Nakedness

Preamble
Issues of personal privacy, openness, and freedom were what were on my mind when I woke up this morning. These on the microscale, mind you, not the grand scale of constitutional rights and such. Just little old me wondering at how much to say or to not say, trying to figure out if I’ve said [...]

Read Full Post »

Déjá Vu All Over Again

In the words of that great sage Yogi Berra, “It’s déjá vu all over again.”
Yes, that quote was going through my head on my drive down to Sedona yesterday to see the flamenco show at Tlaquepaque. That, and all that happened a year ago and what has happened since. (A separate post with photos of [...]

Read Full Post »

My Mission in Life

One thing about writing about personal things in a public forum – sooner or later you will have to retract something you’ve said, apologize, or otherwise eat crow…
I need to correct something I said in my last post. I did believe it was true at the time, and the realization was quite freeing, but it [...]

Read Full Post »

Shut Up and Sing

Since my previous post, I’ve been reflecting on the words of “Not Ready to Make Nice,” by the Dixie Chicks. I’m more of a Juan Martín, Paco Peña, and Mosaico kinda girl these days, but the Chicks have written an anthem for anyone who has ever been told, through violent words or actions, to just [...]

Read Full Post »

Transcending Trauma

It’s been almost thirty years now and I’m living proof that trauma can be transcended. It is possible not only to survive, but to thrive. What follows is some rather unconventional advice. It’s just what has worked for me.
Forgiveness and Forgetting
Forgive? You will be advised to forgive – usually immediately – by well-meaning people who [...]

Read Full Post »

Giving Up Control

I’ve had a post simmering in the background that I thought was waiting for an upcoming personal anniversary. Once again, I’ve gotten the cosmic nudge to go ahead and post something that I was hesitant about. The Universe has its ways of getting my attention and teaching me to give up control.
First, a little background [...]

Read Full Post »

Message From My Younger Self

During breakfast this morning, some fragments of lyrics I wrote 25 years ago popped into my head. The words were from one of my brother’s favorites, yet I haven’t played that song in at least two decades. I can’t even remember all the words anymore. So, I expect I will be out in the [...]

Read Full Post »

Surveying the Terrain

Early this morning, it hit me what a great metaphor surveying is for this process I’m in the midst of. Run the gun, set the backsight, use repetition shots for error correction, locate the foresight, focus, shoot it, record it – I’m surveying the terrain of my life over the last forty some years [...]

Read Full Post »

Stunned

I keep making oblique references to a “web of circumstance and connection” that, to me, is a powerful metaphor for the course and conduct of our lives. I’m definitely going to go a little further “out on a strand” in this post. For many years, and long before the advent of the Internet, I’ve worked [...]

Read Full Post »

Some of What I Believe

I’m kind of at loose ends today. I’ve been practicing and working on promo stuff, but I’m distracted and restless given yesterday’s news. I called F1 and F2 last night and let them know and promised to update them as I found out more. F1 summed up that strange sense of unreality that one [...]

Read Full Post »

Hold On

Getting back to blogging after about a week away…first a trip to Phoenix and then leaving my Power Book cord at my friends’ place kind of crimped my Internet activities for a few days.
It was a good trip to Phoenix – Memorial Day weekend with F1 and F2, finished up with a flamenco guitar lesson. [...]

Read Full Post »

Musical Chairs

Though I’ve been practicing a lot lately, I’ve been pretty casual about how. I’d just plop down whenever I felt like it, somewhere, anywhere, in my living room with my guitar, or pull any old chair over to the harp. I was keeping it “light” and fun, which was fine, but that isn’t [...]

Read Full Post »

Passagio

Over the last few days, everything has changed. That sense of waiting for the cosmic tumblers to fall into place, as outlined in my post “Sweet Surrender,” has passed. It has been replaced by a quiet knowing that I cannot adequately explain. It’s a felt certainty, a wordless intuition, that on some deep [...]

Read Full Post »

Joy

I’ve been thinking more about devotion and the sense of joy that I spoke of in the previous post. I didn’t realize what I had with my guitar playing until I lost it and then I thought it was too late to get it back. I didn’t find that joy again until I was [...]

Read Full Post »

After Action Review

The wildland firefighting community has evolved certain “best practices” over decades of work to improve firefighter safety. Some of the most interesting of these innovations have come out of a partnership in leadership development with the United States Marine Corps. I’ve talked about this a little before in a previous post (Instinct), but over [...]

Read Full Post »