Aly's postcard from Georgia.. check out that early 90's vintage photo-look
A peachy-punch sunset
Peach roses... yum!
The peach tree (another one of Aly's postcards from Georgia!)
The first (and only) time I visited Georgia was in my sophomore year of highschool. My family and I went to Savannah for my childhood babysitter's wedding held in a renovated, old, maroon-painted barn. I'm not sure if it was because it coincided with the first time I fell in love or if the place is actually as magical as I remember it (it probably is) but one thing is for sure: I left my heart in Georgia. Among the weeping live oaks and brick-red cobblestone streets, the warm and thick almost unbreathable June air, the excitement of having my first love send me cute text messages for the first time, the historic Squares and homes reminiscent of colonial America, the stately maples, oaks and white hickories that shade the Savannah River and the wild growing yellow jasmine and mountain laurel. Anytime I see a peach or the color peach or taste a peach or smell a peach I think of Savannah and that oh-so-succulent time in my life. New love. New sights. Summertime. Sixteen. I've said it before and I will say it again, some memories in life are sweet and sour all at once. Like a peach. I've heard the saying "life's a beach" but more likely, life is no vacation. Life is sometimes sweet and sometimes sour, sometimes mushy and ripe other times hard and puckeringly bitter. Or as the Zen Buddhist saying goes "10,000 sorrows, 10,000 joys." But from which will you source your own life?
(I also like to think that if life is a peach left to ripen, then life just gets better as we grow up.)
Of course I am going to talk about the impending hurricane set to make its way on the East Coast. How could I not? I have never seen people so freaked out in my entire 23 years of life. Well most people - unless of course you are my brother. Who didn't even know there was a hurricane coming. Did I mention he is almost 21 years old? And in college? And is very intelligent? Yeah... I don't know either. Let's just call it "denial" and "minimisation" (hey, hey Freud!) Because this is the same guy who had a massive phobia of natural disasters as a kid. (I know he isn't reading this so I don't even need to apologize for the embaressment I might soon cause him.) One of my favorite stories of him is when he visited a colonial-era house for a school field trip in kindergarten. My mom was a chaperone so was thankfully a witness to preserve the story for all of history. When the tour guide asked if anyone had any questions (you know, about churning butter and the revolutionary war) my brother raised his little arm and said:
"Did they have floods back then?"
Actually, good question, bud. Did they? I mean I'm sure they did but it seems like Mother Nature has been particularly kind of pissed at us lately. But can you blame her? I think that Mother Nature is trying to tell us something and my guess is that it might have to do with one or maybe all of the following:
1. It's time to slow down.
2. It's time focus on what truly matters (*hint: it isn't external, tangible or on a computer screen.)
3. It's time to just be.
4. It's time to get in touch with ourselves, our families, our loved ones.
5. It's time for us to start respecting and appreciating Mother Nature a little more. I can picture Mother Nature looking a lot like Aretha Franklin and saying R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me!
But in all seriousness I truly hope that Irene's, that is the name of this hurricane, powerful hurling energy goes UP into the solar system or someplace where it can get dried up by the sun and some meteor dust. I pray there is no devastation. I pray everything turns out OK for all of us. I especially pray that my Nana and Pop-pop's shore house will be safe and sound. The house is the most tangible manifestation of my Nana, who recently passed on, that my family has left. The house was her sanctuary. I truly believe that wherever my Nana is right now, she is probably making some negotiations with Irene about this one. She might even be sending swarms of angels to blanket the house and surround it like a big, warm hug.
The dock in the picture above is the dock at her house and it has provided me with over thousands of sun-soaked memories as a child. To this day, I have no fonder memories than the ones I made on that dock playing in the bay with my siblings and cousins - pretending I was a mermaid, drying off on the hot wood planks in the sun, cannon-balls, back-dives, diving contests, searching for clams in the muck at low-tide, putting on water-ballet shows and "commercials," watching the tide move in and out as the bulk-heads went from stubby to tall, watching the dock ramp move from horizontal to practically vertical, using kitchen tongs to pry the crabs off the bulkheads so that we could "play" with them (read: torture them), spending endless hours jumping into the water and climbing up the wooden ladder (and pulling down eachother's bathing suit bottoms as the person before you climbed up), swatting greenheads and yelling "greenie!" a hundred times a day, finding minnows, spotting the occasional snapping turtle, watching seagulls dive-bomb for fish and for the most breath-taking memory to date - spotting a magnificent and mysterious long clear needlefish with strings of electric blue on its insides slithering in and out of the serene, deep green water. The memories that dock has soaked into its wooden planks and barnacled onto its underbelly are the highlights of my life. I pray that dock and all the creatures (those with feet and no feet!) weather the storm.
When you look kool uoy nehW
into a mirror rorrim a otni
it is not ton si ti
yourself you see, ˛ees uoy flesruoy
but a kind dnik a tub
of apish error rorre hsipa fo
posed in fearful lufraef ni desop
symmetry yrtemmys
~John Updike, "Mirror,"
Telephone Poles and Other Poems
*This is because.... sometimes, the inner critic likes to use the mirror against us. Don't let it win! Remember that when you feel ugly it is only a mirage. Remember that we are more than our physical selves. As Geneen Roth says "we are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around."
photo courtesy of one of my favorite websites, The Atlantic
In other words, chaos is really perfect order in disguise. Only we've got our ignorant-human-people goggles on so we can't see the master plan. We don't have the perspective yet. Maybe in 10 years. Maybe not. But the point is, from far away everything seems smaller. And when we have distance from our problems, our minds, our own little words, our own thoughts we realize how tiny they all are.
We also realize that a lot of little things can add up to one big thing. So choose your thoughts wisely. Choose them with care and remember that you are creating clusters of energy with each little thought. Also remember that nothing is ever as big or as devastating as it might seem.
Hello my innerpeachpies, I apologize for having been on hiatus. My mouth sores have gotten pretty bad - or "nasty" as my doctor so eloquently described. I've been on lots of magic mouth wash (children's benadryl + malox), painkillers and yogurt. Sounds delicious right? I also sound like I have a wad of cotton in my mouth when I talk, and when I smile I look slightly similar to a chipmunk - though not as cute as a chipmunk!
In the meantime while I've been doing as much sleeping as possible and have been trolling the blogosphere. I found some really neat stuff... (yup, I did just say "neat" right there)
I don't know why they don't teach this stuff in schools. I really don't. Especially when, more and more, we see the youth culture today exhibiting signs of deep emotional need that is being covered up and "dealt with" through the dangerous avenues of binge drinking, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse and worst of all, suicide. But none of these ways of coping are health-ful or life-giving. They subtract. They take more away from you than you had in the beginning. They make things worse. They complicate matters. They reinflict old wounds and old patterns. In short, they are self-destructive and generate more pain.
We cannot deal with desperate thoughts this way. They will get worse. We also can't deal with desperate thoughts by "thinking" more. Desperate thoughts are exactly what the word sounds like they are "de-separate" - they seperate us from ourselves and from reality. They are not real. As soon as we have a desperate thought we are - for sure - no longer connected to ourselves. We are separated and splinched. We are bolting. We are no longer in the room, no longer in the here and now. We are in la-la-la land and it's a dangerous place to be. You. Do. Not. Want. To. Stay. Here. So what do you do?
1. Call or text someone you trust.
2. Name the feeling to your trusted friend. Whatever it is. For example, is it sadness, guilt, fear, loneliness, desperation, anger, shame, worry, anxiousness....? Is it nameless? (I used to have a recurring feeling and I never found the right words to describe it so I would always call it "hippopotamus grey feeling")
3. Describe thefeeling and where it is located in your body. If the feeling had a color what would it be? Is it blue, green, red, orange, purple, yellow? Is it multi-colored? Speckled? Streaky? Is it round, soft, hard, jagged, furry, fuzzy, slimey, gooey, thick, watery? Is it in your heart, chest, tummy, abdomen, shoulders, stomach, legs, groin? Is it moving? Stationary? Stuck? Throbbing? Be creative and don't limit yourself to the words I just used.
4. Share the thoughts running through your head. Remember, we are only as sick as our secrets.
5. Do not be discouraged if your friend does not understand or is concerned. The point is you are telling someone else. You are sharing the thoughts and feelings with another being who is alive on this earth. You are sharing your story. This simple act of truth-telling and sharing brings us back to ourselves and to reality.
If you do not have someone to call, do this exercise in a journal or call a helpline. Also keep in mind that when in doubt, disengage the mind. Stop thinking. Be aware of your body, your in and out breath. Take note of the sensations in your body. Invite someone in before you spiral down.
"In all instances, you need to examine your addictive thinking. Virtually every spiritual tradition teaches that your higher self is the presence of God within you. When you know this power within yourself, you no longer think in terms of anything that you must have or do with reference to external needs. In Christianity, this inner knowing is referred to in the commandment that says "... for behold, the kingdom of God is within you". In Confucianism we are told, "What the undeveloped man seeks is outside. What the advanced man seeks is within himself." In Buddhism we are reminded, "If you think the Law is outside yourself you are embracing not the absolute Law but some inferior teaching." In Shintoism we are implored, "Do not search in distant skies for God. In man's own heart He is found." And finally, in Hinduism we are told, "God hides hidden in the hearts of all." Within each and every one of us is a divine power that needs no substance or anything external to know bliss."- Wayne Dyer, via The Daily Love
