The morning after

I woke up in the dark. I am not sure it was voluntarily. I have the inkling that it may be the result of cats tapping me until I rise and then conveniently disappearing.

I lay in bed, imagining that sleep would come once more. The anxious pangs I had been experiencing in the days leading up to my dissertation defense had gone, but in their place was something different.

Emptiness?

A dear friend stayed with me these past few months during a time of transition. Her presence was such a gift, a blessing. Seemingly simple but profound. I watched her create her own chrysalis. I shared in the transformation that took place within, and I celebrated with her in the emergence.

It was beautiful to witness.

And now, I feel the absence of her. Such a remarkable woman who has yet to realize just how truly amazing she is.

The rooms in my apartment feel so spacious, empty space.

My heart feels something similar.

This morning, I write to feel a part of something, to feel less alone, and to fill my heart.

Shaken, not stirred.

A dear friend going through a life transition has been staying with me in Lowell for a while. She had reached out months earlier, and I told her she was welcome here. I hoped that my home could be a haven for her during a time of intense reflection and meditation on life, love, and identity.

She is a dedicated, passionate runner. She runs miles each day. We began working on a song when she first arrived, and the story line was one about running up a mountain where she lives in Alaska. Running is sacred. It is something she does for herself and a way to prove to herself what she is capable of.

It is inspiring to hear her speak of running and to be witness to the determination and rigor involved in preparing for a long race. She ran in a twenty-mile race across New England state lines not too long ago, and I was so very proud of her.

With such a spiritual connection to this athletic pastime, it seemed perfectly reasonable for her to express a desire to travel into Boston to cheer on runners in the annual Boston marathon.

We drank our morning coffee together, and she headed for the train station. Had I not been completely immersed in all things dissertation, I would have likely joined her. I used to be a runner, and I admire the will of body and mind that join together to allow an individual accomplish such an intense feat.

Hours later, I received a text from her.

“Explosions at the finish line!!! Race shut down. Total chaos, but I’m safe.”

“I feel like I’m in a movie,” she wrote a few minutes later.

I couldn’t believe it. It was so very surreal.

I am not sure it has hit me yet, though we have spent hours talking about her experience. She was right near the finish line and felt the vibration from the explosion in her body.

I admit that I have never felt that Lowell was a very safe place, but I was so relieved when she returned home, seriously shaken but safe and in one piece.

I write now to try to channel the unsettled feeling that insists on rattling my insides a day after this tragedy.

I continue to admire my friend. She is determined to run in the Anchorage marathon, which is a qualifier for Boston.

“I was running this afternoon,” she told me, “and I kept thinking, I want to run this race next year. I need to run this race.”

We spoke of the desire to honor the people who were injured or killed and to demonstrate that we will transcend fear and continue to live with intention and love.

Life is a blessing.

Phd Presentation Prep

In response to a request from one of my dedicated readers to share my dissertation on this blog, I am posting the short video I created to describe the work I will be presenting at Prescott College in Prescott, AZ. in May.

As always, thank you for reading (and listening).

Living the dream

This past year, I have been going through an intensive and constant “spring cleaning.”

My apartment feels like a consignment shop, with bags of clothing, boxes of books, and odds and ends lining the walls. I have given away furniture, clothing, over 100 books, and made many trips to the post office.

It has always been difficult for me to part with my stuff. I imagine I gain a sense of stability by having it around. No matter where I go, there is familiarity in my things.

But this past year, it has begun to weigh heavily on me. I have spent thousands of dollars in moving expenses. Take my advice, if you are moving to or from Alaska, travel light!

What was difficult in the beginning has become less so. I feel such lightness with each item gone. I sleep better at night after pulling things out of my closets and drawers and piling them on a shelf in my front room that has become the intermediate space.

One American dream is to have it all—house, husband, and the nicest of things.

I have tried the dream, but it was not the right fit for me.

This does not mean that in shedding elements of one dream I magically find another that fits perfectly. In the end, I am not sure that is possible.

I do not desire perfection.

I desire freedom. Freedom from the weight of material things.

I remember sitting on my couch in Alaska and looking up at the high ceiling—panel after panel of beautiful wood. Each panel was unique, with beautiful knots and patterns and shades of color.

It felt surreal, and it was.

I loved my home. It was like a sanctuary. But at the same time, it became a kind of prison. Because I felt so safe inside, especially compared to how I felt with each passing mile as my car brought me closer to work in the mornings, I had little desire to leave. I just wanted to curl up inside of that house and disappear.

It is difficult to explain.

Leaving made everything else possible. It was a statement to my self and the world that I needed a more sustainable life.

This purge I have been conducting for the past year—essentially, since leaving Alaska—has been a statement to my self that I can be free.

I have lived the dream, but it was just one dream.

And life is long.

There will be many more dreams to come.

The last day

It is the last day of March. Only a few hours remain.

I have now lived in Lowell for just over a year, and I am once again awed by the speed in the passing of the past 365 days.

In the last year, I have spent many hours with visitors to Lowell. I offer ideas about experiences we share with people who lived here in a different time. I suggest that in this moment, we witness a snapshot of a place in the present through the lens of the past. The moment we share becomes each of our own memories, never to be repeated in quite the same way.

It is strange to think that not much more than a year ago I imagined I would be returning to a very job and life in Alaska.

I have made some strange choices in my life, ones that have aroused questioning and disbelief from friends and family. But I cannot say that I have regretted most of those choices. A couple, yes. Yet they have all shaped me into the person I am today, a woman I am proud to be.

I am waxing a bit on the poetic side, but I suppose this comes from being so close to closing yet another chapter of my life—an academic journey.

Whoever gave me the Dr. Seuss book “Oh, the places you’ll go” when I graduated from college must have known something.

Oh, the places I have gone. I have moved seven times in two years. I have had four different jobs. I have lived in four very different bioregions.

From the misty Pacific Northwest to the wildest corner of Southeast Alaska, the desert and dells of Arizona, and finally to an old mill town dusting itself off after years of neglect.

It is enough to make anyone wax poetic and feel a bit out of place. In my life, I have often felt like an anachronism, and these past four years were no exception.

It has not been easy to follow this path. I have gone to the darkest of places, in my heart and in my mind. I have left behind people I loved in order to create a different life for myself. I chose a path I had to walk alone.

Mere months from earning a PhD, I am knee deep into the fourth chapter of my dissertation, an autoethnographic narrative of the four years I have spent in the Sustainability Education PhD program at Prescott College. It has been a difficult chapter to write. I knew that autoethnography meant a lot of writing. What I did not realize was the number of times I would have to relive painful memories in the writing of an autoethnography.

I am so thankful for these past four years, for the friends and family who supported me through the dark times and celebrated with me with the return of the light.

And I am thankful to you. I hope you find your light as well. It can be a tumultuous passage, but the reward on the other side is well worth the stormy crossing to get there.

Gone again, the ides

The ides have come and gone, and I am still here. In the spring of 2010, I wrote a paper for a class assignment that changed my life. Here is the description of the assignment:

C.5. Assignment #4 (20% of the grade):  Free-write and an Ethnographic account of your Spring Break.  Using ethnographic narrative style, write a 5-7 pages account of what happened during the spring break. Write this assignment for yourself such that you will always remember what happened during the last week of March 2010.

I found the topic comical, considering that I did not have a “spring break” to write about. I was working full-time. Yet, the experience of writing was a revelation. I sat down and channeled every emotion onto the page.

On the ides of March 2010, I had just been offered a permanent position at a national park in Alaska. It was surreal, a dream. And at the time, I imagined it to be the answer to the financial woes and challenges that come with life as a seasonal employee.

Suffice it to say that my musings were a bit naïve. However, the catharsis I experienced from writing, as well as the positive response from my professors and fellow students in my cohort, inspired me to create this blog and incorporate the practice of writing into my life.

I created this blog and subsequently realized an identity as a writer that I never thought possible. It was the beginning of a sense of self and a desire to know and share my self more deeply with my community—local, global, and virtual.

Those assignments made possible all the changes I have set in motion to become a more sustainable person in the years that followed. I have made it my goal and practice to write, compose music, and release my inner creative voice. I have found a way to create something beautiful and lift my spirits through the moments of joy and intense grief that come with a life in transition.

I have found a way to embrace the unknown. I may not always move through uncertainty with grace and poise; however, I am thankful to dance with the universe with awareness and intention.

Happy spring.

All quiet on the Lowell front

It is dark and quiet in Lowell.

There’s something strange and wonderful about being up this early. I woke up long before lifting lids and setting words to the page. Two hours of tossing and turning, and I finally gave up. Better to channel the activity of the monkey mind in a creative way than to struggle with it in the dark.

My cats are perplexed. They keep looking at me with questioning eyes.

“Why are you up?”

The look my female tabby, Arwen, keeps giving me would more appropriately be worded, “Why am I up? Turn off the damn light! Go back to sleep, so I can snuggle with you.”

I tried. I really did try. Okay, maybe not that hard. I periodically followed the one lesson I can recall from a book about meditation and focused on the press moving in and out of my nose.

Should I give this necklace to my mom?

Do I need to keep that sweater? It makes me feel frumpy when I wear it. But it has such a cool design on the back. Maybe I should hang onto it. Maybe, I will wear it… someday.

Breath goes in. Breath goes out. Breath comes in. Breath goes

I really don’t think I’m going to wear that sweater. Maybe, I should look for my jewelry tour and give more things away.

And so on, and so forth it went until I got out of bed, took said items out of drawers and cabinets, and set them aside. Relieved, I turned up the heat, began heating water for coffee, and settled in to write about my inner world of identity.

I imagine that we each have one. Mine can get pretty wild at times. It all depends on which voice is taking center stage.

I can just hear the caller now:

“And the inner critic takes the stage. Look at it go, so bold, so threatening. No one can touch it. It is all-powerful. But wait. The inner creative voice looks to the thinking about joining. Yes, I do believe I see a tentative foot being placed right on the edge. Will it climb up and take on the critic?”

And so on, and so forth it goes.

The focus of my dissertation is the chapter of my life these past few years. I have spent many hours with these voices, learning to hear them, understand them, and recognize when to listen and when to tell them to simmer down.

Even as I near the end of my time as a doctoral student, the rivalry among these voices carries on. They are a part of me and I them.

At least, I can’t complain of being lonely.