...the tough keep moving

Greetings, with start-of-the-month “rabbit🐇rabbits” for good luck and hope.

A lot is at-odds, with very loose ends, and more than a little sadness and fear for many. Between now and January 20th Inauguration Day, this year’s holiday season of watching-and-waiting looms large with uncertainties for all varieties of the faithful and faithless alike.

One saving grace can be the still-point pause to think and reflect even briefly with you in newShrink. By January I hope and plan to be able to think and write from coherently thoughtful stance and voice of the proverbial loyal opposition. Gathering relevant literature to share is part of that process.

For me meanwhile, music like this can be salve for soul and spirit. On George Winston’s 1982 album, the piano variations on the classical — here with Bach, in Joy, on the album also Pachelbel, in Kanon — exquisitely echo timeless shimmering winter mornings. (Here’s a sample, available most anywhere you get your music.)

The well-tested, go-to Rx of leaning-in to our communities, tribes, institutions, special connections and relationships can be fraught in chaotic and complicated times like these — even as these connections are most needed. At stake are fundamental matters of where, how and with whom money, power and ego position/roles in the world and with others are up for grabs pretty much across our society.

The less conscious awareness we have about this, the more we are likely to see, experience and even do things like scapegoating and “shooting of messengers.” Also pervasive is the insidious form of the proverbial circular firing-squad — turning on one another and even things we value most — so characteristic of the progressive side of the spectrum.

This is where today’s title theme of being in healthy, conscious motion comes into play in a beneficial way. This simply means being in our bodies, as the shrinks and yogis say, not always or so much just our heads. It’s paying attention to what our five senses tell and show us: Images, patterns, emotions, nuances. This is what’s meant by being grounded.

Sometimes this can be experiencing community and connection in a group or crowd, while talking or listening to one another is completely voluntary and not required.

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Here’s a sampler. (Photos are below each section.)

right in time

Here is Grand Miz E, with whom my living room has become her improvisational modern-dance/lip-synching studio (and her Tishie is some combo of photographer, videographer, cheerleader-coach with her.) Shown in the center oval, this near-daily ritual began back in October when Hurricane Helene required that she, her parents and their two dogs joining our two, spend 3 1/2 weeks here. They were fortunate that their home was mostly undamaged, but their hometown of Asheville had to rebuild water system and reliable internet in order to reopen schools.

Here the performer’s whitened face in the center photo looks like she’s imitating 70s rocker Kiss — if she had any idea who that was. The stuff is just a kid-facial she had not yet removed. (Mine came off immediately, for I looked more like a 1,000-year-old mummy than rejuvenated.)

What doesn’t show adequately in the still shots here is the palpable joy, creativity and increased self-confidence she’s demonstrating with the movements. There’s fun, but also a loosening-release sense of things she’s been unable to express — some she may not have known were there. It’s so good to have this happy-inquisitive creativity, not just her consistently great grades and performance, be part of her learning in life and her school experience.

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Next up…

in-synch and synchronicity

All of the Signets hit the road running for a Turkey-Trot Thanksgiving “Tale of Two Cities” — simultaneously Thursday morning in Charlotte & Asheville. (We have our family holiday celebration at the lake Friday and the weekend.) We’re so proud of 8-year-old Miz E’s great finish of the whole AVL 5k with her mom and dad. (Photo and screen shot from video below at left.)

She was psyched this year, for the race there supports Helene relief efforts that she cares about. (It’s progress from last year, when response to being coaxed to run the SouthPark Charlotte race with her dad and us was, “hmmm, I dunno, will the shops be open?!”)

The quirky synchronicity — and a rather spooky connection she and I seem to have at times — shows up on the video. (Unfortunately the file is too large to post here.) The adults had not checked in with each other that morning on whether any or all of us would be able to run in our respective cities, with heavy rain in forecasts.

As it turned out, at the same time I was running my race in Charlotte — and thinking of this cool new “two cities” theme — on the video she can be heard, announcing like a sportscaster, “I’m running on Charlotte Street!” (That’s a real and well-known Asheville street.)

Meanwhile, down at the Charlotte SouthPark Trot, after crazy 5:15 a.m. downpour — plus waking to thunder and lightning — being able to race had seemed quite iffy. At that hour the prospect wasn’t a big lure; rain is OK, but I try to avoid slippery fall-risks like ice or wet leaves.

But the weather eased by start-time (pictured at right.) And this year was a first-ever treat and break in annual routine: Attending and running as “part-time Charlotteans.” That meant just hopping over to the race from the new-to-us condo getaway (doorway pictured at right), instead of the long pre-dawn interstate commute from Lake Norman. We had better-than-anticipated races in good company with 11,000 runners and walkers. I finished a minute slower than last year, cautiously slow with the wet leaves. But I still won second place in my not-large age/gender group — out of 42 this year. Last year, with shorter time, I placed third among 37.

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Another saving grace, as always…

…some laughs

Here are a few curated gems from peerless Ann Ahern Allen. The kooky one at center is wonderfully like friend Dave Gephart, who posted it. At bottom right is my perennial favorite (and possibly the only) Advent cartoon/meme anywhere.

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a welcome, and a relief

Midmorning last Thursday, (pictured at left) the first of my beloved loons returned for the season, a striking black and white male a bit smaller than the usual earliest. His arrival was after it had seemed quite possibly hopeless this year, perhaps due to the hurricane. I always imagine this first one of the season as real-estate scout for the migrating community from around New York, checking out nesting-feeding-lodging for the winter-to-early-spring season.

Then on Tuesday, the quite large male (at right) was staking out the area out beyond the dock next door.

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Now a final thought along some of today’s themes, by Ram Das — another post by Ann Ahern Allen.

This keeps bringing to mind the image of the parade of elephants in the newShrink signature quote, from a favorite Robert Stafford poem featured at the end of each post. I imagine those lumbering elephants, like us, in context of today’s vast upheavals across every area of American life.

The poem’s a call to stay awake/alert to the general direction of our desired goals, destination, and hold the thread of connection with one another in getting there. I don’t know much if anything about elephant orthopedic anatomy, eg., whether they have some form of elbows for nudging, or how they use their shoulders to press their companions’ way forward.

But in the many circuses under way today, there’s an apparent need for us also to wield that kind of holding-firm, sometimes course-correction pressure with one another. (The link to the full poem is with the quote below, in case it’s new to you, or you haven’t read it lately.)

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And, that is all I have for now.

🦋💙 tish

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… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”

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