Seattle Girl on Cape Cod: The fog will lift and you WILL get your mojo back...

Dear fellow EARTHLINGS,

Are any of you feeling the INERTIA? Are you feeling the fog? Are you on airplane mode? Is your vehicle on auto-pilot? Are you in your comfort ZONE, but feeling like you need a sense of purpose, direction or perhaps a little FIRE under your pants to get you going? (By the way, I enlarged the text on this post because it wants to be LARGE for obvious reasons today).

Well, I am feeling these things!

I had a dream earlier in the month where I was driving my car but had no idea where I was going. The fog outside kept getting thicker and thicker. Eventually I had to pull the car over. I started getting sleepy and realized I was being 'gassed'. I couldn't even bring myself to check my phone or send a message out, I was THAT tired. I was able to lean my car seat back and then I guess I surrendered. It wasn't a fearful dream. I wasn't in FIGHT or FLIGHT. 

I just let go....

A few days after that I went down to Mayflower Beach and the entire beach was in a thick fog. It was like I was living out my dream in reality (or vice versa). I walked directly into the fog and couldn't see Cape Cod Bay or people or life of any kind. I could only see less than a foot in front of me, so I walked in the direction of the sound of the waves. I got to the water and dead European Starlings were strewn across the shore. I have an app that identified the birds. 

Why were they dead? What killed them? Bird flu? Virus? 

I had this eerie feeling and a sense of being the only one left on Earth. I kept walking through the fog with wet sand beneath my feet. There were patches of seaweed and kelp here and there in the sand. I decided to identify some of these: Dead Man's Fingers, Gut Weed...

So now I'm walking through fog over Dead Man's Fingers and Gut Weed to a stark shoreline where once-full-of-song-and-life starlings are lying half-mutilated on the dark, cold sand. If this is not a metaphor for what has been going on in our world for the last...say... 2 to 3 years, I don't know what is.

I stood still for a moment as the fog turned my hair into a wet mess which was now sticking to my face and thought:

For the love of God, can we please have a little light in this world?

Just then the fog lifted. I kid you not. I saw the entire beach stretched out before me. I saw light and people in the distance walking their dogs. I saw kids playing frisbee. Strange seagulls with black heads came out of nowhere. One hovered along side me and I swear he looked me right in the eye. What were these creatures? Before I could have another thought about it, this bird took off on another thermal down the beach. Later, I identified the birds to be a black-headed gulls (makes sense), which is a rare visitor to North America, being that they are European. Maybe they, like the starlings, had a message?

I got my own message that day. It was pretty loud and clear. Surrender and eventually the fog will lift. AMEN TO THAT!

I'm ready for this inertia to go away. I'm ready to feel  clear-headed and get my fire back. I'm ready to WRITE and get my next book out there, teach classes, retreats, get my mojo back and GET ON WITH IT.

I'M READY!

I know the world is heavy right now. I know there is a lot going on. I know self care is needed, but that that doesn't mean you can't spread your wings and fly. You are still ALIVE. What do you want to do with this one precious life? We need your light.... so pick something (or pick a few things, but not much more than that) and stick with it until the end. 

I am speaking primarily to myself, but perhaps you feel this too? And here's the thing:

Just because the GRINCH stole the ROAST BEAST doesn't mean he gets to steal Christmas, right? All the Whos down in Whoville are not going to let that happen. They are going to join hands, love, sing, create and carry on....

And that's what I plan to do.

How about you?

Crashing and Burning at The End of The World

Dear fellow Earthlings,

While I sit on a log on Dungeness Spit in the Pacific Northwest, with 40 mile an hour winds whipping at my face and waves crashing on the shore, I'm thinking about Australia burning. Just the other day a friend said on a blog post she shared with me said,
"THE WORLD IS GOING CRAZY!"

It's a very strange feeling to be way out here where nearly a dozen deer come to my window and graze on the grass each day. These docile, gentle beings remind me that there is still softness in the world, while in other parts there is FIRE burning all around!

As I see my Australian friends' pictures from their backyards of air that is thick with gray smoke and hear them speak about itchy throats and teary eyes, I feel hopeless. I am here in the Pacific Northwest in winter where it mostly rains. However, I have strong memories of the fires that blazed through our own forests all the way down to the California coast the past several summers. I remember sitting at Carkeek Park looking at a couple sitting on a log in the haze and a man in the distance wading up to his waist in Puget Sound. He looked like he was baptizing himself for the end of times.

What are we to do?

And now there is talk of war. Facebook, news and social media sites are buzzing with opinions and theories and fear and anger and...

I have to turn it off.

Throwing my own energy into the fire will only stir it up even more.

The way inside is very subtle. I find it in the forest next to two huge cedar trees with bark graying from the dampness of the air. They are like very old, wise grandfathers. They must be more than 200 years old. Their top branches sway in the wind, but they are grounded with deep roots that I imagine reach the core of he Earth. They call me to stand still and listen. I breathe in the air and raise my hands over head for a minute and then bring them down to hold my heart in gratitude for being with these elders.

I tread further down the moist, pine-needled path to the ocean that roars with tsunami-like waves. They crash through my chest and blow me wide open so that all of the molecules that make up who I am are now blowing in the wind across the Sound and when I sit down on a log with the wind whipping at my face, those same molecules come back into place as if the log were a buoy pulling everything back to its center.

Crashing, Crashing....the waves are relentless in their fury. Fallen trees that are now logs riding the waves come barreling on to the shore. Even the seagulls hunker down behind old stumps and sticks in the sand. Walking down the spit was easy, but when I turn around to walk back to the forest, every inch of me has to fight the wind. I cover my face with my scarf and pull my hat down so I only have a tiny window for my eyes which are shut tight and wet with salty tears.

When I reach the upward slope back to the forest from the Sound, I lift my gaze past the waves and I almost detect a calm smoothness out between the Spit and the land mass on the other side. And then my mind imagines sitting on the bottom of the ocean with the sea creatures there. All of the bottom fish barely moving while so much activity happens on the surface.

 If it is the end of the world as we know it, I don't want to be crashing and burning and fighting and fearing. I don't want to add fuel to the fire. I don't want to predict, judge, criticize, hypothesize  or even proselytize.

The only thing I can do now is look up when I hear the piercing shrill of an eagle overhead. He swoops down and lands right on a high branch of a cedar tree above me. When he lands, he does not move, but stares with that all-knowing gaze that actually brings me a deep peace for the moment.