hearing

I am going to post about hearing.  

The gift of listening is huge - really listening. But before you listen, you must be able to hear.  Listening is impossible if one can not hear.  My daily life is with one who can not hear.  It is to me big, to him obviously not so.  I have more or less given up.  I can only fix me.  I have planted a million seeds and so have others, family and friends and I thank them for speaking up. Their concerns were not heard,  but sometimes one does not want to hear the unpleasant.  

 The bottom line is we all have issues we deal with, and some problems we can fix and some we cannot.  This to me seems fixable if one wants to hear the problem and address it.

It is tiring not to be heard so I have stopped speaking as much.  Does it matter, does it make a difference? I doubt it. One tires of trying and when one is dealing with an adult who chooses stupid One must step back, take a deep breath and allow the other to be stupid. For those of us who like to control and direct this is not easy.   Hoping that not hearing voices, telephones or sirens will not kill the other.
Bottom line, I would love to be heard, not to listen to the TV at high range and so much more, but it is not mine to fix or it would be fixed.

transistion

This morning I visited the yurt.  It is such remarkable space.

It felt good to stand in it.  It is in transition from rental back to ours.  

I have missed the space and the space around it. 

In the years it was being used,  I tried to be respectful 

of that space leaving it for our tenant. 

 I love all of the land here.  In giving up the space I felt a hole. 

 The rental did not work as I had hoped.  It was not bad, 

 a bit of a disappointment.  Perhaps my expectations were too high. 

Towards the end It felt unloved and uncared for.  How sad.

 Our tenant had moved on, at least in her heart.

Will we "rent" again? 

 In talking with my sisters, 

and my friends who have rented,  and my boss who has a rental

 (can you tell I felt I needed advice) 

one message was repeated

 rent in exchange for work, collect the rent,

then pay for the work as it is done. 

Okay, got that for future.

The magic tenant is out there somewhere.

The one who wants to live on the land,

work the land, love the yurt and the land as their own.

It is how I always rented.  We lost money when renting

by improving them like they were ours. 

We put in kitchens, built additions and decks, fenced, painted.

 I shall put it back out to the universe that the yurt needs to be used well, 

be it by us or overnights, weekends for friends 

or R & R  outings for non-profits 

or the magical long term.

In the meantime, the magic tenant is out there

waiting for our paths to cross

 and they will.

seeing

I take pictures.  Some I love, many I delete.  

This pleases me.

truly get this

an exercise in fun

Today after a lunch at Krista's, Janet and I stopped on the River Road in Hiram 

and took pictures.  We both were pretty much shooting the same things.  

then we came home edited and compared.  

Nice to play with another, see what they saw.  

trust and the balance of the universe.

  

~

 the universe keeps balance.  

If someone shortchanges another, then down the line that person will be short changed.
If one lends a hand, one will be helped in turn.

   What we do, comes back to us, be it good or not so good.

What you put out in the universe returns to you. 
Be it a word, an act .... 

In my many years I have seen this hold true. What goes around, comes around.

 It might take a minute or two 

or a decade or two. 

The universe will balance itself out.

DISCONNECTED connections

Ranting....good for the soul to spit it out.  


 This is what a friend called Facebook.  This is what I discussed with a woman who came into the office, as she felt the same.  I am on Facebook because I used to send emails and emails apparently went out of style or maybe family and friends get so many they ignore all mail.  There was a huge quiet.  I felt a need to connect.  To bypass this quiet and have communication, I joined Facebook to find out what others were doing since they seemed lost in cyberspace.  I HATE it overall because most people put up stuff they find on-line/ or they sit and watch and say nothing /or they are not there.  Mostly I feel only a given few thinking verbal people communicate.

Does anyone have anything to say in their very own words?  Sharing is quite lovely, but If I invited you to the house would you arrive with posters and magazine clippings and photos or could you perhaps sit and hold a conversation?  Believe me as an introvert I find people cumbersome, but Facebook is starving me.  It is an extremely sick cocktail party.  No, even a cocktail party has  more depth.  I keep hoping it will improve.  It doesn't.  

I am asking too much.   I try to say stuff of interest, or if I share I try to make it worth reading.  Maybe it is my age.   The woman I spoke with yesterday had the same complaints, unless you are on Facebook you get nada, but on facebook it is not much better than Nada, so why bother?  Because of the given few who do share their own words and thoughts.

God FB pisses me and her off.  I suspect we are in not alone.  

Social who the bloody hell ever had the balls to consider this social, who has 500 friends or even 269.  NO ONE.  If you were dying do you think these people, your FB friends would send cards, flowers or bring a casserole to the house.  NO NO NO.  
Do they send Christmas cards? NO NO NO....... Do they care one iota about you?  
And the other side of this is Do you care about them?  Perhaps it is my age, but aren't friends supposed to care, be there for each other?   

 FB is a hoax pulled on the modern world and millions buy into it.

What is this social "friend"ship.  A contest to see who has the biggest numbers.  Well I declined friendship with someone who has 4000 "friends". When she can name them all I might reconsider.    60 something is about all I can handle and believe me I know that many will not care if and when I die.  

Mr. Einstein said it well....

"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."

Personally, I long for a return to real

 human interaction

table

Our old glass dining table is on the deck this summer.

It makes for some remarkable photos

with dew, rain and fog

and of course

 light. 

intense

This picture is stunning and frustrating.  I don't understand it.

 The other day when I was walking the bog road it was shady 

and the woods overall were shaded, dark, 

except for this one white birch tree which was hit by the light. 

 Blinding white is the best was to describe it. It was hard to look at it.

 Not just light hitting it like the one behind it, normal sunlight.  

This was so intense this tree looked like lightening or fire.  

Some things in nature are so big they literally stop us in our tracks.

And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.

precarious

Dragonfly got caught up in a spider web.

Nature is pretty hard

One moment you are flying high, the next not.

there is magic

we walk and our walks are pretty much the same every day.  

We either walk the fields or we walk down to the bog.  

YET No two walks are the same. 

New flowers, grasses, bugs, no  bugs, lights, shadows, 

rain, sun, fog, mountains, ducks, water. 

 All the same stuff, all magic. It is always new.  Ever changing.

Which is why we are so grateful.

kites

Barbara has brought kites from when she was balloning. 

 She said when the wind wasn't right to take the balloon up, 

it was good to fly kites and she has a number of neat kites.  

So we have been waiting for the right winds and almost didn't get it.  

This kite is heavy and needed a lot to get it up.  

Tim said it was hard to keep up wanting to dip and dive.  

breeding

years ago, in the 60's my husband and I made a huge decision not to have children. 

 There were many reasons noble and not, 

but the biggest being that we felt the earth was in trouble 

and not needing more mouths to feed.  

Over the years I revisit this and the impact on the earth and me.  

Our lives and the lives of others would have been different 

had we not made this choice.  

~

If I I had had children I would choose to have had them when I was young.  

Having kids older makes you financial secure (I hope) 

Yet it is way hard on kids. It is not about money.

My parents were older and they were tired 

by the time we were in gear wanting to do things. 

~

If I had had children I would have stayed home.  

Dropping a child and handing it over to another 

to raise seems to me and this is me, sinful.  

why bother...oh yes money .... no no no.  

Oh my god what one misses and why in the name of all that is sacred 

would you leave this beautiful new life in the hands of.... 

a stranger or even a family member to raise. 

You let someone else have this, this privilege, teach your child?  

First tooth, first everything. 

My feelings about a subject I chose not to partake.  

Let me tell you when you choose not to breed, 

you can not converse with other women for years, 

you are a piranha.... 

I could not talk of morning sickness, baby feeding, diaper rash, nursery school. 

And believe me those with kids cannot talk of anything else for ages!

 I was more comfortable with the guys on the barbecue 

Odd woman out.

I have never seconded guessed or regretted the decision.  

It was and is the best for the earth, 

the best for us, 

and it is as it should be.

oh my, heart aches

Recently a friend asked two young visitors if they liked to read.  

No, a very adamant NO, it is boring.

In a million years I had not thought reading boring.  Hard at the beginning perhaps, but boring, never.  

While saying this, their eyes were on their electronic devices - games, texting.  

My how sad, said my heart. What they are missing.  

Reading will take you everywhere, anywhere and will serve you well in life, for life.  My two young people are probably "normal" in this respect. 

We shall hope the light dawns and some day they find reading not boring.

The other thing I have found absolutely mind boggling is these young people 

seldom go out, no exploring, no escaping from the old people, 

the adults, the house. 

Who in their right mind at a young age wants to hang out in the same house as the adults.  BORING is my thought on that!  

unstructured, self entertaining, 

play beyond electronics seems out of style now a days.

 My childhood was full of outside adventure.  Mornings after breakfast, out ~ and out all day.  I knew the yards, the parks, the houses, the alleys, the sidewalks, the railroad tracks, the streams of our area for miles. We followed the mailman on his entire rounds.  We rollerskated, had pick-up games with terrible equipment, no rules and odd number of players, but we didn't care.  We were free and on our own.  All day most every day in the summers and after school.  Home for dinner was the rule and after dinner home by dark.  What a carefree easy fun life.  Loved to visit my uncle's farm with a pond and fields, a barn!  The beach roads, lanes, we knew them all.  Our world!

Here we have acres of trails, a river, a bog and neat little buildings. I would have killed for this as a young person.  Woods, water so many places to find or to just park.  There is little interest at all in heading out alone to explore.  Even invites to walk with us are usually met with no thank you, I'll stay here.   Again how sad my heart is.  Not for me, I explore, wander, walk.  I am out.  Day, night skies, trees, bugs, birds are my neighbors and friends and I know them, love them relish the daily changes, the magic of nature.   What a small world kids have knit for themselves.  Not all I am sure, although they have written whole books on the subject of being deprived of nature.