Not tooo bad, a post every other month! Oh well.
Today is Thanksgiving 2011. Yesterday at work was unusual, not as many people as in the past and I imagine not as much money being put down for food items. There is a thought in me that wants to say I told you so but I know the store will put some spin on it so we look like we rae doing better than last year, they usually do.
Enough of that. Today I am going to take my annual walk up to the Mosher Shelter on the M+M trail in Leverett. Will take a lunch of some sort and enjoy the quiet.
Funny feeling I have right now, I feel like I am half full and half empty and not sure which direction I am going......

Torn open

Torn open, that is how I feel every day, like I have a large tear from one shoulder to the opposite hip, all blood and bloody, death snooping around, sensing something is dying, something inside of me, what is it that rips me open? How do I keep going each day, how to keep surfacing to take another breath, how do I not float away.............I do not know!

Sadness

Hello sadness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again......
one thing about sadness,melancholy is it always walks back in the door.
Kevin

What's my name?

I just saw on 60 minutes a group of teenagers who spend a school year learning how to sing gospel. They all come from disadvantaged backgrounds as far as families, missing parents etc. It was amazing, one of the exercises the teacher has them do is to shout out their names, shout them out loud! It was so moving, so sad that so many couldn't do it, many would mumble their names, many would say it so softly that you couldn't hear what they said. They would do this exercise each day at class. At their last performance of the year they did it after the last song, in front of the audience. No one was sure what would happen with this one young woman who had not done it all year, so when it came time to say her name, for the first time all year, she shouted it out and I imagine she regained some ownership of a part of her that was missing, one she had abandoned years ago, just like many people abandoned her so many times.
How many times have I abandoned myself in the face of others, how many times I have not shouted my name for all to hear because I was afraid, because I was not sure, because I chose to play safe, because safety was all I wanted, more than I wanted to own who I am, and you know that was okay for then. Each day I get more opportunities to say my name to those who care and those who scare me, many don't understand but my heart does, to take just the next step.

An hour of TV.....

So, today a study came saying that if you watch an hour of TV, it is equal to losing 20 mins of your life!? Wouldn't it equal to losing an hour of your life? Is this study saying that the more TV you watch the longer your life will be. I mean an hour is an hour, whether you are watching tv or reading a book. So in my funny way of looking at this, the more tv you watch the better? So 3 hours of TV would equal 1 hour of life. Not such a bad deal. Oh well, I just keep rambling on, you can just go do what you were wanting to do anyways.

Gentle Rain.

Ahhhhh, this gentle rain that wakens me to this day. I am so grateful for it's prescence. It reminds me of the true forces in this world. Not those of man or companies or the work our hands do, but of the work our collective and indivdual souls do each day. Some of the days are so hard anf difficult one wants to cry and end this life because of the struggle, yet others are so full of light and warmth that I have nothing but gratitude for the blessing of being a witness to this. A soft voice tells me that it will be alright, everything will be alright. The distirbances around me are just illusion, a news story at 6, then by 11 it is another story we contend with. Life is indeed beautiful, we can train ourselves to let it ALL wash over us and let it go, for soon enough our time will be up too, how did we spend it? How did we share it?

Rainy Day

It's Sunday, it's raining and gray. I am feeling slow sluggish and reflective. I wish I could mine these things out of me and tell others what is going on within me, (as if I know) . It is a time of tumbling and feeling squeezed, as if life itself is try to grow a new skin, I wonder if a snake feels like this as it sheds its old skin, and as the new one emerges. Maybe that is the term I need to think about today, I am shedding this skin, this old life I have been living for twenty something years. Yea, I like that. Are you shedding a skin? tell me about it.
Also today I was looking at some pictures of where some children in the world sleep. The one photo that really sticks with me, and there were many, was the picture of just a mattress, on the ground in a field. On this mattress it was told that a family of five sleeps there, at the edge of a field, on the cold ground. Contrast that with the family who owns three homes in various places arounnd the world. One home in New York city, one in Spain and one in the tropics. The unbalance of it all. Isn't that what this world just trying to balance out? Not the people, but the world.