Category Archives: life

When I sleeps, I sleeps

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sleeping cat

My cat Foxy can sleep anywhere. I, who must have darkness, a comfy bed, and absolute quiet, am very envious!

I read the statistics about what sleep deprivation does to us as a nation. I’m convinced if we each got fifteen more minutes of sleep a day, the world would be a better place.

I sometimes compromise with a good, satisfying afternoon nap. Foxy, being a creature of habit and a practical soul at heart, often deigns to joins me.

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
~Leonard Cohen~

 

In the Moon of Strawberries

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Picture of double rainbow over Sedona, AZ

What is interesting about double rainbows, like this one I caught over Sedona, Arizona, is that the second rainbow is reversed. It starts with red and progresses to violet on the other side. The second is also softer in hue, and very rare. They just don’t occur frequently.

The second rainbow reminds me of quiet people, those shy individuals who don’t choose to speak up often. When they do reveal their inner selves–wow, so amazing. Worth the wait!

~When you are beside me my heart sings.
A branch it is, dancing before the Wind Spirit
in the moon of strawberries.~
~Objiway love song~

 

Book review: Elliot Ackerman, WAITING FOR EDEN

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Book cover: WAITING FOR EDEN

It is a short book, 173 smallish pages. And it is “serious” literary fiction. Why on earth would I pick up such a book, promising to be a hard read? Don’t know. But I did. And luckily I started it early in the evening, because I couldn’t put it down.

WAITING FOR EDEN, a finalist for the National Book Award, tells the story of Eden, a badly burned veteran who is not expected to live. It is also the story of his best friend, now a ghost, who waits to escort Eden to the Other Side, and the woman that they both loved.

How do you communicate when you can’t talk and can’t see? Eden finds a way, and it profoundly changes the lives of those around him, including his wife and the medic in the ICU ward. I found the tale to be raw and emotional, not sad but rather an uplifting tribute to the human spirit and the will to survive, whatever the cost.

From the nurse who cared for him on the night shift: “In his body she felt many things at once. Frozen soil. The bark of a tree. Baked sand. A handful of gravel. Glass, both shattered and whole. His textures were a mosaic of many, trapped in the inches of skin…In the space between them there was only her whispering:’If you want to go, go. But if you want to stay, sleep.'”

I felt replete when I finished reading this novel. I hope you will be, too.

Floating, floating, floating

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Baby cloud

I’ve always been a cloud fan, and my photo gallery is full of cloud pictures. This one is a favorite, because it reminds me of how fast time flies. It was about ten o’clock in the morning when this baby cloud popped up. One moment there was all blue sky and the next, there it was.

But that was just the beginning. The little cloud blossomed exponentially over the next two hours. A little after noon, it turned heavy and dark, and drenched us with rain. And a half-hour later, it vanished, and the sky was blue again. Magic, right in front of me.

Life is like that for us, too. One minute we’re a baby cloud and the next, we’ve disappeared and all is blue sky again. In the grand scheme of things, we are very temporary!

I owned the world that hour as I rode over it,
free of the earth, free of the mountains,
free of the clouds, but how inseparately bound to it.
~Charles Lindbergh, aviator~

 

Still standing

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I love old doors! When I found these two in an ancient house, I was hooked. They have weathered time and hardship and still are standing with a special beauty all their own. They remind me of family.

My sister and I have had our differences over the years, and our moments of joy together. But as we grow older, it is our shared history that becomes especially precious to me. Just like these old doors.

We know what it’s like to experience South Dakota thunderstorms, and steal apples from the neighbor’s orchard, and make snow angels in chest-high blizzard snow. No one else in my life, no one else in the world, can do that with me.

Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver and the other gold.
~Girl Scout singing round~

 

Sitting by the dock of the bay

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Sitting on the dock at the bay

I arose early, seeking to experience the dock in the solitude of a Sunday morning.

Later, there would be boats moored to each side, and fisherman throwing out a line, and honeymooning couples strolling arm-in-arm along its length. But for now it was quiet, content, satisfied in just being.

Sometimes we feel like a dock, waiting for our ship to come in. But the wisdom is knowing that our future is already here inside, waiting to be discovered.

When one has much to put into them,
each day has a hundred pockets.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

Nourishment and destruction

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Mussels in a crack

It was low tide on a sunny day, and we ventured far out on the rocks, searching the life left by the waves. Hidden in the cracks, just visible here, we found thousands of tiny white mussels, fed by the surging waves that were channeled into the crevices between the granite boulders.

How did these tiny shelled creatures sense that here, and only here, they would be nourished by the very waves that threatened to destroy them?

For every ailment under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
~Mother Goose~