The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...: September 2016

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Rock Bend Folk Festival

It's been a wonderful weekend. The weather is perfect, the mosquitoes took a vacation, the music is great, and the park is filled to the brim with happy people.

Yesterday, we collected almost twenty stories. Some about water, but we had no rules. I think there is one entitled The Fart Heard Round the World. And so it goes.

We'll be here another day, soaking up sun and music and magic.

Friday, September 09, 2016

It's going to be a busy weekend with a road trip then Rock Bend Folk Festival where our project, 600 Words, will occupy a booth to collect stories. The weather forecast is glorious so what could be better?

I'm testing my ability to post pics and text via email so I can post "from the road"! See you on the inter webs.

Saturday, September 03, 2016

update, as i promised

Update Saturday, September 3

Today is my 60th day of sobriety.

I went to an inpatient program on July 5th and spent 30 days there learning about addiction, reflecting on my experiences before and after my addiction reared its head, sharing things about my life and sharing in the revelations of others, and developing a 30 day foundation of sobriety. It was a profound experience in many ways.

For the most part, sobriety has not been difficult for me, so far. It might get more difficult, certainly, but at this point I am grateful that I have had few urges to drink and those have been fairly easy to deal with.

Yesterday, I subbed in a special education classroom in the same school where I taught for most of my career. At the end of the day I went home feeling a little out of sorts and at loose ends. What do I do with a sober Friday afternoon? I settled on 30 minutes of hatha yoga with a DVD and then a nice dinner out with my husband. I had planned to make dinner but I thought the late afternoon being in the kitchen trigger might be just too much! After dinner we went for a walk as the sun was setting.

Exercise has been an important part of my recovery plan. I walk, swim, do yoga, and I think I might do some biking this fall.

Speaking of which, I learned that a recovery plan is often quite fluid and will not look the same at six months that it did at 60 days. Mine certainly has been fluid. It doesn't look anything like the one I developed in my last week of treatment. As I read about the ideas of massive action and overwhelming force that are required for success, I am developing my recovery plan based on what I think that means. Massive action = daily habits that support recovery.

After much reading, I have decided to use the five areas of holistic recovery to plan my recovery plan's daily habits:
1. Emotional health- Includes AA meetings, Women for Sobriety, family support, and my after-care program
2. Physical health- Includes exercise, healthy diet, regular check-ups with oncology and primary care to monitor over-all health and especially liver functions and red blood cells
3. Mental health- Includes volunteer activities, recreation and hobbies (writing, exercise, reading, cooking, education, music, and art
4. Social health- Includes contact with sober friends I have met through inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, AA, and WFS as well as any family and friends who support me in my sobriety (Third Thursday Potluck, Friday afternoon friends, coffee group after yoga)
5. Spiritual health- Includes meditation and prayer, yoga 2-3 times/week, daily walks, journal and blog, happiness practices

Some categories are very broad and some activities overlap two categories. The thing I like about this is that I can use it for flexible planning of daily activities to support recovery and I can also use it as a way to assess throughout the day if I am doing things in each category. As the day winds down, do I need work on my spiritual health or my social health? Do I go for a walk or do I call a supportive friend?

In September, I can go down to two times a week at my outpatient group. The counselor told me I could pick the days, Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday but I think what I will do is make a monthly calendar so I can be flexible. If one week, I have Digital Photography Club on a Thursday, I can attend group on Monday and Tuesday. I don't want to skip a night of group with nothing to replace it.

This week, I wrote a relapse plan. I watched the documentary Memo to Self and learned that it's good, when I am strong, to plan for when I am weak. My relapse plan has a 1-10 scale of risk of relapse with ten being active drinking. At a couple places along the continuum, there are people to call and things to do. The relapse plan is not negotiable. If I am drinking, this is what we will do immediately. It's a little bit like an insurance policy.

I made it through some difficult things this week- the death of a friend, the serious illness of a child I know, working two days with the subsequent feelings from that, news of several relapses, and some health disturbances without drinking.

I am enjoying my sober life and I am grateful for each day.

P.S. And of course, I have binders for this information. And file folders, dividers, plastic sheet liners, charts, and checklists. It's what I do.

Thursday, September 01, 2016

morning miracles

I've been going for walks regularly with Gus and Regis. Regis likes to be out the door so I have to set my alarm for 5am. Not a bad schedule since I have always enjoyed the early mornings and it helps regulate my sleep to have a schedule like that. Not to say that some mornings, I am not cranky at 5am. Just a little.

I love the first picture. The cloud bank that looks like mountains, the hazy sunrise, the geese. Beautiful.

The sunrises this past month have been spectacular. Looking out over the valley as the sun peeks over the horizon is a wonderful way to greet the day. It's hard to be cranky looking at this.

Last night we went out for a Mexican dinner with Tom and Betty. Good food and good company. We told a lot of stories and had a lot of laughs. We ended the evening by sitting on the deck at Westwood which was enjoyable until the mosquito battalions moved in.

I subbed yesterday in the school where I used to teach. It's always a nice experience being in Joanne's middle school age classroom...until the middle school sense of humor kicks in re: farts. It happens every time. I always tell them I was raised with four brothers and I have heard enough fart humor to last me the rest of my life. And then I laugh.

I have walked with Regis sporadically over the past four years since we got Gus. Gus is a dog who appreciates his exercise which means that one or both of us much learn to appreciate it, too. Regis is dedicated to walking Gus...most days they are out two times for at least a mile each time. Sometimes I am lazy. I am not so fond of the same path every day so I am waiting for the bugs to subside and the paths in the woods to dry up so we can head out into the woods.

Our friend, Tom, died on Sunday at his home at 63. We were stunned and saddened to hear the news of Tom's passing. He and Mary owned Lone Star Barbecue in St. Peter, one of our favorite haunts. From the first time we went there, Tom and Mary remembered us, always came to chat, and made us feel welcomed. This afternoon, we'll attend the visitation and memorial service. Such a sad, sad thing.

Life is short. As Warren Zevon said: Appreciate every sandwich.

Make it a wonderful day, my friends.

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Winter Grace

by Patricia Fargnoli

If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling
into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed-down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over; your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Permission Granted

by David Allen Sullivan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.

"Permission Granted" by David Allen Sullivan,

from Strong-Armed Angels.

Gratitude by Barbara Crooker

This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war

grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer,

or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of

for twenty or thirty miserable years—

And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man

with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times

have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines

through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves

as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree

that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:

cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,

and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,

so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,

Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world

sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s

sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—

And at least today, all the parts of my body are working,

the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter,

finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page,

know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing

on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in,

flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.

And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands

in gratitude, bend to the sky.

From Line Dance (Word Press, 2008).

Starfish by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
stopped when you should have started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Do Not Expect That If Your Book Falls Open

Dana Gioia

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things.

Riveted by Robyn Sarah

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious dénouement
to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

"Riveted" by Robyn Sarah from A Day's Grace: Poems 1997-2002

I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

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