No worries Arnold, I was just being silly. Although the blog has been so quiet I still stop by often to see if anyone is home it's like taking a slow walk down a familiar block and peeking in the windows to see how all your friends are faring. I do miss the days when there was so much interaction, activity, sharing and intimacy and I hold so much gratitude for the boundaries that sharing has helped me transcend and yet I can't seem to find a way to circle back in, to reach out and make that connection again. So much has changed for me in the last six months. Most of my thoughts are so focused on my pregnancy and on becoming a mother that I sometimes get lost in myself. This understanding, acceptance, and comfort with myself and my own company vis a vis the exploration and preparation I am doing feels so natural and all consuming. Sometimes though I pause and look beyond and feel the absence of others and feel very lonely. I've always loved and been amazed by the complexity of the human body. And now even more so as I am forced to be a bystander of my own body, my own genetic make up. As my body does, without any conscious effort on my part, what it needs to create new life. I am, for sure, in complete awe. In so many ways this pregnancy makes me feel more connected to the natural world and empty all at once.
I am happy to hear about your pregnancy. When there is an actual separate human being in your life, it is even more astounding (since I have never experienced pregnancy, however, this is speculation). I am envious of the pathway that you are beginning. It is so consuming and compelling.
The conversation in this space may be over. If it was to continue, it would need some fresh forward motion. Noah had a vision for this. He continues to present it in his recent poems. Perhaps later he will become more fully re-energized.
I thought that the conversation had become rather over intellectualized and needed to be re-grounded in direct experience. If that is what I want, I need to make it happen.
In the meantime, thank you for showing up and sharing.
Speaking of direct experience; I just had a run in with a color.
We are painting our living room today, the folks and I, responding to a whim of dad's and mine. Putting three samples on the wall proved more disputative than we had reckoned. You see there's this color. . . . . . . . . .
It's called "Burmese Gold" but I don't know who would seek out this gold. It is not the gold of Mayan temples or Chinese knick knacks or Fifth-Avenue moms. Dad seems to see wonderful things in this gold but to me it stirs images of sad women, bent over in a picasso style crouch with broad, laborous brush strokes for hair and fingers. It's a color on the bottom of the Raw Umber bucket I left out that grew moldy. It's a color you hide underneath your trees to give them something extra for people to chew on. But it's not a color to paint your living room.
Now I could have said all this in a light-hearted manor and kept this ick to myself but it just seeped and seeped through. I sat down and stared at it and felt sick not to my stomach but to my soul. I don't mean to overdramatize so basically the color just made me feel poopy. In fact, on first application, mum remarked the resemblance to baby shit, smeared on the wall.
So what is it in a color? Would this color viewed by any other eyes seem sweet? Luxurious? There was a transparent quality that my father liked -which I will admit is very interesting- but I kept seeing it in dark sad spaces of my mind. Left in a cupboard and forgotten because it rarely comes in handy
This all leaves me wondering about the effect color has in and on our lives. Leaves me with that empty kick in your gut when you start to cry and have no idea why, and leaves me feeling fat and ugly and searching for that bag of m&ms I saw a week ago in the pantry. Can a color do all this? Is it something else? Is it feelings that have been below the surface? Perhaps I have just been mentally and emotionally constipated recently and that color was my extra-strength dose of ex-lax.
Meanwhile, they've started to paint the ceiling a nice non-confrontational taupe. So I'll go join in on that. Glad to have a place to vent about color and glad to see some slight talk on here.
Megan I can only imagine how beautiful you look right now :)
Your beautiful, shit colored post (very concrete) is wonderful for me because it charts how a straightforward perception stimulates a riot of memories, associations, desires, emotions, and insights (connecting some dots). You have given startling clarity to how perception is an active process where the mind is making meaning out of incoming sensations (nothing new) by weaving this tapestry of life and experience.
I have never had with a simple color the kind of churning experience that you have described. "Can a color do all this?" It is a bit like Ex Lax, in a useful way. Thanks.
Ceili, I love how you explain your experience with your Dad’s paint choice as a run in with color. I can just feel your un-comfortableness and almost sense the color from your words. In fact, I was using the bathroom at my health food store yesterday and when I looked at the walls I thought to myself this is the color that Ceili was experiencing and it is quiet dreary in fact. I think much like smell color has a very unique ability to immediately evoke so many emotions, experiences and memories; even more so than a picture or image. Color’s openness allows us to define it an react to it in such a granular fashion. You father must have seen something magical in the paint chip at the store and maybe it would have served a much grander purpose as an accent color or accent wall than to engulf the energy in the room with its complete coverage.
I have decided to write here – to myself, to you, to the wind, just to place my mark, bow down to this space which has meant so much and still, in whatever context, quiet or whispering, present or hidden, makes me smile. I come here, like a person going to visit a place that was once home, fully aware that everything has changed; I have changed. We are all scattered, walking down new roads, turning our head in various directions, and I think of everyone – play with words, paint pictures of my head, of where people are and what they are doing. It is a lovely little exercise – a meditative prayer of sorts – extending thoughts of well-being and hoping all is well.
I am blessed to have a day to myself – only one minor appointment that will take me away from the house for a brief time. It has been, what feels like a very long time, since I have had this solitude and time to just follow my own rhythm without too many distractions. I am sitting on the small deck behind the house, overlooking the small garden and pond, where there are five frogs a sitting and seven fish a-swimming, and flowers blooming, and the heirloom tomatoes still struggling to gather their strength after a very wet and cool spring. The woods behind the house are thick, overgrown, a jumble of vines, and trees and some orange daylilies growing along the edge. Nothing is planned today – just a few words on a page, sitting, reading, listening to my inner voice, and not listening to my inner voice.
Thanks Arnold. I am sure once the baby is born I am going to burst in feelings and be even more totally immersed in this new life. I can see how it would be astounding as I’m not sure my husband can feel as connected as I do now, he can only experience this growth from the outside in, where I feel like all I have become is a physical, emotional evolving being.
I agree with you the content on the blog did get a bit deep; most of the time gave me good fodder to play with in my mind but I can see how that felt too intense for you. Thanks for continuing to share, I love seeing the world through your lens.
I am so pleased to hear your voice and get a sense of what is happening in your life and in your thoughts. Your words made me reflect on my own experience so many years ago, being pregnant. I remember walking down the street holding my hands under my belly in the later stages and spending as much time as I could floating in water to feel the weight lift. Towards the end I thought of myself as a 24 hour taxi cab, carrying a passenger around everywhere I went. What an amazing journey, an internal reshaping of one’s sense of oneself in the world.
I know if Om is listening, he will probably shake his finger as me when I admit this but sometimes, I just wish I could play my life in reverse and relive some of those moments. I know they are inside me, a part of me. There is – that moment – I remember so clearly, of holding my newborn and feeling what one strives to feel always – the present; so engulfed in it, so aware of it, so joyful for it, that there is nothing else – not the past, not what will happen in fifteen minutes – only the miracle, now.
Hi Emily, I understand your desire to replay your life in reverse, I feel that way sometimes as well. I’d especially like to relive them with my current knowledge. I am so grateful for all I have learned, especially to sit and be present in the moment. I feel that this is allowing me to relish the moments even more. I was lucky enough to experienced that look of awe, connection and oneness this past week and was so touched by it that I wanted to reach out and touch the moment and make it mine as well. I was walking to the grocery store the other day and I noticed a woman on a bench out side of a popular bakery. She was holding a newborn, who had to be only a few weeks old and she was engulfed in the moment. For her nothing else existed but this babies face, she was so tenderly holding him close to her and studying his face. Besides and around her the world churned, the traffic, the fellow patrons at their benches and tables drinking their cappuccinos and chatting loudly in their native Italian and Greek. The older children running around from the sugar of their newly finished sweet treat. The little dogs yelping for some attention. For her none of it exists, she was so caught up in this moment. I was so taken aback I yearned to sit besides her to just watch, to feel her love, to live that moment for a few moments longer than the strides I had left before I pasted her bench. I wanted to touch her face, to hold her baby, to ask how she was doing and feeling, to be one with both of them.
On Saturday I attended a Le Leche meeting and I was a bit nervous and not too sure what to expect. My doctor told me their beliefs can be a bit radical and to take what I needed and not get too caught up, but these woman were so warm and welcoming and took me right into their fold. They shared their fears, and struggles and their joys, they openly spoke of post partum depression and raw and ripped nipples. I watched as they each took their child to nipple in such a rhythmic and natural way as they continued to talk, or move a chair or jot something down their eyes would momentarily scan their nursing child to confirm connection and I could see the child’s back sink and relax more into this moment as they did. It was very beautiful to me to sit among these woman and watch and share. When I came to the door their was a new mother, tired, red and puffy in the face she later shared that her daughter was 3 weeks old and this was her first journey out of the house. Through her tired eyes you could see the pride that she felt for accomplishing the goal of getting to the library. The baby was so tiny and delicate and her cry was high pitch and quick, the unique cry of a newborn. I kept catching myself just watching them together. She fell asleep on her chest with one little hand tucked under her shirt, in such a natural, innocent and gentle way. The new mom looked down and was frozen in that moment for quiet a long time. All of a sudden all of the fears she had just shared seemed to have disappeared.
No worries Arnold
No worries Arnold, I was just being silly. Although the blog has been so quiet I still stop by often to see if anyone is home it's like taking a slow walk down a familiar block and peeking in the windows to see how all your friends are faring. I do miss the days when there was so much interaction, activity, sharing and intimacy and I hold so much gratitude for the boundaries that sharing has helped me transcend and yet I can't seem to find a way to circle back in, to reach out and make that connection again. So much has changed for me in the last six months. Most of my thoughts are so focused on my pregnancy and on becoming a mother that I sometimes get lost in myself. This understanding, acceptance, and comfort with myself and my own company vis a vis the exploration and preparation I am doing feels so natural and all consuming. Sometimes though I pause and look beyond and feel the absence of others and feel very lonely. I've always loved and been amazed by the complexity of the human body. And now even more so as I am forced to be a bystander of my own body, my own genetic make up. As my body does, without any conscious effort on my part, what it needs to create new life. I am, for sure, in complete awe. In so many ways this pregnancy makes me feel more connected to the natural world and empty all at once.
Megan
I am happy to hear about your pregnancy. When there is an actual separate human being in your life, it is even more astounding (since I have never experienced pregnancy, however, this is speculation). I am envious of the pathway that you are beginning. It is so consuming and compelling.
The conversation in this space may be over. If it was to continue, it would need some fresh forward motion. Noah had a vision for this. He continues to present it in his recent poems. Perhaps later he will become more fully re-energized.
I thought that the conversation had become rather over intellectualized and needed to be re-grounded in direct experience. If that is what I want, I need to make it happen.
In the meantime, thank you for showing up and sharing.
An Endeavour to Under-Intellectualize
Color.
Speaking of direct experience; I just had a run in with a color.
We are painting our living room today, the folks and I, responding to a whim of dad's and mine. Putting three samples on the wall proved more disputative than we had reckoned. You see there's this color. . . . . . . . . .
It's called "Burmese Gold" but I don't know who would seek out this gold. It is not the gold of Mayan temples or Chinese knick knacks or Fifth-Avenue moms. Dad seems to see wonderful things in this gold but to me it stirs images of sad women, bent over in a picasso style crouch with broad, laborous brush strokes for hair and fingers. It's a color on the bottom of the Raw Umber bucket I left out that grew moldy. It's a color you hide underneath your trees to give them something extra for people to chew on. But it's not a color to paint your living room.
Now I could have said all this in a light-hearted manor and kept this ick to myself but it just seeped and seeped through. I sat down and stared at it and felt sick not to my stomach but to my soul. I don't mean to overdramatize so basically the color just made me feel poopy. In fact, on first application, mum remarked the resemblance to baby shit, smeared on the wall.
So what is it in a color? Would this color viewed by any other eyes seem sweet? Luxurious? There was a transparent quality that my father liked -which I will admit is very interesting- but I kept seeing it in dark sad spaces of my mind. Left in a cupboard and forgotten because it rarely comes in handy
This all leaves me wondering about the effect color has in and on our lives. Leaves me with that empty kick in your gut when you start to cry and have no idea why, and leaves me feeling fat and ugly and searching for that bag of m&ms I saw a week ago in the pantry. Can a color do all this? Is it something else? Is it feelings that have been below the surface? Perhaps I have just been mentally and emotionally constipated recently and that color was my extra-strength dose of ex-lax.
Meanwhile, they've started to paint the ceiling a nice non-confrontational taupe. So I'll go join in on that. Glad to have a place to vent about color and glad to see some slight talk on here.
Megan I can only imagine how beautiful you look right now :)
thanks for that lovely underintellectualization
Your beautiful, shit colored post (very concrete) is wonderful for me because it charts how a straightforward perception stimulates a riot of memories, associations, desires, emotions, and insights (connecting some dots). You have given startling clarity to how perception is an active process where the mind is making meaning out of incoming sensations (nothing new) by weaving this tapestry of life and experience.
I have never had with a simple color the kind of churning experience that you have described. "Can a color do all this?" It is a bit like Ex Lax, in a useful way. Thanks.
Effects of color
Ceili, I love how you explain your experience with your Dad’s paint choice as a run in with color. I can just feel your un-comfortableness and almost sense the color from your words. In fact, I was using the bathroom at my health food store yesterday and when I looked at the walls I thought to myself this is the color that Ceili was experiencing and it is quiet dreary in fact. I think much like smell color has a very unique ability to immediately evoke so many emotions, experiences and memories; even more so than a picture or image. Color’s openness allows us to define it an react to it in such a granular fashion. You father must have seen something magical in the paint chip at the store and maybe it would have served a much grander purpose as an accent color or accent wall than to engulf the energy in the room with its complete coverage.
just hey
I have decided to write here – to myself, to you, to the wind, just to place my mark, bow down to this space which has meant so much and still, in whatever context, quiet or whispering, present or hidden, makes me smile. I come here, like a person going to visit a place that was once home, fully aware that everything has changed; I have changed. We are all scattered, walking down new roads, turning our head in various directions, and I think of everyone – play with words, paint pictures of my head, of where people are and what they are doing. It is a lovely little exercise – a meditative prayer of sorts – extending thoughts of well-being and hoping all is well.
I am blessed to have a day to myself – only one minor appointment that will take me away from the house for a brief time. It has been, what feels like a very long time, since I have had this solitude and time to just follow my own rhythm without too many distractions. I am sitting on the small deck behind the house, overlooking the small garden and pond, where there are five frogs a sitting and seven fish a-swimming, and flowers blooming, and the heirloom tomatoes still struggling to gather their strength after a very wet and cool spring. The woods behind the house are thick, overgrown, a jumble of vines, and trees and some orange daylilies growing along the edge. Nothing is planned today – just a few words on a page, sitting, reading, listening to my inner voice, and not listening to my inner voice.
Thanks Arnold
Thanks Arnold. I am sure once the baby is born I am going to burst in feelings and be even more totally immersed in this new life. I can see how it would be astounding as I’m not sure my husband can feel as connected as I do now, he can only experience this growth from the outside in, where I feel like all I have become is a physical, emotional evolving being.
I agree with you the content on the blog did get a bit deep; most of the time gave me good fodder to play with in my mind but I can see how that felt too intense for you. Thanks for continuing to share, I love seeing the world through your lens.
Hi Megan
Hello Megan.
I am so pleased to hear your voice and get a sense of what is happening in your life and in your thoughts. Your words made me reflect on my own experience so many years ago, being pregnant. I remember walking down the street holding my hands under my belly in the later stages and spending as much time as I could floating in water to feel the weight lift. Towards the end I thought of myself as a 24 hour taxi cab, carrying a passenger around everywhere I went. What an amazing journey, an internal reshaping of one’s sense of oneself in the world.
I know if Om is listening, he will probably shake his finger as me when I admit this but sometimes, I just wish I could play my life in reverse and relive some of those moments. I know they are inside me, a part of me. There is – that moment – I remember so clearly, of holding my newborn and feeling what one strives to feel always – the present; so engulfed in it, so aware of it, so joyful for it, that there is nothing else – not the past, not what will happen in fifteen minutes – only the miracle, now.
HI Emily
Hi Emily, I understand your desire to replay your life in reverse, I feel that way sometimes as well. I’d especially like to relive them with my current knowledge. I am so grateful for all I have learned, especially to sit and be present in the moment. I feel that this is allowing me to relish the moments even more. I was lucky enough to experienced that look of awe, connection and oneness this past week and was so touched by it that I wanted to reach out and touch the moment and make it mine as well. I was walking to the grocery store the other day and I noticed a woman on a bench out side of a popular bakery. She was holding a newborn, who had to be only a few weeks old and she was engulfed in the moment. For her nothing else existed but this babies face, she was so tenderly holding him close to her and studying his face. Besides and around her the world churned, the traffic, the fellow patrons at their benches and tables drinking their cappuccinos and chatting loudly in their native Italian and Greek. The older children running around from the sugar of their newly finished sweet treat. The little dogs yelping for some attention. For her none of it exists, she was so caught up in this moment. I was so taken aback I yearned to sit besides her to just watch, to feel her love, to live that moment for a few moments longer than the strides I had left before I pasted her bench. I wanted to touch her face, to hold her baby, to ask how she was doing and feeling, to be one with both of them.
On Saturday I attended a Le Leche meeting and I was a bit nervous and not too sure what to expect. My doctor told me their beliefs can be a bit radical and to take what I needed and not get too caught up, but these woman were so warm and welcoming and took me right into their fold. They shared their fears, and struggles and their joys, they openly spoke of post partum depression and raw and ripped nipples. I watched as they each took their child to nipple in such a rhythmic and natural way as they continued to talk, or move a chair or jot something down their eyes would momentarily scan their nursing child to confirm connection and I could see the child’s back sink and relax more into this moment as they did. It was very beautiful to me to sit among these woman and watch and share. When I came to the door their was a new mother, tired, red and puffy in the face she later shared that her daughter was 3 weeks old and this was her first journey out of the house. Through her tired eyes you could see the pride that she felt for accomplishing the goal of getting to the library. The baby was so tiny and delicate and her cry was high pitch and quick, the unique cry of a newborn. I kept catching myself just watching them together. She fell asleep on her chest with one little hand tucked under her shirt, in such a natural, innocent and gentle way. The new mom looked down and was frozen in that moment for quiet a long time. All of a sudden all of the fears she had just shared seemed to have disappeared.