I am doing too many things. I don't have time any more to read, write, clean, get organized, go for a walk, meditate. I'm not really a druid if I don't do those things.
I'm doing too many things because I can't bear to give any of them up.
I get home too late or I get home too tired to make dinner. I try to get by eating something small and simple.
I wake up in the night because I am too hungry.
I don't get enough sleep because I am too hungry.
I get home the next evening, and because I didn't get enough sleep, I'm too tired to make dinner, so I try to get by eating something small and simple.
The cycle continues. It is not good for me.
I should be brave enough to give something up.
Monday, May 12, 2014
All God's Critters
The chorus of "All God's Critters" by Bill Staines:
All God's critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got now.
It reminds me of the philosophy of time-banking -- that everyone has something to contribute.
It also reminds me of my own struggle. I can't figure out what is my place in this world. Am I one to sing, one to clap my hands, or one to clap my paws? Or is there something else I can do?
All God's critters got a place in the choir
Some sing low, some sing higher
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire
And some just clap their hands, or paws
Or anything they got now.
It reminds me of the philosophy of time-banking -- that everyone has something to contribute.
It also reminds me of my own struggle. I can't figure out what is my place in this world. Am I one to sing, one to clap my hands, or one to clap my paws? Or is there something else I can do?
A house concert and the cycles of life
The birth of my nephew inspired me to do a radio show with a theme of family. I played songs about a number of things related to this theme, but one song that was particularly in honor of my nephew's birth was "Child of Mine" by Bill Staines.
Four and a half years later, I was in a room in which Bill Staines was singing that song while my nephew frolicked about, ignoring the music. He was making a loop, jumping off the bed onto a futon on the floor, through a folding chair, and back to the bed again.
It was a house concert, attended by maybe two dozen people, mostly friends and family to each other. As I sat there seeing the children frolicking, it struck me that people have been gathering together for music in the evening for millenia. Some things change. It was not always the case that people were invited to such gatherings by way of Facebook. It was not always the case that my nephew was one of the frolicking children. His father was born when I was 15, so he was the one who was the frolicking child when I was in my teens and 20's. And before that, when I was about 4 or 5, I was the one dancing about while the grownups sat.
This time of year, the new green leaves appear on the trees. Each autumn, the leaves fall and die, but each spring, new life awakens. These are not the same leaves that were on the trees last year, but the follow the same patterns. And so too do humans follow the same patterns -- birth and death, joy and sorrow, childhood and old age. The cycles stay the same year after year, but the faces change -- each generation, different individuals go through these cycles.
The morning after a concert, I went to a cafe for coffee and a scone. I went to that cafe once before, two years ago. It was my brother who found it. I don't live near it, but I had traveled to the area for the concert, so I took the opportunity to pay the cafe a visit. I sat in the same seat that I sat in two years ago. Two years ago, my brother sat across from me. He never will again. He has left this earth. I stared out the window so the people in the cafe would not see my tears.
The cycles of life are eternal, but each individual who passes through these cycles is unique and irreplaceable.
I want to record people's stories so that we can remember those who have gone before.
Four and a half years later, I was in a room in which Bill Staines was singing that song while my nephew frolicked about, ignoring the music. He was making a loop, jumping off the bed onto a futon on the floor, through a folding chair, and back to the bed again.
It was a house concert, attended by maybe two dozen people, mostly friends and family to each other. As I sat there seeing the children frolicking, it struck me that people have been gathering together for music in the evening for millenia. Some things change. It was not always the case that people were invited to such gatherings by way of Facebook. It was not always the case that my nephew was one of the frolicking children. His father was born when I was 15, so he was the one who was the frolicking child when I was in my teens and 20's. And before that, when I was about 4 or 5, I was the one dancing about while the grownups sat.
This time of year, the new green leaves appear on the trees. Each autumn, the leaves fall and die, but each spring, new life awakens. These are not the same leaves that were on the trees last year, but the follow the same patterns. And so too do humans follow the same patterns -- birth and death, joy and sorrow, childhood and old age. The cycles stay the same year after year, but the faces change -- each generation, different individuals go through these cycles.
The morning after a concert, I went to a cafe for coffee and a scone. I went to that cafe once before, two years ago. It was my brother who found it. I don't live near it, but I had traveled to the area for the concert, so I took the opportunity to pay the cafe a visit. I sat in the same seat that I sat in two years ago. Two years ago, my brother sat across from me. He never will again. He has left this earth. I stared out the window so the people in the cafe would not see my tears.
The cycles of life are eternal, but each individual who passes through these cycles is unique and irreplaceable.
I want to record people's stories so that we can remember those who have gone before.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Dreams
When I woke up in the night, I felt contentment. That is not something I have felt lately. My real life has been troubling me. I realized the contentment must have come from a dream, so I thought back on what it was.
In the dream, I thought, "Oops, I got a PhD. Now I will be even less employable than I was before." The dream started at that point, when the PhD was over. I did have the knowledge of the past events though -- I had gone to school because I had been laid off from my job. I had gotten a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Pennsylvania. Now I was living somewhere in the area, not Philadelphia, but eastern Pennsylvania. (Later, in my subsequent dream, I saw a post card of Harrisburg, and though, "yes, that's where I was in my previous dream.")
Anyway, having just gotten a PhD, I was feeling a bit frustrated. "I don't want to be a professor!" I exclaimed. "I don't want to be a researcher." I think those I said, and then I thought, maybe didn't say, that I didn't want any kind of high-falutin' job that a person with a PhD would get.
There was a room, like a motel room, and they gave me a job as caretaker of the room. All I had to do was remain in the room 8:30am-4:30pm four days a week. And in return, it was my room, I lived there. That is what made me content. In the dream, having a place to live was the only thing you needed a job for. So now that I had that, I didn't have to go looking for a high-falutin' PhD job. The only thing left that I had to do was what I wanted to do, to look for like-minded people. I thought about how I knew a lot of good people in my old life [the one that is my actual current real life]. I went through the ways I had met the people I knew in my old life, and decided that in this new place I was living, I would go out and meet the folkies, morris dancers, and time bankers.
There were two people who were kind of like my employers, they were like in charge of the room, they had given me this job as caretaker of the room. I think they already knew and liked me. Maybe I had lived in the room while working on my PhD. I liked these people, but they were not the like-minded people I wanted to meet. One was a man around my generation, maybe a few years older than me. He was kind of large, kind of overweight. We lay in bed together in the room, arms around each other. It wasn't sexual, just snuggly. It was family. The other was a younger woman, smaller, thinner.
There was also a woman who was like a neighboring vendor. She didn't own the room, but she was working something like a deli counter in the room. I think her name was Becky. The man introduced me to her. She was cold to me, but it wasn't personal, she was like that to everyone, so I didn't mind.
Because I wanted to meet folkies, the man told me that tomorrow morning he would be performing at an open mic at a coffeeshop, and I could go with him and he would introduce me to people.
In the other dream that I had later, I was going to a concert with friends. They were a couple. We all three sat in the front. It was a tandem car. Both of my two friends were driving. The man on the left in the traditional driver's seat, and the woman in the middle both had steering wheels, gas pedals, break pedals, etc. The woman was someone I've been thinking about a lot in real life, someone I want to be friends with. The man was not anyone I know in real life, but was similar to the man in the previous dream.
The concert was in a city, possibly Philadelphia. I guess maybe we lived outside of the city. The journey to and from the concert involved driving through a city anyway. There were a lot of turns onto little roads, it was a complicated route. The two drivers knew the route, but the roads were unfamiliar to me. I could not tell if they had some sort of GPS or if they just knew it in their heads. In the dream, I was with them in the car driving to the concert, then at the concert, then with them driving home. It was daylight when we were driving home, which does not often happen in real concerts. I don't remember listening to anyone perform at the concert. I remember being very high up in the seating. The seating was like that, it got higher as you go up. I remember talking with my friend (the female driver of the car). That was when I saw the post card of Harrisburg. We also decided to go down to ground level, maybe to look at a shop next door, or just to see people. We were remembering past concerts we had been to, and people we had talked about before. We were talking about people who were there. She pointed out someone she knew and told me the name. We had talked about that person before, so I was trying to remember about who that person was. There was someone who had two names, a married name and a maiden name, so my friend was like, "That's Miss Newman, do you know who Miss Newman is?" and I was like, "Is it Mrs. Berger?" No, it wasn't, and I kept guessing.
In the dream, I thought, "Oops, I got a PhD. Now I will be even less employable than I was before." The dream started at that point, when the PhD was over. I did have the knowledge of the past events though -- I had gone to school because I had been laid off from my job. I had gotten a PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Pennsylvania. Now I was living somewhere in the area, not Philadelphia, but eastern Pennsylvania. (Later, in my subsequent dream, I saw a post card of Harrisburg, and though, "yes, that's where I was in my previous dream.")
Anyway, having just gotten a PhD, I was feeling a bit frustrated. "I don't want to be a professor!" I exclaimed. "I don't want to be a researcher." I think those I said, and then I thought, maybe didn't say, that I didn't want any kind of high-falutin' job that a person with a PhD would get.
There was a room, like a motel room, and they gave me a job as caretaker of the room. All I had to do was remain in the room 8:30am-4:30pm four days a week. And in return, it was my room, I lived there. That is what made me content. In the dream, having a place to live was the only thing you needed a job for. So now that I had that, I didn't have to go looking for a high-falutin' PhD job. The only thing left that I had to do was what I wanted to do, to look for like-minded people. I thought about how I knew a lot of good people in my old life [the one that is my actual current real life]. I went through the ways I had met the people I knew in my old life, and decided that in this new place I was living, I would go out and meet the folkies, morris dancers, and time bankers.
There were two people who were kind of like my employers, they were like in charge of the room, they had given me this job as caretaker of the room. I think they already knew and liked me. Maybe I had lived in the room while working on my PhD. I liked these people, but they were not the like-minded people I wanted to meet. One was a man around my generation, maybe a few years older than me. He was kind of large, kind of overweight. We lay in bed together in the room, arms around each other. It wasn't sexual, just snuggly. It was family. The other was a younger woman, smaller, thinner.
There was also a woman who was like a neighboring vendor. She didn't own the room, but she was working something like a deli counter in the room. I think her name was Becky. The man introduced me to her. She was cold to me, but it wasn't personal, she was like that to everyone, so I didn't mind.
Because I wanted to meet folkies, the man told me that tomorrow morning he would be performing at an open mic at a coffeeshop, and I could go with him and he would introduce me to people.
In the other dream that I had later, I was going to a concert with friends. They were a couple. We all three sat in the front. It was a tandem car. Both of my two friends were driving. The man on the left in the traditional driver's seat, and the woman in the middle both had steering wheels, gas pedals, break pedals, etc. The woman was someone I've been thinking about a lot in real life, someone I want to be friends with. The man was not anyone I know in real life, but was similar to the man in the previous dream.
The concert was in a city, possibly Philadelphia. I guess maybe we lived outside of the city. The journey to and from the concert involved driving through a city anyway. There were a lot of turns onto little roads, it was a complicated route. The two drivers knew the route, but the roads were unfamiliar to me. I could not tell if they had some sort of GPS or if they just knew it in their heads. In the dream, I was with them in the car driving to the concert, then at the concert, then with them driving home. It was daylight when we were driving home, which does not often happen in real concerts. I don't remember listening to anyone perform at the concert. I remember being very high up in the seating. The seating was like that, it got higher as you go up. I remember talking with my friend (the female driver of the car). That was when I saw the post card of Harrisburg. We also decided to go down to ground level, maybe to look at a shop next door, or just to see people. We were remembering past concerts we had been to, and people we had talked about before. We were talking about people who were there. She pointed out someone she knew and told me the name. We had talked about that person before, so I was trying to remember about who that person was. There was someone who had two names, a married name and a maiden name, so my friend was like, "That's Miss Newman, do you know who Miss Newman is?" and I was like, "Is it Mrs. Berger?" No, it wasn't, and I kept guessing.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Stuffed animal
The original question was what kind of stuffed animal to get, for when I need something to hug, not what is my spirit animal. I don't want something wild, like a bear. A goat might be sufficiently domestic, even though it is not something one would normally snuggle up with.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Spirit animal
Last year at an event we were supposed to each say our spirit animal. I said I don't have a spirit animal, I have a spirit tree, the maple.
In the past few weeks, I've been feeling like I want to get a stuffed animal, because there are times when I want something to hug. I started looking for one to get, and found I didn't want to make a quick purchase, I wanted to make sure I got the right one.
The first thing that came to mind was a goat, because I have always liked goats, and I have some history in college of being called a goat.
Then I noticed that nearly a month ago, I took one of those silly quizzes, and it told me that my spirit animal was the bear. It said:
I like that elephants can dance, but I don't really identify with elephants in other ways.
I'm also drawn to llamas.
But I think it's either the bear or the goat.
In the past few weeks, I've been feeling like I want to get a stuffed animal, because there are times when I want something to hug. I started looking for one to get, and found I didn't want to make a quick purchase, I wanted to make sure I got the right one.
The first thing that came to mind was a goat, because I have always liked goats, and I have some history in college of being called a goat.
Then I noticed that nearly a month ago, I took one of those silly quizzes, and it told me that my spirit animal was the bear. It said:
The Great Bear is found on nearly every continent, in nearly every color. The magic of the Bear is extremely powerful and healing for others. Like the Bear, you have limitless strength. You are a guide for others on the river of life.I like that bears are associated with sleeping in winter, living in the forest, being strong, and eating plants.
I like that elephants can dance, but I don't really identify with elephants in other ways.
I'm also drawn to llamas.
But I think it's either the bear or the goat.
Tired and whiny
"I'm tired and cranky and whiny," I said.
She understood that.
But then I started telling her about my life, the specific things that were bugging me, making me feel unloved. I know they hit me harder now because I am tired. But she starts reasoning with me, trying to explain that I shouldn't be bothered by these things. I just told her I feel this way because I'm tired. Does she think she can reason be out of being tired?
But it's not only that I'm tired. These things do bother me. It bothers me that no one values what I have to offer. I wish someone would just tell me I'm okay, just as I am.
I have one good friend, but he is doing something else today.
I wish there were a lot of people who cherished me as I am, and who didn't tell me my feelings are wrong.
She understood that.
But then I started telling her about my life, the specific things that were bugging me, making me feel unloved. I know they hit me harder now because I am tired. But she starts reasoning with me, trying to explain that I shouldn't be bothered by these things. I just told her I feel this way because I'm tired. Does she think she can reason be out of being tired?
But it's not only that I'm tired. These things do bother me. It bothers me that no one values what I have to offer. I wish someone would just tell me I'm okay, just as I am.
I have one good friend, but he is doing something else today.
I wish there were a lot of people who cherished me as I am, and who didn't tell me my feelings are wrong.
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