Jenny's birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday.

Jim and I lived in a contemporary house with a red door in Tallahassee. Actually, it was a lot like the house Jane and I live in now in Sherwood Forest. I woke Jim about two in the morning and we went to the hospital. I don't remember much about after we got there. This was a few years before natural childbirth or anything close to it came back on the scene.

Mama Deer and Daddy Buck were staying somewhere on the west coast of Florida where he was working then. She had come down to stay with him and wait for the baby to arrive. Jim called them early in the morning and they got to the hospital a few hours after we did. So they were there with Daddy all day, waiting for you.

The next thing I remember, I woke up, back in my room, and it was late afternoon, the August Florida sun was coming through the window. Everybody was there, waiting for me to wake up. Jim and Mama and Daddy. When I woke up Jim said, Hey Sugar, we've got a little girl, she's so pretty. Mama went to get the nurse to bring you to me, and she and Daddy left for awhile so your Daddy and I could be alone with you.

When the nurse put you in my arms, I was surprised at how well developed you looked and felt. You didn't have that tiny squishy body and wrinkled red face that lots of new babies have. You looked beautiful and fresh, and when your eyes rested on my face they seemed intelligent and wise. Your little hands waved around in the air, and when your dad touched your hand with his finger, your tiny fingers wrapped around it, and you seemed to like that, which delighted him and made us laugh.

A little later, Mama and Daddy came back in, and they took turns holding you. You were their first grandchild, they could hardly contain themselves they were so happy. Then I held you again, I still couldn't believe you were actually here and in my arms, not my belly. In a way you still felt like part of me, like we were connected.

I guess every family has its stories about the birth of each child, and this is the way I remember yours. I wish I could remember more details, but I was still pretty foggy. But I remember the sheer delight of your grandparents, and your dad's bursting happiness and pride, and the way you felt warm and alive and beautiful in my arms, and those bright, knowing eyes.

When the nurse came and said it was time to take you back to the nursery, your dad said, I'll take her. He took you from me and stood at the door and waved your little baby hand bye bye to me. What a sight that was, he was so big, your tiny head under his chin. He held you like a delicate precious surprise.

Which you were, and are.

Happy Birthday my darling Jenny. My love and joy in you keeps growing all the time.
Mother

from Sara...

AUGUST 20, 2009 8:25 PM
----My relationship with sloth is oblique: I am tortured by saying I will do something and then not, usually because I get so oh busy doing something else. The consequence is feeling that I can't trust myself, a lack of integrity. Faithfulness feels like a way out, though it seems abstract at the moment.----

Sara, that's exactly my relationship with sloth too. But not from being busy with something else. Just from not feeling like it or wanting to. But it's the same consequence you say, feeling that I can't trust myself, that I or others can't count on me.

I am one big question mark as to how faithfulness could be a way out of that, but I too have an intuition that it may be. And I am interested in pursuing the question.

Here are three things I have a strong desire to do and have been unsuccessful with for the last three years or longer. That's a long time. The inability to move these three boulders keeps me in a relationship of weakness, failure and disappointment with myself.

Lose twenty pounds--less food/wine, some exercise
Embark on, pursue, and complete a new writing project.
Rejuvenate a regular morning meditation practice.

One thing I know doesn't work is making commitments. I make them to break them. I can't really see how faithfulness applies here, or could be a way out. This is not a case of "not knowing the good, but being steadfast in its pursuit," is it? So maybe I'm wrong about that. That would leave me still staring at these three desire/obstacles. Right back in our original discussion of "Sloth or Acedia.....to know the good and be lax in its pursuit. Could we seriously attempt to deconstruct this in a way that would make a difference?

Charles says I take myself out of the game right away and make an enemy of the thing I wanted.

The username for this blog is my e-mail, and the password is sherwood. Sara and anyone else reading here, see if that will allow you to post directly onto the blog instead of as a comment. If it works, please put your name in the title as I did Sara's here.

Faithfulness and shifts in human self-definition...

I want to paste here what I responded to Sara, because I think it connects with the idea of, "Changing and available..."

I said to Sara:
"I've been thinking of a rewrite for "acedia--to know the good and be lax in its pursuit." I'm not sure what quality would be the substitute for acedia/sloth. Maybe 'faithfulness.' In any case, I would like us to think about embracing a distinction such as,
Faithfulness....to not always know the good, but to be steadfast in its pursuit..... What do you think?"

She has not responded yet, but I hope she will. In the meantime, I want to add another quote that I think somehow pertains. This is from Julian James, but it was said to me by a friend who is interested I think in the question: Where are we headed, and do we have anything to say about it?"

----'major shifts in human self-definition' are noteworthy, by which I mean we may look back on them as a signpost or marker on our trail...----Julian James

Now I am going to ponder the question--and I invite anyone who is reading this to join in fully --What if anything do these two ideas--new distinction to replace acedia/sloth in our thinking; and major shifts in human self-definition--have to do with each other? What do we learn if we think about them together?

I'm going to see if I can find someone who can show me how whatever comments are posted here can go directly onto the blog in full text.

Changing and available.....

".....I would like my message here to be a changing one. And I would like it to be available. What do I mean by available? Not everyone has a blog or wants to have one. But everyone who reads, would at times like to write. Something. You could do that here. You could say what you want to say on my blog....."

That's what I said the last time I posted here. Rose and Sara wrote back, and that felt good. I like the idea of being changing and available. The changing part, we don't have much choice about. Available is more an attitude or way of being. It can change too. Sometimes I experience myself as available. It feels open and generous, fulsome, rich with possibility. Whether alone or with others. Sometimes I experience myself as not available. That feels not so good.

If we say that this blog is changing and available, would that mean anything to you? What?

Thurs. morning....

I said goodbye here last week on Aug. 1, because the month I had said I would experiment with writing here and writing myself thin had ended.

But this morning it occurs to me that maybe I would like to continue to write here. I am wondering why. It feels like a lifeline. Like a way to keep on writing and keep some possibility alive. Is it that I will get thin by doing it? I don't think so. It just feels like.........a way of staying in the world. I don't think anyone will be reading or listening. But I sit here in the quiet house early in the morning. I look out my window into the trees, and I don't want to be alone.

Yes, I don't want to be alone.

I need companions. And even if I think no one is reading this, at any time, they might be. Like a person stranded on an island sending out bottles with notes in them. Somewhere in the ocean or on a beach, someone might pick me up, my message. Someone may pick it up and write back.

So, what is my message? Charles's message is about the Rincon and about the vision he is crafting for himself. Jenny's message right now is about her renovation. She may have a different message later, but right now the one she is putting forth is about her her house project and her new neighborhood. I like it. I wish she would write more about it.

I would like my message here to be a changing one. And I would like it to be available. What do I mean by available? Not everyone has a blog or wants to have one. But everyone who reads, would at times like to write. Something. You could do that here. You could say what you want to say on my blog. Could that happen? Like a real conversation. I would like to change the name of my blog. I listened to most of the book about the young woman who decided to make all the dishes in Julia Child's cookbook and write a blog about it. Can't wait to see the movie. There developed a regular community around her blog. But there was a focus there, the recipes and the cooking. People responded to that.

Time to say goodbye.....

Well, it's August 1, 2009 today. The end of the one month I decided to try this blog and try writing myself thin. I am not thin. So I can't say that part has worked. But I have done a lot of writing, some of it good, real writing.

During the life of this blog:

Linda Metcalf and I have designed a course on Proprioceptive Converstion, and written a description to submit to Esalen and Kripaulo.

Charles Gohmann and I have embarked on an exciting new writing adventure.

I started and completed a four week online proprioceptive writing group with six terrific, dedicated writers, each doing a Write each week, to which I responded.

I explored and set aside a play idea called The Homestreach.

I have a germ of an idea for a new character voice for Brenda Bynum. I feel like she and I together have at least one more play in us, and this could be it.

I think that's a good month' s work for a not-so-thin, sloth-inclined person.

Thank you to the sweet friends who have read what I've written here. Especially Jennifer Deer and Sara Jenkins for making it a jolly conversation.

Until we meet again, write well, eat well, love well,

Sandra