Cultivating Soul

In the mail the other day we got two (yes, two) Anthropologie catalogs. The scenes in the catalog were all shot in some exotic Indian location, with lovely stone architectural details, colorful arches and columns, and beautiful Eastern tile work. These kinds of mystical, historical, exotic locations just draw me in; make me long to go on some extended adventurous travel. The part of my mind that imagines escape, a journey of the soul, is somehow fed by these images.
Trekking by elephant across a desert to an oasis of dates and coconuts, maybe to a palace of marble and cool tiled fountains, yes, count me in.
I tore up the catalog (it really helped to have two) and collaged some journal pages. It was so satisfying.
After all these years, I understand that the actual travel is not what I long for, the expensive, tiring, logistically complex work of really taking such a trip (although now and then, I do love to really travel somewhere) is not what I really want.
The longing is for the imaginary vision quest - the challenge of being in the new exotic place, which helps define the measure of our totally known and comfortable home.
I wish all people had to go live in another country and learn another language once in their lives, you really don't know all the assumptions you make in one language if it is the only one you know. We are at a huge disadvantage when we only think and speak in one tongue.
I also have been reading about Hindi and the way it grew out of ancient Sanskrit for many of it's words. Some concepts are just missing from Hindi; they don't even have a word for female orgasm, for example. The verb tenses are all in the now, there is not the focus on past and future we in the West assume we need.
Subtle ways the words are used just make those people who speak Hindi have brains that work a slightly different way than us English speakers, and it is wonderful to notice and enjoy the differences.
Knowing about the other helps us know the self.


"Everyone should know you cannot live any other way than cultivating soul." --Apuleius

finally some more pages to share. . . .

"Get a Mac!" they all said.
"You will love the way it handles graphics."
"You will make movies, and scans, and photoshoppy magical collages, and make magazines, and your life will be perfect and wonderful and full of unicorns and rainbows," they said.
So I did.
I got a MAC.
and my life hasn't settled down yet into a routine and it has been SIX painful months.
I am pretty good with this computer stuff.
and yet, still.
STILL.
My MAC just DOES NOT BEHAVE.
So finally, I just took out the ole camera, snapped the photos of these journal pages, and dumped them here using my OLD TRUSTY Vaio and all my old software.
My Mac just won't talk to the scanner and it really hates my printer.

I will keep at it (I have no choice at this point, the old system is at home with the family, now.)
Last night at our monthly journaling meet-up, I did these three pages, so here, finally are some images I can share of actual journal work. I was so sorry to miss the last two meetings with travel, as it is always wonderful to work on journaling in community.

I do hope YOUR computers are co-operating with YOU, and more importantly, that your journal is there for you, as is mine!





"No pressure, no diamonds." --Thomas Carlyle

**LOVE**

So here I am on the third day of my three day Eat, Pray, Love retreat.
LOVE - what a loaded word.
Love really is more of an action than anything else, so how can I contemplate this while alone in retreat from the world? Love implies there being others, implies connections and embraces and sacrifices and more than one alone.
So, my love day is not exactly the same as the lovely episode described in the Eat, Pray, Love book, where the author falls in love in Bali with a wonderful man.
My day of love seems to be about, first of all - self love.
I do what I need to do to love myself, so that I can love others.
I journaled about these ideas, and came up with images that really run the gamut of kinds of love, love for children, animals, art, perhaps even love for ideas.
I know that I love to read.
I love to collage.
I love to meditate and walk in nature.
but love is really more of a verb, not a thought.
"How well did I love?" -- that will be a question all of us ask when we are facing the end of our lives.
Sometimes I love my children so much it hurts, that I feel like I didn't do or say the right things at the right time.
Loving ones' children is like this, and it stretches us beyond what we thought stretchable.
Loving a spouse for 24 years, as well - that is a long long time to pledge love to one single person, and we have had our ups and downs. and after lots of downs this year, we are actually in a very nice place right now - both learning to love and respect the other in new ways.
I also have friends that I love very much, whose friendship I cherish and need.
Friends who hold me together when I am falling apart. . .
There are many kinds of love - too many for one day. I need a week to just journal and think about love.
no, a lifetime.
hopefully, I will have a lifetime of love.

Day Two - PRAY

So I am on day two of my Eat Pray Love retreat.
PRAY.
This morning I got up pretty early, though not as early as the 3:30 A.M. time that Elizabeth Gilbert had to rise at the Ashram she was studying at, to meditate.
The problem with meditation is there are always uninvited thoughts barging into the quietness that is being created.
I imagine sitting on the banks of a still still lake, and the thoughts are ripples that I let slowly fade out.
This helps until the next thought, one second later.
Well, it's all a process.
Today I will meditate a few more times, do some journey work, and make more pages.
Also here high in the mountains we got over a foot of snow last night - I find myself just gazing out the window, watching the chunks of wet snow fall off the pine trees that surround this cabin. That is a form of meditation, too, I suppose.
Praying is really an act of awareness, as much as anything else.
as is making these Pray pages for my journal. . . .

Eat**Pray**Love

That beautiful fruit was my breakfast this morning - let me explain:
I have been reading this wonderful, wonderful memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love; it is about a year she spent living in Rome, India, and Bali just learning to be - she ate her way through Rome, learned meditation in an Indian Ashram, and fell in love in Bali.
I am inspired by her example to take a retreat - some time off to pursue pure pleasure, enlightenment, and bliss. I don't have a year, but I do have three days.
So right now, I am totally alone in a cabin high in the Rockies near Winterpark, Colorado. I am surrounded by snow and pine trees. This is DAY ONE of my eat, pray, love retreat, this is the day dedicated to good eating.
TO totally enjoy the pleasures that nature gave us in our food - today I am going to prepare three healthy wonderful meals, and enjoy the process of the preparation, the eating, and even the cleaning up after.
I made this fruit plate for breakfast - drizzled in honey.
For lunch - fresh eggs with mushrooms and monterey jack, and for dinner, I got a grass-fed filet mignon. I am totally dedicating this whole day to eating the best I can, to enjoying the beauty and health of the food as well, to knowing my body appreciates good nourishing things.
Today the only goal is to eat well - I also took a long walk, and I worked in my journal, and I will read a bit, nap a bit, etc.
But the focus today is on the FOOD.
Tomorrow, the day is PRAY - that will be much harder and austere. SO I am really enjoying the bliss of the food and luxury today.
Here is the first journaling pages about this wonderful day - and do look for the upcoming journal pages on Pray and Love!