— Joseph Robert Jochmans
I am no believer in doomsday myths or non-native sensationalism surrounding the purported end of the world in 2012. However, in my own life, I've noticed a huge shift taking place within my mind, my body, and my essence of what I would call spirit. As a good Greener, as those of us who attended The Evergreen State College are called, I experienced a college life that blended my scientific observations with a creative flow that felt compelled by the stirrings of my soul. When studying plants, fungi, and lichen, I did more than jot down a few observations to satisfy the scientific requirements at hand. I immersed myself into the subject at hand, observing far more than physical details such as size, growing media, and color. I sat in the environment and listened. I felt the rain misting over my being and heard the droplets percolate deep within the ground as simultaneous ones fell from the massive trees above me. I observed the many varieties of plants growing within the area, and looked for signs of animals that might have passed by. I inhaled the smell of the damp and the moss and all the life and death that a damp Northwest climate brings.
I felt in tune with my surroundings in the Northwest. I tried to experience my time there in three-dimensional quality: sight, smell, taste, touch, and intuition.
During the end of my teens and my early 20s, my life was more moved by my depth of feeling of what was right and what was wrong for me. For us. We made decisions not by practicality, but by how things felt. Intuition and an inner knowledge is as close as I can get to describing the process. As my Grandmother suggested to me, I walked within beauty. I let beauty be my guide.
When we knew the time was right to move back to New Mexico, we drifted in on the ease of good timing. We believed everything would work out, and so it did.
As time went on, a career was rooted and I began to feel the first pangs of dissatisfaction. The job wasn't what I wanted, but how do I turn back and start over? Maybe I should wait another year. Maybe two. Maybe I should pay off my car. Maybe we should see if I can get another job. It's too expensive to go to school. It's too expensive to add an addition. Maybe we should see if I get a raise. Maybe we should find a new house.
The fire settled that. We got a new house. We had some funds. But as quickly as they came into our life, they were gone. A new home. A baby. Then another. Back to my job to earn more money. More time passes. I struggle to remember my connection to the Earth, to the inner stirrings of my own soul. I grew tired, foggy, clouded with habit and the exhaustion of being a hardworking Mama.
Until April of 2012.
Suddenly, I woke up.
My habits needed to be dropped. Change had to occur. I no longer felt powerful, intuitive, sexy. I felt worn down, run out, and gross. I felt fat. I still had plenty of physical energy, but it was my mind and my soul that was left without ignition. My creative interests had all but fallen by the wayside. My athletic interests were falling prey to excuse after excuse, and I no longer recognized myself in the mirror.
But I woke up on April 22, 2012.
I decided at that moment to adopt a Paleo diet template, to completely eliminate all grains and legumes from my diet, and to banish beer from my glass. Within a week, I'd lost 7 pounds. By 3 weeks I'd lost 12. I suddenly had a desire to sit on the edge of the canyon outside my door at work. I would slip down and just observe. The ants crawling along the rocks, the lichen, the swaying of the trees, the ravens circling overhead, and the nuthatches crawling up the few remaining Ponderosas.
I began to feel the spark of intuition and power creeping back into my day. A walk out to a favorite old Indian cave place reminded me of my regular cave walks that grounded me to my place, my Los Alamos.
As I walked amongst the caves and the cliffs jutting red and skyward above me, I wondered what it must have been like to live there, and then, I realized. I did. I do. I live here.
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