BTW

Motherlove

Mother love is not limited to humans.

and it's not limited to species

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Bird Brain

I've had birds on the brain lately. 

I was so upset about the Eagle cam going offline, and then I couldn't find out what happened or why and I got so frustrated!  I nearly bashed my monitor.  I don't know what it is about animals.  There is an opening in my heart for the animals that seems to have no protective barrier.  I had to stay away from the eagle cam for a few days, so I didn't see that there was a new Eagle Cam nest with two fuzzy baby eaglets! 

It's such a salve to the wound, a balm to the soul, to see the little fuzzy chicklets and their momma (dad?).

Watching the eagles reminded me of a movie I had seen a long time ago with Jeff Daniels in it, about a guy and his daughter flying south with a flock of canadian geese.  I remember feeling SO GOOD after watching that movie.  So I got online and bought the DVD - Fly Away Home. 

Come to find out, I bought the special edition, and it's got extra features (!!) about the real guy, the actual real guy Bill Lishman and his family and friends and cohorts and what they actually did that inspired the making of the movie.  If you're going to get this movie, be sure to get the special edition.  The movie itself warmed my heart, made me cry, gave me hope.  But it's TEN times better to know that it's not just a nice story.  Somebody out there is really doing this stuff, is really working hard for the survival of some species on our planet, and is thinking in terms of THEIR needs, not just industry, power, or profit and loss. 

If you want to know more, the website about Bill Lishman and Operation Migration is here:
http://www.operationmigration.org/

It gives me hope in humankind.

Sophomoric vs. The Giggle Monster, or How I Found My Christmas Spirit

It's been a long while since I've been able to feel anything that fed my soul.  I wasn't even going to do Christmas this year.  My plan was to sit in a dark room, muttering "BAH, Humbug!"  But then a bunch of in-law family decided to come visit, and blammo, I'm back.  Inspired.  Excited.  This house will be decorated like never before!

But it's been a frenzy of less-than-joyful activity.  I play my Christmas music, and feel ... nothing.  I look at the pretty lights and feel ... nothing.  No joy.  Just dark and sad and lonely.

Last night I saw a movie on TV, one of those sappy holiday special movies that you don't plan to watch but you get caught up in and just can't seem to stop...

This movie was SO inspirational to me.  It was about a woman who has a horribly bleak life, no joy in it, no loving relationships, who alienates and is mean to everybody around her.  She gets conked on the head, and starts seeing this little girl who won't go away.  Lo and behold, it's HER, at age 7, her own girly self, her inner child turned outer.  "Like a belly button", she says in the movie, "Used to be an inny, now I'm an outy.  And I won't go away until you start to listen to me."

It was so well-done, I was so moved by this silly sappy movie, that it's still alive in my head this morning.  The little girl held all the joy.  She still had fresh eyes to see Christmas, and found enjoyment in little things like snow falling and music and being silly. And she's tired of being repressed and judged.

Little by little, the woman comes to listen to the child, and comes to love her, and by the end, of course, they blend again, become one again.  And when the woman dances for joy, we see the little girl there shining out of her eyes.

I've been in danger of losing my little girl, my joyful little child, in all the sorrow and the grieving.  I have to bring her forward again.  She is my joy, she is my heartfulness of the season. 

She's not far though.  I feel her poking her head out sometimes when I write on my other blog.  I write to make myself laugh, to keep myself interested in something.  But not everybody gets me, I know.  Some woman commented on her blog about my Jingle Balls post, calling my humor sophomoric.  I had to look up sophomoric:  "Exhibiting great immaturity and lack of judgment: sophomoric behavior'". 

Huh.  Yeah.  Can't argue with that.

I left her a comment saying I don't mind, I'm proud to be sophomoric and infantile.  But I lied, it did hurt my feelings.  The more I thought about it, the more it hurt.  Part of the problem with bringing my inner children to the surface is how easily hurt they are. 

I cried a little, and then ... I heard a giggling.  A chanting, "nanny nanny poo poo, you are a weiner too" followed by wild raucous giggling.  I remembered when my brother and I were little we used to go into fits of giggles at "potty humor". 

Sure, it's sophomoric.  And infantile.  But if I don't indulge my little girl now, there may not be much more chance to.  Life is short.  And inner children have been known to die from neglect. 

So, to that woman who doesn't appreciate my sense of humor: "NANNY NANNY POO POO, YOU ARE A WEINER TOO!"

Now I'm gonna go decorate something, and sing Jingle Balls at the top of my lungs.  So there.

Katrina Blogs

I had no idea there would be so many blogs so soon.  These were just the ones on  Typepad's front page this morning:

Finding Loved Ones - from Ernie the Attorney

Surviving Hurrican Katrina

Hurricane Katrina.org

Hurricaid.com - this one has a post about petfinders

Katrina Housing & Transportation Resources

Hurricane Watch

I feel so helpless.

The Pencil Knows...

I had forgotten about these two drawings.  These sprang from my pencil many years ago, almost of their own accord. 

The first I call Pensive, and the second, Waiting. 



Speaking of my romantic heart reminded me of these, and looking at them now, many years later, I can see her there in these drawings, my sad and yet hopeful heart.

Romance is a Place in the Heart

I looked at my recent DVD purchases and realized I'm in a wave of Longing for Romance.  Yesterday was so hot and oppressive I couldn't find the energy to do anything (oops, sorry, said I wouldn't complain about the heat anymore for a while) so I stayed inside right under a vent with my ice water and spray bottles and cooling neckerchiefs ... and watched romantic movies.

Sliding Doors, Love Actually (which I thoroughly enjoyed),  The Cooler, which I didn't care for. I thought I would, but it was disappointing.  Down and out guy with bad luck flowing through his fingertips meets a girl, finds love, and bad luck turns to good.  But it was trying hard to be kind of romantic "film noir", and it didn't quite work.  And it had way too much gratuitous flesh.  Weird that they kept the blood and violence to the shadows mostly, but put in all this graphic sex. 

That made me stop and think about my standards for romance, especially in movies.   What am I looking for in these movies, in the books I read?  Romance and sex are not mutually exclusive!  In real life one usually leads to the other.  Same with the best romance novels and romantic movies.  But somehow seeing it in a movie in a graphic way spoils the romantic feeling for me and turns it into porn.  There's a line there.  A schizm. 

Maybe the filmmakers don't know the difference.  That led me down another road of thought (just flow with me here, it's a circuitous route...) about the differences between men and women and romance and sex. 

No big duh there that there ARE differences.  I've known a scant handful of romantic men - I mean truly romantic men, not just men who bring flowers and light candles in trade for sex.  But there's always evidence of that split, no matter how truly romantic the man is.  For instance - glaring example here - one man I know became enamored of romance, addicted to the feeling of longing and the process of wooing and pursuing.  Once he got the girl, he became bored.  If he could manage to fall in love with somebody who was with another man or otherwise unavailable, so much the better.  But his ability to woo and romance was impressive, overpowering, totally seductive.  Unfortunately, in bed he was another person.  He became a porn king, slamming and dunking without so much as a thank you ma'am.  Come to find out he had a secret porn addiction too.  Two completely different parts of his personality.  Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, romance and sex.  It was the strongest example of the split I'd ever seen in anybody. 

I don't mean he was a multiple personality.  I think we all have these kinds of schizms within, parts of ourselves that we keep in the shadows, for one reason or another.  Many men are similar to this man.  There's sex, and then there's love.  And the twain don't shake hands.  They don't even go have coffee.  They are strangers riding on opposite sides of the bus.

Another man I knew had an aversion to love.  Being in love was not fun for him, he got none of the endorphin high that most people talk about, no elevated sense of self or oneness with the universe.  For him being in love was pure torture, a vulnerability that made him weak.  Like Sampson and his hair, this man believed falling in love would drain him of his manhood, his strength.  I gather that's not an uncommon view either.

The hubs and I never really had a romantic "falling in love" period.  We were friends, then good friends, and I knew I loved him then.  But I wasn't either sexually attracted or falling in love.  I just loved him.  And then suddenly we were together.  There was one night with the table set with a rose in a vase in the center, and dimmed lights.  But he never was very good at romance, he was not a wooer.  And maybe because we'd been friends for so long, he thought wooing wasn't necessary.  And I set aside my need to be wooed because I also knew how damaged he was, how much his heart had been trashed by life, and what an amazing thing it was that he could let himself love me at all.

I felt his love for me, I knew he loved me, it wasn't that.  But longing for romance is also longing for a feeling of ... what... being desired, I guess.  Of feeling that overwhelming whoosh that happens when somebody WANTS you, and they pull you toward them with their eyes full of love AND desire.  It's magnetic and powerful and wonderful and uplifting. 

And I don't buy the argument that it's just a chemical process.  Form follows feeling, is what I say.  The heart feels, the soul desires, the body manifests. 

BUT on the other hand, I know how seductive the feeling is, and I understand why some people get addicted to falling in love, trying to generate that high over and over again.  There's something missing there too, as much of a hole and a schizm as the sex / love split. 

I never really let my desire for romance be apparent or known.  I never have.  For many years now, I've sat on this little place in my heart that longs for romance.  This little pink flower in my heart, a little pink fairy of a girl, not a vixen, not yet.  She's a young woman, still hopeful, still believing in love in spite of all the childhood darkness and damage.  How the hell did she survive all that?  How is it that she still lives there, inside me?  Lord, she seems so naive compared to other parts of me.   A sweet little powder puff of a girl.  And her need for love and romance is legitimate! 

I don't have it in me to act on my desire for romance, it's not in my nature to have an affair or anything like that.  And I know better than to ask the hubs for this kind of thing.  It always feels forced and unnatural, something he does only because I asked. 

So.  I turn once again to the movies and the books.  Let's see, what can I watch today?  How about Romeo and Juliet?  No, I guess death isn't the ending we want here.  Well, we can just do a drive-by on certain scenes, just the dance and balcony scenes.   Yeah, that might work.  But maybe it's time to pull out the big guns.  Go for the sappy and syrupy.  On today's menu, fairy tales and Victorian love stories:  an appetizer of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, for salad, Ever After.  Main course: Emma, and Pride & Prejudice.  And maybe Love Actually (again!).  And then, if we're still hungry, or need some dessert, bits and pieces from The Last Mohican, Untamed Heart, Shakespeare in Love, The Quiet Man, and whatever else strikes our fancy.  Come on Little Pink, let's go get romanced.

Soul Food Pictures

Posting about how images feed the soul on my coffee/tea blog this morning, reminded me I had two pictures I wanted to post. 

The caption read: 

"This is a picture from an article called "The Rescuing Hug".  The article details the first week of life of a set of twins.  Apparently, each were in their respective incubators, and one was not expected to live.  A hospital nurse fought against the hospital rules and placed the babies in one incubator.  When they were placed together, the healthier of the two threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace.  The smaller baby's heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal"

This touches me in ways I can't even verbalize.  Brings tears to my eyes every time I see it and feel how it must have felt for the weaker of the two...

This one is just so sweet, I had to post it here. Dog love is a wonderful thing.

The Heart of a Lion

Check out this news item about a young girl in Ethiopia, rescued and protected by wild lions from the seven men who had kidnapped her.

A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day when authorities found her.

"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.

"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.

Sickening as this is, it's apparently common practice in many parts of Ethiopia.  The article states 70% of marriages begin this way. 

Local wildlife expert says the lions may have come to her rescue because she was crying, and the sound was close enough to a kit mewling to elicit a heartful response in the lions. 

Personally, I don't think we give the animals on this planet enough credit. 

Three of the kidnappers are still missing.  Do you suppose the lions ate them?  Or is that too much wishful thinking?

Found via Resistance is Futile