There doesn’t appear to be any proof, however, that the assault on the 14 yo autistic boy ever happened. And it’s possible that the correspondence with Pam Peterson may not be genuine. Questions have gone unanswered, and we may never know what truly has happened in these two instances. I’m left feeling a bit betrayed, a bit embarrassed,  and entirely disenchanted with the idea of jumping on bandwagons…

It occurs to me that I might want to be more careful, a bit less trusting. Ask questions first, join crusades later. The epidemic of bullying and violence sweeping this country is very real. It needs to have a whole lot of energy thrown at it.  There’s no doubt that many, many kids are being terribly injured, physically and emotionally, through being bullied. I think it would be more effective and appropriate, however, to take up arms about the problem as a whole, as a carefully-thought-out response to the issue, rather than running around tilting at windmills as I did this week.

I’m a little sad, but I’m also a lot clearer on who I am and what I want in my life! I seem to have snapped out of victimhood and am ready to pick up the pieces of my life again. One of the things that this episode made clear for me is that I’m done running and hiding, and done seeing myself as powerless.  My sister suggests that perhaps I’m ready to stop bullying myself!

So much to be grateful for!

”I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” - John Burroughs, author

And I think that’s something to be really grateful for. How sad would it be to have taken all the walks, read all the books, and spent all the times with friends that one wanted? Today I am so grateful to have a life filled with wonderful people, destinations, and stories. Thank you all for being a part of my yearnings!

1. Vigor, verve, pep; courage and aggressiveness, nerve; skill, know-how;backbone, grit, gumption, guts, sand. “Now there’s a gal with real moxie!” 2. A language for real-time computer music synthesis, written in XPL. 3. One of the first American carbonated soft drinks, trademarked in 1924.

Origin:

1908, popularized by ‘Moxie’, an American bitter non-alcoholic beverage; used as far back as 1876 as the name of a patent medicine advertised to “build up your nerve”; perhaps ultimately from a New England Indian word.

I’m just in love with this word today! Having found myself using it repeatedly, I thought it might be time to share it with the world. I’d like to think of myself as having ‘moxie’, wouldn’t you? Not a bad thing to become known for…

‘Moxie’ on the web:

Moxie - A magazine for the woman who dares! “Designed for gutsy women who are living boldly, pursuing adventures, taking risks , and putting together lives that work. … Moxie inspires women to live boldly.”
The Moxie Chicks – Swinging three-part harmony vocals liven up a wide variety of original, traditional, classic, and contemporary songs. In addition to their own compositions, the Moxie Chicks perform songs by the likes of Hank Williams, the Beatles, Paul Simon, Carole King, and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
Movie Moxie is a blog for spoiler-free film reviews, Toronto’s weekly film releases and festival coverage; proudly spreading the word on Canadian, foreign, independent film and enthusiastically enjoying everything from blockbusters to genre film and beyond.

So won’t you leave a note letting me know how much you’ve missed me? Or you could just tell me how you’re doing, if you prefer! LOL

And I’d also like to invite you to visit my latest Treasury on Etsy: Embers, Ashes, Hot Red Hearth. I love curating these theme-based collections of goodies and am absolutely determined to create one that becomes so popular it makes it to Etsy’s Front Page. You can help, if you like, by leaving a comment on the Treasury itself and by clicking through to some of the items.

Thanks – and I’ve really missed you!

Blue-spotted birches

It’s such an outrageously beautiful day here. What a blessing an autumn day like this is! There are big fat spiders hanging all around my garden like fuzzy brown Christmas ornaments, protecting us from mosquitos; several of my roses are in bloom; and the sky is heartbreakingly blue. I wish I could spend the whole day gardening!

It would be the perfect day to plant a dozen new plant-babies, spread compost, and prune and whack to my heart’s content. I haven’t had a day like that in toooo long, and I wonder if that’s part of why I’ve been so lost in the dark? The Bible talks about ‘the long dry desert of the soul’, and most Christian teachers believe that it’s referring to the feeling of being separated from God that we all experience at one time or another…

I think that’s probably correct, and for me it’s shown up as a literal desert in my life. The total inability to nurture my garden, feeling cut off from the plant and soil-life that The Greatest Gardener has entrusted to me, and the renewal and spiritual connection I feel when I’m working… some people seem to get that from meditating, or doing yoga or studying their religion, but for me it’s getting down and dirty with the crawlies and weeds and flowers and trees.

This is a non-exclusive blog! I strongly respect and honor all life-affirming beliefs and cultures.  Whether I refer to God, or The First Artist, or The Greatest Gardener, my intent is to gently share my belief that our universe was created by some sort of organizing intelligence. At the same time I do not want to exclude those who do not share this POV, as it’s not part of my life mission to debate anyone nor whack them over the head with my beliefs.

What makes me saddest about leaving this garden is that it never became all that I’d imagined. There’s just never enough time, energy or resources. Had I lived here another five or ten years? Maybe… maybe not. A garden is never truly finished, but perhaps it would have come close enough to maturation that I wouldn’t feel like I was abandoning a vulnerable infant… all that potential, unrealized. I feel as though I’ve been given something fragile and precious to care for, to bring back to life, and that walking away now is a violation of that trust. It can’t be helped, I know that – we have to do things sometimes that our hearts don’t understand. But that doesn’t always mean it’s easy.

At the same time, I’m positively hungry to start over at another patch of soil! To bring what I’ve learned in the last 10 years, to eliminate the mistakes I made here (and undoubtedly make new ones), and dream new dreams of what it can become.

I have no idea what the next few months will bring. Right now my mantra is “one day at a time”. But I have learned one thing – that whatever comes along will certainly have to include some form of gardening in order for me to stay healthy and happy and strong!

Cuddlebug chooses his first pumpkin, 13 months

I haven’t been able to post much (okay, at all!) lately, and I really  miss it. So I thought it might be fun to share some of the creepy galleries I’ve put together on Flickr in honor of the upcoming holiday. A gallery is a themed and annotated collection of other people’s photos. I don’t own the copyrights to these photos, so it’s okay to post the links elsewhere, but not to re-post the photos themselves. Enjoy!

 A Bit o’ Creepy

Monstrous Fun!

Don’t Go Down To the Basement

Scared Silly

Mostly Ghostly

Bright Green New Soul Growth – Dawn Questions

The antique rose in my little patio garden was looking pretty sickly. Yellowing leaves covered in black spots and little holes, sparse and sickly. Brave new rose buds covered with tiny green monsters sucking the life and juice from the bloom. I switched out the end of my hose from sprinkler head to the fertilizer dispenser for a week, just three or four waterings. The following week I switched back to plain water as our temps went to triple digits.

It’s now been two weeks since I fed the rose and all the other wonderful plants that live in containers in my little jungle with the miracle food. The rose is now covered in new healthy bright green leaves and has even produced one perfect, unmarked bloom with several more to come. The changes are everywhere. The brugmansia has twice as many leaves (no blooms yet) and the black ick has left the ponytail palm.

As I’m watering this summer morning, squinting in the weak dawn light to see the changes on each thriving plant, I’m struck by the thought: where did the disease go? Did the aphids fly off to a neighbor’s nutrient-poor plants? Did they dry up and fall off? (no evidence on the patio floor or the base of the plants) And where did the disease come from in the first place? Like cancer cells within our body, is it always there just waiting for weakness to emerge and reproduce at will? Or does it sense plant distress and fly in with the wind to take advantage of a lapse in good gardening protocol? These early morning questions have my mind spinning as I continue to water, pluck, pat, smell, and enjoy my wee garden.

Can I draw a further parallel between garden health and my own health — when I do the right things with discipline, day after day, such as picking up my junk and putting it away, doing laundry, keeping the floors clean, and shopping at farmer’s market for whole foods, life seem to go better and my mind is more clear. When I begin to put things off, procrastinating with bill paying, clutter, even relying on take out, frozen dinners, and cheese sandwiches instead of preparing healthy meals, my mind and my spirit and therefore my life start feeling like that poor sickly rose. Since I know this absolutely, I wonder why it’s such a struggle every day to do “the right thing.” Which came first, the disease or overall systemic weakness? Is there a quick fix for my life, such as using Miracle Grow, that will help stamp out my internal aphids, black spot, and powdery mildew, and produce bright green new growth in my soul? 

Either way, I’ll switch back to the fertilizer wand as soon as the weather breaks. And enjoy my healthy happy garden as long as it lasts.

Well, we’re officially in hiding. Our lives have officially turned into a melodrama – I’m taking copious notes so that I can write a script later!

At any rate, his dad evidently suffered oxygen deprivation, because he’s doing some really scary stuff. We have a restraining order but one night last week he came into the house in the middle of the night. He showered and shaved and did a load of his girlfriend’s laundry! I didn’t hear a thing, didn’t even realize he’d been there til the next morning when I found evidence in the bathroom and the laundry in the dryer. That was a crazy feeling – it made me wonder if I was going to be another Lacey Peterson.

There’ve been confrontations, police calls, therapists trying to help with the outrageous amount of stress. He made a false complaint to Child Welfare, so I had to endure an investigation from them, which, of course, ended in them finding the complaint to be ‘totally unfounded’.  Still, during the course of talking with them, I discovered that a lot of what he’s been doing constitutes stalking. I simply didn’t realize, I guess because I’m used to him totally disrespecting boundaries and treating me horribly. More fear and loathing.

Now endless phone calls from concerned family, friends, and various agencies; we’re getting help from Victim Witness and the women’s shelter. We’re going to have to pack and move as fast as possible, to get away from him. They’ve advised me that his behavior is ‘highly dangerous’ and apparently escalating. My darling Cuddlebug has only been able to attend 2.5 days of school so far, and doesn’t understand any of this. All he knows is that his world has fallen apart, he can’t see his dad, he can’t play with his friends, and Mommy’s upset all the time.

So, that’s what’s happening. We hurt, we’re surviving. It’s too hard for me to keep up with the blog right now, but please keep checking back in… I love this blog, and hope to get back to it soon.

One of my favorite bloggers — and favorite people — Margie Oomen of Resurrection Fern shared a site where you’ll find an audio file called ”A Singing Yeast Cell”. Relatively new technology has enabled scientists to record the sounds that individual cells make as they go about their normal life processes. It is as enthralling as any humpback song I’ve ever heard, and eerily similar. There’s something about it that is completely familiar — I feel as though I know that song in my very bones, hard as that may be to accept on the surface.

And I suppose I do know that song in my bones.  One of the reviewers at the site says, “Every living being has a voice”. The question has always been what constitutes a being? Until recently, the only answers available were faith-based. Now, however, science is gathering a rolling snowball of evidence that perhaps all things — literally every thing — may well be, in its own way, sentient. Able to respond to, interact with, and even shape its environment. Never hard for me to believe but how I love the mounting scientific validation!

What astounds me is that so many don’t hear the songs. My sister, Judi, stood as witness this week to the cries of trees:

“As soon as I rounded the corner of my shop and noticed the city’s tree-removal equipment and a half dozen men with chainsaws, I began to feel sick in the pit of my stomach. By the time I got out of my car, the feeling was full-blown nausea and a serious flight reflex. It was all I could do to walk up the sidewalk, averting my eyes from the devastation going on across the street. Three gorgeous old ficus trees were slated for removal because they were too big, too old, with too many roots misbehaving. The sick feeling I was having could have been stress — I seriously didn’t want those trees removed. But when I “listened” to my body’s reaction, what I believe I was reacting to was the trees crying out for help. Sounds goofy, like new-agey tree-hugging BS. However, if it’s true that all living things have a voice, than it makes sense that these trees were sending off distress signals — very loud and powerful tree-frequency screams at having their limbs systematically chopped off, the sense of doom and inevitablity creating a sound that could not be heard by the human ear but by the place we all feel fear — the stomach.”

“Two days later, the deed was done. The trees and their offending roots were gone and so was the sick feeling. I had a lot going on in my head about the newly bleak, bare corner and the brutal end of life for those beauties, but my stomach was fine.”

Judi is one of those gardeners who has such a finely developed empathic sense that she cannot throw out even the barest, deadest twig of a plant. She feels the life within and will continue caring for it in every way she can, for weeks, months, even in some cases years. I’ve teased her about it for years, but the truth is that she’s been right and I wrong more times that I care to count, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that her body was reacting to the violent death of the gazillions of cells across the street.

She literally had to lock up the store and go home; it was more than she could bear. And please note, for the disbelieving, that this took place not because Judi has ever believed in the idea of sentient trees, nor even examined that idea. In fact, she refers to that sort of thing as “goofy, new-agey tree-hugging BS”.  And yet her body knew the truth.

The Forest Primeval — the persistent, world-wide, cross-cultural  idea that the world was once covered with a solid canopy of trees — trees who were ‘alive’ and actively communicated not only with each other, but also with at least some humans — is an archetype I ran across many years ago, and accepted as a version of truth. However, I thought that it was a far-from mainstream mythos that most people weren’t even aware of, and would probably disdain. Then I began doing some research for this post and was very surprised to find out how wrong I was! “One of our most popular, strongly held images is that of the ‘forest primeval’.  We imagine a blanket of ancient forest, which nature maintained in equilibrium with the environment,” says James Kate, author of Planning a Wilderness.

It turns out that an amazing spectrum of people hold similar views, as demonstrated by Lisa Alpine at her site The Living Spirit of Old-Growth Forests, where she documents a series of interviews on the subject. I’ve excerpted a sampling of the interviews here, but it’s well worth spending some time on the site to read the much more in-depth interviews:

“It is important to realize that the forest is really more than the trees.” —Paul Hughes, Executive Director of Forests Forever.

Do you believe trees have a spirit or soul? I believe they have tremendous spiritual power. It is important to realize that the forest is really more than the trees. It is all so interconnected and interdependent. The trees are the most visible part, the most glorious part. Nowhere else but in a cathedral forest can you find such deep solitude and the silence.

Do you believe trees are living entities? Some redwoods are 2,500-years-old. Any time you have a living being who has aged and grown that much, you are talking about a reservoir of energy beyond human comprehension. How can you deny that when you walk through the forest and feel that magic and energy? There is much that science hasn’t taught us about these ancient forests. There is an extra dimension there we haven’t plumbed yet.

“When I walk in an old-growth forest the feeling is the closest to a real religious deep-seated meaning I’ve ever come across.” —Larry Eifert, world-renowned naturalist painter

Do you believe trees have spirits? Yeah, I do. I am not sure they are the same spirits we have…  I think they must have great experience and the fact they all join their roots together suggests a community or family.

“You cannot have sanity without sane relationships with your environment.” —Leslie Gray, a clinical psychologist whose work in ecopsychology links modern psychotherapeutic practices with shamanism. She has taught at UC-Berkeley and the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is of Oneida and Seminole heritage.

What is your connection to trees? I always include the tall straight people in my prayers and am acutely aware of how much I have to learn from them. I have a reciprocal relationship with them. I leave offerings for them.

Do you think the older trees or ancient forests have more wisdom than the younger? Those trees are our elders.

Have you spent time in old-growth forests and what feeling do you get from them? A real sense of ancestors. One of my first teachers in shamanism taught me a way of journeying where you sit at the base of an old tree and stay there for 24 hours without food or water. You sit and allow yourself to receive. It is quite astonishing what happens. Trees start talking to you. Many shamans say the best way to apprentice yourself is to a tree.

“A forest without elders is a very empty forest. It is like a child without parents left there to fend for himself” —Tim Corcoran, Director of the Headwaters Outdoor School in Santa Cruz.

Do you believe that trees have souls? I believe that trees are living beings that have all the same types of experiences we have. They are feeling beings. They experience the world very differently because of the way they live.

I also notice that the older trees teach the younger ones. A forest without elders is a very empty forest. It is like a child without parents, left there to fend for himself. People who are in tune with trees will feel this difference.

Part II, examining what deforestation does to our souls, tomorrow…