Ramblings of an EdMan

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Packing Out

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Packed and ready to leave in the morning.

Everyone is exhausted and in bed already. The only ones still out are the adorable black cat sisters, Briggs and Stratton playing with a cat catcher (wand with multicolored ribbon). They are both around 16 months and hyper adorable.

I am leaving with a heavy heart. Dad did survive the surgery but has substantial left side weakness and even feels colder on his left side. Now we have to leave it to rehab and pray and hope for improvement.

It’s going to be a long road.

I need to be back in Maine with my wife and get back to work.

This has been a strange and very long two and a half weeks. I am glad I have my soulmate to come back to. Mom is terrified about how her soulmate will come out of this. They have been together a long long time over 40 years and he’s not well. Maybe he will improve, I think his vision on his left side is likely to stay impared, so he won’t drive again. I also think there will be left side issues which may require a wheelchair or walker. It’s scary times. There may be assisted living ahead too.

Dad is a 4 year brain cancer survivor and we have to wait to see what’s next. I want to see him more awake and concious when I come back in a month over Columbus Day weekend. That would be good. His voice is stronger, and he is definitely hungry so this is good. He is feeding himself, and they do have him up in a wheelchair. We will just have to see what’s next.

I wish I lived closer. Maine is a long way from Allentown, Pennsylvania. But now it’s just time for healing. I know I liked being close with Walter’s illness and being far away will be hard.

Right now I just want to hug my wife and pray for better times. Dad survived the surgery, now here comes the work.

Edmund

Restless Mind

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It’s okay to love
the randomness of my mind.
The way it jumps and leaps
from one thought to another.

From one book to another,
from one place to another.
My mind is restless,
getting different thoughts from different places.

Not just reading newspapers,
not just reading magazines,
the same blogs all the time,
the same books all the time.

I read poetry, and picture books,
and young adult, and non fiction,
and science fiction, and graphic novels .. and …

I talk to the blue collar,
the white collar,
the artists, the unemployed,
the underemployed.

Everyone has a story to tell and something to say.
You need to open your perceptions.

We live in time of filtered streams,
where we tend to read and listen to people who think like us.

But open up your perceptions,
open up your mind,
and be amazed of what’s out there.

It takes a restless mind
to change the world.

The Wee Small Hours…

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I wrote this on Thursday morning in Lake George, NY while my wife is sleeping. Was told by a herbalist that I should walk first thing (ie before shower) every morning. Trying it for a few days so far and love it.

——————–

The wee small hours of the morning
while the wife is fast asleep.

Walking through an empty town
Lake George, almost awake,
Almost welcoming tourists,
unquestionably gorgeous.

4:30am, sun awakens,
birds awake, most everyone fast asleep.

The empty “Million Dollar Beach”,
with lifeguards and everyone hemmed in little swimming areas.

Lovely paved bike trail, deep in the woods
Deeply quiet, wish I had a bike.

Then back to lie down a few minutes with the
snoring wife and a book.

Reading Hugh Howey’s wonderful and surreal “The Plagarist”,
definitely not what I expected.

And then the drive through town for an awesome, decadent breakfast.
Got a huge breakfast at the Lone Bull with bacon, cinnamon french toast made in house, maple syrup, 2 eggs over easy and rye toast. I loved the atmosphere of the place.

Sometimes it’s good to wake up early.

Bittersweet Father’s Day

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My dad is still alive. I didn’t expect that 4 years ago when he diagnosed with GBM brain cancer. I feel very lucky.

My father-in-law is not. He died on March 24th, 2012. This is our first father’s day without him. It’s hard. We miss Walter Maheux, I can’t believe it’s been less than 3 months, it feels longer.

Father’s Day isn’t easy for everyone. Not everyone has a father. My wife doesn’t. It’s hard, she misses him each and every day.

We miss you Walter.

Happy Father’s Day, we will remember you forever.

Heart Centered Meditations

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This week at Rites of Spring, my wife is going to join me in a intensive I took last year that changed my heart and spirit. Whispering Deer’s class on the overflowing heart. I wish I could link to CDs of her wonderful voice, to have us get out our heads and live with our heart. Our heart has energy, it can take so, so much more than our head can.

We pray for ourselves, the ones with us, the camp and the wider world. We pray for compassion, we pray for acceptance of ourselves and the world, we pray for love, we pray for grieving, we pray to learn to medidate, we pray, and we take it all in to our overflowing heart.

It’s an amazing exercise, since we do tend to live our lives in our head, living with the heart makes you look at the world differently. That it helps to love your friends, and ignore your enemies, something I saw again in the wonderful little book “Steal Like an Artist.” It helps you live your life more heart centered. To give prayers for ones in joy, and ones in crisis. It’s something I try to do every day.

One of my practice is heart prayers, which I blogged about back in January. For 2012 I made my goal a “Year of Spirit“, it’s been a challenging year, with the illness and death of a beloved father in law, who we miss terribly.

This makes it even more important to pray with your overflowing heart, and sometimes to listen and take it in. I am excited Lanna will be with me in my workshop this year, and that we continue it as a spiritual practice.

I am also thrilled that Rev. Christine Sillari at First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Portland, Maine, also has a yoga training and can do meditations coming from the heart. They are slower, they require deep breaths and drawing into the self. They are amazing.

If you try to meditate with your head, at least in my experience, you tend to drift through the thoughts and worries of your day.

I plan a follow up post next week on the same topic.

Edmund