Mid Week Drift of Melancholy

I appreciate how the first three lines of Mary Jo Salter's poem speak of the difficulty I have staying in the moment,especially 80 degree September days. Somehow the heat makes anticipating cold winter days even more onerous. 

While appreciating the change of seasons,  I feel a little melancholy tonight. The temperature is dropping and it is dark at 7:00. 

Are you able to stay in the moment when the seasons change? 

According to my Tai Chi instructor Ruth Kneile, there is season between summer and autumn and then another season between autumn and winter; the in-betweens are represented by the bear.   Picture a room full of bears approaching dangerous intersections. Oh the fun of Animal Frolics! 

Let me know how you handle dangerous intersections and season changes. Reply to this email or go to blog: www.nickymendenhall.blogspot.com and leave a comment. 

How hard it is to take September
straight--not as a harbinger
of something harder.

Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning--or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.

How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand

at the prompting of the first mile breeze
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees

summer as an absolute.
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,

as soon as one leaf's off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.

*Found this poem on Brain Croft's, "Barnstorming: Finding Sanctuary in the Seasons of Rural Life". This is a blog I recently stumbled on and would recommend if you enjoy good photography and poetry.

Thanks for enjoying the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

And Now For Something Completely Different - #130

Rather than buckling down to create today's post, I went for a walk. 

I would like to report my time outside was full of introspection, observation, connections between my head and my heart, full of experiential meaning, and that my organizing purpose made itself known.

But that would not be true.

I may have chosen to go for a walk but there was no controlling where the walk would take me. Addictions are like that. Despite other plans, my tennis shoes made a beeline toward the Urbandale Kiwanis Club free library pictured above.

While today was not my first visit, it was the first time I gave into temptation. Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors practically jumped from its perch into my arms. While I don't consider John my BFF, I would like to point out that his brother was on my son's tennis team.  

My sense is I was obligated to take this book home with me.  

My solemn pact to read every book in my personal library before I check out, means each book I pick up extends my life.

If you want to get a head start on the next few post questions, begin thinking introspectively, developing powers of observation comparable to Sherlock Holmes, merging your head and heart, making meaning of your experience, and claiming an organizational purpose all your own. 

And be sure to let me know how you justify your addictions plus what you discover when you are introspecting. Hit reply to this email or provide a comment on the blog.

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

Recipe For Moving From Adolescence to Adulthood

"Every one is born with a mind but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self."*

Do you agree? I attempt to practice and include all of the above in my life but I have to realize that I can't do these and everything else that I want to do.  Letting go in order to have time for these essentials is hard and I'm not always successful. Do you make time to practice and include these suggestions? What gets in your way?

Let me know in the comment section or reply to this email. Thanks in advance for your response. I learn from you.

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

*Quote is  a vision of how to move from adolescence to adulthood found in William Deresiewicz's book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.

Was That A Question I Hear? - #129

Pondering the shut-my-mouth pledge made MidWeek led to this startling realization:

People don't ask questions.

People tell stories. People share experiences. People obsess about difficult decisions. People grumble when confronted with local and national news.  

If a person is describing something I've been through or if I happen to strongly agree or disagree, my compulsion to interrupt their story and tell my story is a temptation comparable to resisting binge watching The Good Wife on my I Pad.  

And since we humans all face similar inner and outer experiences, I will undoubtedly relate to what is being said and want to open my mouth.  

If I hear people telling, sharing, obsessing, or grumbling, I think they might want my input.

While the sentence in the image at the top of the page may look like a question, if you look closely you will note there is no question mark.  

The next time someone talks to me, I'm going to listen for the question mark.  

How do you decide when it is helpful to share your story? Do you ask questions? Do you have someone to listen to you? When do you open your mouth? Is it hard for you to listen to others?

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

Mid Week Question:Can Nicky Keep Her Mouth Shut?

"Healing not as the elimination of disease, but as a falling in love with the poignancy of being alive: taking the great injured heart of the world for my own and coming to respect the essential mystery of life, so that my answer to many questions is "I don't know," and this not knowing is a form of generosity."*

Isn't it an interesting idea that saying I don't know, in response to a question we are asked, turns out to be a generous way to give space to the other to decide for themselves?

My know-it-all voice is never at a loss when someone asks me a question about relationships. Maybe it is an occupational hazard. 

When I can listen and respond with sympathy or empathy instead of proclaiming the answer, my body relaxes. I feel better sharing the mystery rather than solving it. After all, isn't the idea exploring the mystery?

Thanks for your loyalty and support - Nicky Mendenhall

From an article entitled Body of Radiant Knots: Healing as Remembering by Joan Iten Sutherland. I copied just one page and don't remember what book it was in. Sorry.

Walking To Water Takes Time - #128

Burtynsky* describes this stepwell (a passive system designed for collective access to underground water) in Rajasthan as an example of beautiful architecture from the 1600's. Isn't it amazing?

Monsoon rains in India last up to 12 weeks and fill these wells via underground aquifers. After the monsoons, the cistern** is full.    

Look closely and you will see people moving towards water.

When the British introduced pumps and communal taps in the1850's, structures such as these no longer continued as sites for social and religious gatherings but became garbage pits or latrines.

During the severe drought of the 1980's, Burtynsky reports that many requests were made to restore these stepwells. These requests were a serious look to the past in an effort to overcome the water challenges of the present and the future.

Getting to know Burtynsky has helped me learn about water and the creative process in a deeper way. I say getting to know him, not merely getting to know his work, because hearing his unassuming, kind, passionate, confident voice on my app made him a mentor. 

The Water project took him five years. He didn't grouse about the time. Good work takes time. Good creative work takes more time.

Have you ever spent real quality time on a project of your choice? Could you trust your intuition to find images of water as Burtynsky did? 

Sometimes I think about writing a book but the time, energy, and focus this would require overwhelms me.

What about you? What are you willing to spend your time creating?
Please let me know your thoughts by going to the comment section or hitting reply to this email.

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

*Burtynsky Water exhibit, Nahargarh Cistern, Jiapur, India.
** Your toilet tank is a cistern!

It is Mid Week - What Are We Here For?

"We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being."*

Let the above quote and image bring a chuckle to your clunky, chunky self as you enjoy being yourself!

*What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life (2009), James Hollis, PH.D. 

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

Absence or Presence? - #127

Have you have noticed in many of the photographs I've chosen from Burtynsky's Water exhibit, you don't see water?

I'd like to suggest, absence can affect us as much as presence.  

We might say: absence is presence.  

I heard the phrase, "absence is presence" for the first time as a docent in training for the Des Moines Art Center. I'm not sure I even understood the phrase at the time, but my body registered it as true and my mind never forgot it.

Through the years since, I've begun to understand more of what it means to me. The first time my siblings and I gathered to play Pepper after our Dad died, we could feel his absence. And he was very present.

Burtynsky writes that he chose water as a subject after working in Australia - the first continent in this era to begin drying up. So the absence of water brought it to his attention.

What does this phrase suggest to you? Is there presence in absence or absence in presence? Both?

Have some fun with the phrase and let me know what you come up with. Hit reply to this email or go to the blog on the Web and enter a comment.

The image above is the Colorado River Delta #2. What we are seeing is the pumping action of the tides; the tree forms have etched themselves into the sand and they keep getting bigger and bigger as time goes on according to Burtynsky. (Information from my wonderful App.)

Thanks for exploring the mystery - Nicky Mendenhall

Mid Week Love Note

"Receiving love brings us to a place of vulnerability. 

That is why it is so difficult.

So often we live in the illusion that it is much easier to love than to be loved. We may think we can exercise a bit of control in loving another, but there is no control in being loved.

The ones who truly love us walk into our hearts, often unnoticed, unannounced, and then reveal to us how genuinely lovable we are.

And nothing feels more vulnerable than that."*

The beach picture is from Burtynsky's Water exhibit though it is not in the App. Use your imagination as to its location because I can't remember.

Thank you for exploring the mystery of water and love with me. Is it easy for you to accept love? Do you think that it is easier to give love? I would love to know how you feel about love!

*inward/outward, February 13, 2014. 
Visit: http://inwardoutward.org