vegetables with love

silence becomes singing…

nettogirl — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:39:42 +0000

such truth. I am.

e.e. cummings

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
–i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
–i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness).

Filed under: quotes to ponder..., thought poetry...

tumbleweeds in waiting…

nettogirl — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:34:39 +0000

On my way to work, I see a new house with a yard that is in progress. I see evidence that they are working on it, by the little flags that are poking out of the ground to announce the sprinkler placement underneath, and it appears that just last week they poured some beautiful wavy curbing to define where their grass ends and where their other various plantings will begin. They have this one area along these big rocks used as a retaining wall that is covered in soon to be tumbleweeds, which I just know started out as little teeny tiny plants. But with a little neglect, they were able to blossom and grow and grow until one day, either the frost came and claimed what life they had left, or they got sprayed with weed killer, and now they are tumble weeds waiting for just the right wind to knock them off their rock wall and give the freedom that they are suited perfectly for. Rolling, and tumbling along with the very wind that dislodged them from security.

Filed under: inbetween...

side by side…

nettogirl — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:06:04 +0000

My friend Elysia posted a note on what and whom she celebrates… I am going try this as well amidst my blue funk. I think my thankfulness and my funk are sitting side by side, sharing a cup of coffee, and I’m betting my thankfulness is letting my funk share the gloom it sees and thankfulness is listening intently and finding all the silver linings that my funk knows are there, but is too emotionless or emotional to touch on them. So here goes, I will step toward the thankfulness to listen and journal what I hear from her, given that I gave a voice to my funk with my other recent post.

My thankfulness says:

I celebrate having sick days accrued so that I can use one on a day like today for my mental sanity and emotional well being. (ok, I realize this is small, but given where I’m at, it’s huge)

I celebrate my husband who lets me ebb and flow and loves me through it all and has been solid while I have felt wavering. I celebrate his approach to life, to not take things too seriously, and to escape into his cave (i.e. garage) whenever possible to work on stuff. I think it’s his escape and he regularly does it, and always with music playing in the background.

I celebrate when I get to see across the valley in the middle of winter, as opposed to the horrible air days when you can barely see across the street. Somehow when those clear days come, I sense less oppression on my soul.

I celebrate that I can’t imagine grace, and that I can’t imagine God. For both are just too big for me to try to grasp with my mind. This realization brings me to the truth that I can only live in today, because if I fret about tomorrow or next week or next year, God isn’t there, because Him and His grace are too big for me to imagine in those places. I can only see where He is in the NOW, and where He has just been in the days since passed.

I celebrate when people say things that make me think, that challenge my thoughts, and that confront my judgments. I celebrate when people take responsibility for their thoughts and feelings and how they affect others around them.

I celebrate the things I remember from my friends/family (the way the talk, the way they listen, the way they laugh, the way they write) that I have taken and adopted and made my own, so that person is always with me when I say or do or respond in the ways reminiscent of my friends. Somehow doing this makes me feel like I’m growing and adapting and always… becoming. I guess it’s plagiarism in a way, but I’ve put those things in my own words/actions per say, and so now they are me, mine, ours.

I celebrate it when people are honest, and brutally honest, as opposed to people who are passive aggressive people who manipulate others to try to get what they really want. I celebrate when others know what they want and are strong enough to say it, ask for it, and even beg for it. I don’t have to wonder with those honest people, I don’t have to guess, and most, I don’t have to feel like I’ve been manipulated by them.

I celebrate doubts, because in the doubts I have about myself, others, and even God, I feel like I am given a unique place to hold the truths I find. Like a key going into a lock. If I have a doubt, undoubtedly a truth will come to answer it, and fit it and unlock it to a new layer of understanding.

I celebrate where I am, even though I understand I don’t fully appreciate it.

I celebrate…
I celebrate…
I celebrate…

cel⋅e⋅brate –verb (used with object)
1. to observe (a day) or commemorate (an event) with ceremonies or festivities: to celebrate Christmas; to celebrate the success of a new play.
2. to make known publicly; proclaim: The newspaper celebrated the end of the war in red headlines.
3. to praise widely or to present to widespread and favorable public notice, as through newspapers or novels: a novel celebrating the joys of marriage; the countryside celebrated in the novels of Hardy.
4. to perform with appropriate rites and ceremonies; solemnize: to celebrate a marriage.
–verb (used without object)
5. to observe a day or commemorate an event with ceremonies or festivities.
6. to perform a religious ceremony, esp. Mass or the Lord’s Supper.
7. to have or participate in a party, drinking spree, or uninhibited good time: You look like you were up celebrating all night.

I celebrate… I dare say I even celebrate my me, my me in a blue funk and out. My me is different than any other you, but its so similar as well.

Filed under: me on the inside..., moments in freeze frame...

blue funk…

nettogirl — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:46:32 +0000

Feeling like I’m in a blue funk. Not much excitement about life at the moment. My insides feel wound up like a twisted rubber band ready to spring onto itself if the hint of tension is released. I feel ready to tear up if I was given just the slightest encouragement. That damned groundhog today didn’t give me any hope either. I know, I know, spring will come when it’s ready. This winter is dragging me down. Perhaps it’s because I’m working full time and feeling pulled so thin. Perhaps I just can’t cope as easily as I could before. Blue funk is my today. Seeing my own shadow and wanting to run back into the hole to get away from the scariness of it.

funny that… the figment…
it’s not really there…
it’s just a reflection of the light shining from the other direction on me.

Filed under: me on the inside...

rattlesnake charm…

nettogirl — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:47:29 +0000

I’ve been listening to this song on repeat, called Rattlesnake Charm by Sean Hayes. Wow… I just love it. Can’t get enough… love the melody, soft groove and the way the woman’s voice comes in and echoes in a soulful way. I first heard it on my Pandy (pandora) station, and even though I listen to it kind of quietly at work, this song begs me to adjust the volume and smile. Thank God I found the lyrics via google and some kind soul who posted them on her blog:

what you thinking of
man what you do and what you think you can do
what you are
what you do
looking out, it ripples on the dance floor
what you mean is what you get
did you forget to know what the end is?
to begin clearing
looking out, it ripples on the dance floor

dream machine
did you get everything you asked for?
dream machine
rattlesnake charmed on the dance floor

love’s rage
broken page
electric lights and glass bone nights
electric lines run through your minds
distractions with radio contraptions
pipe ashes
night glasses
tick-tock
hear the wind lick the window
ignited
you’re invited
grow wings sprouting from the backbone

dream machine
mister jones you don’t know what you came for
dream machine
rattlesnake charmed on the dance floor

we are like those two mirrors steaming in the rain
oh, we are those two lovers holding each other’s hands
dream with me
dream with me
rattlesnake charmed on the dance floor

listen via the first link.

Filed under: melodies...

beautiful…

nettogirl — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:00:57 +0000

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~Rumi

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you
wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
Against the earth and the sky,
the beloved has bowed there-
The beloved has bowed there knowing
You were coming…
~Hafiz

Posted in quotes to ponder...

a sky with iridecent ribbons….

nettogirl — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:51:23 +0000

After work tonight I felt like when I walked out of my building into my freedom, there was a sunset painted just for me. From the look of the other people going to and fro on campus, I was the only one who could see what was lighting up the evening sky to welcome the fall of darkness.

It was as if someone shred pink and purple iridescent ribbon slices across the sky with razor blades. They were only there for the briefest of moments, and I got to take hold of it, as if it was a welcome sign that this was what the whole day was leading up to. All the scurrying to get the kids ready for school in the morning, for me driving to work in the super cold weather and through the snow driving, through the working all day inside an office where I don’t know if I’m meant to be…

all of that…
all of that…
was what lead up to this moment of a sunset that seemed to be painted just for me.

and the reality came to me that I may not have noticed it if all the day hadn’t have happened as it did.

working eight ours, to walk out of the building into my freedom…
I stepped into a painting where colorful ribbons sliced across the sky for the smallest of moments, iridescence, highlighting the end of my day, and opening the door for the rest of the evening.

Posted in moments in freeze frame...

like a soft whisper wind…

nettogirl — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:56:43 +0000

I was sitting at the table tonight with my family and we were laughing and smiling so huge that it felt like heaven opened up and swallowed us into it’s embrace. I immediately felt my eyes fill with tears and my throat tighten as it dawned on me the significance of this moment and the impact that it was making on my heart. Thankfulness for my husband, his smile, his heart. Thankfulness for my kids, their laugh, their unique sense of humor. And thankfulness for my place in this family, my role of mom, wife, and friend… the thankfulness overwhelmed me to the core. The truth that this moment would fade away all to soon was not lost on me, for even now reflecting on it and trying to find words to tell of it, seem to diminish its heart affect. I am so deeply thankful and so deeply grateful, that mere words cannot express…. but if I were to try to describe it… if I could pull the words together into some order, it would be:

Love love love came swirling around me today like a soft whisper wind, and joy laughed at my cheeks and echoed in my ears that my spirit had to try to grasp the tail of this helium balloon moment that was floating and dancing away and taking my heart up with it into it’s fruition in a chorus of a song in loud Braille with a melody full of effortless love that was imprinting itself inside my heart.

Posted in effects of motherhood..., me on the inside..., moments in freeze frame...

a tuesday with snow on top…

nettogirl — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:42:54 +0000

Today and yesterday I’ve been able to be a stay at home mom, literally. Adair hasn’t felt well enough to go to school, she’s tired and has some aches, and she’s congested, but most of all, she’s just tired. I’ve been reading up on the H1N1 and wondering if she has that or some other type of random virus. Interesting reading it was though, let me tell you. I learned there is a class of individuals that is known by the community of immunologists as the “superspreaders” and surprise surprise, school aged children are in that group, along with their well meaning parents or guardians. Superspreaders, sounds generous doesn’t it? Not so much if it’s talking about viruses. Another term I learned was about your “herd immunity”, which is where if the elementary school does a school-wide vaccination for all the children, then we as adults even if we haven’t been immunized would receive benefit because of us residing in the same herd as those who did get the vaccination. Interesting isn’t it? Another new thing I learned is that there is a whole subset of people who in their spare time are “flu trackers” and they study the immunology, and waves of illness. Isn’t that interesting? Did you know that the illnesses come in waves? H1N1 has. Wave 1 occurred early last spring, and we are now joyfully entering Wave 2. Fun! I hope I don’t catch the wave, I’m really not that much of a surfer.

Anyway, today there was snow, and my little girl is resting. I’m on the computer logging the moment into record so that we all know it occurred. Tuesday. Girl. Sick. Snow. Home. Love. It’s all there for you, just not necessarily in that order.

I’m home… where I feel like I was meant to be. Tomorrow though, I’ll find the courage to return to work, knowing at least that it means if I do, that my little girl feels all better.

Posted in children..., moments in freeze frame...

imploding…

nettogirl — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:31:39 +0000

What to do with the cacophony of emotions that come about when someone you love is nearing the end of their life? It doesn’t seem to matter to my heart that this person I love has had a long and wonderfully rich life, filled to the brim with experiences, of which I was able to share some of. It doesn’t matter that this person I love lives hundreds of miles away and the last time I saw them was three or four years ago. The doesn’t matters don’t matter, my heart feels raw and the inner depths of me feel like it’s going to implode on itself with the rest of me to follow into the smallest black hole abyss on the inside that I didn’t realize had the power to suck me under and in.

Maybe the impending death of a life so richly lived is a reminder to the lack of permanence we all have. Or it is a window to unresolved grief for others that I have lost, or those I am afraid to lose in the future.

It is bittersweet and I navigate a path and tension between one part of me that celebrates a life well lived and another part mourns what this significant loss means to me and all those involved.

I know I will go on. I know all others involved will go on. I know I am better for having loved this person. I know that a legacy has been set into motion that will always live even when they are no longer here.

But right now, before this person dies, I want to voice that I’m going to miss them, and dare say I already do. I want to say I’m sorry their end is near and will come. I want to say that I am with them even though I’m hundreds of miles away. I want to say thank you for all that you have poured into my life. I want to say that I recognize that you encouraged and supported me, and that I am forever grateful for it. I want to say so much more but I can’t because I’m imploding, and this imploding hurts.

I don’t want comments…
I don’t want “I understands”…
I don’t want platitudes…
I don’t want you to tell me later that you read this post…

I’m putting this here for me…

I’m scribbling this out to describe what I’m wrestling with…

I just want to write this moment out for my mind, my peace, my presence and my heart….

as if it will help the implosion go somewhere instead of the inner inside and away with a force that could sweep the rest of me with it.

Posted in me on the inside..., moments in freeze frame...