For Shelter, the World

Checking In ...

... Summer, Fall, Winter; whenever I'd check in at my blog, there would be the title of my most recent post: Ready for Spring.

Ahem.

Remember the intro on that old soap opera: "Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives"? (I can hear MacDonald Carey's voice now.) Nowadays, it seems more like torrents of water, cascading through rapids on their way to the ocean.

I think I've been too busy living my life to write about it. Or maybe sometimes when that water is rushing downstream, the best thing to do is to go with it, and figure out what it's about later on. Things are shape-shifting so rapidly, by the time you've got a grasp on something, it's changed, or moved on.

The blog is still there (or here, in cyberspace and in my heart), however, and so am I.

 

Ready for spring

After an amazingly mild winter here in the Pacific Northwest, the calendar hit April 1st, and the snowy weather arrived. Although at river level we only had flurries, there's a nice accumulation of snow up on the clifftops on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, and more predicted later this week.

Nonetheless, we intrepid gardeners are preparing for the local Community Garden's second year of operation.

I've got my crops planned - golden summer squash, zucchini, peppers of various kinds (hot and sweet), garlic, green onions, tomatoes, and later in the season, broccoli. This year I'm going to try growing some Yukon gold potatoes, too. Over the weekend, I went to the garden for the first time since last summer. It was like seeing an old friend again.

Here's my plot peeking around the side of the storage shed - weeded, turned and composted, and ready for planting.

Changing voice

Over at Whole Latte Life, Joanne's prompt for the day asked us how we were applying "spring cleaning" to our creative life. This one was pretty easy for me to answer.

For the past several months, I've been working on a mystery novel set in a small, fictional town in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest (where else?) The supporting characters were making themselves known to me in vivid detail, but I was having trouble getting in touch with my main character and bringing her to life. It doesn't help that she's an introvert.

I'd started out writing the story in third person, because I wanted to be able to show action that takes place out of sight of the protagonist. It finally dawned on me to try first person instead. Yep! That has made all the difference. So now I'm going back and re-working what I've already written. It's requiring that I restructure the storyline, since I can only show what the main character experiences. It's going to make me stretch as a writer, and likewise will help the story grow organically. I am excited to see what happens.

There's a "real life" parallel to this writerly change of voice. So many seasons of cocooning, gestating, growing, transforming ... and now I am emerging, getting involved in community activities again, and I see that my voice has changed. I am expressing myself differently. Not just in the words I use, but the intent and the energy with which I engage with the world. (And with myself, too, no doubt.)

As a part of this, changes are coming to my blog, as well. As with my mystery novel, I can't wait to see what that's going to look like.  To begin with, I'm still using the Typepad platform, but after 4 1/2 years, I finally decided to purchase the domain name for the title of my blog, "For Shelter, the World".  For those of you who have my blog bookmarked in your browser, make sure to change the URL to http://forsheltertheworld.com/ 

I'll be doing some clean-up work, changing the subscription set-up to reflect the new URL, freshening the links sections, and perhaps re-organizing the blog layout.

Happy Spring to all!

Paradox in action

A random chapter of the Tao Te Ching for this moment in time and space:

69

There is a saying amongst soldiers:
 I dare not make the first move but would rather play the guest;
 I dare not advance an inch but would rather withdraw a foot.

This is called marching without appearing to move,
Rolling up your sleeves without showing your arm,
Capturing the enemy without attacking,
Being armed without weapons.

There is no greater catastrophe than underestimating the enemy.
By underestimating the enemy, I almost lose what I value.

Therefore when the battle is joined,
The underdog will win.

-- version by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

 

The generals have a saying:
"Rather than make the first move
it is better to wait and see.
Rather than advance an inch
it is better to retreat a yard."

This is called
going forward without advancing,
pushing back without using weapons.

There is no greater misfortune
than underestimating your enemy.
Underestimating your enemy
means thinking that he is evil.
Thus you destroy your three treasures
and become an enemy yourself.

When two great forces oppose each other,
the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield.

-- trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Boomers, re-dux

Times of great change and upheaval, such as we are experiencing now, carry the gift of opportunity with them: transformation, renewal, regeneration. The phrase that I've been hearing in my mind lately is that we are re-inventing ourselves. I think this is true of the collective human race, and the potential is there on an individual level as well.

I especially see it in people my age, the Baby Boomers, those in their late 40s through mid-60s. My generation started off in the 1960s with a bang ... civil rights, women's liberation, gay rights, an awakening environmental awareness, and the idea that war may not actually be a necessary part of human existence. In general, we carried on the momentum created by our Depression-era parents during the post-WWII years: their hope for the future, their sense of power and optimism that they could create an abundant world for their children. Then their world cracked open in the 1960s, with the Cold War, JFK's assassination and Vietnam. We were there to both widen the breach and extract the budding flower from within.

I can recall a feeling back then of infinite possibility, that we didn't have to do things the way they'd "always" been done, or settle for the status quo. We pushed the boundary of what was considered normal and acceptable. And we took action on it, seeming to realize our connection with humanity as a whole, knowing that our acts had greater consequences, and capitalizing on that fact.

Boomer women are the ones who established -- through our ongoing way of living our lives, not just by philosophizing or protesting in the streets -- that women are equal to men. The same can be said about all of the various human rights movements. The result is that subsequent generations take for granted the things we created one step at a time. Although sometimes I hear complaining from my fellow Boomers (myself included) about that, when you think about it, what better thanks could we get?

Our generation does not seem to have aged in the way that previous generations did, either. My grandmothers, born in the 1890s, were elderly by the age of sixty (although they continued to live for another twenty-plus years.) That's almost the age I am now. Those amazing times in the '60s opened the way to so much change, not only in the way human beings live but in how we think.

Then something happened. After we settled into adulthood, careers, and raising families, it seemed as though the Boomers stepped back, almost out of sight. I can recall, when we were all contemplating the millenium back in 1999-2000, thinking how mundane, downright materialistic, and turned in on itself life had become. What had happened to us Boomers? Where did our fire, passion and sense of adventure go; those things that had moved humanity forward? Were we "one-shot wonders" whose time had come and gone thirty years ago?

At the time, something inside of me said, "No. We Boomers have something else to do. Contrary to popular opinion, our time has not passed. It hasn't even arrived yet." It took a few tumultuous years more, but here we are.

The human race is in the process of re-inventing itself, and I believe that we Boomers have something important to contribute to that process. Looking at myself and listening to others my age, it's as if our passion for life, our sense of adventure, and our intrinsically optimistic nature are re-awakening. Those are perhaps even more powerful now, being grounded in life experience and the kind of perspective that only age can bring.

It takes a certain innocence and idealism to believe that one can, in fact, re-invent oneself, and then to take action on that belief, especially when the world appears to be falling apart around us. As our younger and much more cynical fellow human beings can tell you (often with a lot of eye-rolling), the Boomers have that innocence and idealism, in spades. So stand back and watch, or join in, if you dare. The fun is about to begin.