august plans

i’m really excited about how things are shaping up for august.  of course i’m most excited about the new apartment—that was a headache, let me tell you!  ever tried to find a new residence from across the country and then decided to take it, sight unseen?  i don’t recommend it.  luckily, we did have mom to go up to bridgton and scout around for places.  we really took a risk with the way that we had to lease the place, but i think it really paid off.  we found a great little cabin apartment back at the beginning of june, but it was sitting empty and looking for new residents.  when i contacted the landlady, she said it was available, but that she wouldn’t wait on us until august (fair enough).  so we decided to go ahead and lease the place, coughing up a month and a half of rent for an empty apartment.  i feel good about the decision though, because i firmly believe that peace of mind is worth $900.  several of the girls at my school are still looking for places, and buddy, that is a situation that i would not like to be in.

the end of the building. #3 is sandwiched in the middle

our place is great.  it’s a triplex building in the woods of naples, maine, right off the main highway, 10 minutes from my school and about 40 minutes from portland.  i think it used to be a summer camp or something, because the road (stable road) used to be called camp keoka road and the two converted apartment buildings are one-story gray wooden summer-camp-looking contraptions.  the place is small, small, small, so i’m trying to thin belongings before we move.  i got rid of all of my sca garb over the weekend (thanks for helping me out, gryphon’s gate family!!), and i am about to make my third trip to the hannah home to drop things off.  stephen and i are going to have to share a closet (eek!!) but it’s all worth it for a wood-walled cabin that (so i hear) smells of cedar and fresh air.  the kitchen and bathroom are fair-sized, and the livingroom runs the length of the place, screen doors at front and back.  adapting to life with out a/c or a dishwasher is going to be interesting, but that’s all part of the adventure.

can you see chickweed and bean sprouts in the window and jars of herbs in the corner? 🙂

i’m really excited about the yard, and i’m wondering if it’s better to ask permission or forgiveness for a little patch of garden.  i’m leaning toward forgiveness myself.  it might be too late when we get there to plant them, but the drab gray of the building would really be perked up a bit by some sunflowers and calendula.  i’m trying to wrap my head around the vastly different growing seasons up in maine.  in alabama, you don’t have to worry about a hard freeze until december, but in maine it’s early october.  i’ll have to experiment with a winter garden—lots of lettuce, chard, and spinach!  i’m thinking containers would be handy as well, since i can drag some of them in if the weather goes nuts.  i’m seeing a kitchen window full of chickweed for salads.  it should be happy there all year long, and although most people cringe at the sight of the prolific little plant, i know it’s damned good to eat 🙂

and speaking of good to eat, i’m not sure about the pay or the length of employment yet, but it looks like some time in august i’m going to be apprenticing on an organic farm (!!!!).  goddess knows that a city gal can probably wreak some major havoc on a garden, but i’m really thrilled to be able to learn a little bit about sustainable agriculture and about growing food in maine.  i’m hoping i’ll get to bring produce home, but if i can’t, we already got on for shares at another csa in poland, maine.  for about 25 bucks a week, we’ll get a box of local, seasonal veggies every week.  i can’t wait to learn to cook new things!

yay! green things instead of pavement and beer bottles!

the only other things that i’m going to do in august are study, meet my classmates, and hopefully find a place to sell my urban herbwife skincare products.  birthwise sent out one of our syllabi already, so i’m thrilled to be able to go ahead and get started with my assignments (yes, a dork, i am aware).  first thing is anatomy and physiology—that will be a throwback to high school for sure!  do you remember what a xiphoid process is? 🙂  i’m hoping to be able to be able to meet with some of my classmates before school starts.  almost all of us have found each other, and we’ve all been chatting on a facebook page.  it should be a really good mix of people—there are women from all over the  country and from all walks of life.  i believe i am solo in representing both the south and zaftig women.  they’d better look out! 🙂

so that’s that for now.  more to come!

snake medicine

when we find ourselves in times of trouble, we tend to turn deeply to whatever mythos or stories best explain our circumstances or provide empowerment in a time of perceived weakness.   a catholic, for instance, may turn to mary, to the divine mother who kept her faith even as her child was being murdered, for spiritual mothering and comfort—a buddhist may meditate upon the eightfold path, remembering that life is dukkha, or suffering, but finding sanctuary in the fact that freedom from pain is attainable—the philosopher may simply say “oh well—-c’est la vie!” and go on about her day.

i suppose my own personal mythos is a bit of a patchwork, but all tending toward a similar theme of earth-based spirituality.  i have a simple reverence for the cyclical complexities of nature, and as what i supposed you could call a pantheist, i see “god/goddess” in everything.  i try to make myself receptive to any lessons that the universe throws my way, whether though people, experiences, or serendipitous encounters with everyday things.  a large part of my spiritual upbringing consisted of traditional cherokee teachings gleaned from my personal mentor or from the stories of tribal elders who i met in my decade on the powwow circuit as a traditional shawl dancer.  one part of the cherokee mythos that still sticks with me today is the concept of “animal medicine.”

by medicine, i don’t mean medicine—i mean healing and teaching.  i suppose it’s a problematic translation that we’ve kept all of these years, but there’s little i can do about that.  an animal’s medicine consists of many things, but mainly it refers to the lessons that you can learn from a particular creature.  one interesting thing about humans as a whole is that many cultures around the world ascribe the same medicine (think of this as an archetypal concept) to the same animal.  for example, a dog’s medicine is its ability to teach us loyalty—and this transcends many times and places.  raven is associated with magic in many parts of the world, and in more cultures than one, spider is the great cosmic weaver, connecting all things by a single thread.

by observing the strengths of each animal, and by paying attention whenever animal messengers appeared, a member of the tribe could strive to be a wiser, more well-rounded person (many lessons, as they are today, were learned the hard way as well!).  also, because different personalities have different dominant characteristics, one would be said to have a lot of a particular animal’s medicine in them.  kind and gentle people carried deer medicine with them.  visionaries might have buffalo medicine.  jokey smurf had plenty of coyote medicine in him!

as i look forward to my move, snake, with its medicine of transmutation, has been on my mind a great deal.  in all of my preparation, i have been placing emphasis on the stress of the move itself—of packing all of my belongings into a truck and driving them across the country, only to have to unpack them at the other end.  but when you think about it, all this really requires is good stamina and energy.  i had been inadvertently preparing for this part by eating well and by taking nourishing herbal infusions every day (didn’t really think about it; just listened to what my body said it needed).  when i said my first goodbye last week and then said even more over the past weekend though, the reality of my situation came crashing down hard—-it wasn’t the physical aspect that i was unprepared for—-it was the emotional aspect.  changing location is easy; leaving a life is hard.

in cherokee tradition (and in many other native traditions, i’m sure) snake is a symbol of transmutation.  where as transformation is a more general concept wherein one thing turns into another, transmutation carries with it the connotation of deep change, from a lower to a higher state of being.  snake was thought to attain higher states of being because of the way it sheds its skin.  when snake has outgrown its skin, its eyes begin to cloud over, signaling that shedding is forthcoming.  the eyes cloud over because they too are covered with single immobile scales that must be shed along with the rest of the body.  in the cherokee mythos, this clouding of the eyes represents a trance-like state wherein the snake, being between “two worlds,” can see the deeper secrets of the universe.  the new snake then emerges from the old skin, carrying with it any wisdom gleaned from its time between worlds.  it doesn’t just grow bigger–it also grows wiser, though the experience can be harrowing and dangerous because of the temporary vulnerability of the transmutating creature.

though i’m not shedding eye scales (thank god for small favors!), i’ve been having these crazy crying jags for the past two days.  it doesn’t take much to set me off.  yesterday i watched a compilation that someone posted online of soldiers coming home to surprise their families—instant and unstoppable water works—don’t know what i was thinking.  today i started my day by fielding a reference call by dhr wanting information on a friend of mine who had been reported for her home birth.  the anger that welled up in me that my friend should have to be defended thus for her educated, healthy choice sent me off again.  things that would normally just make me bitchy are making me very emotional—and i think it’s more about the move than anything else.

i’m in a vulnerable in-between-worlds space, and i don’t really know the best way to handle it.  i’m shedding my skin one painful scale at a time, and i’ve got two whole more weeks of goodbyes left.  snake’s medicine is its ability to experience life willingly and without resistance, to grow and to gain wisdom.  but what of the moment of vulnerability?  how to handle that?  for the moment, i think i’m best served by purging unneeded belongings, packing boxes, confiding in my better half,  avoiding sedentary days (which is hard when the heat index is 110!), and taking the time to seek all of the closure that i need.  there’s the “eyes on the prize” mentality as well, but whole-hog adherence to that can make us miss the present for the sake of the future.

there’s some wisdom to be gleaned from this in-between space—-i’ve just got to find it.

to be continued…..

(ps.  it’s later in the day and i’ve just discovered that yoder’s good health recipe, an amish herbal tonic, is a great pick-me-up for the blues.  must be that black cohosh!  i’ve only ever seen it at amish roadside stands in tennessee, but manna grocery carries it now!)

saying goodbye

i thought that graduate school had prepared me for saying goodbye, but watching friends drift across the globe one by one, over several years, in no way prepared me for what it would be like to say goodbye, all at once, to everyone i know.  i’m leaving for a new life in maine in 20 days, and suddenly the race is on to get all of my goodbyes in.  i felt pretty casual about the whole thing until i left my dad’s on the 4th.  it was overwhelmingly sad to say goodbye and even sadder to know that i would just have to do it all over again…and again…and again.  but i can’t get too dramatic about it—i mean, this is maine we’re talking about—not mars!  still, a 23 hour car trip is not very conducive to weekend visits.

one penske truck, two cars, three days!

so far in my goodbyes, two common themes have popped up.  the first is the “call me and tell me everything!!!”  i figured that if i made that promise to everyone who asked, i would have nothing to talk about except for being on the phone with people from alabama 🙂  of course i’ll call, but i figured a personal blog would be a better way to relay the gory details.  i’m sure there will be many exciting, terrifying, weird, and wonderful stories that come out of a southern gal’s move to the great white north, and if you’re interested in a little voyeurism, you can find it here.  if you could care less, you can run screaming!

the second theme is “i’ll have to come visit!!”  now, this is something that i’m not taking lightly, folks.  if you say you’re going to visit, i will hold you to it, and nothing, not the mud season, not the swarms of mosquitoes (state bird of maine), not the waist-deep snow, will keep me from dragging y’all up here.  our apartment is very small, but there’s a patch of floor with your name on it, buster!

so here i am, in the homestretch of life in tuscaloosa, looking at a hoard that needs thinning and a lifetime’s worth of belongings that need packing.  anybody see disney’s the sword in the stone?   i soooooo need merlin’s magic bag about right now.

oh yeah, and if you’re one of the people who has not made byebye plans with me yet, give me a call!!  time’s a wastin’!

to be continued….