So, it's been awhile since I last wrote. More than a year. I was just reading a post from a friend of mine who writes his own blog. He mentioned the "light at the end of the tunnel" with a photo for punctuation. He also related the idea of emerging with that of the time of year being Lent, with Easter on it's way soon. For some reason, today, this rang true for me. I find myself emerging in my life in so many ways, and so I'm thinking that I will spend some time writing about this in the next few weeks. This time of year, we in Wisconsin are emerging from Winter into Spring. Sometimes, this means that when I walk outside from having been in for awhile, or after we have not seen the sun for many days, I feel like a mole that is emerging from her hole, seeing the sun, and, blinking/squinting, has to take some time to readjust to daylight again. I find myself surprised and somewhat perplexed by this each time it happens. But, it seems to be a natural evolution for this time of year, the seasons changing, and now, my own emerging in life which seems to be symbolic of the many other ways I'm emerging! (That last sentence sounds a bit redundant). I don't have a lot of time right now to expand on this, but I wanted to put it out here before I forgot; to start a germ of a thought, to expand on later.
The sun is out, but not directly shining today. Maybe a good place to be, since I'm emerging and full, bright sunlight might be too blinding.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Monday, January 18, 2010
Been Busy.....
Just a note to say I am planning on finishing up my thoughts about living here in the Midwest. Hopefully by the end of the week.
Thanks!
Carolyn
Thanks!
Carolyn
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tired but Happy part 2
A few more days have passed since I had intended to finish up this note. However, it seems providence has provided a few more things to enable me to finish this up quite nicely.
Some of you may be familiar with a movie called, "Pleasantville". This movie spoke to many things, but the one I wanted to emphasize was the sense of people living "life as it should be", rather than the life they could live, but might be a bit more risky or scary, but also more fulfilling. The movie is set in the 1950's, and as such, is also filmed in black and white. Thus, my earlier reference to living in a black and white world, or existence. Since moving here, I have really felt as if I had gone back in time about 30 years. Everything seemed so backwards and "old", especially seen in the buildings around me, which, unlike California, have often been there much longer, since there have been no earthquakes here to destroy them. And, on days (or weeks) when the weather is cold and gray outside, with no sunshine in sight, it can often seem as though life is old and gray. Especially in Winter, I so miss the life I knew in California, with all the signs of life around me; the ocean, the wind, the sunshine on my face, the many colors in the flowers and foliage, the many activities of the people around me, and the animals on land and sea. Whenever I have had the opportunity to visit California in the winter, I am always amazed by the vividness of the colors around me. The flowers almost shout to me of their liveliness in their bright hues. It is hard to ignore them.
The contrast to living here is unmistakable. And, somehow, it seems that life imitates art here as well. The black and white exterior of life seems to embody the lives of the people who live here, and I don't know which came first. (We'll bypass the whole chicken and the egg thing). This is now my 16th winter spent in this place. I have had time to contemplate this to some extent. This has given me some insight into things, a bit of understanding about why people here are the way they are. I can understand getting sucked into the depressiveness of the weather, the cold, the gray, and over the years, to kind of come to expect this as a part of the life cycle, or the seasons of the year, etc. It can bring about a sense of the sameness of life, of having a set of expectations that are rarely challenged, and even a sense of the stoic, as if "I've gotten through it", or, "it won't get the best of me", a sense of being hearty, hale, and in that, also a non-questioning of the status quo, because by doing so, you might tip the equilibrium and upset things, at which point, chaos ensues. Yet, in all this time, I have yet to find a way to transform my own experience so that I could maximize the time of winter, in order that it doesn't bring me into depression, or lull me into a state of "just getting through", going about my day to day activities in a kind of mind-numb that parallels the feeling in my feet when I stand outside in the snow too long. Living in the status quo. There is no change to the monotony of cold, but I don't want that monotony to seep into the rest of my life.
This may seem to be rambling, but I am getting to the point. The question for me has been, "What will change things?" And, up until now, I haven't had an answer to that. To read the answer, tune in tomorrow, when I will finally (hopefully) finish this up!
Some of you may be familiar with a movie called, "Pleasantville". This movie spoke to many things, but the one I wanted to emphasize was the sense of people living "life as it should be", rather than the life they could live, but might be a bit more risky or scary, but also more fulfilling. The movie is set in the 1950's, and as such, is also filmed in black and white. Thus, my earlier reference to living in a black and white world, or existence. Since moving here, I have really felt as if I had gone back in time about 30 years. Everything seemed so backwards and "old", especially seen in the buildings around me, which, unlike California, have often been there much longer, since there have been no earthquakes here to destroy them. And, on days (or weeks) when the weather is cold and gray outside, with no sunshine in sight, it can often seem as though life is old and gray. Especially in Winter, I so miss the life I knew in California, with all the signs of life around me; the ocean, the wind, the sunshine on my face, the many colors in the flowers and foliage, the many activities of the people around me, and the animals on land and sea. Whenever I have had the opportunity to visit California in the winter, I am always amazed by the vividness of the colors around me. The flowers almost shout to me of their liveliness in their bright hues. It is hard to ignore them.
The contrast to living here is unmistakable. And, somehow, it seems that life imitates art here as well. The black and white exterior of life seems to embody the lives of the people who live here, and I don't know which came first. (We'll bypass the whole chicken and the egg thing). This is now my 16th winter spent in this place. I have had time to contemplate this to some extent. This has given me some insight into things, a bit of understanding about why people here are the way they are. I can understand getting sucked into the depressiveness of the weather, the cold, the gray, and over the years, to kind of come to expect this as a part of the life cycle, or the seasons of the year, etc. It can bring about a sense of the sameness of life, of having a set of expectations that are rarely challenged, and even a sense of the stoic, as if "I've gotten through it", or, "it won't get the best of me", a sense of being hearty, hale, and in that, also a non-questioning of the status quo, because by doing so, you might tip the equilibrium and upset things, at which point, chaos ensues. Yet, in all this time, I have yet to find a way to transform my own experience so that I could maximize the time of winter, in order that it doesn't bring me into depression, or lull me into a state of "just getting through", going about my day to day activities in a kind of mind-numb that parallels the feeling in my feet when I stand outside in the snow too long. Living in the status quo. There is no change to the monotony of cold, but I don't want that monotony to seep into the rest of my life.
This may seem to be rambling, but I am getting to the point. The question for me has been, "What will change things?" And, up until now, I haven't had an answer to that. To read the answer, tune in tomorrow, when I will finally (hopefully) finish this up!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Tired but Happy part 1
Tonight, I realized that it's been two weeks since I started this, and I haven't added anything else to it. Not exactly what I had anticipated! Maybe I had to let it digest a bit first. There's the "good" side, and the "bad" side to this.
I think my life is at some kind of crossroads. On the one hand, my day to day life has gotten much fuller, which is the "good" side. On the whole, my daily life, except for a brief spurt between April and July, has been pretty solitary outside of work. Some of that has been of my own doing, a sort of "personal time" away from the noise and haste. But, a lot of it has been not of my own doing, but more a factor of location. I've always told myself, before I lived here, that I could be happy wherever I was, because happiness comes from within, but also, one can decide to be happy and find the things and places that contribute to that in their environment. However, this notion really got tested once I moved to this area about 16 years ago. Maybe it was partly my own expectations, or partly it was my lack of knowledge about the realities and actualities of the ability of culture to shape one's experience, especially if one has not been any other place to experience any other culture other than one's own. I guess to put it bluntly, it was like, "When Worlds Collide", except not in the global, sci-fi sense, but in the real life, conversational, interactional way, which actually tends to seep down deeper and begins to affect the soul when you find that suddenly, you are the "different" one, instead of the one that tends to blend in to the surroundings, or at least, has much common ground with the other natives in the local village. It still amazes me that we can call ourselves one country, the United States, and yet, life can be vastly different in almost every way from one state to the next, or even one area of 200 miles or so in any one direction. Basically, after not such a long time being here, to steal from another movie, I realized, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore......". And, I missed my version of Kansas very much. Maybe because, more like the opposite of the movie, it felt like my Kansas(California) had gone from the wonderful colors of Oz back to a black and white tornado-infested Kansas, otherwise known as Wisconsin.
At first, I tried shaking it off; "I can do this. I've got the skills, I've got the desire, this is my new home, I'm making a go of it". Then, I'd tromp off to make my world more colorful. The only difficulty that I hadn't factored into my nice theory was that, unlike me, the other natives of the village didn't really want to live in color; they rather liked their black and white existence, and, in fact, thought it was full of color! I think, for the longest time, I worked really, really hard to try to "see" the colors they saw, but, to my chagrin, it never seemed real to me, just still black and white with shades of gray. Oh, and the other thing was that these people seemed to also live in a rather 2-D world, when I was used to 3-D. That takes a bit of getting used to, also; in fact, I've found myself off kilter more than a few times, trying to re-adjust my sights and "fit in" to the new land I inhabited. But, it wasn't very comfortable, and I grew tired of always feeling off kilter, wondering how these others thought this to feel so "normal" in their world. I felt like a hexagon that was trying to adjust myself to fit into a square box. It gets a little cramped after awhile. And, trying to explain a world in 3D when the natives only see 2D gets to be a bit trying after awhile, especially after getting the same kind of faraway look that says, "I have no idea what you're talking about." So, slowly, I began to pull away from the crowd, and find a way to feel more comfortable. And, the funny thing is, I suddenly found myself spending lots more time by myself, which of itself wasn't a bad thing, but, over time, I did start to feel as if I were really quite an uncommon kind among these parts, and I'd have to search beyond this village to find some like minded folk.
Due to technical difficulties, this message is being delayed until further notice. (Editing: This is taking longer than I thought, so I will finish this up tomorrow). :-)
Same bat time, same bat channel.
I think my life is at some kind of crossroads. On the one hand, my day to day life has gotten much fuller, which is the "good" side. On the whole, my daily life, except for a brief spurt between April and July, has been pretty solitary outside of work. Some of that has been of my own doing, a sort of "personal time" away from the noise and haste. But, a lot of it has been not of my own doing, but more a factor of location. I've always told myself, before I lived here, that I could be happy wherever I was, because happiness comes from within, but also, one can decide to be happy and find the things and places that contribute to that in their environment. However, this notion really got tested once I moved to this area about 16 years ago. Maybe it was partly my own expectations, or partly it was my lack of knowledge about the realities and actualities of the ability of culture to shape one's experience, especially if one has not been any other place to experience any other culture other than one's own. I guess to put it bluntly, it was like, "When Worlds Collide", except not in the global, sci-fi sense, but in the real life, conversational, interactional way, which actually tends to seep down deeper and begins to affect the soul when you find that suddenly, you are the "different" one, instead of the one that tends to blend in to the surroundings, or at least, has much common ground with the other natives in the local village. It still amazes me that we can call ourselves one country, the United States, and yet, life can be vastly different in almost every way from one state to the next, or even one area of 200 miles or so in any one direction. Basically, after not such a long time being here, to steal from another movie, I realized, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore......". And, I missed my version of Kansas very much. Maybe because, more like the opposite of the movie, it felt like my Kansas(California) had gone from the wonderful colors of Oz back to a black and white tornado-infested Kansas, otherwise known as Wisconsin.
At first, I tried shaking it off; "I can do this. I've got the skills, I've got the desire, this is my new home, I'm making a go of it". Then, I'd tromp off to make my world more colorful. The only difficulty that I hadn't factored into my nice theory was that, unlike me, the other natives of the village didn't really want to live in color; they rather liked their black and white existence, and, in fact, thought it was full of color! I think, for the longest time, I worked really, really hard to try to "see" the colors they saw, but, to my chagrin, it never seemed real to me, just still black and white with shades of gray. Oh, and the other thing was that these people seemed to also live in a rather 2-D world, when I was used to 3-D. That takes a bit of getting used to, also; in fact, I've found myself off kilter more than a few times, trying to re-adjust my sights and "fit in" to the new land I inhabited. But, it wasn't very comfortable, and I grew tired of always feeling off kilter, wondering how these others thought this to feel so "normal" in their world. I felt like a hexagon that was trying to adjust myself to fit into a square box. It gets a little cramped after awhile. And, trying to explain a world in 3D when the natives only see 2D gets to be a bit trying after awhile, especially after getting the same kind of faraway look that says, "I have no idea what you're talking about." So, slowly, I began to pull away from the crowd, and find a way to feel more comfortable. And, the funny thing is, I suddenly found myself spending lots more time by myself, which of itself wasn't a bad thing, but, over time, I did start to feel as if I were really quite an uncommon kind among these parts, and I'd have to search beyond this village to find some like minded folk.
Due to technical difficulties, this message is being delayed until further notice. (Editing: This is taking longer than I thought, so I will finish this up tomorrow). :-)
Same bat time, same bat channel.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Number One!
Well, I've finally done it. I've gone where many have gone before, but thought it would be a place I'd only visit. I've taken the dive into the sea of bloggers. I've heard it's quite a large sea, so maybe I should change that to "ocean". I'm hoping mine is a friendly ocean, mostly calm, with nice, surfable waves, not too choppy, very few storms, and lots and lots of nice, bright sunshine. I never thought I would join this particular ocean, mostly because I never really thought I had much to say that anyone else would really want to read. However, I have come to realize that this is really an exercise more for me than it is for anyone who chooses to read here. Most of us have probably at least heard about journaling, if not done so ourselves; I certainly have. However, lately, I haven't had much enthusiasm for putting pen to paper, so it's been awhile, and most of my real life journals are collecting dust.
I have also found, much to my great joy and surprise, that a few friends of mine also have blogs, and I've very much enjoyed reading through them at all hours of the day/night, depending on when I have the time. I like the fact that I can hop on this magical thing called the internet, or as some call it, "the interweb", and easily hook up with my friend's pages, enter their lives either where they are currently, or jump back to the past that I haven't fully caught up with yet, and re-live some of their old memories. This has allowed me to feel much more connected to them, their families, and feel as though maybe they really aren't as far away as they once seemed (even though one lives in Africa and the other one in Holland). Yes, this magical device makes the world a little bit smaller, and more accessible. And, fantastically enough, it's something I can afford! (That's a big bonus in my world). Having lived in the Midwest for the past 16 years, and having not really been able to travel much except to California and Idaho, I have to say I have felt "landlocked" and isolated in this area also known as the Great Lakes Region of the U.S., part of the Great Plains (it is very flat around here), or, as some just 30 minutes north of me like to say, "The Frozen Tundra". Unfortunately, I have to agree with the last definition, and it's that way more often than I would like. I often feel as though I haven't quite adapted to this different "culture", and so, never quite feel "at home" here. Being able to read my friend's blogs, and hear what they're up to, helps me feel not so isolated, and more "at home" here in this land I now do call "home". Being able to travel in my imagination to a warm Africa for awhile can ease me into the soon-to-come winter, even as the wind is howling outside my window tonight during a rain storm. (I am thankful for rain, knowing they are having a drought in Africa and Calif.). Taking a trip to Holland, or Amsterdam, or Germany, depending on where my friends there are traveling, helps me to remember that I'm not alone in terms of feeling different in a place that doesn't much care for different people. I also get to do some really cool sight-seeing without the expensive plane fares! Now, that's something. In addition, I get to try to see things from a different perspective; maybe I'm stuck in a rut of gray days with no sun, or struggling with a conundrum in my head, and I just need a break; my friends give me great opportunities to tune into something outside my own life experience (I can imagine myself enjoying a nice mango with Lisa, or going on a walk with Maury the dog through the village with Gretchen), and by doing so, enlarge my own world in the process. I know that by reading about their adventures, I have become more attuned to current events, politics, art, history, music, religion, culture, literature, social justice issues, emotions, and maybe most important, the qualities of faith, hope, and love. What else in this world holds us all together, anyway? To me, it's all about connection. Where would we be without connection to one another?
So, my intent is to brush up on my writing skills, put down my thoughts on various and sundry topics, which hopefully will be wide-ranging, and perhaps, in the long run, I will be able to become a more thoughtful, enlightened human being. And, maybe you will find something you like here that you also want to comment on, put your two cent's worth in, rant about, or just say hi. I hope this will be a place where we can engage one another in conversations. Many, many conversations. I look forward to hearing from you! And, who knows....maybe in 10 years, I could earn another Master's Degree, this time in Surfing; only, it would be on that great big ocean called the World Wide Web that I have just become a part of!
I have also found, much to my great joy and surprise, that a few friends of mine also have blogs, and I've very much enjoyed reading through them at all hours of the day/night, depending on when I have the time. I like the fact that I can hop on this magical thing called the internet, or as some call it, "the interweb", and easily hook up with my friend's pages, enter their lives either where they are currently, or jump back to the past that I haven't fully caught up with yet, and re-live some of their old memories. This has allowed me to feel much more connected to them, their families, and feel as though maybe they really aren't as far away as they once seemed (even though one lives in Africa and the other one in Holland). Yes, this magical device makes the world a little bit smaller, and more accessible. And, fantastically enough, it's something I can afford! (That's a big bonus in my world). Having lived in the Midwest for the past 16 years, and having not really been able to travel much except to California and Idaho, I have to say I have felt "landlocked" and isolated in this area also known as the Great Lakes Region of the U.S., part of the Great Plains (it is very flat around here), or, as some just 30 minutes north of me like to say, "The Frozen Tundra". Unfortunately, I have to agree with the last definition, and it's that way more often than I would like. I often feel as though I haven't quite adapted to this different "culture", and so, never quite feel "at home" here. Being able to read my friend's blogs, and hear what they're up to, helps me feel not so isolated, and more "at home" here in this land I now do call "home". Being able to travel in my imagination to a warm Africa for awhile can ease me into the soon-to-come winter, even as the wind is howling outside my window tonight during a rain storm. (I am thankful for rain, knowing they are having a drought in Africa and Calif.). Taking a trip to Holland, or Amsterdam, or Germany, depending on where my friends there are traveling, helps me to remember that I'm not alone in terms of feeling different in a place that doesn't much care for different people. I also get to do some really cool sight-seeing without the expensive plane fares! Now, that's something. In addition, I get to try to see things from a different perspective; maybe I'm stuck in a rut of gray days with no sun, or struggling with a conundrum in my head, and I just need a break; my friends give me great opportunities to tune into something outside my own life experience (I can imagine myself enjoying a nice mango with Lisa, or going on a walk with Maury the dog through the village with Gretchen), and by doing so, enlarge my own world in the process. I know that by reading about their adventures, I have become more attuned to current events, politics, art, history, music, religion, culture, literature, social justice issues, emotions, and maybe most important, the qualities of faith, hope, and love. What else in this world holds us all together, anyway? To me, it's all about connection. Where would we be without connection to one another?
So, my intent is to brush up on my writing skills, put down my thoughts on various and sundry topics, which hopefully will be wide-ranging, and perhaps, in the long run, I will be able to become a more thoughtful, enlightened human being. And, maybe you will find something you like here that you also want to comment on, put your two cent's worth in, rant about, or just say hi. I hope this will be a place where we can engage one another in conversations. Many, many conversations. I look forward to hearing from you! And, who knows....maybe in 10 years, I could earn another Master's Degree, this time in Surfing; only, it would be on that great big ocean called the World Wide Web that I have just become a part of!
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