Eyeing Some Fish

MAY 11, 2015 IN GENERAL

I haven’t meant to neglect this blog. Life is always changing. I’ve been doing work-related projects for the most part, but also some house things and an artsy project. I’m trying to decide whether to remain in the Ohio Valley for a while longer or go somewhere else. If I move, where will I go? Or will I travel for a bit and work from the road? My little pea-brain spins when I start pondering all of the possibilities. These last two weeks the “busy-ness” is catching up with me, and, as of this morning, I’m quickly developing either a sinus/allergy malady or a blasted summer cold.

At any rate, Saturday I visited my cousins, who are working on the decorative pond in their front yard. We went up to Wet Pets in Pittsburgh’s South Hills looking for new pumps and plants and fish. While they hashed all of that out, I meandered through the aquarium aisles watching neon colors in various shapes and sizes dart through bubbled waters and fake coral.

The fish life in an aquarium: no big decisions on packing it all in to unpack somewhere else; daily food in a temperature-controlled climate; observing the observers on the other side of the glass (what is glass?) I did note, though, that while some are lazily, coasting back and forth, others make their tanks look like the subway at rush hour. What are they thinking?   

Are they content, or do any of them, like the goldfish in the Public Television commercial, long to be a wild salmon swimming upstream in the excitement of the rapids?  

(These, by the way, were taken with my phone not my DSLR, so the quality is a bit lacking)

The Next Chapter

June 1, 2014

Well. Here we are, and here we go. If you’ve been reading my blog, you are aware of the “themes,” the “mantras,” the “riffs” that run through my thoughts and life.  The Universe has been at work again, and I have a new blog site. GoDaddy discontinued their blog product and told everyone they had to move, so I packed up all 250+ entries from the past seven years, and here I am.

I, of course, am at another plateau anyway. Since last year, I have been “releasing.” I copied all of my years of blog posts into a Word doc—1,101 letter-sized pages of photos and words. Scanning through those entries reminded me why I moved to Oregon and what I can do when I’m working creatively.

As the world at large moves into its next phase, my world is shifting, too. There are new causes to explore and priorities to rearrange. Sorting through the house after my parents’ deaths in November is teaching me much about release. Let go of the sets of Time-Life books; one only needs so many throw blankets; keep my grandmother’s jewelry box. As it happens, my niece is moving into her first solo apartment, so she will be able to use some of her grandparents’ furniture, dishes and pans. This is good.

I’ve turned inward to release habits and thought patterns that no longer work for me. My focus is on evolution and re-finding my purpose, though I suspect part of it does include the journey here to help my parents these last four years. Now, though, I feel myself running in place, excited to move on, yet not quite knowing in which direction.

Just last week a friend posted that her “overworked and overwrought” husband is leaving his job “to take time to smell the roses. And to fish.” I say, “YES! Do it!” I’ve leapt off that cliff in the past and feel myself moving toward the edge again. Writing, photography, teaching, consulting, wine—I’ve done this before. The hard part is honing in all of the possibilities to develop something doable that makes sense. 

These photos are from a field trip I took recently with high school art students. It was great to be at the Carnegie Museum with them and to wander amidst art and creatures from other eras. The pot in the first photo is decorated with the archetypal swirl that appears in nearly every culture throughout millennia, always symbolizing change, transition, birth, growth. I've been drawn to the swirl for a long time and used a version of it for my first business logo in Rochester and Oregon. This pot is more than 5,000 years old. Fascinating. These objects are ancient, but the beauty and drama of their energy live on as the world continues its story.