Setting Boundaries and Meaning them.

(“Sailing Away”, watercolor, 2005  Jane Kohut-Bartels, an actual sailer used as a coal barge in 1958, England)

 

 

This short piece might sound weird, strange or downright mean to some. Frankly, it’s been a long time coming. I’m still learning here so this is certainly not a complete answer, far from it. It’s an issue like an onion, with many layers.  It can be stinky, too. And, it can make us uncomfortable in the doing.

I grew up with a parent who was an extreme narcissist by any score.  I never learned, or actually, I was never allowed to set boundaries as a child or teen.  Since a narcissistic parent doesn’t see their child as anything except an extension of their own person, the offspring setting boundaries is something not tolerated. Hence, it was something I didn’t really know the value of until much later in adulthood and after quite a bit of therapy.

Boundaries mean choices and choices should reflect a healthy sense of oneself. In life we meet all sorts of people, appropriate to our existence and those inappropriate.  When we haven’t an understanding of boundaries, (and this doesn’t just fall out of the sky, we have to learn this) when we are uncomfortable with the behavior of others towards us but don’t know why, we can dismiss these feelings and we can choose inappropriate or unhealthy relationships.  Many times we are afraid of offending, so we open ourselves to what comes down as actual abuse. When we have serious deficiencies in self-worth and don’t value ourselves in healthy and positive ways, we fall to the relationships that are obstacles and become, ultimately, terrible and/or destructive burdens.

Recently, I have been taking stock of this issue.  It has loomed large in my life over the past few years.  Perhaps this is because I have become more conscious of this, and the ties to narcissistic behavior, but also because I have begun to develop a long needed and necessary sense of self-worth. And it isn’t something that is easy. Abuse, emotional and otherwise, comes from not valuing yourself and setting boundaries. There are many people in this world who look for what they perceive as vulnerable people and they latch on for their own benefit.  We call them opportunists.

I remember working at a local university in the early 90’s.  I grew to hate it.  I had a female supervisor who demanded that I give her neck/back rubs. This was not in my job description, but she was a woman who had a lot of issues. She was just a low-class bully, with little to redeem her. I remember complaining to HR and then I realized clerical workers were just seen as shit, expendable.   I was told any employee who went up against a supervisor was sure to lose. The “University would win all the time.”  That was the way it was then.  I don’t know if things have changed at this university, but I had to realize boundaries weren’t encouraged to clerical workers, even though the HR rep knew well my complaint.   I was told “This University isn’t a place to work for everyone. If you can’t take it, quit.”   Amazingly arrogant, but a reflection of the reality of the situation.   I also remember having to cover (and in one case clean up) for the stupid and (at times) drunk designers in the department. These were two girls (they didn’t deserve the title ’women’) who had been there a long time, and they abused their jobs.  On occasion I ended up doing their work in different departments of the University.  I left after five years.  I started to write a book, just a historic novel, but it gave me feet to get away from a situation that was debilitating. This situation was so bad I had nightmares. I was in despair.  A few weeks away from this mess and those feelings passed.  I hadn’t set  boundaries and I was afraid IF I did, I would lose my job and probably in that highly dysfunctional department, would. We had just adopted our only child, and it would have been much better to leave.  My priorities were much screwed.  I was beyond ‘uncomfortable’ but didn’t understand what to do to end this situation. Quitting was a relief, but the basic problem (setting boundaries and meaning them) wasn’t addressed then. Many women are caught in such positions, afraid of the ‘authority’ above them, even if it is a stupid Methodist University.

Again, no boundaries, no resolve.  I didn’t honor or protect myself. I was too fearful about things that others who had better self-worth would have  walked out with little problem.

It’s been a long struggle to come to terms with this issue of boundaries.  Many women just don’t see this as possible or important.  It has everything to do with either the way we are raised, especially when there are psychological issues with parents and also within society’s concepts and expectations of women in general.  Marriage can have a lot to do with this lag.  I am very fortunate in my second marriage.  My first was full of abuse, some physical but mostly emotional.  I had left a narcissistic parent to marry a man who was a carbon copy of my childhood parent.   I didn’t set boundaries, I didn’t know how.  I prolonged my own misery.

A few years ago  I was involved in an online squabble with a bunch of women here in Atlanta calling themselves “Smart Asses”.  As a dear friend pointed out….”They were not so smart, but they definitely are asses.”

I knew a few of them, and some I knew as probable sociopaths.  Possibly more than a few.  Why be involved with these kind of people?  Stupidity on my part and thinking I could make a difference.  One needs to realize that you can’t correct crazy.  Again, I failed to set boundaries, thwarting myself further.  What in Hell was I trying to do with these people? I had nothing really in common with these women (and men) so what was I there for?

(There was a lot of drug use with some of these folk, and it was also in the midst of a heroin usage uptick amongst the middle classes in Atlanta.  I got ‘shamed’ for even mentioning this. )

You can’t change the world; you can only attempt to change yourself.

Recently, a sister in law said (when I asked about her youngest (24 years old) drug addicted son) that “we will not have this conversation”.  Sounds rude?  Perhaps it is, but she was setting a boundary, and I think this healthy.  Setting boundaries isn’t easy.  It takes work, but more so, it takes perseverance.  You have to mean them.

What I have learned about boundaries needs a lot more thought and practice.  However, I have learned some things and these I hope are helpful.

First, know who you are. Know your limits.  Don’t make excuses for them, look at them closely and consider if they are something you can defend.   If you feel uncomfortable with a person or a flock of people, you probably need a boundary of some sort. Maybe several. Go with your gut.

Center yourself in who you are and what you love. In those things you have accomplished. This takes time and a lot of energy and probably some therapy for many of us.  Our wires get twisted in life, but down there, somewhere, if we are honest with ourselves….are the things that make us glow and blossom.  Don’t get caught up in the energy sucking drama of other people.  That’s just a waste of your precious life.  They don’t want any advice, they just want an audience. (I’ve done this myself to some of my friends, and for some reason they are still my friends. My apologies all around…I’m learning.)

When our boundaries are weak, when we are not clear about our value and self-worth, or the value of actually having boundaries we will lean towards all sorts of chaos and drama that isn’t ours. When our boundaries are weak we are also uncomfortable.  We self-doubt most of the time.  Recently I wrote an article titled “Nihilism, Smart Asses, etc.” on the blog and this was because I was trying to ‘fit in’ with people I should have run from like the raging plague.  These people had nothing going in their lives except creating negativity and bitchin’ to the Heavens, but I stepped into it with both feet.  Again, you can’t fix crazy.  If some people have given you the willies before by their past behavior, trust your gut.  They probably haven’t changed much.  Set boundaries and don’t try to climb over the retaining wall because you think you can change a situation.  You probably can’t.  See your boundaries as protection that accompanies you through life.  Respect the need for them and you will begin to respect yourself.

Base yourself in something you love and in something you have pride in accomplishing.  When I feel swayed by other people that I know mean me ‘no good’, are insulting or belittling, that I can see are violating my boundaries, I look at the bindings of my six books sitting in my library.  I look at all these paintings on the walls. These are accomplishments I should honor. They meant I tore myself away long enough to do something positive.  I set boundaries here where I used an enormous amount of energy to do these things.  They were made ‘real’ because I set boundaries on my time and energy and what I would give to the rest of the world.   However, I also know I didn’t do these things all by myself.  Bill Penrose formatted and ‘made real’ the first three books on Lulu.com, and Nick Nicholson did the next three on Amazon.  I’ve known both of these guys for ten years and they are the best friends a person could have. They gave of their time and energies and experience, mostly their enormous hearts and friendship and I am still amazed by their generosity.  The writing was the easy part for me.  I couldn’t have done what they did.  Of course, there are friends along the way, especially in the last five years, other writers, poets and some just wonderful women.  Especially these women, on websites concerning the issues of narcissism, were beacons for me.  They guided me through the maze of abuse and into the light of knowledge.  First, they helped me understand boundaries and then they helped me put them in place.  I owe so much to other people in my life.  They saw someone floundering around in the water, and dragged me to shore.

And that’s the point of life. We can start deficient in these issues, like boundaries, but if we remain so, we impoverish ourselves.  We impoverish our creativity.  Learn from those who can help on these weighty issues, and avoid the negative folk.    Setting boundaries are possible, and also necessary in this fugue of life.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

And….by setting boundaries, I was able to publish these books:

 “A Seasoning of Lust”, Amazon.com, second edition, 2016

   “Song of the Nightingale”, Amazon.com, 2015

   “Pitcher of Moon”, Amazon.com 2014

   “White Cranes of Heaven”, Lulu.com 2012

   “The Zar Tales“, Lulu.com 2010

  “A Seasoning of Lust”, first edition, Lulu.com, 2009

 

Mrs. Jean Kohut, 1912-2014 and the poem “Gratitude”

was to be the cover painting for “Pitcher of Moon” but didn’t work out.

(UPDATE: Pam, Aunt Jean’s daughter called today just to see how I was. Pam shared her dear mother with me for years. She knew how attached I had become to this wonderful and compassionate woman. That was so sweet and I appreciate this so much. Pam has the full weight of the funeral arrangements (along with her husband) but she told me Aunt Jean had previously picked her burial outfit. She was being buried in her lavender pants suit and her USA teeshirt! I think that wonderful, that an almost 102 year old woman would want to do such. She was dignified to the max, a woman with great influence, the head of this Kohut tribe. Originally from Hungary, she loved this country dearly.

Brava, Aunt Jean!)

—

My Aunt Jean, almost 102 years old, died today, July 28th. Aunt Jean was a remarkable woman with tremendous history behind her. For many years she encouraged me, basically the only person in my family besides my husband, to write and to develop my poetry. The last two books have been dedicated to this remarkable woman and she will always be first in the dedication of any future book. I started this blog exactly 6 years ago with a story about Aunt Jean. Later, when I can collect my thoughts, I will write more about this brave woman who at 24, faced down a Nazi court in Hungary. She was a prolific writer of letters and her autobiography, and came to this country wanting to be a journalist. Over the past 10 years we wrote each week, and sometimes I received two or three letters a week from her. She was such a marvelous example for all women. She was my Anya…Hungarian for Mother…and she will be missed by so many.

Jane-Elizabeth (as I was to her)

—

Gratitude

What are these lights?
They shine into the heart even
As I shade my eyes,
Pierce my soul with exquisite pain!

Ah! The blessing of the Universe,
Whose stars are shooting messengers
Come to claim my heart, my soul,
Come to knock down walls of
Loneliness, isolation.
.

Who am I to argue?
Is there not a web, gossamer as a spider’s
Silver wire crossing from bush to bush,
Shining with prisms of light falling from
The morning dew?

Does not this silver thread, so fragile, eternal
Bond us together in Humanity?

The ways of the heart are mysterious.
They triumph over cold logic.
The ways of the Universe are greater
With mercy when least expected.

Oh, sing my heart with gratitude!

If we would listen to the music,
Would let the stirrings of a grateful heart move,
We would dance in rebirth each day!

Let pride be destroyed,
The soul made new,
Resurrected each day
To meet the morning with song, hope;
To dissolve law into love –

Paradise enough for You.
Paradise enough for Me.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2014

“Original Blessing”….a poem

PItcher of Moon, available from Createspace, Amazon.com

Paperback: http://goo.gl/RzFRj4
Kindle e-book: http://goo.gl/cOh8Ww

Every so often, I get challenged by someone as to my religion. To me, religious or spiritual beliefs are personal, and I am not one to sally forth and try to convince anyone to believe as I do. Of course, this has led to much shunning and ridicule in my birth family. But they are extreme fundamentalists, and there is a heavy ‘hate’ issue (which is really fear) in their beliefs. I hope all these years I have lived have allowed me a more tolerant and broader picture of spiritual issues. I don’t go for dogma, whether it is clothed in liberal trappings, nor do I want to sit on a hard bench, or mumble prayers in devotion to some strange, dead prophet. But still….there is a pull towards gratitude. Sitting outside and watching the twist of huge oaks and pecans, the passing of clouds and all the bounty of nature pulls me into a profound gratitude for life.

Lady Nyo

“Original Blessing”

.
I am dizzy with love,
Standing in the rain,
This cosmic blessing
Pouring on my head,
Mingling with tears of gratitude
Til one stream
can not be deciphered
From the other.
.
I am an Original Blessing,
As are you,
And we are not born in sin,
But brought into the light of life
In great joy and anticipation.
.
Our first bellows are not of pain
But surprise at the roominess of the Cosmos,
As we kick feet, flail arms
And finally open eyes at the glorious colors
Of Nature.
.
Original sin would have us
Born rotten,
A theological monkey on our back–
But I know no God of the Cosmos
Who would scar these tiny blessings
With such a heavy burden.
.
Original Blessing is a deliverance,
A deliverance of hope, trust and pride
A heritage where we can discern and save
Ourselves,
Walk in harmony with the Earth,
Stride with God across the span of life–
For this Earth is our cradle,
And all in it our kin.
.
For a truly wise person
Kneels at the feet of all creatures
And is not afraid to endure
The mockery of others.
.
And when the day sidles up to night
I will settle into the nest of the Earth,
Draw the dark blanket of the Cosmos
Across me,
Pillow my head upon stars
And know the blessings I have been
Graced with today and always
Have come from the womb of the Universe.
.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2012

Published in “Pitcher of Moon”, Createspace, Amazon.com, 2014

In Praise of Good Husbands…and a poem.

 

–

I have been married for many years to a man who is 8 years younger.  At first, this garnered a lot of ill will from  some family members, especially my mother.

 

Mother….

In spite of this,  we have weathered  the slings and arrows coming our way from exwives (his) and people who should have shut their collective mouths because they had nothing positive to say.  After 28 years, we are doing fine.

Women tell me how hard it is, in middle life, to reconnect with men.  Either they have been seriously hurt, or they have grown used to their own company and making room for a new man is too much work.  I can understand this. 

 

I have no answers. But I do feel blessed with this man.  He is tolerant, patient and a person who champions my activities.  Well, most of them.  Perhaps I am a borderline hoarder of stray animals.  He feeds, pays the vet bills and makes room on the den couch for cats (9), dogs (3) but draws the line at the 5 hens and goldfish in the pond.  On occasion, a few brave hens have come in the back door and perched on his couch.  He’s allergic to the cats and his nose hasn’t stopped running in 28 years but he does take shots. Helps.  Doesn’t help that the cats adore him and try to sleep on his chest and face.  I think they are trying to discern if he also has nine lives…

He is a gentle man and doesn’t stint on affection. I am in constant gratitude for the life he brings to me.  I only hope I can do the same .

Lady Nyo

–

POEM OF MY HUSBAND

–

 

“You’re all I have”

Heard in the dark

Heart almost stopping

In an inattentive breast.

–

I dare not look at him

Too bald a sentiment

And too true to bear

A light, comforting answer.

–

What would occasion such words,

Such a piteous sentiment?

–

When one has lived

Within another’s hours, days, years,

The fabric of this making

Can be frayed.

The warp and weave, the very thread

That appears as if out of air

(and it does)

becomes substantial,

it covers and clothes more than the body

and the life blood of sentiment,

Love-

Becomes the river within, unending,

Even transcending the pulse of life.

–

“You’re all I have,”

A whispered refrain

Echoing  in the heart

And burrowing deep.

–

 

–

“Poem Of My Husband” to be published in “Pitcher Of Moon, Poems of Gratitude and Blessings” hopefully soon.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2013

 

“Original Blessing”, poem

ORIGINAL BLESSING

I am dizzy with love,
Standing in the rain,
This cosmic blessing
Pouring on my head,
Mingling with tears of gratitude
Til one stream
can not be deciphered
From the other.

I am an Original Blessing,
As are you,
And we are not born in sin,
But brought into the light of life
In great joy and anticipation.

Our first bellows are not of pain
But surprise at the roominess of the Cosmos,
As we kick our feet, flail our arms
And finally open our eyes at the glorious colors
Of Nature.

Original sin would have us
Born rotten,
A theological monkey on our back–
But I know no God of the Cosmos
Who would scar these tiny blessings
With such a heavy burden.

Original Blessing is a deliverance,
A deliverance of hope, trust and pride
A heritage where we can discern and save
Ourselves,
Walk in harmony with the Earth,
Stride with love across the span of life–
For this Earth is our cradle,
And all in it our kin.

For a truly wise person
Kneels at the feet of all creatures
And is not afraid to endure
The mockery of others.

And when the day sidles up to night
I will settle into the nest of the Earth,
Draw the dark blanket of the Cosmos
Across me,
Pillow my head upon stars
And know that the blessings I have been
Graced with today and always
Have come from the womb of the Universe.

‘Original Blessing’ to be published soon in “Pitcher of Moon”,
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2013

“Original Blessing”

.

I am dizzy with love,

Standing in the rain,

This cosmic blessing

Pouring on my head,

Mingling with tears of gratitude

Til one stream

can not be deciphered

From the other.

. 

I am an Original Blessing,

As are you,

And we are not born in sin,

But brought into the light of life

In great joy and anticipation.

 .

Our first bellows are not of pain

But surprise at the roominess of the Cosmos,

As we kick  feet, flail  arms

And finally open eyes at the glorious colors

Of Nature.

 .

Original sin would have us

Born rotten,

A theological monkey on our back–

But I know no God of the Cosmos

Who would scar these tiny blessings

With such  a heavy burden.

. 

Original Blessing is a deliverance,

A deliverance of hope, trust and pride

A heritage where we can discern and save

Ourselves,

Walk in harmony with the Earth,

Stride with God across the span of life–

For this Earth is our cradle,

And all in it our kin.

. 

For a truly wise person

Kneels at the feet of all creatures

And is not afraid to endure

The mockery of others.

 .

And when the day sidles up to night

I will settle into the nest of the Earth,

Draw the dark blanket of the Cosmos

Across me,

Pillow my head upon stars

And know  the blessings I have been

Graced with today and always

Have come from the womb of God.

. 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012

“In The Hollow Of Winter Twilight”,

The silence of winter makes space for contemplation.  This season of stillness, expectation, is also a time for  solitude.  Books, a low fire, the company of cats and dogs, the bare-boned limbs of trees outside, the possibilities of this ’empty’ season draw our minds to contemplate our lives and where we are ‘going’. I need this space, just to be still, to feel gratitude.  There will be spring, with planting of gardens and the wonder of buds, but for now, this bare, washed palette outside, with its greys, blacks and duns comforts my eyes and mind.  It is enough.

Lady Nyo

IN THE HOLLOW OF WINTER TWILIGHT

. 

In the hollow of winter twilight

The ground of the soul is darkened,

Silent, waiting,

A shallow breath will do.

. 

Muted  tints

Flood earth and sky,

Black bare-armed trees,

Skeleton-like,

Now softened in this sullen light,

 To clothe with longing.

. 

True winter has begun

This season of scarcity, silence,

Survival never assured,

The very thinness of air,

A sharp, searing bitter breath of air,

The inhaled pain alerts us to life.

. 

No excited cries of birds,

No rumble of young  squirrels

Turning tree hollows into hide and seek,

Only faint tracks in the layered snow

Gives  evidence of others around,

Small three-point, delicate prints

As if a creature bounded on tiptoe.

. 

There is little left to do

In this darkened ground of  soul-time

But rest before the fire

And fill the hollow of the season

With hope, patience and desire.

.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012

Love Letters….

This is a sorrowful month for me.  My father, many years ago, died, right in the full swing of Autumn, the most glorious of seasons in the North.  Then my dearest of friends, Marge Chester died unexpectedly the other day.  They were both wonderful and similiar people in many ways. This is just a little letter of love to them, now so gone. 

 

Dear Daddy,

This month of your death so many years ago –feeling like a blurred yesterday—you would have loved this month, this glorious autumn.

The drought of the past few years has made the colors brilliant, longstanding.  I can’t remember a fall season, now sliding into the earliest of winter, so beautiful.  The reds of the maples are like the slashes of summer’s red cardinals, the oranges and golden leaves, bushes, long grasses as vibrant, as glowing as the sun refracting off broken glass in the grass.  The air is brushed clean with strong seasonal rains, a further blessing after a dry summer.

But the winds! They come out of the north, like bellows, or a bull bellowing. They blow everything before them, and trees, these large pecan and live oak so prominent in the south, are like swaying troupes of dancers.  When this happens at dusk, before the heat of the day cools, when the sky darkens and there is a roiling of clouds in a balmy sky, the winds come marching in like Storm troopers and this spectacle of nature is awesome, fear inspiring.

Thanksgiving was too warm for our holiday: 60 degrees; there is something wrong about this.  Pleasant, but wrong.  Better a cold dreary rain. I’ve been playing Copeland, conducted by your buddy Lennie, and I thought you would be pleased.   At least the music follows tradition if our weather won’t.

I miss you so much.  It took years for me to understand why. I only hope I can be as generous and loving to my own child as you were to me.  I didn’t appreciate you then. It took years for me to understand. But you were, are….loved deeply by me.  All the cousins and remaining dear aunt say I take after you.  I couldn’t be more pleased with that opinion.  Dear Aunt Jean was reading a letter from you from 1943, when you were up to your eyeteeth in WWII.  She said she could well understand where I got my writing ‘skills’ from.  I hope she will share your letter.

Love,

Your daughter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Marge,

I still can’t get my head around your death.  We were talking the night before for Christ’s sake!

You died in the same month as my dear father.  You were born in the same month as my dear father.  But the strongest commonality here is  you had such a gentle generosity to you, such a love of life  and good, Talmudic wisdom.   LOL!  We would joke about that last thing, as I knew how much you were bent in life in dividing the wheat from the chaff.  And because of how you looked at life, you lived a beautiful one.  I haven’t been able to ‘properly’ mourn yet, sweetie.  That first hour of sobs scared me, as you know how I react to death, but I think the grief will come: it just hasn’t sunk in yet. 

You were my rock and my best friend.  Now I have to write to your mate, and I can’t get my words straight.  But I do have them in my heart, but I just can’t yet believe t they are needed.   I don’t believe you are gone.

In time, I will know but for now, I am holding you close to me, remembering the sound of your voice, and the years of compassion and solace…and good wisdom, from many streams.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Thanksgiving, 2011

Religion and other bothersome matters…

Painting: "Irish Coast", watercolor, 2005, j.kohut-bartels

Lately I have been thinking  about religion and spirituality.  I don’t see these as the same, and I struggle through a lot of nattering influences to come to a place of my own.

I went through a period of searching for a religion where I felt I could belong.  Raised haphazardly Christian (Episcopalian) or as my brother the holy roller likes to refer to this as “raised by wolves”….nothing of organized religion seemed to ‘fit’.

A short while ago an Orthodox Jew (who turned out to be a bad example of Jewishness and humanity), tried to harangue my husband about “the Saints”.  I guess to this Jew’s thinking my husband looked like a Christian.  I had to laugh because my husband was and is a Buddhist of 25 years standing.  His wife finally told him to shut up because she didn’t want to hear this stuff.  Good girl.

His religious narrowness didn’t put me off the Jewish religion and for a year went to classes about Judaism and attended Temple.  Somewhere my father’s family was Jewish, and though it was on the wrong side of the blanket, I wanted to understand something of this religion.  Finally, it was, to me…..just rituals.  About as mystical as those damn Saints.  I couldn’t suspend my disbelief.

I have a lot of friends who come from different religions.  Muslims, Ba’hai, Christians, pagans, Jews, etc.  The Christians break down into many various parts.  Episcopalian, Unitarian, Quaker, Unitarian Universalists, etc.  With the Jews it was Reform, Orthodox, Conservative.  The Ba’hais were pretty consolidated.  The practicing pagans were just down-right silly to me. Perhaps I had grown far beyond such  stuff.

But still there was a nagging issue of spirituality.  This, I believe,  is something that encases a broadness  that perhaps the religious dogmas can’t touch.  For me, it comes down to a question of Gratitude.

I am grateful for the breath of life, for the ability to awake and walk, to read, to laugh, to see the marvelous passage of clouds and time, to commune with nature and friends and family, and all this is wrapped up in Gratitude.  To receive love that sometimes I don’t deserve.  To give love and to mean it.

I fight this battle with myself and at times it gets overwhelming.  It’s more than I am, and more than I can solve.  I’m out on a limb here, and the answer isn’t  within these accepted forms of worship. At least not for me.

Today it was a perfectly beautiful day…one which was memorable for nothing except the perfection around me.  The sky was marvelous, from dawn to dusk, that sharp sentiment of expectation in the change of season, and the season to come;  the beauty of the still-green leaves and overwhelming, huge trees here in the South; the winds that made themselves known, not as gentle blowing breezes, but as swooshing dervishes, rotating branches and making their power known.

I felt such gratitude in the presence of this day: what wonderful beauty was before me.  There was no way around gratitude.

I came across something tonight, and it struck me as a coda for the day; something that brings a definition or a conclusion to this marvelous beauty before me.  It gave structure and meaning to what I was seeking.

Lughnasadh

“The Autumn quarter of Lughnasadh brings the gift of maturity and is a time of physical harvest and spiritual garnering. It sees the greatest change in weather from broiling heat to dark and chilly nights.  It is the time for celebrating the harvest and sees the busy preparations for winter.  In the human growth cycle, Lughnasadh corresponds to the period of mature adulthood when a certain steadiness and responsibility have been established.  It is a good time to celebrate the lives of all who have helped stabilize and uphold the noble values of life, of all who have exercised good judgment and steered the doubtful into the harbor of certainty, of all holy ones whose guardianship has saved us from life-disabling mistakes.”

From “Celtic Devotional”, by Caitlin Matthews.

Funny, this hits the spot.  It incorporates the Gratitude I am feeling and it gives a particular direction.  It gives hope.

Lady Nyo (with a fond hug to Margie and Bren)

Some new developments….

Some readers and friends have asked me what I am doing.  And why am I coasting with posting chapters of a novel I wrote two years ago? And why haven’t I gone in and rewritten in places it obviously needs?

I AM coasting.  The Montreal trip was exhausting in a number of ways.  I was bombarded with much stimulus of new ideas, observed new creations of other dancers, and then there were other people (non dancers) involved.

It just takes time to sum up and sort it all out.  On top of it, the release of “A Seasoning of Lust” and the suggestions of promotion.

For the release of a first book by an unknown author, I am told things are going well.  Right now, they seem to be, but who knows what the future holds?

Well, actually, I do.  Bill Penrose, a good friend of a couple of years, actually someone who functioned as a writing mentor in a small private group….is back onboard for a second book…Volume II of “Seasonings”.  And there is also planned a Volume III.

Most of the writing is done, collections of short stories and more flashers and poetry.  It’s just a question of what goes where and why.

Bill has a better eye with experience for all that.  I just do the easy part, write the stuff.

There are many people that contribute something to a book being written.  It’s not such a lonely, solitary business as most of us want to make.  There are many friends who read, crit and encourage.  There are people who give up blog space to promote your writing.  There are some who play the role of Muse, and there are others that are sometimes…nasty irritants.  They also fuel the fires and must be at least, privately, acknowledged.  There are people who send you lists of books to read, or websites on some particular area of research.

And there are also people who, across the world…sit up late at night and give personal guidance, soothe wounds and restore humour.

So a book doesn’t necessarily get written in isolation…sometimes it’s more than a group effort.  Sometimes it’s a crowded affair.

And I am grateful.  For all who stick their fingers in the pie.

Lady Nyo