THE GOODNESS OF MEMORY

Leaves burning remind me of Fall
The kids playing on the swing set while I rake
Matching green sweaters with hoods, pumping, out and back 
Sarah with her little bones, happy; Adam in boondockers, whirling  
We're feeling the chill, our hands and cheeks as the sun sets 
Damp earth, smokey air
Dinner at McDonald's, baths, soft pajamas, little feet, wet hair
Fragrant life
There's nothing wrong with my memories, nothing at all 


Sometimes it feels calm, the movement of life, the blessing of the surrender to time. 

Nina Naomi

ABOUT AWE, PART 3

Site Plan of Butler Wash Ruins, Prehistoric Anasazi Cliff Dwelling

Written on October 12, 2019

Another day in AWE Country.  Not everything goes well of course.  Away from home, hauling travel gear, covered in dust.  One lodging is more than you expect, another far worse.  Making changes is not easy.  I'm less flexible than I'd like, grumpy, and ashamed of myself.  My husband's grumpy too.  We've gotten a slow start today.  Ever happen to you? Then we get out of the car and start our hike. 

The goal is to reach the cliff dwellings of the Ancient Puebloans (Anasazi), who lived here in alcoves from about AD 900-1350.  We're in Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.  The cave ruins are nestled on Comb Ridge, a dramatic geologic fold about a mile wide and 80 miles long.  These and the prehistoric rock carvings are what I now want to see most on this trip.  Even though they won't be as spectacular as the hoodoos ("About Awe," posted 10/18/19), there's something about being with the remnants of ancient civilizations.  

Marked Trail to Cliff Overlook

The walk isn't long but the temperature's dropped to 50⁰.  We're in the desert and the walking changes everything.  All I feel is the sun on my back and shoulders.  All I see is scrub land, Prickly Pear Cacti, yellow Rubber Rabbitbrush, Desert Sage and Mormon Tea.  The desert sand gives way to slickrock--large and flat and easy walking. We're on a plateau headed toward a small canyon.  More sun and then the cliffs and dwellings come in to view.  

Butler Wash Ruin as seen from Overlook

Think of it--people just like us, living in cliffs, farming and hunting, building, cooking everyday, tending their toddlers, loving each other, giving birth and growing old.  And all at the cliff's edge.  What agility they must have had!  What spiritual lives, feeling at one with nature. The same instincts to feed and protect their families, to shelter them.  To be tender or angry, happy or sad.  I'm in AWE of them!  

I want to carry these feelings home with me, so that we connect with our neighbors not just horizontally, but also vertically through time. So that we preserve their treasures. Somehow these people have managed to connect with me.  So nature and civilization lift my mood, set things right. I'm learning so much, and through all my senses: climbing, touching, seeing, hearing. . . . There are layers of goodness everywhere. 
 

Petroglyphs near Bluff, Utah

 


 

ABOUT AWE, PART 2

Zion National Park, Utah

Written October 9, 2019

We are still in AWE Country.  Last Christmas (Post, "Merry Christmas To All," 12/23/18) I wrote about my back surgery and the confinement it caused.  Not all bad by any means, punctuated by friends and lovely caretakers.  Well, the surgery must have succeeded because here we are following trails into canyons and up rivers and having more of those unbelievable feelings of awe.  At nature, at geological time, at God.  Not one of those tiny pleasures that I'm so grateful for every day.  But something huge! 
 

Mitten Butte, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Have you ever visited a place and thought, "What if I had been born here?  What if my family lived here and I came here all the time?"  I remember being quite young and thinking "What if this Swiss village were my home?"  Instead, I've never returned.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.  This place is like that.  You want more.  More days, more nights. . . last evening in the Navajo Tribal Park it was so quiet.  We and the other visitors fell silent as the sun set.  People seemed to whisper out of respect for the landscape. 

Sunset, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

In my hometown of Durham, North Carolina, one of the experiences that brings awe is listening to the Duke University Chapel organist play Widor's Toccata (1879) on the Chapel's great organ.  If you can't recall the piece, or just want to listen right now, it's easy to call up.  It's a favorite at royal weddings.  Mentioning it, I am hearing it in my head.  Sitting here in Utah writing what I'll want to post when I get home I have two blessings:  the music in my head and the canyons all around.  

Funny how awe works.  It can be there to see or hear or feel, or even just recall and recreate.  So much to be grateful for.  And right now, Number 1 on my list is my back surgeon!                           
                              With thanksgiving, Nina Naomi





 

ABOUT AWE

Hoodoos, Bryce National Park, Utah (Inspiration Point)

Written October 5, 2019

Do you live in Utah in the US?  I know readers are all over, some in places I've been and many not.  I haven't been to Portugal or Australia or Ukraine or Malaysia.  But this week we're in Utah and I am filled with awe. 

I don't especially like the term "bucket list."  Probably because it comes from "kick the bucket," slang for "drop dead."  Not a happy thought.  But the famous National Parks in Utah were on mine, let's say . . . on my Longing List.  Doesn't it feel great to reach a life-time goal? It's taken an effort to get from North Carolina to this remote place of Nature's wonders 2,188 miles from my home. 

Awe is not a feeling that happens often, but it's been happening here so frequently that I'm becoming well-acquainted with it.  It's almost like anxiety:  the stopping of breath, the opening of the chest, the widening of the heart, the flood of emotion.  The deep pulls of air.  The pureness of it.

What a change this is from my everyday.  As beautiful as the woods are where I live and the ocean's variety where I visit, this place is MORE.  It enfolds and lifts at once.  I felt this at the Grand Canyon and in seeing Old Faithful erupt. Certainly in the Alps.  And I have sometimes sat spellbound in the great cathedrals of Europe and England.  Closer to home with my babies and grand-babies.  You too?  
 

Natural Bridge, Bryce Canyon, Utah

You know the famous scene in the movie Titanic where Jack and Rose stand at the prow of the great ship, arms stretched out as if flying? The music swelling as they lean into the wind soaring with the waves?  Out here I keep seeing things that feel like that.  Walking the rim of Bryce Canyon on this windy day with all the hoodoos below, carved out of the rock like statues.  Then hiking down and and looking up at them.

Tonight at 9 pm when the darkness is absolute except for the quarter moon, there's a ranger with a telescope at Sunset Point.  Whoever shows up gets to look.  We'll be there.  Tomorrow, Zion National Park, a mere 90 minute drive, for hiking to the Narrows where the canyon walls rise a thousand feet a mere twenty feet apart.  I'm excited!

If you have a longing list you may want to put Utah on it.  It would be a trek from Portugal or Australia, that's sure.  But there are AWE SPOTS everywhere over the whole earth aren't there?  What are yours so far? Such blessings, 
                                                                       Nina Naomi

"YOU MUSTN'T WISH FOR ANOTHER LIFE."

Illustration by Maria Galybina

On Life. . .

You mustn't wish for another life.

You mustn't want to be somebody else.

What you must do is this:

"Rejoice evermore.  Pray without ceasing.

In everything give thanks."

I am not all the way capable of so much,

but those are the right instructions. 

Wendell Berry, from Hannah Coulter, 2004

 On Love. . .

"But I knew too that he was thinking of me. My steadfast comfort for fifty years and more had been to know that I was on his mind. Whatever was happening between us, I knew I was on his mind, and that was where I wanted to be."   Wendell Berry, from Hannah Coulter

How oh how have I not yet read Hannah Coulter?  I am promising myself the pleasure of this novel.  Eight hundred pages of George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871) to read for my December book club.  But then on to this wonderful book.  What a lovely few months I have in front of me.  What are you reading? 

IMPEACHMENT--SAME SADNESS, DIFFERENT CAUSE

It's one of those mass-shooting days in America--same sadness, different cause.  The beginning of an impeachment inquiry into our President is like a funeral march, not a parade.  It's hard to be an American and not feel the tragedy unfolding. 

I know the readers of this blog are from across the world.   This week alone audience stats show readers outside the US living in Australia, India, Malaysia, Portugal and Sweden. Last month's readers included people living in Ukraine, Canada, France, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.  So understandably some readers may not care all that much that the United States House of Representatives has begun its impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. After all, you logged on perhaps for some respite from the world's problems, and your own.  That's one reason I do. So . . . spoiler alert:  like "Another Week of Shootings" Post 8/4/19, some things are too much to ignore. 

I was alive when President Richard Nixon resigned before facing the House impeachment vote.  He had betrayed the country by his coverup of the break-in into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC.  Both Republicans and Democrats were prepared to impeach him.  I was already a lawyer when President Bill Clinton faced impeachment for a lie under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.  But yesterday when I read just the redacted transcript of the phone call between Trump and President of the Ukraine I actually cried.  Maybe because I studied Constitutional Law I saw the treason so clearly and it made me sad. 

Now I've read the whole intelligence officer whistle-blower complaint and listened to the live testimony of the Director of National Security.  President Trump blocked delivery of aid to Ukraine.  Then he phoned President Zelensky and asked him for "a favor":  to investigate  former Vice President Biden-- American citizen, member of the United States Senate and a rival presidential candidate.  He asked Zelensky to work with Trump's personal attorney and with our country's Attorney General in the investigation.  He is actively seeking foreign interference into the upcoming 2020 election.  Then, when the phone call was over, recognizing its implications, his White House attempted to "lock down" all records of the call. These facts have been admitted and confirmed.  Although the last few years have paved the way for this revelation, this reaches new levels.  As a country we are in for it. 


This is not a political blog.   Politically I am an Independent.  So was my mother, Nina Naomi--a US history teacher and an Independent voter.  Living simply, loving nature, staying in the present, being mindful of each day, nesting, keeping healthy attitudes, taking the time to live well--that is what this blog commits to.  But these few days are watersheds.  There will be more.  All of us will need to stand up and be counted.

As I wrote in the post about a recent week of mass shootings,  when we need a break from news or worry, daily chores or work, or our own activism,  then nature, mindfulness and other tools that restore us are still there.  There's much work to be done.  But for the next hour I'm going back to my own lovely scrapbooking and collage-making.  It's filled with sayings and quotations that hopefully will give me some perspective.  Here's one that helps when things are very very difficult:

The Best Thing to Hold Onto in Life is Each-other.

                                                                                            Nina Naomi

Illustration by Mia Charro

 

TURN ON YOUR CREATIVE BRAIN

Lately I've been loving making word collages.  Bloggers love words, that's fair to say isn't it?  So do readers.  We love to read and to write.  Somewhere I read that crafting used to be considered trivial.  Not sure who felt that way, but those kinds of judgments are long past.  Now we know how healthy hobbies are and if you can make a living with your hobby, so much the better.   

This word collage is in a 10"x12" old frame that I painted.  I collaged over a quote by Maya Angelou:  "You can't use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have."  I like seeing her words left exposed, you & creativity, and knowing what the rest of the phrase is.  The words I chose were: 

sunset, dance, darling, the meaning of life, 

lies you've told, Outside hours, hate small talk.

"An ordinary life can be extraordinary and that magic can be found in the everyday."  

speak emotion, life goes by too quickly, warm tea,

Quiet, like people with depth.    

We--all of us--think in words, in our native languages.  Even our word-less emotions we try to give names to.  "I'm sad," no, "I'm downright miserable."  "I feel empty." No, "bereft." Words give us distance from the bad times. Or "I feel loved."  Saying those words slows our breath, releases any tightness. See the phrase "speak emotion?"  Those two words are fraught with memories for me, a kind of therapy almost.  Being loved creates a physical feeling of calmness.  Being absorbed in creating a word collage can do the same, like the other things we do just because we want to. 

This word collage is in a 3"x4" frame:  

Write more, Living, flow, ONE DAY AT A TIME,
Today, all these years later, Don't be afraid,  
Tiny Pleasures Sticky Notes, a blessing, to enjoy each day.  

The pleasure is not only in choosing the words and phrases for what they bring to you, but also deciding on a background, choosing the fonts, and arranging the sentiments.  I have old frames of faded snaps just waiting for reuse, but our consignment shops are also filled with them.  

This one is in an antique brass oval frame, also 3"x4".  It covers a picture of a person in our family no longer known to anyone living.  I enjoyed picking the leafy green background and the words and phrases in alternating white-on-black, white-on-taupe, and black-on-white: 

because, Focus your attention, What makes you think, 
Close some doors today, what counts most, you, 
 discovering your options,  Make a plan,  lead,  
 what can you do to change, simply

My husband asked why I would choose "Close some doors today."  "Because some doors lead to nowhere," I said.  He said the word he liked best was "simply."  Maybe I do too. Making a word collage is definitely a simple pleasure.  One more:  

This is in a 5'x7' frame.  My granddaughter likes to illustrate and drew the background wallpaper. These words just collected themselves, different fonts, sizes, colors all amassed and waiting for the right matting which also appeared.  I hope you like it as much as I do.  The words? 

 Insight, FLOW, KIND, beautifully, POETRY, 

TAKING PHOTOS, THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING ABOUT LOVE,

BODY BEAUTIFUL,  TAKING TIME AND LOOKING CLOSELY

Why do we like this sort of thing?  Because focus is calming, isn't it.  So many people make creating something, even the smallest thing, part of their recipe for wholeness.  Maybe doing nothing for a bit is even healthier, but I'm not there yet, maybe never will be.  In the meantime, let's turn on our creative brains and make something.  I'm committed to enjoying every single thing I make!