Oops! Forgot to Tell You I Moved!

Sorry!

So, these days, on the rare (so far) occasion that I blog, it’s here, at Heart’s Aperture. In between what you find here and what you find there, I wrote briefly at Take A Picture Here.

Quiet

Night's hush descending. 12/29/11. Canon A3300 IS.

I’ve been silent in this space two days past a month.  Putting 2011 to bed took a lot of energy, and stirred up a lot of emotions.  The dawning of 2012 has been much the same, taking a lot of energy, and stirring up a lot of emotions.

Energy and emotions have flown fast and free, but words and images are scarce.  The photograph above, while not perfect, was the first thing I’d felt like photographing in weeks at the time, one taken on the fly as I ran out after dinner for pre-New Year’s errands.

The truth is, I’m still processing.  I’m still processing how 2011 ended, and still feeling my way into 2012.

I hope to find words soon.  Until then, I will sink in and savor the quiet.

Emotional Overdrive and Sunday’s Serendipitous Sign

Wood, found on railroad tracks, which looks to me like an angel’s wing. 12/4/2011. Canon A 3300 IS.

These days I feel on emotional overdrive.  I care about everything, and everyone around me, even when I don’t want to.  Tears well up easily.

It’s like my heart has vacated its space behind the protection of my rib cage and breastbone, and has risen to the surface to rest just below the thinnest layer of skin, and refuses any sturdier protection.

The old familiar walls refuse to go up, and crumble as fast as I try to build them.

Yet, in the midst of the vulnerability and tears, I am finding a glimmer of fearlessness that I didn’t know I had.  Things that used to frighten me, I mean really scare the daylights out of me, are getting easier…Like opening myself to compassion to everyone, even when I don’t want to…Like allowing myself to be vulnerable with other people present…Like not being perfect, or not being exactly what other people want me to be.

I went for a walk yesterday around my neighborhood, and cutting down the train tracks I spotted the piece of wood up there, shaped by weather and where it had landed and who knows what else, to resemble an angel’s wing, and I can’t help but feel it echoes the feather I found on the beach, photographed, and spoke of in this post.  It feels like a good, serendipitous sign that I’m on the right track.  (Pun intended, given where I found it.)

Something good is rising, I can feel it.

Thanksgiving Gratitude

Take 11/23/2011 with the Toy Camera feature on my new Canon A 3300 IS.

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow U.S. dwellers! (Everyone else, I hope you had or are having a nice day.)

I feel off-kilter at the moment because my family isn’t celebrating until tomorrow due to the work schedules of some of us.  That said, to preserve the day as it was intended when it became a national holiday, I’m taking a few minutes to be publicly grateful.

I am strangely grateful to my most recent job for putting my back against the wall on a (nearly) daily basis, thereby forcing me to locate my metaphorical backbone and put it to use.  Also, it is pushing me to my edge in mindfulness and compassion practice, making me face my shadow, and acting as a catalyst for further clarifying what I truly want to do with my life, little by little.  It’s not pleasant, but sometimes the teachings we need aren’t.

I am grateful for family and friends, and for my co-workers-who-have-become-friends, without whom my life would feel empty.

I am grateful to have a warm home, a “just right” bed to sleep in, and that all my other basic needs met.

I am grateful for every beautiful and/or interesting thing I capture with my camera, for the power in all the arts, and that the arts persist, that people still hear the call to create and make those creations available.

There are so many things I am grateful for, this is just a taste.

Now, time to get offline and sink into the restfulness afforded by a long weekend, something else for which I’m grateful!

A Reminder…

I am not my job.

I am not the contents of my bank account, or, in the eyes of some, the lack thereof.

I am not the roles I inhabit on the stage of the day: secretary, daughter, friend, academic, or, depending on who you ask, bitch.

I AM, or at least part of me is…The spark in the center where a heart beats and breath flows as a smooth breeze if I let it…The part that speaks in intuitive whispers, even when it encourages my voice to roar…The part that knows no time, that sees beauty in the mundane, that notices Nature’s signals, that sees through to souls, that feels compassion, that never stops dreaming and hoping, that drives the urge to create, that seeks pockets of peace and stillness, and that animates this body.

I am THAT.  Ham-sa, as some are taught to recite, or, others, So-hum.  I am THAT.  You are THAT.  We are all a little piece of THAT, The Divine That-Which-Is-Bigger-Than-Us.

“So breathe,” I remind myself, and you.  “Who you are is so much more than the present circumstance.”