atlas and i went for a hike that turned into an adventure!

when we turned off the gravel road and onto our trail, we found a puddle that still had ice around its edges. i took a shard of ice and wandered around, looking at bits of the world through my icy lens.

an evergreen. the sky. red berries. the sun.

when i was ready to turn away from my soft, muted, sparkling world, i offered the ice to atlas. he likes to eat ice and drink from puddles so it seemed like a double dose of pleasure.

when we left the trail and wandered into a field, we found a small grove of trees. they were dark grey and completely devoid of cover. aside from the rustle of dried leaves below our feet, the air was quiet and still and haunting.

just beyond the trees, there was a dark mound of something, so atlas and i went over to investigate.

the dark mound was felled trees. these trees looked like they had been pulled from the ground and loosely tossed into a pile. the tangled roots on the end of the nearest tree reminded me of an old man with a beard. i fully expected him to open his mouth and start speaking. (the old man wordlessly requested his privacy so there is no picture.)

when i looked to the left of the trees, i knew exactly what had happened. there was a large open pit in the ground. it was a giant sandbox!

atlas and i explored the sandbox for a while. it held rocks and sand and patches of snow and ice – and a tiny patch of flowers that resembled soft brown puffballs.

beyond the sandbox was a mountain, a mountain made of gravel. next to the gravel was a rusty turquoise excavator.

by this time, it was late afternoon, and dark comes early, so we turned toward the trail.

as we walked back, i watched the sentinels in the distance grow closer and closer and closer. it felt like they were circling us in protection and calling us home.

if growing up meant losing your ability to imagine, to play, to pretend, then i wouldn’t want to grow up at all.

fortunately for me, i know it doesn’t.

i was almost asleep after a midnight potty run for atlas – half in dreamland, half out, disoriented and groggy and heavy – when he got off the bed and began to pace back and forth between the bed and the door.

(the door to this room is always closed – it’s a cat-free zone – so he needs me to open the door.)

atlas paces when he needs a potty run, but he had just gone, so i was sure he didn’t have to go again.

he also paces when his stomach is bothering him and he needs to vomit, but this is always accompanied by a very vocal stomach and his was silent, so i was pretty sure it wasn’t that either.

back and forth, back and forth, he paced.

atlas came over to me – when he wants me to do something, he stands in front of me and tries to communicate with his eyes – and i felt a spark of anger burst into flame and i whisper-yelled at him to “go and lie down”.

he jumped on the bed, then jumped off.

back and forth, back and forth. atlas stares, elizabeth whisper-yells. jump on, jump off.

repeat, repeat, repeat.

finally, i grumpily and noisily got up and brought atlas outside into the cold, snowy night.

he walked over to the snow-covered grass, then came back to me.

oh, was i furious.

i whisper-yelled “we are not going inside until you go to the bathroom” and pushed him toward the grass. atlas walked to the grass, came back to me, and looked up at me sadly.

i did not relent. i whisper-yelled again and pushed him toward the grass. he walked to the grass, came back to me, and looked at the ground.

repeat, repeat.

finally, still upset, i opened the garage door and let him inside.

while i was wiping the snow off his feet, i woke up.

i wasn’t really mad at atlas.

i was frustrated. atlas’s needs and movements often interrupt my sleep, even more so since we arrived here, and sometimes i just really really need/want a few solid hours of sleep.

i was worried about atlas. he has been sick quite a bit since we got here. what if he was too old and the move was too hard on him. he was doing so well, and now he’s not. what if it’s all my fault.

as soon as we entered the house, i realized that something was wrong.

atlas’s back was arched, his belly was large and tender, and he walked through the kitchen with his head close to the floor like he was going to vomit.

i spent the rest of the night taking care of him.

i spent the next day taking care of him.

all the while, i berated myself. because i was mean to atlas at all. because i was mean to him when he was sick and needed me.

but then, later that evening, something occurred to me: i was mean to atlas for maybe fifteen minutes.

fifteen minutes.

i saw his whole life, with the moments i was unkind to him – the moments that feature in my thoughts often, when i am berating myself for things i’ve done wrong – next to the moments i was loving and kind.

when i saw the lifetime of moments, i was filled with so much tenderness and forgiveness for myself.

i am human. i am imperfect. i am going to make mistakes. i am going to have moments when i wish i had behaved differently.

i know those moments seem so awful to me, so far from how i want to behave, that surely they must outweigh the whole.

maybe sometimes they do.

i want to be able to forgive myself for them anyway.

i also saw that sometimes i do the same thing to others: i let moments of unkindness overshadow a relationship full of love.

and of course i would. i do it to myself.

i just hope that as time goes on, it takes less and less time to find my perspective.

atlas and i are sharing a twin bed at the moment.

you can probably guess how humorous this is and how well i sleep. (in theory, it should work, only atlas has no concept of personal space. he never has. he stretches out and takes up all the space available.)

sometimes i try to sleep on a different bed, but when he’s not feeling well (which has been more often than usual as he recovers from the move), he sleeps better when i’m right there next to him.

the other night, the funniest thing happened.

atlas was chasing a fox that turned into a white tiger and then they fought and the tiger drew blood. i was running back to my little cabin in the woods, followed by atlas who was now being chased by the tiger – thinking through how i would get inside and let atlas in without letting the tiger in – when i rolled over and fell off the bed.

i woke up on my hands and knees on the floor.

oh, did i laugh.

somewhere in dreamland, that tiger is probably still chasing poor atlas.

I was out for a walk one day when a bright red flash of something in a puddle caught my eye.

At least, I thought it was bright red. This seemed impossible, however, because it was a perfectly ordinary puddle on a perfectly ordinary street and there was nothing red anywhere in sight.

When I reached the puddle, I looked closely at it. I was right; there was definitely something red in one corner. I knelt down for a closer look and almost fell over in surprise.

In the puddle was a tiny faery. He was dressed all in green, carried a bow lightly in one hand, and had a head full of fiery red curls.

The faery looked up at me and his eyes twinkled. He pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked the arrow in his bow, and pulled his arm back.

I don’t know why I didn’t move out of the way. It didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t make sense to me now.

His tiny arrow flew up through the puddle and hit me in the forehead.

It didn’t hurt.

It felt like a kiss, the light kiss your mother gives you at bedtime when she thinks you are already asleep.

Slowly, a warmth spread through my body – the warmth of friendship, of affection, of love.

I waved at the faery, blew him a kiss, and stood up to go back about my day. But as I went, I carried the warmth with me like a blessing.

{like this story? then you’ll love the story club. the red-headed faery and i would love to have you along.}

i was driving home from a friend’s house, a week after arriving in michigan, when the tears began to fall. as they dripped down my cheeks, i realized they were not the occasional tears of grief, but tears of exhaustion.

this was not the exhaustion that comes from a spontaneous decision to pack up my life and move 2000 miles away. in three weeks.

no.

this exhaustion ran much deeper.

in that moment, i realized that i felt completely and totally responsible for myself.

not in the way you might think – because i am responsible for myself – but in a way where i felt absolutely alone in the world, a world in which there was no one i could turn to for anything.

and i realized that i was completely and utterly exhausted.

another day. another story.

it was a chilly michigan afternoon and my car wouldn’t start. i tried and tried to start it, but nothing happened. i know absolutely nothing about cars; when something is wrong with my car, i feel a sense of panic, completely and utterly helpless.

i was at my parents’ house, and my dad was home, so i went inside and told him that my car wouldn’t start. my dad came outside with me, got the car started, told me what happened and how to start it myself if it happened again, and went back inside.

i got in the car, put my hands on the wheel, and realized that i was crying.

right now, i am working on my relationship with abundance, with money, and i keep coming back to these stories.

i don’t even want to write about this. i am so full of confusion that i don’t know what to write. and yet i still feel compelled to do so.

maybe i am waiting for the perfect words, for the right words. to be the person who is on the other side of this, not the person who is lost and confused and in it.

i don’t know how to give up this sense that i have to do everything on my own, that i have no one to rely on but me.

intellectually, i know this isn’t true.

i can ask people for help and support.

i can ask the universe for help and support.

sometimes, rarely, i ask the universe for help. but the truth is, unless i am at my wit’s end, and just can’t see where to go from there, i don’t really mean it. (and i am hardly ever there.)

rarely, almost never, i ask a person for help. but oh, it is so hard for me: to ask for help, to receive help. even when i really need it.

how on earth is asking for help related to my relationship with money?

quite honestly, i have absolutely no idea.

when i look at my relationship with money, i find things like: “i am smart, not creative, so i can bring in money using my smartness but not my creativity.” or this: “i don’t know what i really want, and so i can’t create it.” or this: “i don’t deserve it, so i can’t receive it unless i pay for it in pain and suffering, and i’ve done so much work on my stuff that i can’t force myself to suffer anymore.”

and yet, i keep coming back to these stories.

well, there was a tiny clue related to receiving.

apparently i cannot receive.

unless i give and give and give.

but really, even if i give and give and give, i can’t receive, because the giving is just payment for whatever is on the other side of the scale to be on the scale at all.

if i somehow manage to let something in, to receive, i have to pay for it, because i didn’t deserve to receive it in the first place.

intellectually, i can see that none of this is true. i also sense that the clue about receiving is a small clue, not a large clue, and in fact it is something that has already shifted.

and yet, i am still in this place of confusion, and it is immensely frustrating to me.

i am not in resistance. i know how to look at my stuff. i am willing to look at my stuff. i like looking at my stuff. i am not afraid of what might come up in the process.

i feel like i am in a fog and i am waiting for it to lift and there will be a glorious sunrise on the other side. only i don’t know what to do to get there.

except. oh. i just now realized that i am in resistance.

i am resisting this place, this place where i am, this place of confusion.

i am here, and maybe this is a right place to be.

even if i can’t see it.

even if i don’t like it.

in this moment, i am so full of warmth and affection and gratitude for you.

there are so many places for you to spend your precious time and attention.

whenever you visit, whenever you comment, whenever you think of me or atlas, you are gifting us with your time and your attention and your regard, and i am honored and touched by it.

i can feel your presence, and your presence is a blessing.

may the blessing you give (the blessing you are) return to you a thousand-fold.

“I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I’m just soul on a sunbeam.”

~ Richard Bach

on our drive from oregon to michigan, atlas and i stopped in north dakota for a day to visit my sister and brother-in-law and little savannah.

we went to the theodore roosevelt national park for a hike and a picnic. isn’t it gorgeous! i love the hills and the valleys and the different shades of green and yellow. it reminds me of the badlands of south dakota, which makes sense, because i think these are considered the badlands of north dakota.

if i were a giant, i would pretend the hills were rocks and the valleys were a river and that i had to get across the river on the rocks without falling in.

the bison was standing by the guardrail when we drove by. i’m pretty sure he wanted to say hello because he stood there so nicely while i took photos. (if you were here, i’d have you watch me flip back and forth through the other photos i have of him because you can see his eyes opening and closing.) (and in case you are like me and are wondering how you can tell the difference between a bison and a buffalo, apparently buffalo have longer horns and are only found in africa and south asia.)

it was beyond wonderful to see savannah again. she took atlas for a walk (with my help) and ordered him around (not that he listened). it was pretty cute. after our picnic, she wanted me to take pictures of her. she ran to a spot above the river, stood still for a moment, ran back to me, looked at the picture and said, “a cute one!!!” she repeated this over and over and over. she was a delightful change from my usual and not-so-agreeable photo subject atlas.

and just like that, just because you’re you, the world offers you its heart.

sometimes, life is a spiral.

i have been quiet here.

the truth is that it is not so much an inspired quietude as it is a combination of two things.

first, the words for all of the things that i want to write about are slow in arriving. you would not believe the number of posts that are in draft form.

second, i have been under a strange and new cloud of confusion related to the connection between my art and my life. the result of this is that i am second-guessing almost everything i want to write about. when i do this, i block my own flow, and no words come out at all.

yesterday, i was given a moment of clarity.

what i really want, what would bring me joy, is to be here with you.

i am spending so much time playing with my camera. so much time. i want to be sharing more of these photos with you.

what i really want is to return to the days when i posted pictures almost every day.

and so i am.

if i want to write, i will. if i don’t want to write, i won’t. and i will write about whatever it is that i am inspired to write about.

i feel so free.

today, i do want to share an article with you, in case you like questions to consider.

it’s from the poet david whyte, and it’s about the questions that we should be asking ourselves.

i keep thinking about something he said in the article.

“most people, i believe, are living four or five years behind the curve of their own transformation.”

there is something very compelling about the idea that this might be so.

i wonder: what am i ready to step into, that i don’t recognize because i think it is far out in front of me, when it is really the very next step.

i don’t know. but i am curious to find out.

if you want to ponder one or more of the questions with me, please do. i love thinking about things and then talking about them.

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

~ Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums