The Long and Winding Road

On the way up
Walking up the Road

Heading up the road this morning, my blood feels like clay.  No flow, and many unanswered questions  banging around in my mind.  I’m a bit terrified because this was one of the symptoms my severely depressed friend complained about.  “Thick blood, and feeling like being stuck in a bubble”.  I go back in time to the many walks I took with her in order to cheer her up, pull her out, have some laughs.  None of which worked.  I was watching a light in my life, one of the main lights, dim and keep dimming, and I didn’t like it.  Nothing to do.  Now, when I feel under the weather and sort of depressed, I usually go back to thinking how my friend must have felt or she may still feel today.

A close relative once pulled me aside to ask me to please listen to “these CD’s about depression”.  He told me he was depressed and he thought I was too.  “A generational thing”.  I was able to say “No, thank you,  I will not take on your depression.  It’s all yours”.  At the time, I was in the middle of a break up of my marriage and I was sad.  I was feeling loss.  And yes, was probably depressed.  After this depression, diagnoses, encounter, I felt so much anger.  It was in the anger that I saw I was able to feel.  It was in these guts of mine saying, “no”,  that proved to me I am on my own path, and as much as it might be depressed, I am going to feel every bit of it.

Then there is the SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder which I wonder about now, after not seeing the sun for a few days, and knowing this is just the beginning of the season.  I can feel what some of my Seattle/Portland friends have talked about.  The food thing too.  I am buying organic, but does trucked from California count? It doesn’t feel like it does. Down to the health food store for a quick lunch doesn’t happen here- neither socially nor healthily.  Stolen hours, which I was accustomed, on a rock in the sun at the California trailhead, aren’t happening either.

The Long and Winding Road

This subject of depression is interesting, because as I started this post with being “terrified” of noticing the symptoms, I realize the true fear of depression which I actually have.  Weather it being me, as a sponge, soaking up others’ feelings or the environment’s affects, who wants to feel clay for blood. I don’t, yet at the same time, when it comes up I don’t want to deny it.  I recall Thomas Moore’s The Care Of The Soul‘s one chapter on depression.  My introduction to the idea that depression is a gift.

Yes, a gift when, if I’m not so afraid of it, I allow it to happen.  In the meantime, I notice the wonderful and tricky part about depression is that a simple sweat up the hill usually nips it.

And, today, walking back down the hill,  I hear myself singing The Long And Winding Road….bum….bum…..bum…..bum………dummmmmmm.

Now, is that being depressed?

Back down to town

Wake of the Lake

This morning’s walk took me further, beyond my usual route, ending up with my feet in the mud at the edge of the shore. There I could feel the energy of a storm just gone through the east, lapping in the heavy wake.  My west coast people are concerned for me in these storms.  I keep telling them to look at a map….see exactly where I am……”Go to Lake Ontario, about the center of the U.S. shore, straight down, the small lake shaped like a ‘Y’? I am there, at the southern end”. The storm didn’t reach here, today is filled with sun & blue sky, not snow.

The inspirational push to my boundaries this morning was a blog post.  Reading it urged me to see a different vision, suggested expanding my horizon.  And I did, and it worked. Though it all seems like an outer experience- “different vision” & “expanded horizon”- it’s not. It is happening on, which seems to be my theme these days, an Inner Level. 

In the sound of the water, beyond the secure and known in which I create over and over in order to feel safe, I sense safety in the unknown. I watch the wake in it’s effortless push to shore.  A flow.  The process of this flow…. trustworthy.  

Trusting does not come easily to me. It is my challenge.  It is my change.  I have not had the courage to allow….not even wanted to give a glance at how to go about it in order to “just be”.  Though, my own soul, constant and loyal, still pleading, “Do you acknowledge?  Will you stop and see? Can you let things be?  When?”  

In response I am grateful to say-

Yes, today, down at the lake, watching the wake, effortlessly.




The Assignment

Over a week ago the sun was ducked behind the storm named Sandy.  One week ago I was waiting for what was to come, after having prepared for it to the best of my ability. Bottled water, food, water in the bathtub, flashlight batteries, etc. This area was not touched by the storm as drastically as others. Though, I see that winter is definitely here, at least weather wise, if not season wise.  (just don’t look at the 60 degree forecast for this weekend…which I am trying to not get great hopes up about)

With this knowledge of impending winter and trying to not get too freaked out by it, I gave myself a project of photographing some of the buildings that intrigue me.  In order to get me out and move, regardless of the weather.  I have been noting them in my mind as I drive by in the car, so this assignment was to get out and shoot them on foot or bike.  

Place I love.  Someone has fixed it up.
School.  Once was Curtiss house/bike factory.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Curtiss

Mallory Mill.  Next door to where I live.  BTW….For lease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Mallory

Place begging to be fixed up.
www.pleasantvalleywine.com

Great Western

Pleasant Valley

door 

Today, November 6, 2012, I am on tender hooks in anticipation of a different kind of storm to pass.  The political storm that I have been wading through for weeks now.  As I rode my bike in the sun.  The illusive sun, having been gone for over a week, that I was so glad to welcome on my nose dripping, eyes running, beanie hugging, scarf wrapped face.