(Doorway into the woods. October 2008. Photo © Robin)
When you follow your bliss… doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.
~ Joseph Campbell
quotes
All posts tagged quotes
(My feet at the beach. November 2007. © Robin)
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Stevo has been wondering: Where are the feet photos in the blogosphere?
Well, here they are again: My feet. I wonder how well my feet posts will compete with each other in terms of getting the most hits.
One of my favorite feelings in the world is that of my feet in the sand. Mud is good too, but sand is best. Snow isn’t so bad either, now that I think about it. But my feet can’t take a lengthy excursion barefoot in the snow.
This photo reminds me that it might be nice to get a pedicure, even in the midst of winter when my toes rarely make a naked appearance anywhere (mostly in the shower/bath and on the yoga mat these days). My feet could use a little spoiling. They’ve been working hard lately, putting in a lot of mileage in an effort to meet my 2008 walking goal of 1,000 miles.
I almost forgot: The music.
Bibliomom recently left me a comment that was essentially a challenge of “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
So, here’s mine:
It’s one of many I’ve collected over the years. Here is an inside view:
The pen likes to ham it up and insisted on being included in the photo.
Some of you may be wondering what this is all about. Amuirin asked me where I get my quotes. I replied that I keep a journal of quotes, writing things in whenever I come across something that I like and/or might like to read again or refer to later. Bibliomom commented that she has a quote journal too, and said she’d show me hers if I’d show her mine.
Don’t you feel as though you just circled back to the beginning of this post?
The journal pictured is one of several. I’ve been keeping this sort of journal for quite a few years and have managed to fill up a few books. Sometimes I paste in photos or things I’ve torn out of a magazine or newspaper, but mostly I copy in quotes from books or a variety of other sources.
I also keep a personal (handwritten) journal, but I don’t have a collection of them because I’ve been known to burn them as a way of transitioning from one year to the next. There are some years I’d prefer to forget. Burning the journals doesn’t make me forget, but it is cathartic. All that bad energy turned to smoke and ash.
I didn’t have the time or a good place to artistically or prettily arrange the journal photos this morning. I’ve been so busy with my other masterpieces:
Pickling peppers. Lots and lots and lots of peppers.
With all the pickling, canning, and freezing going on around here, the rest of the house is a royal mess. Finding a dust-free, clutter-free surface wasn’t easy. The ottoman in the living room volunteered. And even that could use a quick vacuuming to rid it of the little kitten hairs.
I’m going to try to remedy the messy house situation today. M and I will be going to the market again tomorrow and that may mean another few days (or week) of food preservation. I figure I should grab hold of this opportunity to clean house while I can.
Not that I’m terribly worried about it. The harvest will be over soon, and winter will make its way here. There will be plenty of time to clean, organize, and rearrange in the coming months.
Still, I would like to give it a good Autumn cleaning before we close up the house to protect ourselves from the cold. We may be having summer-like weather this week, but I’m not going to let that fool me. I know the ways of northeast Ohio. Once we enter the month of October, snow could arrive any day.
I’ll leave you with this morning’s view of the pond:
(This just reminds me of more work: See those weeds growing around the edges? I’ll be out there later today with a huge rake, pulling them out of the water. We’ve found it’s more effective if we pull them by hand — or by rake — than spraying them. It’s hard work, too. Builds muscle. And character, so I’m told.)
(My lovely niece. Photo by Robin. July 2007)
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future.
~ Gail Lumet Buckley
(Longwood Gardens pathway. Photo by Robin. 2007)
The secret of life is in the shadows and not in the open sun; to see anything at all, you must look deeply into the shadow of a living thing.
~ Ute saying
(The body of a tree. Photo by Robin. 2007)
Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon as well as all the pilgrimage places … I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.~ Saraha
As I slowly approach the age 0f 50 (the turn of the decade occurs in December 2008), I find myself finally (FINALLY!) beginning to feel comfortable in my body. But lately I’ve felt more than comfortable. I’m actually enjoying myself.
I thought, at first, this was a brand new feeling, one I’ve never had before. But then it occurred to me that I must have felt this way as a child. Happy, joyful, glad to be in my own skin.
I haven’t had plastic surgery. I haven’t lost a lot of the weight I need to shed. I still have the aches and pains that come with getting older, various parts beginning to feel a lifetime of usage. I still have to take care with my back injuries.
Perhaps that’s it. The back injuries. The call to action. The decision to honor and care for my body as I wish I had been doing all along.
It’s interesting how life set up this series of coincidences. There have been quieter wake-up calls that I’ve ignored over the past few years. Then I got hit hard with the back problems and being unable to walk. What’s interesting, and coincidental, is that if we’d stayed in the Bogs, hadn’t gone on a sabbatical adventure, I’m not sure I’d have pulled myself out of the dark pit of pain. Well, maybe. Eventually. But the move to a new town with new things to explore forced me to do something while I waited for our insurance to kick in.
My waiting wasn’t passive as it might have been at home. It was an active waiting. A waiting in which I went faithfully to the gym every morning, even when I couldn’t do more than hang on to the rails of the treadmill and shuffle along at 1 mph. Even when all I could do was sit on the bench of the weight machine and hang there, in a kind of sitting traction. Some days the better part of the workout was just getting to the gym. Walking down the hallways, riding down in the elevator, walking down more hallways, opening doors. Those simple acts, things we all take for granted, were often all that I could manage. Sometimes more than I thought I could manage, making me push myself beyond what I perceived to be my limits, limits enforced by pain or by my own thinking.
Then one day I was able to pull down the bar of the lat pulldown machine. I discovered that walking uphill was less painful than a level or downhill course.
I was moving. I was doing. I was being.
I’ve lost a few inches. Weight/strength training will do that to a body. I’ve also lost about 10 lbs. But it’s not the loss of weight or inches that has me enjoying the feel and look of my body.
The change occurred within my soul or spirit or mind or whatever you want to call it.
I sat with my pain, listening to it, encouraging it to tell me what I needed to do next. I learned from it.
And now, now I’m discovering the awesomeness of the human body. The way it can bounce back, if given even half a chance, some nurturing, and some love. The way it can somehow work around the injuries, heal around them in such a way that it’s possible to start feeling normal again.
Cool beans. 🙂
(Green frog by the pond. Photo by Robin. 2006)
An old pond
a frog jumps in
Sound of water– Matsuo Basho
Another old post revisited.
(Photo by Robin. 2006)
Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~ Robert Brault
Ain’t that the truth?
It’s the little things that tend to excite me, bring me joy, or make me feel content with life. It’s the little things that can throw off a day, too.
Little things I enjoy:
- My granddaughter (of course she’s on the top of my list!)
- Holding hands with my husband
- Hugs
- A good laugh
- Spotting an unusual (to me) wildflower or mushroom while hiking/walking
- A long, hot shower
- Sitting on the beach, watching the waves roll in
- Time to read a good book
- Cooking a delicious meal
- Taking a few moments each day to do a gratitude list, mentally or by writing it down
- The Best Socks in the Universe (might as well link to them since, like it or not, it’s usually my top entry)
- My favorite comfy cotton hoodie
- A cool breeze on a hot day
- A cup of tea, any kind of tea
- A good conversation with my sons
- Deep, deep breaths, the kind that go right down to my toes (I can do that now that I don’t smoke)
- Smoke-free environments
- The scent of fresh air that wafts through the apartment when I open the windows
- Listening to the spring peepers at night
- Watching fireflies in the summer
- Picnics
- Snow
- Rain
- Sunshine
- Moonlight
- Watching someone I love enjoy themselves in some activity
- Sitting quietly, being in the moment
- Walking barefoot in dewy grass
- Letting the colors of a sunrise or sunset wash over me
- Floating in the pond
- The sound of thousands of bees buzzing in the wildflower meadow
Well, this could go for a very long time (and it’s sounding a little like one of those dating things: “I enjoy long walks on the beach, picnics in the park…”). Some of these things aren’t really little things, either (my granddaughter, for instance, may be young and small in stature but she’s a big deal in my life).
Let’s make this an interactive post. I know there are people out there reading. Time to speak up. What are some of the little things in life you enjoy?
(Yosemite. Photo by Robin. 2006)
And we who have always thought of joy as rising, would feel the emotion that almost amazes us when a happy thing falls. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(Moon over the Bogs. Photo by Robin. 2006)
Sometimes I look at something and I think it’s so wonderful.
And then I realize I was pointing out a fact
That was as obvious as the moon.~ Hsu Yun
Bountiful Healing 