HAPPIEST OF HAPPY YEARS TO US ALL...

Some shots of the season, captured on my phone... May your path lead in the direction of your bliss, may your heart grow and soar, may your soul be replete...

HAPPY NEW YEAR

XO

Healing... Hope... Summer... Thunder

Hoping like anything to be back... really back...feeling more myself many days. Though this is far from over. Hope to share some lovely things from this summer soon.

So very much prefer the actual Thunder in my life to the proverbial thunder... It's beauty is evident, I know how it works, and it passes all the more quickly and predictably!

Love to all

(did you say,) "Lyme Disease? OH no you Di'n't!"

"Lyme disease is the most rapidly spreading vector-borne disease in the world.

The medical world is divided with one group saying that it is rare, easy to diagnose and easy to treat, and the other saying it is a difficult diagnosis because of the negativity of the ELISA test and the lack of medical education of medical students, family practitioners and specialists.

There is an urgent need for making the public and the medical world aware of this since there is an unexplained Lyme denial problem prevalent in our medical association.
I have seen many suffering from arthritis, mental fog, and severe fatigue and most of these patients have gone undiagnosed to the present day. "

Quote from "The Spread of Lyme Disease" http://www.theconference.ca/index.php?/The-Spread-Of-Lyme-Disease by Dr. Ernie Murakami http://www.theconference.ca/index.php?/Murakami-Dr.-Ernie

Nuff Said?

I can't even go there, to tell the horror I feel. But the blessing is the opportunity for a better than conventional , alternative treatment.

I will speak disjointedly, just and only as a manner to update you all.

Currently being treated for Lyme's Disease. Explains A LOT. But too over being in the horror to explain the mechanics of the thing, or what it's meant for me. Apparently for years now. To quote Joe vs the Volcano of his Brain Cloud: "I KNEW IT!!! I mean, I didn't know it, but .... I KNEW IT!" His Brain Cloud issue was not serious much less real (as many may say of Lyme's) but it's symptoms dogged him for years.

The part I cannot take? My darling boy, my 15 year old with Mono since March apparently has it too.

I am taking the good and the blessings right along with the curse of it. But it's taking everything I have. Not to give in. For very long. With every burst of energy I can muster, however infinitesimal, I jump on that wave, determined to fight this, to drive out the fear and depression that are attacking us both.

My honor roll student hasn't been able to attend a full day of school since mid-March. Is too exhausted to do much, walks, more like shuffles like an old man, and then leans against a wall or sits in chair in order to make it across a room. It will take every bit of strength fortitude and advocacy we can lay claim to for him to finish the year. Good grades optional. But how to convince him? He who is all or nothing, can't do it halfway and live with himself, no matter how we reassure him? We are constantly working on that, too.

So. Not terribly creative during all this. Feel a bit broken, actually. But determined. At least at the moment. So many things have been on the back burner any way, since before any diagnosis. It's hard not to be well, harder still not to be able to hope realistically for a speedy recovery.

But we're still here. Fighting. And I'm missing you all.

I check in every once in a while...

Wishing you all HEALTH!

It's the best wish I can wish for you, along with peace, love, safety, whole hearts, and dear ones near.

xo

HAPPY EARTH DAY! One Body by Ben Strang

Happy Earth Day, dear ones.

Please view this moving Public Service Announcement, created by a young man near and dear to my heart. It's truth and sincere message, beautifully delivered, cut right to the heart of me.

I believe.

One Body from Ben Strang on Vimeo.

Ben, this Auntie is SO proud of you. :,D

xo

In Resonse to a New Comment on "Virginia Tech... April 16, 2007"

Dear Carla,

Thank you so much for your kind comments-- I'd been thinking about this for the past several weeks, in the corners of my mind. But, with a child home sick for the past 4 weeks, today has crept up on me.

Today, I can only hope and pray that broken hearts are still beating, healing, however inexplicably, and that the love and prayers generated by these losses, that the memory of those lost and the positive effects of their contributions given and of those that were cut short before they might be given, radiate out into the wide world and surround us. Teach us. Heal us. Protect and guide us. Ever after.

Strangely, the tulips bloomed early this year-- first time ever, since the way they began that day. And they are, even more strangely still, a different color.

Perhaps, just perhaps, change is good.

xo

(Original Post, dated April 20, 2009)

Thunder! & Lightening! & Hail! OH MY!

Oh fragrant spring... today you delighted the senses with sun and anonymous though lovely scents... of flowers' perfume carried on gossamer breeze.

And now this! The smell of fresh rain on the pavement, then the rumble of distant thunder. A peal and a CRACK! and the newly darkening, greening and blackening skies perfectly set in place to showcase bright flashes!

Then, portentous knocking, as the hail comes... falling with increasing crescendo. And just as I see- notice the stones look like moth balls on the skylight windows, they stop. Perhaps too proud to have their drama upstaged.

The patter and beating is decreasing now... the thunder only rattling. Like the wooden wheels of some caravan, rattling down the road, done pedaling it's mysterious wares.

Is it my imagination, or is the green just a touch greener? The light warmer, the water drops more crystalline reflective?

There is only now, to the ear, an intermittent metallic tap, the drainpipe... the last to stay after the show, clearing up after all the hoopla...

Now birdsong. The storm is really over.

And Spring. It's REALLY HERE!

Forest Lover...Painter Emily Carr...

...the Majesty of Trees, Totems, Raw Nature... An amazing and inspiring woman whose paintings move me... to a place of mossy verdant misty lifegiving fertile ground...

...did a multitude of things women weren't supposed to do at that time. Traveled alone, unmarried, was an advocate of Nature, advocate of tribal peoples and conservateur of their vanishing art through her art...















While watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver that took place this last month, I was moved more than I expected to be as they progressed. Somehow, in thinking of the totem poles as they were represented, my mind went to a favorite book, The Forest Lover, by Susan Vreeland. The story of Emily Carr. Canadian. Woman. Writer. Lover of Trees. Oil Painter. Fearless Traveler. Chronicler of Vanishing Totem Poles.


Then as the amazing stage changed again, as the giant totems began to become trees, even as she was already on my mind, I saw her there, honored. The style of the trees under which the dancers danced was that of Emily Carr. (I can't find a clip or shot of that yet; will add it to this post if/when I do.)

She studied oil painting in France when women of her time were not to venture past water colors, were not to travel alone, were best not to remain unmarried, and certainly were not to traipse about the huge wilderness that is Canada without husband or guardian or female companion. All of these things she did and more.

I urge you to become familiar with her, with her work, if you are not already. http://www.groupofsevenart.com/Emily_Carr/Carr_intro.html

After viewing her work, perhaps this March, as the waters return, and the greening begins, you will see her in the trees, in the greens, and in the invisible intractable movement that is being. ALIVE.

To me, she has been an inspiration. And her work holds a place cached in the stronghold of my most daring and most reverent heart.


Emily Carr; December 13, 1871 - March 2, 1945

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/Emily-Carr.html