Re-inventing Life

Rotation of the Seasons

From Clip Art, Alas, not Me!

I went to a lovely park in Piedmont last Sunday while Rob was at the Raiders game. It was a small, dog-walking kind of park, approximately seven miles from my home, nestled so deep into a neighborhood I didn’t even know it was there! I walked a bit and found a bench in the late afternoon sun; that barely warm, golden-lit, late autumn afternoon kind of sun.

 

I had that Sunday evening kind of feeling; maybe a bit melancholy, dreamy, weekend coming to a close kind of feeling. The longer I sat, the more I could feel the hope of a new season rising in my heart.  The light through the treetops filled me with the anticipation of something new. The rotation of the seasons is part of the whole cycle of death and resurrection. I felt connected again.

The rotation of the seasons mirrors the journey I’ve had healing from the vertigo. Mary Catherine Bateson in her book, Composing a Life, refers to living one’s life as an improvisatory art, including repeated re-direction, and re-definition of identity.  

Re-invention and continual re-definition is really what this blog is about. I’m coming to realize that as much as I love the concept of vacation at home, it is broader than that. The vertigo was a life-changing experience that redefined my very identity.  I’ve experienced nothing short of a personal death and resurrection. The changing of my season is coming fully back into life. 

My life feels even more enhanced, renewed. My experiences in both Paris and Yosemite have yielded even a deeper joy than I had felt before. And this joy spills into everyday life. But it's not only joy. Now I am experiencing the whole palette of emotion. I'm not as scared of pain or loneliness as I used to be. It's all part of the rotation of the seasons.

And I’m also realizing that just like the seasons, there is a steadiness down deep – an essence of Karla that is constant.  It doesn’t matter what I do for work, whether I’m sick or healthy, who I’m with or where I live.  There lies deep beneath the surface a truth.  I can count on it. I want nothing more in life than to accompany each other as we find the anchor of our own essence and soar from there.

Mary Catherine Bateson tells us that the undiscovered self is an unexpected resource.  I can think of no life purpose as meaningful as walking side by side with you as we discover our mutual unexpected resources. 

 

Vacation at Home

Tea With Gloria
Photographs by Gloria Strohm

 

Flowers at Farmer's Market

It’s the way she makes me feel – special, cared for, pampered, safe, celebrated.  She creates a special world. The everyday world of food and eating and sitting at a table comes alive; it’s fun, its electric, enchanting!  All the details and her eye for beauty transform everyday life.  They exalt me.  I feel engaged.  I want to be there. 


Luscious Pre-Diced  Strawberries

There were tiny pink bowls of finely diced strawberries with a little pansy tucked in the side; a pitcher of ice water with floating lemons and limes, mint and strawberries; baguette sandwiches as alluring as those behind a Paris window, arranged prettily on a tiered tea thing with a small wedge of spanakopita, quiche tartlet and a mushroom in scalloped pastry for each of us. 

 

 

Then she brought out boiling water and poured it in a French press and pushed down jasmine tea leaves.  The scent was heavenly.  I changed my mind, of course I wanted some!  She presented me with an exquisite teacup, lined with delicate blue flowers and a gold rim and carefully poured the tea from its own fluted glass pitcher.  Lovely . . .enchanting . . .heart-calming.

 

Ok, that’s the food.

 But it was the stories that animated the whole scene and put fire in my heart.  I leaned forward, fascinated by her life.  She talked about life in her 20’s in New York City with two business partners and lawsuits at a theater production company. 

She talked about her relationship with Jack, her new husband and how they fully relish their time together; creating a sanctuary of love, connection and hospitality.  Their love is big enough to include all of us, too.  They savor their precious weekends and evenings after work, driving to the farmer’s market in Occidental every Friday evening, marking the weekend with flair.  We went with them one weekend and had a blast!  (See prior posting).

Wildflower Bakery, Bohemian Highway





They entertain at that same table I sat at for tea – love and laughter and connection are theirs.  They even have a pet bunny, Dolly, quiet and sweet, you barely know she’s even there, and then you feel a slight movement and she’s at your feet.  I hear she has a tiny sister now, Thumper. Dolly is not sure how she feels about that yet!

Dolly and Thumper

I’m inspired!  Being with Gloria not only inspired me to go the thrift stores and find pretty teacups and give a tea for my girlfriends; it also has illumined what I already do to make the everyday special.  Being with her has revealed my gifts, too.  Isn’t that just a special person who can do that?  We never forget those people in our lives.  We remember how we feel about ourselves when we’re with them. 

She has given me an opening in the way I see myself.  I am pretty good at creating experiences.  I’m inspired to try my hand with an everyday experience like food.  I can experiment.  I can pay attention to what lifts my heart.  Tea with Gloria ripples into concentric circles growing and expanding toward the future.

 

Vacation at Home

The Joy of Reading

 “Reading gives a nice, mild slow burning rapture all the time.” Joseph Campbell 

Reading has always been a favorite part of vacation for me. I love wide open hours and beaches and a great book. So why not give myself lots of unstructured time for reading at home?

Healing from the vertigo these days I read all the time. I read novels and magazines alike, enjoying several books and authors at one time. I usually have a good novel, a rocker biography, a mystery, “serious” literature and an inspirational psycho-spiritual book stacked by my nightstand at any given time. 

I have reading material within easy reaching distance from wherever I might be in our home, whether it be in the bedroom, living room or bathroom.  I have magazines in the trunk of the car and booklets tucked away in the glove compartment. I always have something to read while waiting in a doctor’s office. (There is a lot of waiting in life – why not read?)

Reading is an integral part of my life. It helps me make sense of my own world and opens up to new worlds.  It is an adventure of the mind.  It is vacation at home! 

I love to read.  It informs my consciousness. Language and story transport me and connect me to other cultures, other mindsets, other perspectives and other feelings.   

Reading helps me to understand myself and my own feelings, either through empathizing with characters in a novel or a musician interviewed in Rolling Stone. My mind and my heart are expanded and enriched through reading. Reading introduces me to places, people and activities outside of myself. 

It doesn’t always matter what I read, but it matters very much how I read.  I adore good writing, (bad writing is so irritating), and there is surprisingly good writing in all of the different genres. 

 It is most important that I read with rapt attention.  If I focus and allow myself to be absorbed I am more likely to remember what I read. I might even be changed by it. I may learn a new perspective that becomes a part of me and my understanding of the world. 

I have become so inspired and attached to characters in a novel that I have actually been changed by them. I think about what they would do in a certain situation and I am inspired to adopt their goodness or courage. (Dorothea in Middlemarch.) 

Conversely, I have gotten so angry with certain characters, that their behavior has stopped me when I am tempted to act unseemly. (Oliver in Angle of Repose.) 

This kinship can occur equally with a salty detective in a crime novel (Kinsey Milhone), or Edith Wharton (Countess Olenska).  It all depends upon my mind state while I am reading.  If I am absorbed and engaged, almost anything I read can be a learning experience. (This is another benefit of meditation; it teaches me to be still, focus and pay attention.) 

I make notes on books I read, copying down a quote from a novel or a spiritual book word for word. I may mark the pages I want to read one more time after I have finished the book.

It sinks into my consciousness when I take the time to actually write the words with a long hand. There is an added gift years later when I go back to the book and see my notes and passages that moved a younger me tucked into the front cover. 

Reading is a feast for my spirit. It is an ecstatic lift of the mind.  It is an accessible and ease-filled way of being on vacation at home.

 

 

 

Vacation at Home

Roaming Bookstores and Libraries  

Following your interests, studying deeply, rapt attention, novels, unforgettable characters, the smell of old paper, finding used hard covers of favorites, author’s readings, the ecstatic life of the mind. . . 

 

 

One rainy day last winter I took a sojourn to our local library and had so much fun that it has since become a regular outing. I forgot about libraries! What a treasure they are! This is an absolutely free way of taking a vacation at home. And most towns, no matter how small, have a library.   

I wandered up many flights of stairs that memorable afternoon and found my way to the very top floor where the historical archives are kept. I had a lovely time of it gazing at the grainy, black and white pictures of my town back in another century.

 

I took a long, loving look at our history, immersing myself in the scenes of Lake Merritt and looking deeply into the eyes of the people. It transported me. I experienced a magical connection with my ancestors for a brief interlude in that library.   

I found shelves of essays about my beloved Paris, whole rooms of mysteries and literature, and several rock and roll memoirs. I looked up authors I had always wanted to try, and found old children’s books in the reference room. (Remember Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Nancy Drew?)

 

It was way cool; an abundant feast for the mind. I have since passed many a fine hour in our old public library. I can go on vacation a mile from my home any time I want.   

Another vacation activity is scouting used book stores. Part of the reason I go there is for the smell. There is nothing like that slightly musty aroma that calls up memories of curling up with a good book, a fire and my kitties.

 

When I really love a book I want it for our collection and I want it in hard cover. Used bookstores are bar none the best places to find used hardcovers of my favorites, especially good literature. I may even find an old edition or a signed copy!

 

There is nothing more gratifying to get it home and gaze at our library and see all of my favorite books grouped by beloved authors, beautifully bound in hard cover, waiting to be savored.  Ahhh. . . the ecstatic life of the mind!

Vacation at Home

Labor Day, 2012

My beloved Point Reyes was a bit of a bust. Like people in all relationships it doesn’t always act the way I would like! We got a late start. (noonish). A little, (ok, a lot) of traffic, but never mind; we’re out to have FUN!

We plugged in the Stone’s masterpiece, Exile on Main Street and shouted along with Lovin’ Cup, top down, shooting through sunny Marin County.  So far, so good.

So not.

Fog.

Rolls and rolls of it, moving fast, obscuring any view that might have been off of the Point Tomales trail. We knew the ocean was down there, but could only hear it. The good docents were out with their tripods, observing the Tule elk. We tried, but could barely make out several brownish forms, against a background of a slightly different shade of brown. Brown, brown everywhere, shot through with coils of gray – not quite the experience the Drostes were looking for on their day of leisure.

The lush vegetation in the summertime at Point Reyes.

We valiantly ate our lunch and tried to imagine ourselves on a romantic moor in the British Isles.

But we weren’t.

I was chilled to the bone, and impatient for Rob to finish his apple so we could be on our way, bundling up under Patagonia, windbreaker, scarf and hood.  Ahhh. . . summer in the Bay Area!

I tried to think of Eckhart Tolle, encouraging us in his Power of Now to stay in this moment, be held by the presence . . . hmmmm, maybe not so much.

However all is now well; very well.  We found the sun at the Busy Bee Bakery in Inverness Park and a cup of tea and peanut butter cookie made everything good again.  We enjoyed an hour of creating time; me writing, Rob sketching.

 

And here is my proud husband with yet another National Park stamp on his passport!

 

 

 

Vacation at Home

Five-Day Labor Day Weekend

Friends asked me if I was going anywhere this weekend. No! Why would I want to go anywhere on a holiday weekend when I can be on vacation at home? I love our sweet home better than any hotel or bed and breakfast. I’m sitting in front of the fire (yes, in August!) with Pablo and Toby with absolutely nothing on the calendar today except a massage at the Foot Spa and of course, writing to you.  I am feeling gloriously unhurried.

We finished our ‘art book’ of our Paris trip yesterday. I cannot begin to describe to you how much joy it has brought me to continue our vacation through re-creating it with this art project. 

We bought a lovely blue linen book with colorful page inserts – deep blues, greens, burgundies and even pink polka dots!  We were going for a retro-look, using actual materials instead of electronics.  So satisfying!

We spread it all out on the kitchen table; my blog, Rob’s sketches and all of our pictures and began to recreate each of those magical days. 

Look up at the Sky

Here is our book with Rob’s sketch of the graffiti found in unexpected places all over Paris; Look up at the Sky.That night we had a taste of Paris in our very own home town.  We started at a French bistro in downtown Berkeley called La Note. I wore one of my new Paris dresses to celebrate the occasion.

Me in my Paris dress at La Note

 

Then we were off to the Freight to see Eric Bibb and His String Band. I had been looking forward to this concert all week. I humbly thank Joe and Mary, our good friends and excellent musicians, for turning me on to this guy.

We got there early and secured two seats, slightly off-center in the second row. I love being up close. I love seeing the musicians’ faces, watching them focus and signal to each other, then smile and get into the vibe of it all, making magic with each other and captivating us in their rootsy/bluesy spell.

They really were that good. They must have had ten plus instruments between the four of them; several guitars, fiddle, harmonica, (smokin’ harmonica), banjo, accordion and a guy came out on the last couple of songs playing a swishy, percussion type instrument, (box drum?)

And guess who else was there? Maria Muldaur! Eric called her out of the audience and she strutted up to the stage, belting out a blues number with her deep, sexy, luscious voice and signature curly black hair. Oh, Lordy, can than woman move!  

He greeted Alice Walker from the audience, too, and we saw Wavy Gravy introducing his wife to Eric after the show. We were deep in the biography of Berkeley and I felt like we were all a part of the history somehow; part of keeping this wild, haunting music alive.

No pictures, so sorry, but flash photography was strictly prohibited.  How I wish we would have thought to have taken my picture with Eric and band after the show!

Oh, well, it was a memorable evening that will stay in my heart, picture or no picture.  What a wonderful experience of vacation at home.

The Other Side of Vertigo

We had dinner with our friends, John and Candace and our sweet God daughter, Audrey Claire last night. After catching up and laughing in their spacious back yard, reading and dancing with Audrey and eating fresh, beautifully cooked food, I found myself talking about the vertigo.  I shared pretty openly, at a core-level, getting more and rawer as I talked.  It felt good but also a little exposing.  I hadn’t shared at that level while actually experiencing the vertigo and the dizziness.  I couldn’t.  It was enough to just survive it.

Just that morning I had watched a couple of people on YouTube share about their experiences with labyrinthitis and vertigo.  Marcela, my physical therapist, had mailed me an article with a link to a multi-part blog series about a woman’s experience very close to mine.

I watched a 20-something heavily inked Irish guy talk about being dizzy all the time, a 50ish British woman who still had it after 26 months, (my heart wrenching while watching her doing her head and eye exercises); there was a sensitive type man in his early 30s sharing about anxiety, a bald stockbroker guy sharing dryly about the facts, and a lovely religious musician who had written the blog; all suffering from this mysterious virus that had suddenly attached itself to a nerve in all of our inner ears, savagely changing our lives for a while.

I’m not sure why I never looked for these testimonies during this whole last year while suffering from the condition. I noticed that most of them were writing and sharing from the other side of it, too.  Thank you, John for those perfect words, the other side . . .  It was so healing.  Maybe it was the last piece I needed to get myself firmly on that other side. 

We all had so much in common.  It is an invisible condition.  You don’t look sick.  No one knows there is anything wrong with you.  It is intensely isolating.  You can be perfectly healthy, spiritually aware, emotionally intelligent, and it can still hit you.  I found out these things:

I didn’t cause it.

This isn’t the beginning of “getting old.”

It’s not all in my head.

It won’t last forever.

I didn’t go”crazy”.

It sure seems like a lot of people have suffered from it.  It’s getting more and more common.  I’m not saying all this to scare you dear friends and readers. I’m saying it because it has flooded me with relief.  I didn’t cause it. I didn’t cause it.  I didn’t cause it.  I didn’t have some sort of anxiety breakdown.  I’m not less healthy or my brain isn’t less smart because it took it longer to compensate than other people’s brains. It is sudden and violent and it has no cause and no discrimination.  And although I am grateful for excellent health care, the medical field still understands very little about it.  That’s why they can’t give you any definitive answers.  Like, when is it going to go away?!? 

I am grateful to my sweetheart who lived through it with me.  I am grateful for all of you and the friends who are still willing to listen to the memories of what it was like and how the anxiety changes you.  That’s another thing I learned; the accompanying anxiety is a biological reaction to vertigo.  Again, I didn’t cook this up, I didn’t go crazy.  I was just so terrified it was going to happen again that any whirling sensation, dizzy feeling, pressure in my head, or slight stumble could catapult me into physical and emotional fear. And I am so relieved that this is a normal response.

It’s not that I want to dwell on all of this and swim around in the muck of it.  But I’m gaining a perspective from the other side that I didn’t have while in the midst of it. And I am grateful for that perspective. I am grateful for the wisdom. And I hope that I have the opportunity to give it back to anyone suffering from biological or mental/emotional anxiety.  No matter the source, anxiety is anxiety and it feels horrible. 

My compassion has increased a hundredfold.  And I am grateful for that, too. It has helped make me even more whole. And that is a worthy way to live one’s life. Growing and expanding into greater wisdom and wholeness.

P.S.  And I am overwhelmingly grateful for the wholeness and health to go to Paris and Yosemite and Point Reyes and restaurants and parties and church and work and the ability to drive to it all!

Me and Little Red!

 

Me under a waterfall at Yosemite!

L’Arbre a Cannelle in the Passage des Panoramas

My beloved Point Reyes

 

The Beatles Mass at church

Picnic at a California Winery with Larry and Connie

Natural Beauty - Bois de Vincennes



Creative Beauty: Spotted in a Paris Window

Me in the hammock on our deck overlooking downtown Oakland

 

Ah . . . life is short and it is wondrous!!
Let us live and let us live well!

Vacation at Home

Cafe Interludes

 

Vibrant street life, pots of tea, writing, reading, musing . . . watching all of creation going about the business of living.

 

 

Immersing myself in café life is a wonderful way of building in the spirit of vacation during the week.  Cafes are great on my day off, but it is almost more special to stop by a café after work.  It gives me something special to look forward to at the end of my work day and provides a bridge to the leisure of evening.   

I have a variety of cafes I love, and am always adding new finds to my repertoire.  I have favorites in the summer where I sit on pretty patios with flowers in the shade or woven chairs in the sun amidst the vibrant street life.  If it’s cold or rainy, I find a sweet nook with a poofy couch and settle in with a pot of tea by a window.  And of course, summer or winter, I always include a delicious baked good.  Who says you have to have dessert after dinner?  I’m on vacation! 

Cafes are perfect for my rhythm, because they are entirely spontaneous.  I can decide at the last minute if I want to go and where I want to go.  There is no appointment to cancel, no expensive ticket going unused.  I want to be free when I’m on vacation, steering clear of any pre-set obligations.  One of Rob’s fondest memories is reading the Herald Tribune with espresso and croissant in a Paris café.  Why not indulge in this very same thing at home?  

So what do I do in the café?  What makes it fun?  For one, as a flaneur,  I love being in the buzz of life, while at the same time being anchored inside myself.  I like cafes because I can be surrounded by people, but am entirely with myself, free to reflect and watch. If I’m outside, I watch the people for a while before opening my book, taking in the street culture.

Here are some recent café delights:  Watching a father with his little girl as she ate her cookie, an intimate couple with their heads close together in their private world, two 40-something women in deep discussion about something important, a loyal dog flopped at the feet of an elderly man, two career people in suits discussing a marketing plan, and all the college students (and me!) with their laptops - - in short, all of creation is going about the business of living and I’m right in the middle of the pulsing, buzzing energy of it all!  It’s so alive!  I love it!  It lifts my heart and stimulates my mind.  My life is full of possibility and adventure!  And I’m only 10 minutes from home! 

I may open a spiritually inspiring book and savor the wisdom, sucking on the words like a lemon drop, letting them drop to the depths of me - - then, look up and watch the life around me again for an exhilarating moment.  After a bite of a chewy oatmeal scone and sip of tea, I drop my head back in my book.  I read Ann Morrow Lindberg’s Gifts from the Sea in its entirety on vacation at home, while Rob was gone for three weeks one summer.  I also read The Razor’s Edge for the third time, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s whimsical Emily of New Moon, a delightful book of essays on Paris, and a biography about my favorite musician, Bonnie Raitt. I stayed as long as I liked every evening, only stirring when the baked good wore off and I was hungry for dinner, the kitties and a chick flick. 

Some days, when I feel moved, I bring in Little Pink and write to all of you.  I feel all creative and arty, perched at a table in a café with tattooed students and other edgy types, creating something unique and authentic to me.  Reflecting on Reinventing Karla; Vacation at Home has been a journey of self discovery.  Writing it introduces me to myself.   What do I do just for the sheer joy of it?  I have learned a lot about myself through discovering what I like, what I really want to do.  (Like eat baked goods in a café.) I’m learning about what energizes me and gives me joy.   

Writing doesn’t feel like work, (usually) because it’s so uniquely, irrevocably me.  These are ideas and activities I’ve been enjoying all of my life and I yearned to share them with people.  As I write, I think about you dear reader, and hope that you are receiving inspiration to develop your own ideas and activities that fill you with the light-hearted joy you have on vacation.  

 I’m looking forward to my next sojourn after work to that lovely French bakery, on College Avenue, sipping hot tea in the cool (or cold!) of an East Bay August evening, and nibbling a delicious lemon iced oatmeal cookie while reading Gifts from the Sea (yet again) slowly at that big antique table with the lacey hanging lamp and watching the bustle of people coming in and out amidst the vibrancy of urban life. . .

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