driving down the long empty road and had to pee.

I stopped and walked a bit to a somewhat sheltered spot.

There was NO ONE around for miles but I am shy that way..

Walking back to the car I looked down and saw the most gorgeous combination of color: warm rust and seafoam green and a hint of mustard.

There was clay in the soil and it had formed in appealing shapes.

I went to the car and got a pail (ever ready in Cathy’s car) and collected my treasure.

When I return my attention to the earth, the world with it’s trials and confusion and velocity fades to grey as the ordinary and sensual pleasure of dirt opens me to possibility.

My priorities instantly shift into a more sensible order.

And my whole being softens to hear it’s whispered wisdom.

You can’t be loud when dealing with the earth because you’ll likely miss the best parts held between the lines.

Eyes closed, breath soft, senses heightened..

The gifts of the low-down and ordinary…

Gifted

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GIFTED

A new friend came and

Scrupulously shoveled snow.

My heart was opened.

- CA

Dance

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I like to watch dance movies.

Girl from upstanding backround meets busboy and he sets her free.. those kind of films.

LITE entertainment, surely, but I do love them.

The girl with MS LLLLLOOOOOOVVVEEESSSSSS them!

Could be thought of a torture but, for me, they remind me of a kind of life in my body and soul; free and unhinged.

Last night I watched HAVANA NIGHTS which was the sequel to DIRTY DANCING.

Shot in Cuba, it was full of color-unAmerican, the street beat of their culture amidst the political landscape of the day.

The lead guy says at one point: “You can’t dance with someone if you don’t admit your fear to them.”

That line got me.

I think that means that if you want a masterful union with anything then we must become transparent, unhidden.

I often look at this PPMS I deal with as a sort of dance.

I must constantly take off the blinders and rose-colored glasses to see exactly WHAT IS.

It used to be a breeze to look the other way.

Now, if I do that, I may fall and complicate things terribly.

The “What is?” of this situation changes pretty quickly in my case.

So I really have to be real.

This particular dance is not romantic.

But the focus in mastering the particulars in twists and turns and emotions and physical needs seems somehow similar to me.

I am not a novice, here.

Probably, I would characterize myself as an intermediate student.

A large part of my education has been to make sure pleasure is a basic and constant medication.

For me, this includes dance movies, and dinners with friends, connections with strangers, my dog, writing here, communing with Nature, reading, musing about life and, as I think about it…there is the odd pleasure in being transparent to myself and others as I negotiate this terrain.

It is REAL.

RAW.

Uncharted territory.

But REAL, non-the-less.

That is really something, in this culture of pretense and glitter.

Here, up close and personal, if you’re fortunate you can catch the delicate fragrance of the heart. Open and exposed.

A rare thing, indeed.

Winter

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Everything about Winter asks me to go inside.

Deep inside.

The cold, snow, irritable people (self included).

As I was brought up in Michigan, I NEED the seasons.

Such a direct reminder of cycles we are a part of.

Bloom, fade, back-to-the-earth, gestate, gather, reach for the light, bloom.

In Winter I gather.

Early in my art career I self-flagellated a lot in judgement of my meanderings in magazine racks and coffee shops and the wilds of New Mexico in my big red truck.

I thought were anyone to know how I spent my days oftentimes, I would be judged irresponsible and lazy.

Quite to the contrary, I now know…

I am a gatherer.

I spend time witnessing, looking, sensing, appreciating, being appalled and back to gratitude again.

After I do this for varying amounts of time, some THING in form appears.

When it was art I was primarily creating, all the gathering would distill into something like the piece above.

These days, healing my body is my chief concern so this Winter’s gathering is taking shape in the form of inspired guidance concerning my quest for wholeness (whatever that looks like).

I am now, after all these years, familiar with and not self critical about this process of mine; gathering then taking extreme pleasure in watching for the form to appear.

This is surely NOT a heady endeavor.

More a softening into the cycle of the seasons in me.

Today is very white and still with a constant light snow.

I have paperwhite bulbs growing an inch per day in a glass vase on my counter.

The only thing we can count on is change.

May as well enjoy the ride.

Permeability

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This piece is made out of lava rock.

They came from a favorite place in New Mexico called the BISTI BADLANDS.

It looks like a god-forsaken moonscape.

I love it for it’s otherworldliness.

So, these rocks caught my eye.

I just notice stuff as I’m going along and ask if it’s ok to take it home.

In this case the answer was yes and here I am, 6 years later writing about them.

They went through the fire.

A very big one.

And today they are my teacher.

The rocks are HARD.

And COMPLICATED.

They know the shadow and are still here.

Transformed, perhaps. But still here.

Lava formations in New Mexico are mysterious places.

They can surprise you if they are hidden.

Or take your breath away with their monumental size.

I liked these particular rocks because they aren’t really a solid mass but a maze separated by air passageways.

I suspect from the bubbles as the firey mass cooled.

They remind me of me.

I am fairly complicated, I think.

Not hard, though. Anymore.

I have been through the fire as we all have at one point or another.

MS is my fire at the moment.

The thing is, I notice this fire I am in is leaving me more porous than before.

My guard goes down somewhat because I haven’t the energy for it anymore, really.

But the gift in that is I now feel and think about myself, the world, the whole game board differently.

I used to be much more serious than I am now.

It took a lot to make me laugh but not these days.

The witness in me takes a gander at Cathy trying to get to the bathroom in time and how her body looks making that desperate journey and who wouldn’t laugh?

This whole MS thing can be funny.

Unless it’s not.

And that, there, is the shadow side.

The thing is, there they both are.

Am I any different than anyone else in that respect?

Point-of-view…

That’s the key, right there.

Dirty old black rock?

Or teacher in disguise?

Saving Grace

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Last night I watched a film in which James Earl Jones’ character spoke of being ’saved’ three times in his life.

He told the stories of each which were significant moments of support or compassion or something very life-changing that allowed him to continue on the path to becoming the best man he could be.

Some obstacle was removed by another to let him open to his fullest self.

That scene got me wondering about those who have ’saved’ me….

Here they are:

1. MY GRANDMOTHER, Gonnie

She essentially brought me up and tended my spirit. Showed me a secure and loving place to feel safe to begin ‘becoming’. I loved her.

2. TISH VELMETTI, grade school teacher

She took me under her wing as a burgeoning artist from 2nd through 6th grade.
I began to have a glimmer of self-worth because of her care and patient support.

3. LARRY REESIDE, principal of Kingswood school

Mr. Reeside was a first love. He GOT me. I was a depressed and delinquent kid in a girl’s school. I skipped more classes than I went to and disappeared into the neighboring woods to get high with the boys from across the lake. Mr. Reeside was well aware of my antics and lent me a blind eye but his heart was very knowing where I was concerned.

4. JOE LALLY, Boston police officer

I was raped in Boston in 1988. Joe put all the evidence together in a water tight case and the guy was sent to prison for 28 years. He died of a herion overdose two years ago. Joe is now a part of the homicide department because of the work he did on my case. We are still good friends and email regularly.

5. NEW MEXICO began her work on me in 1989 when I left Boston.

She has healed me, kept me company, helped me find ‘home’, let me use her for my art and a good deal of who I am is because of her.

6.   ERICH SCHIFFMANN, yoga instructor

I met Erich when I first moved to Santa Fe in a workshop he taught.  At the end of the weekend, I left to get into my car and began crying and couldn’t stop.  I finally figured out that being in his presence felt like HOME with a big ‘H’.  He somehow helped me experience the largest part of myself and my ‘core of goodness’ as he puts it.

7. CYNTHIA, my mentor

Because of her immense wisdom and guidance I have been able to peel away most of my inauthentic self and now feel like one of the healthiest people I know. I love my life as a direct result of the love and care and teachings she has shared with me.

8. My chihuahua, OLIVIA

Honestly, I don’t really think I knew what true love was until Livvy came into my life. She is a constant teacher, confidant and partner in the light and shadow.
She helps my light burn bright.

9. Cathy Aten, woman becoming..
I will include myself on this list as I now have enough solidity to my being to know a lot of the time how to make choices which move me toward a thriving existence.

Man

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I absolutely love the privilege of being a woman.

And men interest me.

Their way of being in the world is so different.

It intrigues me, this difference.

They seem like the dance of negotiation and ‘all-your-ducks-in-a-row’ kind of living is second nature.

Their confidence in themselves seems almost cellular.

And when that quality crosses the line into the dark arts of manipulation and entitlement, rest assured this is not of which I speak today.

I do envy the attention to foundation building men often display.

We, women love the circle.

Their energy, in the best sense, feels like the square.

Think of the symbol of the square with a circle drawn inside it; the circle touching the lines of the square in each of four meeting places.

Those four points of meeting become rare and precious and important when looked at in this way.

Then look at all the rest of the symbol aside from the four points where the two shapes meet and you see 99% of the action in the symbol.

But the power of the thing would not exist were it not for those four meeting places AND the rest of what is going on..

Because my life is guided by the circle and I have chosen it as my mentor does not mean I have no interest in the square.

I am well aware that the transformation, wisdom and access to ways of being other than the norm are DEPENDENT on the interaction of these two representations of energy.

I am not talking about gender-specificity.

Energy is energy.

I AM looking at my lifelong penchant for doing it all myself and the fact that that stance has brought me only so far..

(Please bear with me as I am thinking this through as I write)…

(The ‘circle-thing’ in action!)

I see that I can go no further without the foundational support of energy that is NOT my nature.

If I am to plumb the depths of anything there has GOT to be a force holding the rope somewhere.

Some would say all you need is God.

This ‘other-than-me’ energy can and does show up in many forms.

I’m just saying I’m well aware I need it to move forward in an effectual and thriving way.

A way that does NOT render me less, but MORE.

Tree

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My cognitive function is beginning to be impaired.

This, above all else is scary.

It’s the short term stuff and only every once in awhile.

When one has all their faculties intact it is always a possibility to talk ones’ self into or out of any reality, really.

Meditation practices place high value on ‘no-mind’.

But I don’t think they had this kind of ‘no-mind’ in mind.

PPMS is a slow accumulation of various disabilities.

No respite.

When I feel myself change direction and the high road I travel more often than not turns toward the downward spiral, I look to NATURE.

Not to humans. To Nature.

I trust that if I look there, trustable and ready answers are to be found if I look attentively.

Today, my attention goes toward trees.

They act as a bridge between Earth and the heavens as they set their roots and reach for the sky at the same time.

In between is the trunk.

Strong, with the bark as protective buffer against the elements.

Inside runs the sap.. the life juice of the tree.

The sap can’t/won’t run without that protective layer.

The metaphor I’m inching my way toward is this:

I’m going after whatever I need to do or whoever I need to be to have that ‘bark’ of mine be in tip-top shape.

I can only do what I can do.

I always think I can do more than that.

There is that pesky ‘thinking-thing’ again!

I’m going to soften into the slow flow of the thing and see if I can’t clear these channels of some of the extraneous thinking (worry) that may be part of the problem to begin with.

I find it interesting that the theme of protection keeps resurfacing in my posts.

Something trying to get my attention, no doubt.

Not going to THINK about it, though…

Allowing the information to come to me as it will feels more the ticket.

Yes, that feels right…

Whew.. what a relief not to have to ADD another thing!

Allow. Trust. Receive.

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