the beginning of a new chapter.....

This is about the beginning of a new chapter ... in my life.... Now, before you go, "oh, yeah, right!" Let me tell you more .... there are seeds ... and there are patterns in raindrops. Not just random, you see, but small tell-tale signs that you can see you're heading for the waterfall and if you're lucky or very, very attentive, you can high-tail it out of the boat before the rapids come.... or so they tell me. The old ones, you know, the ones who traveled the earth before the rains came and melted the crops with acid that etched our trees and houses with the fine dust of a million acid rains. Those old ones. The last ones to see the automobile, the train, the commuter copter -- all those motors based on oil and gas and burnin' up a dirt road.... Haven't had 'em for a long time - about 50 years or more. Since we dug up the last of the oil reserves in Antarctica and the Ice Melts flooded London and New York and about all the coastal areas there are. There was such a rage and panic that the safest thing to do was to deliver your vehicle to the city center and abandon it there. For you weren't going to get any gas to keep it up. Not with all them folks drowned and cities submerged under water and people everywhere rioting.

Not that I minded, though. I was living in Austin at the time and it was fairly peaceful still. We didn't get hit directly by the Melts. Just the hordes of people coming up north from Galveston who crowded into our city's hotels, motels, and homeless shelters. People started getting riled, though. They couldn't tell which way was up with all the directives coming from the government, which was supposed to make things clearer, but instead muddled it up. What with the feds arguing with the state and the local bosses even having their own ideas about things, and no one wanting to repeat the mistakes of New Orleans ... you couldn't get one definite agreement on what was happening without hearing new accounts which confirmed or contradicted what you already knew. And everyone was depending on the news, but since all the reporters had been assigned to the Russian Gulag and the networks broken up in anti-trust legislation, there was no centralized source of news anymore. With every citizen having their own internet connector, there was no need for it. Everyone was free to seek out their own news and post their own views. So different from the broadcast days of old when the Voice of Truth came in two or three varieties, though they all told the same story only in different makeup. Now you couldn't tell how many stories there were. But still the biggest ones were known to all. Like how .....
(to be continued)
[photo from PhotoDisc at i.abcnews.com]

Happy, happy, happy....

I am happy. I just ran my usual couple of miles at the park by the lake and before that, got my wireless internet connection set up and going. Only took 3 hours, talking to 3 tech guys (made a couple of dates... just kidding), and now the internet world has opened up for me.
Well, actually the thing that precipitated this post is getting email from two unexpected sources - a new friend, who is multi-talented (I'll tell you more about her later), and a viewer who left a comment on my blog (YAY!) Such a thrill! Either it's been way too long since I had some positive feedback on the blog or else I am easily satisfied with the simple pleasures of life, but either way, I am happy, happy, happy.

Puts me in mind of the saying from Abraham: Happy, Healthy, Dead. This means that there's not a lot of time to put it off - Life is too precious. Whatever you want to do, start it now. And before I start thinking of all the quotations that might be appropos here, let me end this for now.... more to follow.... thanks.....

am moving

I am moving from my office to a new office in the main area of the
department. It's not a happy move. New job responsiblities, new
co-workers, new office, new work arrangement, etc. But I am
determined to make it work - for me. I am determined to prosper from
what I learn and do ... as a stepping stone to what's next for me.
And there is something next -- and new -- for me on the horizon.

I haven't taken the time to write during the holidays but want to
start up again now. My blog may change intention a little - we'll
see. Meanwhile, I hope you are yours are gazing up at the stars at
night -- at least metaphorically - so you don't lose sight of what's
up there. Of what's all around us.....

Laura
--
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Laura D. Havlick
Administrative Assistant
Curriculum Studies/Social Studies
Curriculum & Instruction Dept.
University of Texas at Austin

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

self-musing....

I haven't self-mused in a few weeks. Maybe that's what's missing, ha, ha. Not sure, but wanted to document that I feel a pull whenever art comes up. It happened last night on PBS when the Austin artist Bydee was talking about his work and different pieces were shown, and then I noticed it when looking through my email and deciding what to read. I kept skipping over Robert Genn's (Art) newsletter to save me grief. What's that about? To save for later, and savor (at some time in the future). But I keep putting it off - that moment of getting to it (finally) like I have more important things to do, or more pressing things, or things related to my survival.... So, I keep putting off my bliss and my enchantment with life. Hmmm....like I'm saving my cookies til it's really raining. Til I'll really need them.

But what about "if you don't use it, you lose it," or shorter: "you snooze, you lose"? If I don't collect my cookies now, will they be there in the future? Are they a finite resource, and I better "get 'em while the gettin's good?" Or will it always be there? It's something about what I learned to do as a child, in clean up the house before you sit down (and relax in it) or do your homework and then you can go out and play. But sometimes it gets out of balance and it becomes all work and no play. At least not much play. Watching a favorite TV show at the end of a long day of cleaning and taking care of, is not much play. Not much imagination in that. Or much joy. It can be savored but it's quickly boring. I don't think joy would be boring. It could be ecstatic, quiet, peaceful, uplifting, but not boring.
Which brings me to joy .... and pleasure ... and why do I avoid it? To avoid feeling disappointed, getting my feelings hurt, having it taken away or being somehow restricted from enjoying it? More hmmmmm......

Or am I just putting off what I could have now...and then more later?

life and minor surgery

... life goes on ... but I definitely feel different. I had minor surgery last week to remove a small lipoma - a benign tumor about the size of a big wad of chewing gum from my right cheek. I had begun to notice it a few years back, but was hoping no one else would. I couldn't imagine paying for plastic surgery so I figured my preoccupations with it were idle concerns. Until the first time a friend asked whether I had the mumps.... Though I knew she was extraordinarily perceptive, I knew it was just a matter of time before others noticed and I would have to claim it.

I have always held a (barely conscious) belief in the importance of "being perfect," in physical form. So much so that when I was in my twenties, and discovered a patch of dryness on my leg that seemed to have no outward cause, I balked at the idea of some part of me not being "perfect." So, with this anomaly, I once again bumped up against my notion of physical perfection and how I had so identified with it early on. Very odd - that little pocket of absolutist thinking that had escaped detection until now.

At first, I tried out different ideas (or even rationalizations) about my face - that I had always had it (the fatty pad), which meant it was a natural part of me that didn't need to be removed, that it was natural because God had made me, etc. And I looked for ways to camoflauge it - with my hair all bushy and combed forward or trying blusher to define a cheekbone that wasn't there. I even considered the value of turning slightly to one side instead of facing someone directly, so it wouldn't be as obvious. But I bristled at that idea because I defined myself as direct in my communication and didn't want to change. (Form follows function. Would function follow form?)

I used to watch the Extreme Makeover shows and muse about what I would have done, if given the chance, and what I would not. It raised my consciousness not only of life's little "imperfections," but also of how we much we as a culture value how we look on the outside, and that beauty is defined as being symmetrical and "perfect" (meaning without flaw).

I ran through the gamut of what it could mean to my life, and tried to find a way to relate to it in the Japanese word Wabi-sabi, the "'Japanese art of appreciating the imperfect, the primitive, the incomplete,' .... Wabi-sabi asks that we 'set aside our judgements and our longing for perfection,' and concentrate instead on 'the beauty of things as they are'" (Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com).

I stole looks at my face in private until I could live with it. Then I began to be more proactive and point it out to people - close friends at first, then family, and then work colleagues, in order to call attention to it before they did, and thus render my embarassment mute. At first it was awkward but it worked. By naming it and owning it, I was no longer trying to live in the shadow of myself. And even though some friends said they couldn't tell if I hadn't had mentioned it, I wasn't so sure. But their kindness and discretion was noted and appreciated.

I finally came to terms with my face, through introducing the subject on my own and after repeated scrutinizations. I measured the width and depth of it, the look and feel of it, and somehow gained some kind of acceptance of it. It became part of my picture of myself, no longer a stranger -- not entirely perfect, but not rancid either. A "human" part of me.

In the "coming out" of it, I grew courageous (and accepting) enough to mention it to my doctor to see what he would say. He referred me to a plastic surgeon; I began to research about it on the internet. The plastic surgeon referred me to an Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgeon who successfully and easily removed it. (A bit of a wizard, was he.)

It was funny that after the surgery, upon looking at myself, it was like looking at someone else, like someone I could have been if I hadn't had that fatty pad in my cheek. I hadn't realized it til then, but I had incorporated the look of my face into who I was. I had started expressing the funny, kooky side of myself more. Now however, I was face to face with another, more womanly, more stately self. She was a mystery to me.

But I am glad to see her and I know we will become as close friends as my old pal, the clown was.

Note the "before" picture was at a party (smiling) and the "after" picture was after surgery (the drugged look).

Swamping the boat and Hakomi

Swamping the boat refers to how it is sometimes when circumstances or events seem to press harder and faster than you can go, or when you have a deadline that is totally eating your lunch ... there goes another metaphor..... For some people, having a deadline helps to put wind in your sails (as revered author Brad Brown said), and at other times or for other people, it swamps the boat.

Useful to know. How you are with the circumstances of your life - the deadlines posed from outside and the deadlines posed from within...? We want to do things on our schedule. At least, I do. I want to make it work according to my picture.

Therein lies the rub. We're not in control. That's the bad news -- while we're busy trying to get into control or take control or just can't take our hands off the wheel while the car is going over the cliff ..... and the good news -- when we finally get it that we don't have to be in control -- we can let go and let God. That's a wonderful relief ... at least for a few minutes ... and if we (by we, I mean "I"), can just remember - keep reminding ourselves that it's okay to let it go. It's okay to not hold on to the it of existence. The minutae and the details and the who said what to whom, but just bask in the glory of existence. To see the sweep in life, instead of a dreary plodding or a preoccupation with bean-counting.

A grace, instead of a punishment. A light if we will only look for it. Which brings me to Hakomi, which is a Hopi Indian word which means "How do you stand in relation to these many realms?

In this instance, I am refering to Hakomi Therapy, a body-centered therapy, of which ...

"Some of the origins ... stem from Buddhism and Taoism, especially concepts like gentleness, compassion, mindfulness, and 'going with the grain.' Other influences come from general systems theory, which incorporates the idea of respect for the wisdom of each individual as a living organic system that spontaneously organizes matter and energy, and selects from the environment what it needs in a way that maintains its goals, programs, and identity."

More on this soon. ; ) But there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Or am I awash in metaphor?