All natural

Perhaps it is time for the human race to ponder when food necessitated a label of being "natural."
When did this really become a necessary demarcation?
Is there really another palatable option...
    "unnatural"?

Foreign to the universe at large, banned in 20 countries, developed by chemists in protective white armor, will not decompose, unintelligible, unpronounceable...
"Let's tear into that cellophane wrapper, nuke it and throw it on a styrofoam plate for lunch!"

If we don't need a field to grow our food, do we need a meadow or mountain to stir our emotions?  To unleash our dreams?  To scatter our spent energy into a breathing organism that is sure to nourish our very soul?

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, 

Children are closer to nature than all others.  Maybe it's because they are lower to the ground, the dirt itself.  They wear the scent.  Maybe they need all that open to absorb the sound and motion they've anguished to conform to "inside" dignities.   The stratosphere is close enough.  That will do.  Sea level to the limits of space is about enough room for their voices and bodies and anticipations.  

A child becomes laced with air and clouds and flows with the stream and dives deep into the breath of every leaf and limb.  Belly-crawling to freedom.  Rolling in delirium.  Only the young truly make nature so tactile and real.  And, dew-drenched and filthy and pulsing, they reach out to touch, pet, poke, grab, paw, squish, pour, splash, claw, caress....   With greedy hands, bold and determined, they pull it all in and rub it all over.  Painted in sweat and dust, a mask of nature--the warpaint on technology--is absorbed, it is a part of them because they make it so.  They connect to the simple magnificence, and become grander, freer, happier.   

And, these glowing screens....the bologna, the "chicken and waffle" artificially-flavored potato chips, the red-colored sugar water of creativity....what are we to do with these tablets and phones
and remote-controlled, brainwashing, lobotomizing icons of "entertainment"?  Can we spoon-feed the light and life of our children with chips and processors?  Let us put them aside long enough for something natural.  Feed the mind, the imaginations of our children's lives with something messy and alive.

If nature is a mother, then children are her champion.
And, it is all won and celebrated in our own backyards.

snow

I hate winter.
I hate winter.
I hate winter.

It is February.   A blanket slumped over my shoulders, I gaze through the window on what appears to be the depths of Cocytus....as detailed by Dante himself:  "the deepest level of hell, where the fallen angel Satan himself resides. His wings flap eternally, producing chilling cold winds that freeze the thick ice."  It is morning, when color will emerge from the gray twilight, and, yet, it remains mostly gray.

I could continue to explore my feelings for the dark, dead, soul-sucking ice-gray pit of depression, rendering me nothing less than fetal for 12-14 weeks of the year....
I could...
However, I will acquiesce.  For now, I shall admit, in a quiet whisper...barely heard above my throbbing contempt....the exception to all the distresses this season brings, and pay homage to the miracle of snow.

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

How, I ask you, can one despise a phenomenon involving crystalline confetti of purity?  Dancing, spinning, floating like frosty feathers in the empty cold.  Utterly tender and silent, suspended by its own delicate nature until lying down, like a whisper, into a lacy veil, piling effortlessly until the landscape is overtaken by the ubiquitous plume.

When the snow tumbles down, as seen through window pane or windshield, it creates a mood, fluttering like candlelight on a cloudy day.  Light and weightless, or recklessly driven, it layers and blankets and tucks in all that is small and loose and lost, and hushes the mourning of what has been sacrificed to the darkness and covers the stark nakedness, lulling a dormant landscape quietly to sleep.

The first timid flakes appear from thin air, little more than imagination.  And, you peer heavenward, searching for the birth of a snowflake.  You will find that it bursts to life from within an infinitely deep steely gray void  And, the snow cascades, each flake exploding into being, from the nothing gray, in that place above, just beyond the reach of fingertips, only mere seconds before it pelts dewy kisses on steely foreheads and velvet cheeks and perches like a frozen teardrop on hesitant eyelashes.

Sugared roadways become alive with serpentine trails, twisting and writhing until it coagulates and packs down in the tread of traffic.  Children suit up to dive in and taste and roll and slide, while I find solace in what is warm and cozy and slow, in a life of white-hot, blinding speed, and it becomes universally proper to fall limp amongst blankets and pillows while the exhale of a steaming drink fogs my nose...

unconditional

Some time has passed since my last post.  Ahem...
I'm sure there is a well-funded federal case study to find the average time allowance for a new endeavor, or resolution to utterly fail, and I have filled a personal graveyard of abandoned interests.  Nevertheless, here I type, resisting--no, taunting--the laws of averages.

A few individuals of late are prodding this exhausted mother to continue.
So, I told my parents, "Alright, already!  I'll get more pictures of your precious grandchildren posted..."
(Whaaa-whaaa)

Actually, what will never cease to amaze me is the interest of those without nepotistic motive, no common DNA do we share, and, yet these have an interest in the mutterings of a tired (already used the word 'exhausted') middle-aged mom, and, in so doing, they become more than a cheerleader toward this goal, but a cause.
I owe a debt to anyone who reminds me who I want to be.


But, who are these people that cheer us on?  Where do you find that individual banging around in this world ready to dive into you and the minuscule personality trinkets you have to offer?    A relationship is nothing short of a phenomenon.   These people become attached to us in this life, some for a blink and others until there is no more.  And, in the ups and downs, to whom do I consider "blood" vs. "water?"

An infant born, bathes in love unconditional.  A young child demands this love, and an adolescent challenges and frays the fibers of the "unconditional" parameters.  And, I don't care how old I am, I still pine for my parents' love in that deep, hollow place between the heart and gut.  Birth is random. The blood we share is not by choice, it is blind and chaotic and arbitrary.


Yet, we ramble and hurl through the stream of days and months and years, and encounter individuals who matter little, and we don't know their name, we cannot recall the tone of their voice or their scent that lingers in their hair and scarf, and we do not long for their gaze, their thoughts unburdened, the inhale and exhale that fuels the light of their desire and dreams.  They drive a Honda, like so many Hondas, and they drop their keys while paying a cashier.  They have nice shoes and look pensive.  They peck at a phone in their hands, shuttling messages to someone not us.  And, that someone is someone to them, and how and when did it occur?  Were they born into common blood, or was it another chance encounter bound for unknown intention?

 "Blood is thicker than water" is commonly understood to mean that the bond between family members or blood relations is stronger than one between people outside a family (water?).  Life has a way of challenging an absolute philosophy, does it not?  Upon further research, I discovered what appears to be the origin of this phrase:   

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Interesting...
When blood sealed a covenant, it was more binding than a family tie.  It's all about perspective.  It's all about commitment.

There is no doubt I understand the complexity of unconditional love, when wellness is hoped for above all else.  To love, without diminishing self, without accepting disrespect or abuse.

I love my husband unconditionally, bound by a vow, a covenant.  To be "blood" through the good, the bad and my many hairstyles of the 90's.  And, I love my children and, unconditionally, through sweat, tears, and...yes, blood, battle the doldrums and trudge the summits that lock child and parent in a tandem journey to discover who we all are and how we will bear the yoke we carry together.  Born in water, bound by blood.

And one day, you may bend down to place keys in the hand of a stranger, or share a bench with a personality reflected in a pair of fabulous shoes.  Sometimes the chemistry, the electric fray in which we are all immersed, will produce a random ricochet that lands and sticks, and you find a friend.  More, really, because there is a sense of yourself in that one, already understood, with words unspoken.  And when you find yourself speaking, tumbling toward fore-drawn conclusions and sentences unfinished yet understood, you will forever share your existence with this one, because you knew from the first spark that this one is blood.