Waking up dead : not a Sookie Stackhouse novel

Swamp Marsh Journal
In playing around with my setup, I lost it would seem, my content. Hopefully, I can just go back to my choices of what to share on the page, my dashboard, and put the lost content back on the blog.

I have had a most joyous and cool spring and summer, though, dealing with heart disease and the chronic other that I deal with and have for about 15 years now. I can also now look forward to a new school year, without fear, as I see that people in positions that matter, care that I get placed somewhere that it will work out. For it not to work out, is a blight on them, if you ask me. Any good administrator, as a model, should also assume mentorship. I have been told I would be assigned to a position in which a good structure is in place. I am grateful for this extension of my career into another year and a chance to demonstrate that I can teach, and teach well. To me, that means bring out the best in every student.

I am grateful also for the remaining days of summer. Dealing with this newfound, and unidentified "defect" in the septum of my heart, has me a little bit sick in my stomach until I know more the outcome. I will know that next Friday the 25th, if I don't wake up dead.

I see images in clouds, and trees

I have recently been enjoying this site, http://www.sparkpeople.com/myspark/community_home.asp
just found on LifetimeTV...It's interactive and very social, which I don't have so much time for but I can drop in once I week and try to keep up my part of the social bargain. That is, if I can remember my passwords. One of the newest problems for the middle aged (weaned on IBM Selectrics) who can use a computer now, can't remember their passwords.

I have been snapping away with my little camera. Both my phone and camera have taken a beating, so I can recommend either brand for their sturdiness, despite their ragged appearances. It is amazing to me that the scenery can change from moment to moment throughout the day and from my view I can see that any time I wish. Dolphin are the most fun to try to capture a photo of. By the time you hear them come up the first time they are already back down into the water. If you are lucky you may catch a glimpse of a tail.

If I am fortunate enough to see them on their first or second surge upwards and out of the water, I usually will see them dance down the river coming up and out of the water and back down at least three to four times total, sometimes more. At some point, though, they tend to go deep and come up some 20 seconds away or more. I have captured them many times now on video and still shot. I still love it everytime I spot one.

I have spent many hours on my deck just looking over the water that flows about twice a day. It flows one way for several hours until it stops and stills itself, and that last some time; then, it flows the other direction for many more hours. That alone has been an amazing thing to witness. The play on light, as I often say, is the most visually interactive form of art ever. Each day is tanalizing to gaze at...the changing clouds, the changing hues and values, the surface of the water, the texture of those things that grow all around. The sounds and smells that accompany all of these things. Who needs human entertainment, when I have this great beauty at my disposal?

And last, though I would not say I am an obsessive animal person, I do have to say that for the first time, out of the animals I have had in my life, my two adopted cat and dog, who I think of as brother and sister, have made a solid difference in my life. Some people reach middle age with no one to comfort them, and a loyal pet can help to restore peoples' souls. So it is less about the animal, to my mind, and more about us. I have been understood and "felt" by my pets, when humans did not have it in them to offer help on the deep emotions I've had at times on and off.

I am every so thankful to the HHI Humane Society for connecting me with the owner of my girl, a Yorkie; and Holly Zuzak of Three Black Dogs for letting me take home my precious boy, Diego. He has gone from a stressed "sketchy" cat, with skin problems to a  healthy happy river cat free to climb trees and study the small creatures that roam the creek bank.

I try to work on my research for the short story I am forming on paper and in my head. I am trying to decide on the years I will cover and have narrowed it to 1750-1800 because there are all kinds of dramatic events erupting. I have to keep going beginning tomorrow. Almost an autobio is forming. I have three pages...

So far I have not turned on my A/C and am proud of that. The weather has cooperated by remaining somewhat cool with a breeze here on the waterfront. However my body has suffered with perspiration pouring down my skin and finding its way into places it ought not be found. My dog licks my legs cause I'm salty all over. I am showering a couple times a day, just to cool down to normal body temperature. Besides, I'm fat and that is not a good summer state to be in.

It has been coming on a rain shower this evening, begining before dark and coming from the northwest. You could see the sheets of rain like stalks supporting large puffy mushroom heads on their tops.

Let me just kick back with this rain and thunder and lightning...

Beautiful Agony

The title of my novel :: I hope to submit at least 50 pages for consideration by a few publishers. Hopefully someone I know will know someone and show up on the scene. haha if you think that happens. Anyway, I'm in the middle of Sue Monk Kidd's novel, written actually by both she and her daughter. This novel is so well written. Both of them are marvelously skillful in turning their insides out for us to cipher for ourselves. Coming to know her Jungian application of her life's insights the reader comes to identify and define herself based on a similar set of archetypes. I, as reader, marked my own life according the phases of the archtype of Mary, mother. And I would stop there, and just say, mother. The inward journies of the two women who travel together, while they make emotional contact in the beauty of what they see and what it means, made for a deeply satisfying read.

While all of women will, I think, experience all of these archetypes sooner or later, I would not have known them in the way I know them now, if it weren't for Sue and Ann Kidd's attunement to what went forth before them. Beginning with the symbolism of iconic images as they toured, they took the psychological dive into metaphors and found themselves faced with the human fears few of us desire to wrestle with. Only halfway through Traveling with Pomegranates and I am awed by the threads Su and Ann weave in their proactive work to dig for the bones and put themselves together. Seems akin to our thought of "reinvention."

Sue's link of death to life's exercises in loss, that end up as loss of "self", made me feel as it did Sue, a bit more embracing of the concept of death. Going fighting and screaming will be difficult I suppose, but  none the less, all will go. After her visit to the island of the Gavilry and the tumulus, she sealed in her mind the connection that letting go of this place would take one into the womb. Womb to tomb, she said. I've heard it before, that phrase. She wasn't sure she made it up.

When a writer can change your life, your outlook, your belief in yourself (from beat to conqueror) then that writer is a wordsmith and a phsychologist, an artist, and an accomplice to your self in changing what you know and believe, perhaps even, in co-creating a new reality that you can live with for awhile.

Larrain's Photograhy

This is a new photo album I am posting on Picasa for my friends and for my followers on Swamp Marsh Journal to see. This is a reflection of what I see on a daily basis. I am so blessed.                            Just click on the photo here to see the album!

I wrote an entry. Is this some entry eating machine? It wants another!

Read the above.

in reference to: http://spotted.blufftontoday.com/photos/index.php?id=1728148 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Farmers Market May 15 2010

A delightfufl spring day, early at about 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. Pleasantness was palpable among those who strolled and shopped and sat and snacked, in the shaded park on Ribault Road in Port Royal. Always colorful, a farmer's market draws a sweet crowd of people. I was excited to see a couple fellows who were handsomely weathered in their straw hats, and through their hands they transferred along the love that went into growing those fuits and vegetables the customers bought. Otis Draiser brought bright red tomatos and I bought 4 looking forward to some soft white bread (I like Sunbeam, or Wonderbread) and some salt and pepper, for a sliced tomato sandwich. Southern Living ain't got nothin' on us Southerners. We don't tell them about the good stuff. (Think, Moonpies) Enjoy the day with me through my photos of the Farmers Market in Port Royal, SC.

in reference to: http://spotted.blufftontoday.com/photos/index.php?id=1728148 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Taking responsiblity: confession of a toxic procrastinator

Ah, finally some breathing room. There is no excuse not to do all the things I have in the past procrastinated from doing. I am dealing with procrastination as an old friend who needs to go now. She has been a drain on me. I have to recognize her for who she is and give her the boot, so to speak.

It has taken me two years of living in the ditches that I have dug as a result of procrastination. I know it is a toxic level of procrastination, because it made me sick. I could think of 7 to 11 ;-) things I NEEDED to, SHOULD do, and the more of them I thought of, the sicker I got. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like i was inside of a big math problem, boxed inside the problem, and I couldn't figure the way out. So things just piled up around me.

After allowing myself to feel the weight of the results of my decisions, I finally came around. I made a positive move, one I dreamed of and I believe was fulfilled through my faith, and took hold of my environs. Am I completely cured of procrastination? No. I have my moments when decisions overwhelm me again. But there are ways to cope and conquer this feelings.

JUST GET UP & DO SOMETHING

1. There is always of trail of "things" wherever I have been!  I can follow the trail, pick things up, and deposit them in proper places.
2. If there ARE no proper places, then one must be made.
3. There should be nothing on the floor but the carpet and rugs. Take care of that.
4. Kitchen should ALWAYS be clean. Clean all dishes throughout the day. Keep countertops clean.
5. It is good to have a "made bed."  Change sheets at least once per week. It's wonderful & keeps the bedbugs from sleeping with you. Air your bed and pillows as often as possible.
6. Organization should be apparent, even to me! LOL
7. Don't take yourself seriously. But remember that your life is a valuable gift & you deserve to live the richness of it and all the tasks that are part of enjoying it.
8. Find or create a place to "chillax" with a glass of Arizona pomegranite green tea.