All Out of Still — Orphan Wisdom

A few months ago a certain degree of unspectacular life adversity leaned over to me and whispered: “What if you stop for a while? You were obliged off the road anyhow by the plague. Why not go the rest of the way there, and choose stillness?” Clever fellow. Years ago I remember coming across some stout…

All Out of Still — Orphan Wisdom

GOSH! I am SO grateful for the above post from Stephen Jenkinson. It put words to all the things, and in them, I became still. The still, for me can then leave room for creation. Of what!? My built in forgetter thinks it gets to control that outcome. Sometimes I believe my actions are proof that I can. The part feeling so proud and SEE yes I did! and Control is GOOD! Is all perked in the I Have Arrived pose. And then, the muscles start to quake and to shiver. The pose doesn’t hold up for long. It collapses in exhaustion long before my thinking, my mind even begins to notice. While I write it, I’m smiling like an indulgent parent watching a toddle learn… But IN it, oh I believe it’s Hell! I’m prone to grab, and to shove, and to rant. Thank you, Sir, for the Spring in my step. For now.

Morning Trip (328)

“The thinker, he who is serene and self-possessed, is the brave, not the desperate soldier. He who can deal with his thoughts as a material, building them into poems in which future generations will delight, he is the man of the greatest and rarest vigor, not sturdy diggers and not lusty polygamists. He is the man of energy in whom subtle and poetic thoughts are bred. Common men can enjoy partially; they can go a-fishing rainy days; they can read poems perchance, but they have not the vigor to beget poems. They can enjoy feebly, but they cannot create. Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from preturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. How many can exercise the highest human faculties? He is the man truly–courageous, wise, ingenious–who can use his thoughts and ecstasies as the material of fair and durable creations. One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it. The mass of men do you know how to cultivate the fields they traverse. The mass glean only a scanty pittance where the thinker reaps an abundant harvest. What is all your building, if you do not build with thoughts? No exercise implies more real manhood and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men can tell what they have thought! I hardly know half a dozen who are not too lazy for this. They cannot get over some difficulty, and therefore they are on the long way round. You conquer fate by thought. If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow. There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed.
–Henry D. Thoreau, I to Myself, Entry May 6, 1858

Morning Trip (283)

“I decided to start anew–to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown–no one to satisfy but myself. I began with coal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.”
–Georgia O’Keeffe

Walktober (4)

I am writing this morning, early. No, not early, 7:30 but it is dark and cloudy with wet from rain on the pavement, and it feels cave dark early. I have had one swallow of tea. The post then, might make more or less sense. That is the way it is.

This image has a WHOOOOOOOOOOLE lot more light than there is right now, but sort of resembles my hair’s current state. The bushy part and the bent parts, not yet the grey.

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The day before yesterday I went to a talk at the Thomas Taber Museum.

“…Sieminski will relate the fascinating lives of Williamsport native Myrtle Miller Anderson and her photographer husband John Alvin Anderson. For forty years, the Andersons lived on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. A fascinating photographic archives developed which included portraits of Native Americans and life on the reservation, some photographs of which are now housed in the collections of the Library of Congress….”
Thomas Taber Museum Website

I both enjoyed it, for the opportunity to think and to engage and was incensed by parts of it. The incensed parts had not much at all to do with the presenter herself and more to do with the disrespect perpetuated as truth and fact unknowingly. I tend to Wrangle with that incensed part in relation to the topic and with myself that I have yet to find balance or the most right thing to do. I used the experience to look at how elders share history. I used the experience to notice how those that are called historians and those that call themselves historians, might not be. I continue to recall one elder laughing at me in my on the floor at feet search for the truest truth. Maybe I am also incensed with myself for not having worked out how to find or how to let go of a truest truth?

Maybe no matter my wishes sometimes things are just blurry.

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Sometimes we don’t know if they are poison or a cure and answer to the…cold.

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Yesterday, I found out that there might be a way to get neurology and psychiatric care for the (adult)kiddos. It’s two hours away, however if it is good and appropriate care, perhaps God will make a way. I went to pick up one of them for Fall Break from college. I got news that was distressing, though not entirely unexpected–I detached from it a bit and got a small bit of praise from the disability services coordinator. He finally stated clearly that he cannot really recall having a student as unable to do such things before and that it had been difficult for him not to see it as lack of caring. He stated that he knows differently now, but doesn’t know what to do to help him, as he can’t attend or focus long enough to find out. He then took a breath and asked my permission to be a little personal. The inner attack me committee steeled itself to rip me to pieces. And, he stated that he felt that I felt that everyone on the outside felt that my son and daughter(who attended the same college) were the way they were because I am a bad parent. That school people viewed their actions as bad behaviors that with the right will could be corrected. And that I had failed. He then stated that in case no one had told me–No other parent would drive once a week to college to attempt to help a disabled student navigate these issues so that they could express the amazing people that they are. He said that he found it amazing how I manage to keep my composure and to calmly state and restate matters if/when others didn’t understand. He said that if no one else tells me, he thinks I am a good Mom. And, that I might need to try to find a way in all that doesn’t look like it is going well, to try to remind myself of that fact. I didn’t know that I appeared as if I had not lost my composure. Yes, that is what I focused upon, the rest was out of my pay grade to process as I sat in the chair.

More about falling short and enoughness, even within truly falling short. That is a very difficult concept for me to master–anything less than mastery isn’t enough for me. Hm.

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I also took out the Patchouli, moved the sickly looking Thyme inside–in case what I have seen is dormancy, and took care of a few other outdoor chores. I returned a huge stack of library items. The librarians’ response: “Oh myyyyy, how do you manage all of that it’s only been a few weeks. You must eat and grow on information!”

PSST! Unsure of how Robin wishes the links to the Walktober Project so,

Creating, Not Saving, Losing, Recreating, Learning Curve: Thoughts On Water

Thoughts On Water copyright

Photographic Art Pieces and Images.
© 2012 and 2013 Elisabeth Connelley & Purple Shoe Photography
To Inquire, email:elisa58t2sugarless@yahoo.com

Just playing around and I found perfection, which was perfectly imperfect, as flash crashed and the entire image was lost. Leaving me. Leaving having NO idea–ok maybe a few layers back, of what I had done to it and with it. I was a wee bit really farkin mad about it too. The muses must have figured that I had to work with the program some more eh? Birds in flight run the whole gamut of potentials. 😉

Morning Trip (64)

“Emotions drive the threesome of attention, meaning, and memory.” In essence, that just about sums up what we know about learning: attending to information, constructing meaning, and lodging it in our memory. Brain researchers have shown that emotions are critical to patterning, which is the way that information is organized in the brain, how we are able to retrieve that information. Emotions assist in both evaluating and integrating information and experiences.
However, as we know, not all emotions facilitate learning. Stress, frustration, anger, fear – all can overwhelm the brain with hormones and thought patterns that totally shut down one’s ability to learn. When major emotional flooding occurs it is true that one literally cannot think straight.”
– Eric Jensen
Teaching with the Brain in Mind

“I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.”
– Temple Grandin

“Generalised [sic] anger and frustration is something that gets you in the studio, and gets you to work – though it’s not necessarily evident in anything that’s finished”.
– Bruce Nauman

“Rips out hairs!”
– Elisa