just keep moving...

Happy November!

I snapped this photo on my way out the door for my morning walk yesterday. It fascinates me a little that I seem to always take pictures of myself for the internet outdoors, just out of bed and sans make-up. (It’s a long road from the 80’s teenager who wore a staggering amount of pearlized cosmetics and Aquanet and never let her appearance-guard down for a moment, even in the privacy of her own bedroom.)

I think I snap these photos because they represent moments when I feel happiest - on my way out of doors to move my body. That makes it sound like I’m one of those bouncy, energetic people who loves to be outdoors, but it’s not true. I’m actually a low-energy, low-stamina person who likes to be very, very comfortable all the time, pretty much what you’d expect from a writer. :) But somewhere along the line I decided that wasn’t going to serve me well and I needed to move. So I do, nearly every day. I keep it up because now that I’m in my late-forties (ouch) I find that not moving daily = stiffness, sore joints, back injuries, bad moods, mental fog, and weight gain. No thanks!

So many times I talk to people my age and older who think eating right and exercise are not worth the effort, or it’s too late for them to make any changes, but “too late” doesn’t happen until you’re dead! and feeling good is worth every bit of the self-discipline, even when it happens slowly (as it does for me.) Recently, I made an inspiration board for my husband and I and put it on the fridge to keep us motivated, pictures of older adults who are/were going strong with diet and exercise past the time others thought they should slow down. (Like Tao Porchon Lynch, Dr. Ellsworth Wareham, Rich Roll, Joan McDonald , and the fabulous Twyla Tharp among others!)

There’s always a transition period for me with the colder weather, and I’ll have a few days where I don’t want to leave the warm house, but if I just keep putting on my shoes and going out, eventually I start to look forward to those crisp mornings. It’s a better energy booster than caffeine to get me going for the day and I need that for all the hours I spend sitting in front of a screen.

November goals:

Move.

Eat more veggies.

Move some more.

(Oh, and finish the first draft of this novel! So close!)

peace keep you, friends,

tonia

there is a place

This weekend, we took to the woods to learn how to find mushrooms. We had a gorgeous day, and the woods were eager to share their treasures. Our guide took us off-trail, taught us to let nature lead us. We looked for open, mossy spaces, free of tangled undergrowth, the places where mushrooms want to grow.

Every species has its ideal conditions for growth, he told us.

I thrive in these cool, damp, shadowed woods.

I would like to unwind time like a ball of wool, get back to the unformed part of myself and let her know: not every creature thrives under the sun. There is a place where the soft, deep parts of you can live.

Give me the quiet, secret spaces. Let me hear birds and rain at their work, follow truth like a deer trail through the trees.

A long time ago I lived under a steely sun, among false prophets, confident of voice and reasonable-eyed. They said the path to truth was too difficult to find, I would lose my way. They taught me to harden and to doubt.

But now I know truth spreads itself secretly underground, waits on every trail, waits for me to arrive and take it up at the right time.

I am un-hardening, un-doubting. I am looking closely for what’s real, what emerges from the fern-soft ground.

It was the Romans who taught us that time is a line stretching forward, but the Greeks believed time was a circle that comes around and back again. Perhaps that unformed girl is here, only waiting for me to come back round to her.

Perhaps she will step out now into this kinder world, perhaps she will find a place to fruit and grow soft under this understanding sky.

what i do with myself

October feels like returning home from a long and tiring trip. Home again to writing, early mornings in the dim little room next to the stairs, view of the woodpile. Cup after cup of tea, laundry humming in the dryer, garden slowly dying outside, to-do lists stacking like cordwood in my journal, breath prayers to keep it all from toppling. // In the morning, cold, my hands ache and the chickens’ feet are mottled red. Summer’s banishment was swift and I wonder about winter, feel the presence of it looming heavy, brittle, just out of sight. More wool socks, I think, another pair of waterproof gloves. Soon I’ll be breaking ice on the water buckets, scurrying to get back inside, my glasses fogging up when I cross the threshold. // France lives nine hours ahead. We text from our beds: her waking, me settling in for sleep, and again at midday, when she says goodnight. The afternoons are the loneliest. // At dinner we talk about the justice of various world economic systems - pick your poison, they all need to be vigilantly humanized - and wonder how to be free and just within our own. I want this in my bones. // I clean the pantry, scrub away the trail of some little creature who came looking for warmth and a meal; my husband lays a trap, rightly so, but I wipe peppermint oil on the shelves and secretly hope it will be deterrent enough. // The youngest discovers 70’s folk music and it plays all afternoon, I make bread out of buckwheat and sunflower seeds. The hippies were right about everything, we say, and laugh. // Someone asks me what I’m going to do with myself now, empty nest and all. Love, tend, grow. There is no economic system for that, it has to be carved belligerently from the one you inherited. // Once, many years ago, we pulled up an old log in the forest and under it curled a clutch of newborn mice, fat commas shuddering in the naked air, their flesh translucent and rose brown, their unopened eyes a tiny violet gem swelling beneath the skin.

August grace

If I’ve learned anything this month, it’s how dependent motivation and self-discipline can be on good health. I kept imagining, all through this convalescence from pneumonia, that each next day I would regain my interests, that I’d want to know what was going on in the world, that I’d want to read or write or at least make plans for when my body was well again, but it didn’t happen for weeks. Over the month, I managed to get things done that had to be done, but oh, how I missed the feeling of purpose and focus that I’m used to.

There are so many things I take for granted in an ordinary day. I don’t want to lose this new-found tenderness, this awareness of the grace which hovers over life.

This morning, my daughter and I made big mugs of dark coffee and took them out to the back deck to talk and watch the day arrive. Already, the mornings here are cool and tinged with Fall. By the time Fall really arrives next month, my daughter will be in France, so we are stealing all the moments we can together. Every time I’m with her I’m filled with that strange mixture of pride and fear and sorrow and joy that accompanies sending a child into their adulthood. Being a mother, a parent, is a continual prying open of your hands and heart.

Looking at the calendar over my desk, I see that today is also the birthday of Tasha Tudor. That makes me smile, for I’ve been thinking of her words lately:

“I enjoy solitude. It's probably selfish, but why bother about it. Life is much too important, as Oscar Wilde said, to be taken seriously. I feel so sorry for those mothers who are devastated by loneliness when their children fly the coop and don't want to live at home anymore. They feel lost, but look what exciting things can be done. Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!”

It’s true. Life continues to open and open and there is so much more to look forward to, so much to treasure.

Tasha always had tea and a nap in the afternoon, so I think I will do the same in her honor today. :)

Looking forward to getting back to posts and books and words. Thanks for your patience, friends.

Peace keep you,

tonia

Invisible

I finished Akiko Busch’s “How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency” while I was in San Francisco. It was good fodder for contemplation, walking around in a city where I was almost entirely anonymous. According to Busch, I am also close to invisible, who includes “women over 50” in her category of people we naturally don’t see (the list also includes service workers, people of color, and migrants and refugees, among others.)

“And then not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you.” ~ novelist Doris Lessing

We’re in an age that values Visibility, so finding yourself on the other side of that can be a depressing prospect. But traveling around San Francisco with this in mind, I was surprised to discover something else entirely. Lessing goes on to say:

“You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible.”

With the idea in mind that no one else cares about what I look like or what I do, I found myself expanding into someone freer, more generous, more aware of other people. I smiled more, talked with strangers, looked for small ways to help or encourage. I stopped other women to compliment their clothes or shoes or smiles. In short, I was friendlier and happier.

“A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform - rather than limit - our lives. Going unrecognized, paradoxically, can help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.” ~ Akiko Busch

We can also make invisibility something of a discipline for ourselves. I hear my friends who are stepping away from social media talking about the same kinds of things, the power to BE without anyone’s gaze on you, to experience and love and enjoy without anyone’s approval or notice. It can be liberating!

To embrace it, Busch offers this advice from her friend, James Burns, an Episcopal minister:

“First learn to love yourself. Then forget about it and learn to love the world.”

It makes me think of Steinbeck: “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

Freedom.

You can read the chapter on women and aging in the Atlantic.

And I am opening the comments. By request. :) We’ll see how it goes.

Peace keep you all.