Today is the last day of mu life up until now. I'm in the process of detaching from my sojourn at Ft. Hood. Got off work early (my team lead made arrangements to have me covered), didn't make my numbers (contacts instead of widgets), came back to my room (home for seven weeks), did an hour in the little weight room (treadmill, weights, what the hell is happening to me!). Now this. Giving myself permission to mull over the moment.
I didn't used to "do" goodbys. I would try to treat leaving like business as usual. After a while, I learned that a kind of compromise Ho!
Sometimes it was okay, a choice to not emote feelings which were private and which I wasn't either sure exactly what they were or, if I could seperate out and recognize an emotion, I wasn't up to putting words with the feeling.
There was some sort of embarrasment about this.
Like when I was a kid looking away when the cowboy kissed the girl (or his horse).
It was a mixture of a desire to look, a movment in the chest reagion (and later somewhat lower region), and a pain that seemed might overwhelm me. Acturally, no one told me not to cry when I felt like it, felt sad, or lonely in advance of the parting.
I actually don't seem to have the chemistry for easily crying and that has sometimes been quite painful.
I learned this from experiencing times when crying just came out and it felt good not to have to try to do the emotions with words.
It gets closer to essece of the moment vs maybe the meaning
Along the way to now I was fortunate to have it brought to my attention, through some pretty emotional partings,
that sharing what you value about another person,
lets them know that you see them and perceive them, and that this actually feels good.
By being seen one knows more readily that one actually exists.
it possibly may encourage them to recognize or reconnect with and perhaps own their presence on the planet as a gift requiring ony that they show up, be present, be in touch.
One also
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Baby Massage in the Military
This morning I did a Briefing, where I talk about the Military and Family Life Program, for a Baby Massage Class. It was four or five couples sitting on the floor in a living room here at one of the facilities where all kinds of military classes and training happen. The point wasn't to teach the babys how to do massage, of course, but it was an amusing thought that crossed my mind. Stepping from the brightly lit hallway with a floor shined as only the military seems to be able to do, into a carpeted, lamp-lit, quiet space felt almost as though I'd been "beamed up" into some other time and place. The woman who was facilitating the class was dressed as though she was in/from India, her face partially hidden by the scarff covering her head and a very sweet and peaceful smile. And get this, one of the parents was a dad. It all felt so, well, so not what I would have thought to find here on one of the biggest military bases on the planet. Welcome to the paradox of the modern military.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Bits and Pieces
Last weekend I drove to Austin. I know a young man named Austin whom I like quiite well. I think that may be why I've found myself already predisposed to like the city Austin.
Austin is about the same travel time as from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon - an hour and twenty minutes or so. Without the high desert and alpine scenery. Much of what I did see was like parts of Rt. 66 going west from Seligman, AZ. The old parts. The look of the small, one story buildings, the ages of which appeared to date back to the era of two-lane roads and gas pumps with round globes on top, road side exhibits for ruins and two headed chickens, the look of rural farmland and scrub desert built over and now passed through by the interstate. The land itself is reminiscent of some of the desert surrounding, say, Phoenix or Tucson, the high desert part that is a lot of limestone and then some juniper or mesquite and grass cover. It was, after all, under the same ocean as the rest of the southwest, the several oceans one should say. Shells and other remnents of sea life to be found in the rocks. In the rain it smells to me kind of like the ocean as does the desert around southern AZ when it rains there. Or, maybe it's just my imagination.
Ever read a book called High Tide in Tucson (Barbra Kinsolver)? Title comes from an essey about how the crabs in her aquarium still move to the rythem of the tides moving in oceans they no longer inhabit. Not exactly the same thing as what I'm talking about, but this book and her others, which unfold in and around Tucson, are really satisfying for me, especially because I experience the physical energy of the terrain that is the setting for her thoughts and tales. Her connecting it to the larger picture of larger forces moving us like the sea life far from the sea is a reminder that I am like that as well and this is the same sea bed "all the way here in Texas" as there in Arizona or New Mexico and much farther north.
Austin Impressions:
Skyline with the mirrored rectangles; one etherial glass tower softened and exalted by a curving top swooping to a point in the sky, crystal light and lite in the morning sun; the old fashioned dome of the Capital building on a hill in the middle distance, set amongst a forest of tree tops and then the State office buildings and then the rest of the city; the college campus and "requisite" football stadium an expectant battlefield (the feeling I have in looking as I pass not unlike that of visiting other battle fields - of violence and intense activities somehow still perceptive in the air and earth); chain hotels, car dealerships, eateries of all the familiar national varieties with an occasional holdover wedged in here and there among them, hold outs from when they were the places to stay; getting off on 6th Avenue following the signs to the Visitor Center and finding myself on a quiet street lined with pubs, eateries, salons, souvenier shops, and the feel of rediscovered, redone old town anyplace USA, e.g. Sante Fe, Sedona, Flagstaff, New Hope, Seattle, Cleveland, and any place around a college campus.
Colorful buildings, colorful names, a kind of Disneyland for adults. In fact, I see almost no children, a fact which comes home to me when a family pushing two kids in a carriage and one in tow wandering behind, come around a corner and I have to move to the side to let them pass.
Here is a lovely 12 or 14 story hotel who's architecture bespeaks old wealth and old politics just a couple blocks south of the capitol. And low and behold, the Visitor Center is right here down town like it says on the signs and it is my luck that on this Laborday weekend Sunday, there is little traffic and a light crowd and a place to park seems suspiciously easy only a couple blocks away (in a Loading Zone marked Tow Away Monday-Sat. between 6:30 - 8:30AM. I ask a couple of people if they know if the parking meaters and this sign are monitored on Sundays. Just to be sure. Being towed would spoil the outing kinda. They just shrug appologetically, being tourests as well. I take a chance and eventually happen upon someone else parked in a similar place and decide to go for it. I win this lottery.).
The map I get is really helpful and the guy at the Visitor Center points out the highlights, the Capitol, the U., the Lyndon Johnson Library, the headquarters and huge market that is Whole Foods, the park by the river (is this really the Colorado as I'm told? How can that be?!) where there's a children's park and a crossing bridge under which the "world famous" colony of bats lives.
These bats exit their crevaces in a huge cloud every evening around sunset. The bridge when rebuilt included these as part of the plan to encourage them and protect them. They were thought to be a protectrion against a Typhoyd fever epidemic in the early 20th century and it appears to have worked, as it was much less severe in Austin than in other places.
Every evening under the gaze of thousands of human eyes the bats come out. I stay late to witness this and though it's a bit disappointing in that dark bats, even by the hundreds of thousands, are hard to see against the night sky, being with the people on the river bank, with the paddle wheel and private schulls and other boats plying the waters below, and the hundreds lining the railings of the bridge, it's a festive feeling to the end of my day.
I walk for several hours just taking in the sights and feel of the place. It is remeniscent of my time in San Francisco and once again I feel satisfied in conecting with this place by foot.
Eventually I notice I'm really hungry and stop in to have a 2:30 "brunch" which turns out to be Tex-Mex and quite good. It feels good to sit and after lunch wander over to the old hotel and up a grand stairway inside to a lounge area with settings of leather couches and chirs and bookshelves filled with hard bound books. I pick out one at random, a Clive Cussler mystery, and open it also at random. It manages to catch my interest and I read until I doze off. Some time later, voices passing nudge me awake. I decide the cool space in the middle of the hot afternoon feels right. So, I leave this venue and go to a small movie theater around the corner which is playing something I've wanted to see. It turns out that food and drink is served during the movie, right where you're sitting. In front of the seats and between the rows, there is a counter to put things on and an isle for the waitpersons to move to serve you. The preshow is Bevis and Butthead introducing home grown Japanese television comedy of the sort that involves people dressed in large rubber bea costumes doing bizar slapstic which is sometimes quite humerous.
After the movie, I wander down to the river where there is a rowing club and a pathway and also some pretty high-rent hotels. There are several bridges besides the one with the bats. It's peaceful to sit on the "dock of the bay". The railing along the bridge slowly begins to gather it's watchers, the sun goes down eventually peaking readly through one of the arches, a big dog jumps in off the end, kids throw sticks, and one or two stars come out. And the bats are finally flying. I'm glad.
Now I can go home. It's time. The drive just long enough to be restful but not so long as to pose a sleep-driving experiment. Killeen, TX. Who'd thought I'd call here home, even for a short period. Have you ever heard of Killeen? But, here's a footnote. My dear friend Marcy's sister was born here when her father was at Camp Hood in the "big" war.
At least, I think that's what she said. The other thing that's interesting is Marcy grew up in part on the same street in Bay Villiage, OH that my sister now lives. Maybe I'm part of Marcy's family and this is home. Naw (at least to Killeen)!
Austin is about the same travel time as from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon - an hour and twenty minutes or so. Without the high desert and alpine scenery. Much of what I did see was like parts of Rt. 66 going west from Seligman, AZ. The old parts. The look of the small, one story buildings, the ages of which appeared to date back to the era of two-lane roads and gas pumps with round globes on top, road side exhibits for ruins and two headed chickens, the look of rural farmland and scrub desert built over and now passed through by the interstate. The land itself is reminiscent of some of the desert surrounding, say, Phoenix or Tucson, the high desert part that is a lot of limestone and then some juniper or mesquite and grass cover. It was, after all, under the same ocean as the rest of the southwest, the several oceans one should say. Shells and other remnents of sea life to be found in the rocks. In the rain it smells to me kind of like the ocean as does the desert around southern AZ when it rains there. Or, maybe it's just my imagination.
Ever read a book called High Tide in Tucson (Barbra Kinsolver)? Title comes from an essey about how the crabs in her aquarium still move to the rythem of the tides moving in oceans they no longer inhabit. Not exactly the same thing as what I'm talking about, but this book and her others, which unfold in and around Tucson, are really satisfying for me, especially because I experience the physical energy of the terrain that is the setting for her thoughts and tales. Her connecting it to the larger picture of larger forces moving us like the sea life far from the sea is a reminder that I am like that as well and this is the same sea bed "all the way here in Texas" as there in Arizona or New Mexico and much farther north.
Austin Impressions:
Skyline with the mirrored rectangles; one etherial glass tower softened and exalted by a curving top swooping to a point in the sky, crystal light and lite in the morning sun; the old fashioned dome of the Capital building on a hill in the middle distance, set amongst a forest of tree tops and then the State office buildings and then the rest of the city; the college campus and "requisite" football stadium an expectant battlefield (the feeling I have in looking as I pass not unlike that of visiting other battle fields - of violence and intense activities somehow still perceptive in the air and earth); chain hotels, car dealerships, eateries of all the familiar national varieties with an occasional holdover wedged in here and there among them, hold outs from when they were the places to stay; getting off on 6th Avenue following the signs to the Visitor Center and finding myself on a quiet street lined with pubs, eateries, salons, souvenier shops, and the feel of rediscovered, redone old town anyplace USA, e.g. Sante Fe, Sedona, Flagstaff, New Hope, Seattle, Cleveland, and any place around a college campus.
Colorful buildings, colorful names, a kind of Disneyland for adults. In fact, I see almost no children, a fact which comes home to me when a family pushing two kids in a carriage and one in tow wandering behind, come around a corner and I have to move to the side to let them pass.
Here is a lovely 12 or 14 story hotel who's architecture bespeaks old wealth and old politics just a couple blocks south of the capitol. And low and behold, the Visitor Center is right here down town like it says on the signs and it is my luck that on this Laborday weekend Sunday, there is little traffic and a light crowd and a place to park seems suspiciously easy only a couple blocks away (in a Loading Zone marked Tow Away Monday-Sat. between 6:30 - 8:30AM. I ask a couple of people if they know if the parking meaters and this sign are monitored on Sundays. Just to be sure. Being towed would spoil the outing kinda. They just shrug appologetically, being tourests as well. I take a chance and eventually happen upon someone else parked in a similar place and decide to go for it. I win this lottery.).
The map I get is really helpful and the guy at the Visitor Center points out the highlights, the Capitol, the U., the Lyndon Johnson Library, the headquarters and huge market that is Whole Foods, the park by the river (is this really the Colorado as I'm told? How can that be?!) where there's a children's park and a crossing bridge under which the "world famous" colony of bats lives.
These bats exit their crevaces in a huge cloud every evening around sunset. The bridge when rebuilt included these as part of the plan to encourage them and protect them. They were thought to be a protectrion against a Typhoyd fever epidemic in the early 20th century and it appears to have worked, as it was much less severe in Austin than in other places.
Every evening under the gaze of thousands of human eyes the bats come out. I stay late to witness this and though it's a bit disappointing in that dark bats, even by the hundreds of thousands, are hard to see against the night sky, being with the people on the river bank, with the paddle wheel and private schulls and other boats plying the waters below, and the hundreds lining the railings of the bridge, it's a festive feeling to the end of my day.
I walk for several hours just taking in the sights and feel of the place. It is remeniscent of my time in San Francisco and once again I feel satisfied in conecting with this place by foot.
Eventually I notice I'm really hungry and stop in to have a 2:30 "brunch" which turns out to be Tex-Mex and quite good. It feels good to sit and after lunch wander over to the old hotel and up a grand stairway inside to a lounge area with settings of leather couches and chirs and bookshelves filled with hard bound books. I pick out one at random, a Clive Cussler mystery, and open it also at random. It manages to catch my interest and I read until I doze off. Some time later, voices passing nudge me awake. I decide the cool space in the middle of the hot afternoon feels right. So, I leave this venue and go to a small movie theater around the corner which is playing something I've wanted to see. It turns out that food and drink is served during the movie, right where you're sitting. In front of the seats and between the rows, there is a counter to put things on and an isle for the waitpersons to move to serve you. The preshow is Bevis and Butthead introducing home grown Japanese television comedy of the sort that involves people dressed in large rubber bea costumes doing bizar slapstic which is sometimes quite humerous.
After the movie, I wander down to the river where there is a rowing club and a pathway and also some pretty high-rent hotels. There are several bridges besides the one with the bats. It's peaceful to sit on the "dock of the bay". The railing along the bridge slowly begins to gather it's watchers, the sun goes down eventually peaking readly through one of the arches, a big dog jumps in off the end, kids throw sticks, and one or two stars come out. And the bats are finally flying. I'm glad.
Now I can go home. It's time. The drive just long enough to be restful but not so long as to pose a sleep-driving experiment. Killeen, TX. Who'd thought I'd call here home, even for a short period. Have you ever heard of Killeen? But, here's a footnote. My dear friend Marcy's sister was born here when her father was at Camp Hood in the "big" war.
At least, I think that's what she said. The other thing that's interesting is Marcy grew up in part on the same street in Bay Villiage, OH that my sister now lives. Maybe I'm part of Marcy's family and this is home. Naw (at least to Killeen)!
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