reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

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through the viewfinder. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

i suppose it depends on how big your viewfinder is. looking through the viewfinder of a handheld camera brings your rapt attention to whatever direction you have aimed it.

as you know, we often watch the youtube videos of hikers on trail at night, before sleep. we hike the trail – vicariously – through their eyes and it is fascinating to see how the trail changes – and how the trail stays the same – through a multitude of viewfinders.

it is particularly helpful to be on the trail “with” these hikers, for their cellphones and gopros are our eyes until that time when we are stepping the millions of steps on a thru-hike path with a hulking backpack and – hopefully – a lovely mule carrying it. (ok, just kidding – about the mule.)

we just read each other our posts from an earlier day, as is our custom. we write from an image but don’t share until after we are done. it was during the reading of one of my posts that we just stopped – full stop – and said how very fortunate we are…despite everything.

though there is much that would need be “shut out” in order to achieve serene peace, we focused for a few minutes on what is a part of our personal viewfinders.

for a while – years, maybe – i carried a white cardboard square slide frame in my wallet. my dear friend crunch had told me that there might be times that holding the slide frame up in front of me (not close to my eye), closing one eye and focusing on only what i could see through it – while blocking out everything else – might help my perspective. one thing at a time, not the whole picture. sometimes i have found that is necessary.

“just look through the viewfinder…” and the peripheral stuff falls off. at least momentarily. we all have it – all that peripheral stuff, some of which sets the entire somber tone for the entire country, even the whole global world, some of which is personal and keeps us burdened and struggling, some of which is just the picayune detail of life and living, some of which is a bit lighter, less difficult to carry.

years ago my beloved teacher and friend andrea wrote to me, “nothing is idyllic. i think we have idyllic moments. we have to take time to savor what is around us.”

the viewfinder keeps us in the moment and doesn’t let us forget to acknowledge the right now. it keeps us appreciative of the way it feels to smell the coffee in the morning or hear the earliest bird calls. it’s perspective-arranging, gives us a breath when we can hardly breathe. it helps us see the glimmer on the water, the mica right around us. it is life-giving, even if just for a small bit of time.

it gives us what we need to then leave that narrow focus and, once again, look at the whole horizon and all of that which is there.

****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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my jeans’ genes. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

these aren’t my favorite. i don’t regularly wear my favorite jeans, wanting to keep them “for good”.

but this pair is the runner-up. pretty distressed, these ripped jeans aren’t just a bit frayed. they are downright holey.

ai says that “ripped jeans are best for people with slim or skinny body types”. goodness gracious! i mean, who asked you? i would venture to say that if one wants to wear ripped jeans, one should just wear ripped jeans – without a pretty-little-head thought to whether ai thinks it’s appropriate or not.

i’ve been wearing these for years. decades, actually. some of the time it has been by accident. my jeans just got old and worn. some of the time it has been by design. i’ll never forget – and always cherish – the days at abercrombie with my then-teenage daughter, ferreting out the best ripped jeans on the sale rack.

i have worn ripped jeans to unimportant events and important events, to beautiful places and grocery stores. i have worn ripped jeans on high mountain tops, in midwest meadows, in paris, in the canyonlands. i have worn ripped jeans in recording studios and i wore ripped jeans at my wedding. i have performed on the smallest and biggest of stages wearing ripped jeans.

so, here we are, on my 67th birthday and it is likely i will be wearing my fave ripped jeans to go and do whatever it is we will go and do – unless it is hiking – because, as you know, i have to save my fave jeans “for good”. some other destructed denim will have to do.

there have been moments when i have looked in the mirror and pondered my jeans. (and yes, also, my genes, particularly as they are aging.)

i’ve wondered if mid-sixties was ‘getting there’ – there being a place where ripped, distressed, fraying, holey jeans might be better retired.

and – after some wondering, some pondering and a little bit of googling with downright obnoxious results – like this video narrated by a twenty-something guy – guy! – informing me that “women after 40 should not emphasize imperfections” – i have decided.

just like the amish leave a slipped stitch here and there in their quilts – to allow spirit in – and maybe for the same reason – i will continue to subscribe to the jeans i love to wear. perfection doesn’t exist and each quilt is an expression of beauty-in-that-moment, of artistry, of someone’s very soul, of the chutzpah of spirit. ditto my jeans.

so…if you don’t like my ripped jeans, don’t look at them. they are me and i’m just out here trying to emphasize my imperfections – especially now.

*****

IN A SPLIT SECOND © 2002 kerri sherwood

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every falling leaf. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

in my son’s first year at lawrence university, i had the joy of visiting the campus fairly often. one of those times there was a comedian on campus and, along with a group of his friends, i went to her show.

it was fall 2011. tig notaro was about 40 then – though she looked way younger. i was 52 or so, not a heck of a lot older. following her bright career for a bit, it was difficult to see her deal with complicated and dangerous medical issues, the abrupt death of her mother, breast cancer, a double mastectomy, relationship breakup.

hundreds – maybe thousands – of shows in the growth of her success later, we watched her on anderson cooper’s – stunning – grief podcast “all there is”.

we stumbled upon this just a few nights ago – after you-tube-ing the news until we could no longer take any more in. anderson was visiting with ken burns and the show was titled, “the half-life of grief is endless“. there is nothing like an honest, open conversation about mortality and loss to draw you in. i repeated the words aloud: “the half-life of grief is endless” before realizing that quote had been – aptly – chosen as the title of that episode.

it feels true – in my opinion. the half-life of grief IS endless. and in that space we inhabit – that space that loss always shields with an impermeable membrane – we find so much meaning, so much life, so much right-now.

though well-acquainted with loss of dear people around her, tig spoke specifically of the loss of her friend, poet andrea gibson. she described the feeling of andrea nearby her. she read bits of her poetry. anderson cried. i cried. i think d cried too.

i never could understand how – when my big brother died – the world could just go on. i wasn’t a child. i was 33 and pregnant with my second child. but i still couldn’t grok it, even as i had lost others in my life, even as I could cognitively understand it. it was a gut-punch, yet i could feel him – wayne – nearby. i could sense his humor, his brilliant mind.

in the love letter that andrea wrote to their fiancée, they wrote “dying is the opposite of leaving…” and in the same, their words, “ask me the altitude of heaven and i will answer ‘how tall are you?'”

i cannot hike in the woods without stopping. there is so much to take in, so much for which to gently hold space, so much to be grateful for. just to see it all…washes over all the grief and enlivens all the grief. both.

and then there is this: “every falling leaf is a tiny kite with a string too small to see, held by the part of me in charge of making beauty out of grief.” (andrea gibson)

*****

LAST I SAW YOU © 1997, 2000 kerri sherwood

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grasshopper, grasshopper. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

jeffie used to use the term “grasshopper” a lot. not really understanding any reference, i always took it to be a term of affection.

in the middle of the middle of stuff we are in the middle of, we took a hike. we always see tiny grasshoppers on the dusty trail – hopping in just the last second and flying away – like small moths zipping past us.

but this day – in the middle of the middle of stuff we are in the middle of – there were Grasshoppers – capital G. never had we seen hoppers this big on any part of this lengthy trail. they didn’t just hop away upon feeling the vibrations of our feet on dirt. they stood their ground.

i bent down to share a few moments with this one. after communing with it, i urged it to jump off the beaten path, trying to save its life from zealous bikers also on trail.

for the first time, i looked up what jeffie’s “grasshopper” reference might be. and it all made sense, reading that kung fu (from the 70s tv series i never watched) used it – yes, affectionately – to convey to his students etc “a message of growth and learning”.

this differential grasshopper grinned at me as i bent down, posing for the camera. he turned and looked down the dusty gravel trail. and then he turned back to me for a few moments before i urged him on, away from potential danger.

“you got this,” he whispered. “keep going. you may feel small and it may feel bigger, but we both have abundant power. i can only go forward. you can jump with me.”

i heard him as he took off with a giant hop for the underbrush, “remember! leap!.”

today is a good day for grasshoppers.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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hippies or not. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

whether or not this is true, i thought it was funny and i laughed when i saw the bumper sticker.

there is definitely a little hippie in the two of us….all right, more than a little. and i’m perfectly ok with that. particularly the part about wishing for a world centered on peace, love, social change and harmony. and the part about gender and racial equality. and the part about being a conscious consumer, about focusing on environmental wellness, awareness of the footprint of products and of, well, everything, about being accepting and open-minded. and the part about not being excessively materialistic or terribly mainstream or fixated on massive accumulation of wealth. and the part about believing in kindness.

yes. if those are the descriptors, then, i guess, the shoe fits.

and then i think of the opposite.

those wishing for a world that is dictatorial, with extremist and narrow views, centered on suspicion and hatred, bigotry, patriarchal mores, xenophobia. a world that is cavalier about its nonchalant environmental abuse, apathetic about the future impact from the footprint of its intentions, close-minded and exclusionary. a world that is rigid, isolationist, with self-serving restrictive inhumane tenets, competitively materialistic and skewed to the stratospheric haves. a world that believes in cruelty.

THAT shoe fits our current country.

and that’s not funny.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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obvious. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

well, THIS seems obvious. obviously an epidemic of monumental proportion.

so unbelievably twisted, so devastatingly sad, and so incredibly dangerous.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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wisdom of the stanchion. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

one of the coveted front spots beckoned. it is pretty unusual to arrive at this grocery store and for there to be a front spot open. we don’t mind walking from afar but when it’s 150 degrees out with humidity tilting the charts – and you don’t personally have central air conditioning – and you just came from a hike where you nearly melted into the gravel in the parking lot – you take the coveted front spot because from there to the door of the pretty bitterly cold air-conditioned store is merely steps. steps, i say! i pull littlebabyscion into covetland and start to jump out of the car – ok, slither is more like it – when i see the sticker on the stanchion in front of the covetedspot.

“you are beautiful”

in this moment – when my hair is plastered to my head, my lake-geneva-tjmaxx eddie bauer first ascent sun protection UPF50 lightweight moisture-wicking trail guide capris are two-way-stretch-stuck to me, my injinji coolmax no-show toe-socked-toes are screaming for freedom, my eyes are watering from coppertone spf 50 dripping down my forehead – unchecked by my meager blonde eyebrows – into my eyes – which makes my nose kinda run – and i look wrung out, not at all fresh or pressed or glowing from being outside and from having exercised – i do not feel beautiful.

“you are beautiful”

i laugh aloud, get my phone and schlither myself somewhat-debris-flow-ish out of the car and to the front of littlebabyscion so as to take a photograph of this sticker, prolonging by at least 45 seconds my entry into the much-anticipated cool-dom of the store. two young girls are walking by – looking fresher and definitely tan and glowing – while i position my camera. i’m pretty sure they were wondering why this melted woman was taking a picture of the metal post in front of her car.

i take a closer look as i get ready to click.

below the sticker that reads “you are beautiful” is another sticker. this one says “visitor” with a smiley face as the “o”. sheesh. i nod. i soooo feel like a visitor to this place. particularly right now. and i’m not talking about this grocery store. everything that is happening is hard to understand, to grok, to even slightly wrap my head around.

visitor. yep.

because what i really believe – in my rainbow-bubbles-sunrise girl kind of way – is that if we could all embrace each other – respect each other – treat each other kindly and with equality – rights, privileges, care and concern – if we could really truly look at the words “you are beautiful” and believe these words about all people – all people – regardless of any – any – differences – we could stand a chance of survival.

anything less makes us visitors to a land of ill intent, a land of corrupted souls, a land of immorality and sociopathic narcissism. and nothing about that is beautiful. we are privy to that.

nevertheless, i show my photograph to david as we walk into the store.

“you are beautiful”

he gets a cart and stops for a second. he looks at me and says, “you are.”

i hook my arm through his – as he begins pushing the cart toward the baguette aisle – and – for these moments of freon/puron/HFC/HFO/other-refrigerant-bliss – all is right in the world.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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the most real. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

in the middle of the middle of the chaos that is this world right now, the thing that seemed the most real was last night’s pizza.

with a new pair of garden snippers, we went out to the potting stand and snipped off some fresh basil for our homemade pizza. the oven was preheating while we sous-chef-ed. we poured a glass of red wine and reveled in the cool breezes coming in from the back door and windows. we dined al fresco on the deck with plates of pizza, arugula spilling out of salad bowls and dogga at our feet. ohhh, what a day.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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before it was gone. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

i suppose it’s human nature. we tend to take it all for granted – our health, the place we call our home, our freedom. we are relatively complacent about it – maybe not necessarily actively grateful – more passively matter-of-fact.

until we are without it – our health, the place we call our home, our freedom.

and we want it back.

and then we wonder why we didn’t appreciate it when we had it.

each and every time i have had any kind of physical challenge, any ailment, i linger on what it was like before it began. before i broke both my wrists, before frozen shoulder, before i had covid, before…

it’s – of course – a fool’s errand and does absolutely no good save for being somewhat masochistic – which doesn’t fall under the category of good.

and – of course – the lesson i find is to intend gratitude for all in each moment we experience.

but we humans – particularly in this society – are slightly more hindsight types. and we tend to sort to the “in retrospect” view of things instead of being anticipatory or present.

so i do a heads, shoulders, knees and toes check-in and thank my lucky stars. i look around at our old house and thank this place we call home. i move about daily without restraint, making decisions about what to do, where to go – for which i am thankful.

and yet, right here and right now, we stand at a crossroads – an absolutely critical moment – when we must decide what all it is we are grateful for, what all we wish for, what all we believe in – before we don’t have it anymore.

those of us who are not in allegiance with the takeover of our democracy into autocracy, those of us who have not normalized an administration which is morally bereft, those of us who pledge our pledge to a republic and not a man – we all must decide to stand up for the freedom of this country. before it becomes one of those things we wish we had appreciated – when we had it – before it was gone.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING SMACK-DAB

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there is. i will. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

it was this morning – while i was nibbling on gluten-free cinnamon toast. it was while i was dishing out dogga’s dinner. it was while we sat at the kitchen table, darkness quickly falling outside. it was while i was sending a picture-of-the-day to my children, while i was texting with my dear friend. it was while i listened to george winston’s thanksgiving. it was on the trail. it was at the matinee of the movie here. it was leaving the theatre, tears in our eyes, grateful it was still a little light out.

it is right now. and this is where we are.

there are boundaries to be drawn, plans to be made, worries to be worried, griefs to be grieved.

there is shock and outrage. there is absolute horror.

there is no humor in what will come – and there is disgust at those who laugh with the sadistic glee of getting their way.

there is knowing and not-knowing. there is lostness.

there is uncertainty in the insanity of these moments.

but it is right now. and this is where we are. still.

so i will take stock wherever i find goodness, wherever i find community, wherever i find even a bit of joy, wherever i find love.

and i will dance in the kitchen, make homemade tomato soup, grow parsley in the winter. i will hold tighter to his hand and hug on our dogga. i will be frugal and i will be frivolous.

and i will sit on the wire with the other birds, watching the sky turn from night to day and night again. grateful for the tiniest things – that sky, the birds who love me and who i love, the wire and the still of still being here.

*****

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read DAVID’s thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY

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