You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
I didn’t have a particularly good afternoon. I will not elaborate on the details but let it suffice that most of the afternoon I felt very low. If my mood were palpable, it would be like mud—dark, sticky and awful.
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Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
I’ve been pondering gardens quite a bit during the last week. There is something deep within me that yearns to stick my hands into dark, moist earth and smell its fragrance. There is something about being around plants that energizes me. There is something hope-filled about seeing the first sprouts of germinated seeds……
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Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
I caught the tail-end of the lunar eclipse this morning. The first image was taken with a flash and you can see the last bit of shadow passing off the moon face in the upper right edge. In the second image, without a flash, you cannot see the shadow at all but I liked the image nonetheless.
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
The label “wild gardens” is comprised of seemingly contradictory terms. One scholar has written that gardens are “enclosed, protective places that…are metaphors for [the] cosmos in the face of chaos.”1 Similarly, another writer has defined the garden as a symbol for the subjugation of nature2. This would appear to be true: by function, gardens are places where nature is tamed and forced to grow in a particular way by the hand of the gardener….
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Image and text, Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
This is a digital construction made in honor of Heather Blakey’s birthday (AKA “Enchanteur”), founder and owner of the Soul Food Cafe, a mentor to creative people the world over, and an all around great gal! Let the good times roll!
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
It has been hot and muggy for the last few weeks, so I have been taking my daily “power walk” after sundown when it is cooler. Usually, when I walk after dark, I stay on residential streets, so, in the unlikely event that someone should accost me, I can run to a house and get help.
A couple of nights ago, I could not resist taking a different route– down the road towards the beach. The twilight sky glowed in variegated hues of burnt orange and turquoise, and a balmy night zephyr swept in from the ocean. I was in a bit of a melancholy mood, and I thought by going for a stroll down to the beach on such a gorgeous evening, I could lift my spirits.
The road proceeds down a steep grade, passing between a power plant on one side and the holding tanks of an oil refinery on the other. In the daytime, it is not the most attractive place to take a stroll, but in the evening, the structures in these facilities blaze with twinkling lights, taking on the appearance of some futuristic cityscape.
Both facilities are separated from the road by chain link fences covered over by brush and trees, so if there is a need to beat a hasty retreat from an unsafe situation, my only choice would be to run up or down the road– there would be no other place to go. I took that into consideration when I started my walk. I was alert but not frightened– at least not at first.
I started walking downhill, just letting the breeze wash over me and trying to enjoy the sunset. It was refreshing, but I could not rid myself of the growing apprehension that it was getting too dark and I was virtually alone in an industrial area. Should someone stop…… I gripped my keyring and let several keys poke from between my fingers…. Should someone stop, I would be ready.
I heard a noise behind me. I turned and saw a jogger coming down the hill at full tilt. I stepped to one side and let him pass, nodding and mumbling hello as he sped by. I stopped for a moment so he could get far ahead of me. Then I noticed the descanso, a small shrine set up to honor a jogger that had collapsed and died there a couple of years ago. Usually, I found it to be quite a lovely sentiment but at this moment I found it a bit unsettling. I resumed walking.
When I got to the bottom of the hill, I decided it was simply too dark and desolate to safely walk on the beach. I crossed the road to the other side and started back up the hill. I was forced to slow down. Eventually, my breath became labored and my heart pounded. It occurred to me that if I had to run away from something, I probably couldn’t.
Then something caught my eye. Through the brush along the sidewalk, I saw a blue glow. As I approached, I saw another one. For a moment I thought they were a pair of eyes, peering at me through the leaves. Then I realized that they were small solar-powered lights affixed to the chain link fence. Under the lights were two wreaths of flowers.
Another descanso? I was not aware that anyone else had died on the hill! I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I saw a sign next to the wreaths. I stepped off the sidewalk towards the fence. I had to read the sign and see what this was about.
“Psssst.”
I jumped and spun around.
“Pssst”
I could not pin down the source of the sound. It was nearby but I couldn’t determine the direction. And there was no one in sight.
I jumped back on to the sidewalk and hurried as fast I my weary legs could haul me. My mind was processing what I heard. Was the sound that of the breeze rushing through the power lines above? Or a discharge of gas from the power plant across the street? Had I disturbed something in the brush? A bird, a opossum, or something worse? If it was a person, was he angry because I approached the descanso? Was he a…..?
No, no, no. C’mon. I chided myself.
I chuckled and decided that a bout of melancholia and apprehension, coupled with a whole lot of imagination, can make a person misperceive a normal situation.
Yeah, that’s right.
I crested the top of the hill and saw the enclave of houses and apartments buildings of my neighborhood. A couple of blocks away, I saw the warm light of my front porch beckoning me home.
Lori Gloyd © 2007
I spent the afternoon culling my library and re-organizing my books. I am observing, with great satisfaction, my wonderfully neat bookshelves (which will last about a day and a half). In case you are curious about what kind of books I have, here is a tiny sampling of some of the titles on the bookcase closest to my computer:
The Warrior Queens, by Antonia Fraser
Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Woman, 1750-1800, by Mary Beth Norton
Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg
On Writing, by Stephen King
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, by Christiane Northrup, MD.
The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, by Ted Kaptchuk, OMD
The Holy Bible (New International Version)
When the Drummers Were Women, by Layne Redmond
The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff
Understanding Islam, by Thomas W. Lippman
Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue
Webster’s New World Thesaurus
The Star Trek Encyclopedia
The Reader’s Digest New Fix-It-Yourself Manual
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
Doors: a somewhat common metaphor for self-discovery. One steps out a door into a new life and new opportunities. Or one steps through a door to explore her interior world, to find meaning within. Both are valid.
But here’s my problem: when the door swings open, I find myself standing on the threshold. I don’t know whether to go in or out. I don’t know which way to go. The door to the world flies open and the chaos and uncertainty of the world is overwhelming and I hang back. Sometimes, I open the door to my heart and am appalled at what I find there. I slam that door and hide on the back porch. Oi! What to do…….
Here’s a thought: Maybe I should re-evaluate the meaning of the door. Maybe I should consider that, well,….I am the door!
Let me explain: Rather than trying to decide which way to go (inward or outward), I become the door itself. I am simply there and the worlds pass through me. I let the outer world in to influence my interior realm. Everything manifested in the world– nature, people, politics, the arts, books, pancakes, toothpaste-everything “out there”, from the great to the mundane, comes in through the doorway of my senses and my intellect. The experiences of these things become influences that find a milieu within me that is fertile and waiting. The seeds of physical manifestation and actions plant themselves within, and when they germinate and grow, I change within. What happens on the “outside” makes me who I am on the “inside.”
Conversely, that which is within me–my emotions, spirit and psyche– push to come through me, out the door, and into the world in the form of my art, my words, spirituality, love, hate, anger. Everything I express is a manifestation to the outer world of what is happening within me, and, as a result, these expressions influence the world around me. The inner and outer worlds are in a constant state of flux because when one changes the other, then the other turns around and changes the one. And I, an open door, stand there and let them pass by.
Before you say that this is just semantic gymnastics and a lot of nonsense, I do have a practical application. Whenever I look outward and see the world, from the trials of my personal life on up to the great problems of the world, or when I look within and see a knot of emotions or a broken spirit, I just stop and take a breath. I don’t belittle myself for not taking that step forward or doing that intense self-examination. I just let the influences and expressions of both realms pass through me, one going out and one coming in. I stand quiet and let it be.
And then, wonderfully, everything just seems to work out.
Lori Gloyd
Photo: “Venice Doors” © 2005
Text: © 2007
The dictionary offers two definitions for the word “peruse”. One defines the word as “to consider with attention and in detail” and “to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner.” However, the other definition says “to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner.” These two definitions seem at odds with each other. I am inclined to use the second definition. When I peruse, I am doing it without much attention; to skim a book, for example, or to scan a list as another. It is the way I tend to read now. Recently, I read through the new Harry Potter book in just four evenings, racing through each chapter, overlooking details, just so I could get done with the book.
I remember, when I was a kid, I could sit for hours reading. I would savor a book and re-read passages that caught my attention. I could gobble down a thick historical novel, perhaps something by Michener, in just a couple of days. I wasn’t speed reading for distance as I did with the Potter book. I was reading as one totally immersed in the experience of the story.
Today, I can barely read a page or two before I get distracted. My mind wanders. Sometimes I need to re-read a paragraph several times because I just can’t focus. Most times, I just fall asleep.
I blame this partly on the type of work I do. I engage in administrative routines where my attention is constantly being pulled in different directions. I multi-task too much, and as a result, I have lost my ability to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes.
I don’t blame it all on work. Consider movies. The next time you go to a movie, notice how long a scene typically runs–a minute or two at the most before it cuts to another scene. Now compare that scene to one in a movie made in, let’s say, 1935. Those movies were simply plays on film. The scenes were long and wonderful and you could get totally drawn in.
Television is just as bad and the news media is the worst: sounds bites just a few seconds in length. There’s an all-news radio channel in my city that tells its audience “give us 22 minutes and we’ll give you the world.” The news of the entire world crammed into a few minutes. That’s a lot of sound bites.
All of this has conspired to destroy my ability to focus on a book. But it’s done more than that. It has spilled over into other areas of my life. For example, I’d rather fire off a short e-mail than to call someone. And heaven forbid actually having a face-to-face conversation. (I haven’t gotten to text-messaging yet but give me time-I’ll get there)
Even blogging–I rarely write anything that goes off the bottom of the monitor for fear that the reader will get bored and move on. (And I don’t have the attention span to commit to writing anything long…)
That being said, I’d better wrap this up for now because this is getting too long. Let me just say that I would like to go back to the other meaning of “peruse”, the one that infuses whatever we do with a sense of careful attentiveness and leisure.
Now go peruse a good book and take your time.
Lori Gloyd © 2007
DOPPELGANGER
/'dä-p&l-"ga[ng]-&r, -"ge[ng]-, "dä-p&l-'/
Function: noun
Etymology: German Doppelgänger, from doppel- double + -gänger goer
My comments:
Doppelganger: the ghostly twin or double of a living person who is a harbinger of bad luck or death. It is a person’s evil twin.
In spite of the ominous meaning of this word, I just love saying it: doppelganger. It just trips of the tongue. If you see someone walking around mumbling “doppelganger” over and over, it’s just me…
Anyway, I am intrigued by the folklore behind this word: Seeing an exact image of yourself brings death. I would think meeting your evil twin would be a good thing. It is only when we confront our evil selves that we can deal with it. It is how we change and become better. Dragging our flaws and dysfunctions out into the sunlight will bring healing to our souls. Not letting that sniveling, quaking part of ourselves hide in the dark recesses of our psyche will make us whole. Perhaps meeting our evil twin does make us “die” in a way. It makes us die so we can be reborn into a new and fully live person.
Yeah, I like this word.
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
Today’s Word was provided by Wordsmith.org and the pronunciation and etymology by Merriam Webster.
“Neon Groove”
Digital Construction
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
Far out, man! I think 1960’s flower-power was so boss!
This is primarily addressed to my fellow Americans but to those readers from elsewhere, this could be you as well….
*****
Two years ago the levees in New Orleans failed and people died. Last month an ancient steam pipe in Manhattan exploded and a person died. Two days ago a major interstate highway bridge collasped, and, well, people died.
I just don’t get it. In spite of what experts in the field say about our failing infrastructure, little is being done! The federal government says it is the various states’ responsibility to take care of such things. The states say they can’t afford it and it’s federal responsibility.
I heard this morning that it will cost $65 BILLION to upgrade our nation-wide infrastructure. This is not even counting the untold billions of dollars to expand that infrastructure. I don’t think any state can afford their share of this. They’ll have to get it from the feds. Gee, where will the feds get the money? What else could it possibly be spending our tax dollars on instead of our infrastructure. Oh, let me think…. Ok, sarcasm aside, maybe I am being simplistic. The answer is complicated, but we’ve got to do something. People are dying.
What happened to We The People and our committment to promote the general good of the people? (I’m speaking to Americans right now who should know that these words are from the Preamble of the Constitution). We the people elected politicians who care more about keeping their jobs than doing what is right. We the people need to get those people out of office. We the people need to take back our government. We need to take it back for the common good of us all. Complain to your representatives, loudly. Tell your neighbors to complain. At your next election, VOTE!
I know, I’m being naive and simplistic. But tell me, am I wrong?
Fellow citizens, ponder that the next time you accelerate onto that highway transition bridge.
Lori Gloyd (c) 2007
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