memory

Wrong Somehow – ND #45

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Photo: L. Weikel

Wrong Somehow

Have you ever had that experience where you write down (or type) a word that you use often, perhaps even daily, and it suddenly trips you up? You can’t stop looking at it. You’ve spelled it the way you always do (or at least you think you have), but no matter how hard you try to just move on, in this moment, it looks misspelled. It looks wrong somehow. So you try to spell it another way but that doesn’t look right either.

I wonder about that. What little blip or glitch took place in side my brain that has me looking at a word I’ve seen and spelled and used a million times, only to have it feel entirely unfamiliar?

Perhaps it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with the insides of my brain. Maybe it’s simply a function of perspective.

Not Always Words

Actually, my most recent experience of this phenomenon didn’t have anything to do with words. It had to so with a photo, an image I collected.

The photo is of the reflection of some birch trees in a puddle that’s on the verge of freezing solid.

I know exactly where I took the photo and how the milieu appeared to me at the time I took it. Indeed, it stopped me dead in my tracks. There was a quality to the moment that demanded I capture it.

The thing is, every single time I try to ‘save’ the photo in my laptop’s library, it refuses to behave. It apparently prefers a sideways stance. But that’s when that funny feeling suddenly starts up.

It looks right to me sideways. In fact, when the photo is on its side, I’m reminded of something that feels like a visceral memory. I’m reminded of a view from the inside of a cave looking outward, and it feels like I’ve been here before.

I feel like I’m looking up and outward. Photo: L. Weikel

Change in Perspective

All of which, again, reminds me of the power of changing (or at the very least shifting) our perspective. But it’s tricky, isn’t it? Is there a way to trigger a shift in perspective? I can’t say I’ve ever been able to consciously attempt to do it with words (as in, make myself think a word suddenly looks misspelled or out of place).

And maybe that’s the thing. Maybe it isn’t supposed to happen with the words. Or maybe it just… doesn’t. Maybe it’s all about our ability to transport ourselves elsewhere through our mind’s eye.

(T+45)

Missing Our Girl – Day 829

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Sheila Maloney – Photo: L. Weikel

Missing Our Girl

It’s funny how memory and emotions work. Sometimes it seems there’s no rhyme or reason why a loved one (human or otherwise) suddenly comes to mind and slices open our heart unbidden. When I opened my eyes this morning, lingering in that between space of neither awake nor asleep, I suddenly found myself overcome with missing our girl. Missing my Sheila.

Grief is like that. It’s sneaky and cruel, in a way.

If I scratch the surface, though, I probably only label it as cruel because the intensity of that missing, the sudden, excruciating awareness of that void, can knock the breath out of us – especially when we don’t see it coming. And that’s sort of how it is after they’ve been gone a while.

And so it was this morning as I lay in bed, swimming to the surface of consciousness, remembering who and where and when I am, that I yearned to hold my puppy Sheila again. I remembered with acute clarity laying in bed with her years ago, stroking the white streak that ran down her nose and always reminded me of a feather, telling her what a precious puppy she was.

The Fire Brigade (Tigger, Spartacus, Cletus) – Photo: L. Weikel

Something In the Air

About an hour or two later, I took a photo of Spartacus (her son), who was snoozing in front of the fireplace with two of his (feline) brothers, Cletus and Tigger.

I texted the photo to my youngest son without a word of context.

His response? “Wow, what babies. Miss that pup.”

Then a handful of seconds later: “Oh. Wow. I thought that was Sheila.”

Sheila was his pup. Or I should say, he was her boy.

For whatever reason, her memory, her essence, the loving energy that was our ‘Sheila Monster,’ was visiting both of us today. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts – it didn’t matter where we were. Her playful, protective, and utterly sweet-natured essence enveloped us both in the memory of her love.

Sheila: “MY Boy” – Photo: L. Weikel

(T-282)

Remember to Heal – Day 800

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Photo: L. Weikel

Remember to Heal

No, I’m not suggesting that you’ve forgotten that you need to heal something you’ve put on the back burner. The title I chose for tonight’s post is a reminder of the words President-elect Biden used early this evening when he and Vice President-elect Harris, along with their spouses, paid tribute to the over 400,000 people who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19 over the past year. We must remember to heal. The crux of his speech was that healing cannot take place without embracing our memories and allowing ourselves to feel. We must remember in order to heal.

When we sustain the loss of someone we love and cherish, it can feel like we’ve been burned. We shy away from the flame. We don’t want to go there again. It hurts too much.

But the truth of life and love is that we cannot separate our emotions. It’s impossible to parse out only the so-called ‘good’ feelings and emotions and simultaneously refuse the existence of the harder, more painful ones. You simply cannot have one without the other. They truly are two sides of the same coin.

Yet We Try

Just because the pain comes with the joy, the delight comes with the sorrow, doesn’t mean we won’t try to separate them. Of course we will – at least, most of us will try. As humans, that seems to be our default nature.

And that’s pretty much been our national reaction to this pandemic up to this point. There’s been a denial by many of the devastating loss. The deaths – so many, so staggeringly predictable, yet callously rejected as true. And the utter loneliness in which so many were forced to endure these losses.

Now, We Remember

This evening we were finally given permission to acknowledge the losses many of us, and so very many of our brothers and sisters, have sustained – and are enduring at this very moment. We remember. We know. We acknowledge the truth of our love, our relationships, our heartbreak, our loss.

Now, we start to heal.

(T-311)

Doing the Grunt Work – Day Forty Nine

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Doing the Grunt Work

I’m afraid this second-to-last post in 2018 is dismally pedestrian. But necessary.

I spent the day today doing the grunt work I spoke of yesterday, only today was the piece by piece examination, recycling, and, when necessary, shredding. I’m astonished by the volume of paper I’ve purged.

I only have about three short piles left to examine in this fashion, and tomorrow is my deadline.

I’ll confess: the stuff of Karl’s, I’ve saved (euphemistically, at least) for tomorrow. And I’m not going to beat myself up over any of it. If I need to save half a dozen file folders for a couple more years – or thirty – or 100 – so be it.

Purging My Old Hats

Instead, I’ve been engrossed in reliving my work lives at the two institutions prior to devoting the vast majority of my time to my shamanic practice.

It’s amazing to me how much I forget from year to year. It makes me wonder if that’s unique to me or if most people allow vast chunks of detail to float down the river of memory, too. Sometimes I wonder if I deliberately let go of a lot of memories by recording my life contemporaneously in journals.

I don’t know if that’s true – but it does provide me with a modicum of comfort.

So many details seemed so important at the time, and the urgency of a lot of it came back to me as I re-read emails I’d saved and reports I’d written. And now…wow. So many issues we dealt with have become exponentially worse.

I think the biggest surprise, however, is how freely we used our social security numbers on so many documents only 15 years ago. Wow.

My Shredder – My Best Friend

As a result, I’ve been shredding my behind off. Indeed, I literally overheated our shredder twice today. We started smelling burning plastic and then a long band of red light (that I’d never seen before) appeared beside the small green ‘on’ light, and the shredder stopped working completely.

We even used our social security numbers as ID numbers for our health insurance plans! I don’t think we had any inkling of the dangers we’d routinely face around identity theft.

Speaking of identity theft…that was another memory I’d put into the back of my mind and recollected in all its complicated detail today. I’ll definitely have to write about that experience one of these days.

The bottom line, though, which I believe the comments many of you so generously shared on Facebook confirmed, is that this purging is necessary. It’s perfect. It’s an extraordinarily empowering way to begin not only a new year but also a new chapter.

(T-1062)