Feeling Good

Recently I've been feeling really good.  It could be the Celexa working combined with my thyroid medication; which has coincidentally allow me to drop over 20 pounds!  I am trying to not over-think this new 'system' but recognize that I am truly grateful for its benefits.

That being said, I would like to give a big Thank You to all of the world's energies that have come aligned for me to experience this newly felt goodness in my life.

Humbly,

Jenn

Two-Take Exchange: Take 4

Swap number four! This swap's image was chosen by yours truly, Aubree, and the following is my "take" on it. I don't title these things, but if I were to title this one, I think I would call it "The Vain and the Obliterated."

As usual, you can pick up Jenn's "take" if you wander over to my blog, Akashic Aisles (follow the signs to the basement). We hope you enjoy both perspectives. Feel free to leave comments, unless you are a spam-artist: in which case, we cordially invite you to...suck it.

"Speculate, Perspirate, Suffocate; all the while forgetting to Calculate the odds stamped upon the heavens and delivered unto our hands...both of our hands...without a digit to spare." -A.L.

Basking in a light that is not the sun, while resting on an ocean floor that is now the same as any other surface...dry, and without purpose. Nobody sees it, but it's coming.

So blind is she that she wishes only to use its heat to change her skin tone, struggling as she is to be the card that society flips over in a match to itself.

"Society." This term and its implications will be told - as parables of warning - under an ashy sky to the unfortunate heirs of the Cleansing.

Unfortunate? Who am I to say? There are gifts hiding in the strangest of places: perhaps under a broken shell left behind by a parched and foresaken ocean?

Nobody sees it, but it's coming.

The broken shells on hardened sands will be tools rather than reminders - or novelty bits of decor, for it is true that such luxuries will become naught but smoky memories that will soon enough turn to cold, but fruitful legend. And the next cycle: will they starve themselves of the fruit?


I wonder. 


Is that a magnifying glass that she doesn't see? How fitting. As her hair is caught by flame and fury, she thinks only of the card she aspires to be in a game about to end. "Do these highlights bring out my eyes?"


Even her grand illusion is brought together in pieces - one frame at a time - like the simplest of all puzzles. Still she cannot see the clues meant to remind her of Origin and Errand.


 She flaunts an Armani dress and flashes her best smile.  Silly, distracted girl.


 It is not the mermaid that is fabled.


Never have the fabled been falsities; and never have fairy-tales been stories reserved for any but the young...For there isn't an Old one among us.


Nobody sees it, but it's coming.



Post Written by: Aubree @ Akashic Aisles: The Basement View

Take-Two Exchange: Take 3

Blog-Swap number three is upon us: I, Aubree (author of Akashic Aisles: The Basement View), am posting my “take” on the below image, while Jenn – who runs this blog, Embrace Your Crazy -  is posting her perspective on the same image across the way at,  The Basement.  And…Voila!  The “swap” has been swapped. 

Before moving on, though:

Already, in three swap-a-roos, I have learned something rather fascinating.  Of course I knew that individual interpretation of all things artistic covers a vast expanse from one person to another.  I did not realize, however, how different the manner in which we discover our interpretations of a single piece can be, and often is. 

For instance, I have learned that I am not detail oriented in my artistic ruminations.  An image does not affect me in parts and pieces; it affects me as a whole…as a story (which, I suppose is not entirely shocking, once considered).  Rather than seeing it as a slow and unraveling depiction of line and color, art impacts me like a tidal wave, and my emotions continue to follow the tale past the point of impact and well into the undepicted village that lies beyond the frame.

Sure, this is an interesting discovery I have made about myself; but that is not why I am sharing it.  I am prefacing the following text with this revelation, because I believe it necessary to do so.

Now, onto the tale: beginning at the point of visual introduction to the simultaneous point of impact….and beyond.

"The masons build, alter, and determine a structure's facade - brick by brick, but be of right mind in knowing that you can fire and replace the masons at will. A continent can be intimidating in its vast and changing terrain, but be of right mind in knowing that the smallest bit of sand and a sufficient wind can change the face of a mountain" -Aubree Luke

  

I have been given occasion to take the Lookout’s seat in two separate watchtowers, each of extreme gift...and consequence.  The towers have been placed on opposite shorelines on the same continent, but they might as well be galaxies apart, except for what they have in common: the light within, and the misery that encompasses their views. 

The two know of each other, because I know of them – invited as I have been to climb the miles of rickety stairs that exist within both.  Also, the continent that divides them sends tales about one to the other, as frequently and garishly as possible.  Yet in truth, they know nothing of the other that can flaunt more value than the briefest glimpse gained as their lights quickly cross, without stopping.   

If only they would stop…. 

One tower is much larger than the other, and despite its weakening foundation, the masons insist upon adding more stone (these are the same masons that refuse to repair the winding and wobbling interior staircase that leads to the light source).  Without considering the tower’s view, the people that run to and fro - casting havoc throughout the continent that divides the towers - think it within their privilege to throw rocks of contempt at this larger of two towers; yet strangely, no mind is paid to the masons who hurriedly add more and more mortar, brick, and stone…yielding not to the cries of the foundation as it screams under the crushing weight. 

The smaller of the two towers is so much the measure that it is but the slightest fraction in bulk of the larger, and though its foundation remains sound in structure, the small tower sways precariously at the mercy of passing winds.  The inhabitants of the continent between the two towers pass harsh judgment upon the smallest, demanding to know why it does not fight to obtain more stone and mortar for itself.  And, in fury and frustration, the continent’s populace covers the frail tower’s facade in obscene graffiti; however - yet again - the masses do not thwart, nor condemn the masons who have chosen to leave the building materials by the side of the road to be weathered and deteriorated by time and element, rather than putting them to good use for the sake of the small tower (these are the same masons that refuse to repair the winding and wobbling interior staircase that leads to the light source).  No one stops to consider the swaying tower’s view. 

On the exterior, these two towers seem to have nothing in common.  It takes climbing the worn and beaten interior of each to understand the viewpoint that they cast their wavering, but constant light upon.  And rest assured, my friends, it is true that each member of the dividing continent(s) will have the same occasion as I, and eventually, the land between the two will lose acreage as Compassion makes water out of land, allowing the towers to move closer to one another.  Indeed, eventually their lights will not be so eager to pass each other by, and they will share a view of commonality that sows a growing reverence.  Finally, when the masons are given their share of responsibility, the faltering stairs accessing the climb to higher perspective will be restructured with blueprints of safe and nurturing priority. 

The two structures will become one, needing only a single light. 

Yet, understand (so as not to be misled with treacherous idealism) that there will be other Towers with viewpoints divided.  They will rise again and again, until every structured pair has housed every light, and every continent in between is dissolved.  Then - and only then - will we all be at home...in the same castle. 

Tonsil Stones!

Tonsil stones are known as tonsilloliths which are calcified matter that gets trapped in the crevices of your tonsils.  Nice, huh?

They can weigh 300 mg to 42 g.  Can you guess how much this little gem weighs?  I've added a penny for ease of estimation!

Tonsil stones are putrid, disgusting, cheese-like, curdled yogurt nuggets which I commonly refer to as gag-a-licious, vomitsville, and utterly repulsive.  The doctor says there is nothing to worry about except horrible breath 24/7.  Oh, that's great, it's not like I ever have to talk with anyone on the job.


You can get them out on your own with the assistance of a q-tip and a little nudge on the tonsil or you can visit the doctor and have them pry it off of your tonsil with a metal instrument- when a tooth pick just won't do the trick.


It's good fun.  So, the next time you're bored on a Friday night, have a peek into your throat or stop on by my house.


There's always free popcorn.

The Two-Take Exchange: Take Two

Hello to you!  Once again, I, Aubree - fellow blogger and good friend of Jenn, am slinking out of The Basement to do my part in our second blog swap by sharing my "take" on the below image with Jenn's readers, just as Jenn, herself, has taken a break from "embracing her crazy" (ha! as IF) to write her words, as inspired by the same image, on the walls of my Basement.  <---click here to view Jenn's "take."  This is our second "swap" thus far, and I am exceedingly proud of both she and I for our dedication.  I mean, seriously: we could've just jumped ship after the first one, but alas...we are warrior princesses that do not give up so easily! 

I hope you enjoy our two takes (this time, completely different - one from the other - as opposed to the parallel thinking that ensued within last week's "exchange").  Happy reading!

I perceive life...within death.

I died.  And never looked back.  Not much to see, in the end.

I rose above the deafening cacophony that was life…and walked away. 


I walked away.  It was easy.

By and by, the joke is on you, my friends…if you still believe in the boatman.

As it is, ‘tis how it must be.  So, I laugh...

Souls perch like ravens, trying to decide who and what is ominous among them.  Keeping score, even in death.  Fools.

Angels speak only to the living, because the living are the only ones desperate enough not to listen.

I died; I chose a direction.  So will you.

I am not the raven; I am not the water.  I am the boatman, ferrying my own clandestine(y) and collecting my own dues.

And by and by, the joke is on you, my friends…if you still believe in the boatman.

The Butterfly Effect

  “and is it right, butterfly, they like you better framed and dried” TAmos

What does anything anyone does matter?  The answer is simply, everything.

I’ve recently thought about this concept and how it relates to everything in the world.  If this is the first time you’ve heard about this, think of the phrases- chain reaction, avalanche effect, chaos theory, and snowball effect and you’ll begin to get the idea.  

As a society, we’re so not in tune with our actions and the implications they cause.  Mostly because we’re only consumed with ourselves, that we barely take the care to give a rat’s ass about other beings, things, or creatures.

I find the quote below interesting.  It shows the relevance of how one simple, natural motion can perpetuate a chain reaction of immeasurable proportions. 

“This is an illustration of the butterfly effect - the idea in meteorology that the flapping of a butterfly's wing will create a disturbance that in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere will become amplified eventually to change the large scale atmospheric motion, so that the long term behavior becomes impossible to forecast”  Quoted by R.C.Hilborn (Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1994). 

So, if we alter the natural course of life, in a very small, seemingly insignificant way, are we altering everything in the world that was meant to naturally occur in the future?  I believe we are. 

Our actions and choices are shaping the future at an exponential pace.  The further we continue to destroy the minutest things we encounter, the less we’ll be able to understand how to forecast the future.

The Two-Take Exchange: Take One

Hello to the readers of Jenn’s blog, and congrats on your willingness to Embrace Your Crazy!  I am interrupting this blog to inform you that Jenn and I have decided to - every so often – engage in a “Blog Swap.”  In case you are unfamiliar with the term, it goes like this: We will choose an image of interest and without exchanging any thoughts before or during the process, so as to avoid any accidental interloping on the other’s view-point or “take” (which is why we call it the "two-take exchange") - we will each write a little (or a lot) about what we see or feel, as provoked by the chosen imagery.  We will then trade our perspectives to be posted on the other's blog. This is our very first go at it, and as it happens, I seem to have written a mini-novel on this initial post (what can I say: I just write what falls into place). But I imagine that the tone, texture, and length will vary from imagine to image and post to post, as will the form and genre.  This, of course, is by design…to keep it interesting. Below is my "take" on the attached image.

You can find Jenn's "take" on my blog  <--- Click here and look for the post with the matching image.

So, without further ado, I introduce to you my “Take One…”

The eleventh hour barks a hasty order as false as its own existence.

The old woman's raspy breaths were shallow and growing more and more distant, so as to match the waning depths behind her eyes.  Her family surrounded her in silent reverie, letting the decades of memories they shared with this sweet and selfless woman slip quietly down their cheeks. The only sounds in the stark and indifferent hospital room where the beeps and blips of the machines that measured the short time she had left coupled with the sniffles and pacing feet of her family members that were a precious kind of measurement of a timelessness gone by.

For the last few days, the old woman's adult children and grandchildren had taken turns whispering to her that it was "okay to let go" and assuring her that “they would be all right” without her.

She knew they meant well, but she couldn't help but wonder at what point they had decided that anyone other than she would know when it was time for her to loosen her grasp on the last string that bound her to this world. In a way, it amused her as she thoughtfully wandered back on the time in which she had offered the same well-intended, but misguided "permission" to her own mother…twenty-five years earlier.

‘We can be so foolish in times of impending loss,’ she thought to herself.  Inwardly, though, she was grinning with compassion.

She heard the door to her room swing gently open, and without opening her eyes or having to hear a voice, she knew that the person on which she had been waiting had arrived.

Grief-stricken and tired from a geyser of emotion and a four hour flight from California, her twenty-two year old granddaughter, Maggie, had answered the old woman's unspoken call…across the miles.  She had come to say farewell, after all; she had mustered the strength to face the fading embers of the woman who had influenced her happy life more than anyone else ever had, or could.

The old woman smiled inwardly, again. The rest of the family had felt sure that this was more than Maggie could handle, and Maggie herself had thought the same. But the old woman had known better…truer. 

After the shuffling embraces and whispers of the rest of the family as they greeted Maggie at the door, the room became completely silent except for the old woman's over-burdened lungs and the noise of the machines that everyone thought had been keeping her alive these last few weeks, when all along it had been the promise of Maggie's presence that had filled her old heart and kept it beating.

As granddaughter made her way to grandmother, the two generations between them dissolved with every step, until time seemed an empty and meaningless notion.

Maggie stood over her grandmother and took her old, tired hand into her own tender and youthful grasp. The young woman jumped a little with surprise when she felt the frailty of the hand she held turn to a hard and firm grip. A surge flew through Maggie's body and caught in her throat. She could not speak. She could not breathe.  Her heartbeat was thunder in her own ears.

The rest of the family looked on, unaware.

The blast of energy pulsing through her very being brought with it a vision, a memory.  In a matter of seconds, the young woman relived every detail of her grandmother telling a tale of wonder to a raptly engaged five year old version of Maggie.  It was a story of two doors: one displaying a perfectly vertical sign that read "Dream," and the other was marked with a skewed sign that boasted, "Reality." A little girl - no older than Maggie's five years- stood before the two doors, at the instruction of an angel, trying to decide which to open...which to enter.

"Which one do you think she chose, Maggie-May?" her grandmother had asked.

After a long and focused deliberation, five year old Maggie answered, “I don’t know, Grammy.”  Her young and unencumbered eyes searched the gently lined face of her grandmother, looking for a hint or revelation.

"Well, when you think you know, you come tell me, okay?" And with that, Gram kissed Maggie’s forehead and sent her off to play.  How she loved to watch that child play…and dream.

As the years passed, Maggie would approach her grandmother with an alternated guess, and not just any guess; oh no, Ms. Maggie was a thinker.  She always had been.  She pondered each door with heartfelt reason and warrant, changing her mind from week to month to year, and each time she did and presented her newest guess (and accompanying explanation), the old woman would smile sweetly down at young Maggie, and would utter a thoughtful “hmmm” and nothing more.  The young one would search the old one for any gleam of a hint, but all she ever got was all that was ever offered: a loving smile and a kiss on the forehead.

As the years cartwheeled on, eventually Maggie forgot about the two doors, and her grandmother never mentioned them again. The tale of the doors had become a riddle lost in the folds of life...until now.

Without realizing she had moved at all, Maggie rediscovered her place - in a strange semblance of time - stationed on a chair beside her grandmother's bed, with her head bowed and resting on the back of the old woman's hand, onto which she still fiercely held. Even through the bedsore creams and other ointments, Maggie could smell that old familiar and heartwarming scent of age and wisdom that came with being close to her Grams.

"Look around you, Maggie-May. What do you see?"  It was her grandmother's voice. Maggie snapped her head up quick enough to give herself whiplash. Her grandmother laid there, eyes closed and taking quick breaths that made her chest move almost imperceivably. Looking back at the rest of the family, no one showed any sign of having heard Gram speak aloud.  Maggie turned quickly away from her loved ones: she could barely stand to see the pity that painted every one of their faces into a sad and emotionally wayward distortion.

The old hand tightened its grip on her young hand. And, again, she heard her beloved grandmother speak aloud, except…from within. "Tell me what you see. Look closely, Mags. It's easy to miss…but not for you, my girl. You've always been able to see what others cannot, because you see with your mind. Now, look."

Maggie looked around the room: stark, stale, medicinal. She looked back again at her family, all of whom had moved in closer, surrounding her from behind like a wall of broken hearts. It was almost more than she could stand. As her eyes were in route – with contemplative intent - back to her grandmother's face, she saw it.

Through the window, a beam of sunlight was pushing aside the gray clouds that had thickly veiled the sky since Maggie had arrived back in her home state a couple of hours prior. The ray shone through the window's glass with little effort, and as Maggie followed its trajectory, she smiled slightly to discover that it ended on the left side of her grandmother's chest, precisely underneath which lay her heart.

And then, she was thrown into a perpetual state of déjà vu. No…not déjà vu. Maggie was stumbling around in her own mind as extrasensory activity forced its way outward. She knew that the nurse was going to peek in to let them know that visiting hours were almost over two seconds before it happened. She heard her mother mumble under her breath, saying, "They will have to drag me out of here," moments before she said it. She felt her father's hand on her shoulder a full minute before he placed it there. And she knew the words her grandmother would "speak" just as they echoed in her mind.

"You've seen this before, Maggie." It wasn't a question.

"Yes." And after a moment, "So have you."  Also, not a question.

Maggie knew before he asked that her brother was going to question, "Who are you talking to, Mags?"

She hadn't realized that she had spoken aloud, but it didn't matter. She knew she could have continued this conversation with her grandmother in silent thought exchange, but she did not.  The importance of sound and silence seemed to be as mutually torn as the very fabric of time.

"We've been here together, Gram…haven't we?"

The family stood united in shocked mystery, and then, came her father's hand on her shoulder. Maggie put her own hand up to knock away the sympathetic words her father was about to send out on a breath of pity and misunderstanding. At her gesture, the room became completely still.

Gram's voice filled Maggie's head, "Which door did the little soul choose, Maggie-May?"

"I am the girl?" This time it was a question.

"Yes…you and I and every other soul whose travels have brought them to the same choice; the same...challenge."

"So, if you and I have both been here - seen this - before, then..."

"Yes?" Maggie could detect eagerness in her grandmother's question.

"We chose both doors, didn't we?" A question. "Expecting a difference. "Not a question.

Gram squeezed Maggie's hand, and after a brief moment of pondering, Maggie burst into a fit of laughter. She waved the approach of her concerned family away, but continued to laugh until tears ran free, like rain on a sunny day.

After she gathered herself, and ignoring the worried looks of her family (and a nurse that had entered to investigate the raucous), Maggie sat in silence for a while. Finally she spoke, this time without sound, "But if you knew the truth, why did you pick the other door, too?"

"Because I knew you would.  It was your second choosing, and we all need to walk through both doors to realize there is never a need to walk through both doors.  They are interchangeable.  Two doors: one destination.  It’s seldom that a soul figures it out on the first go ‘round.  So, I came along – a third time - to help you remember…just in case.  It was my choice of sacrifice, and I made it happily…for you.”

"You went through the same experience a third time, even after you had solved the ‘riddle?’"  She looked at her grandmother’s quiet face in disbelief, and then in offense, but she continued to communicate with thought. “What does that say about me, Gram, that you should have so little faith in me that you would endure the bore of a completely foreseeable lifetime?”  She was almost angry. “If others can figure it out on their own, why couldn’t I be expected to?”  Maggie was feeling a lot like a huffy child, yet somehow her inquiry seemed justified.

"Is that what you think?" Gram’s chuckle filled Maggie's head. "Well, there are still many years and lessons before you, Maggie-May, but I will give you a small hint on these matters:  First of all, nobody goes at this alone.  We all have help.  Never forget that.  Secondly, choice will always rise up and meet the ‘foreseeable’ head-on, my love. Always."

Before Maggie could respond, Gram cut her off by necessity, but also because she had a last silent favor to ask of her granddaughter. "Sing to me, Mags. Sing my favorite song as I untether from this world.  I have more doors to open, and I need my rest."

Maggie smiled even as a single tear escaped, and feeling joy and understanding, she said aloud, "I love you Grammy."  Then, she fell comfortably into the melody and verses of This Little Light of Mine.  By the time she sang the last note, Maggie-May had all but forgotten what she had just shared and "heard," and when the machines let the family know that Gram had passed, she joined her family as they embraced in love and mourning.

Thirty-five years, and two (or three?) shared existences later, Maggie sat her granddaughter upon her knee and told her a tale of an angel, a child, and two doors.