Hello from Portland--A Vision Quest

Oregon that is.

An overcast day on the gem of the ocean, the Columbia River.

The Red Lion Inn is situated in Jantzen Beach on the Columbia River—sounds divine, with a river walk and all. The only problem is it sits next to a steel bridge with a constant stream of traffic, and every second a truck drives over something, a steel plate I think, that sends off a loud clang that drives my dog nuts. That is if we are outside. Inside the room, we are in hog heaven. It’s quiet. I can concentrate. I can write myself silly. Sweetpea mainly sleeps on the bed.

 Do you know what this is?

It's a rain chain. It directs water from the roof, down the chain and into the ground.

I’m on a birthday retreat, a vision quest of sorts. Three days without concerns of home and heart. I’m not like Dick Van Dyke, who as Rob Petrie on his TV show, set himself up in a mountain cabin to write and ended up playing with a paddle ball, and lonely for home.

I just completed the longest blog ever—for bloggers on www.bestdamnwritersblog.com. (And there I found I am a Crash-test Dummy blogger.)

You know how I have complained that the blogging gurus say long blogs work best. It’s a mystery to me. And today (ha ha) Seth Godin (world renown blogger) had a two-line blog. I love it.

I am playing around online with a downloadable day planner/calendar. About ten years ago I bought a day planner that worked great for me. Since  then , and not wanting to spend $29.99 and up, I’ve been buying some that have pretty covers, but don’t work well for me. I end up writing over pages meant for something else, so I decided to put one together myself, without knowing that would not be a simple task. My plan was, maybe is, to have it eventually as a downloadable give-a-way.

Already January has zipped past, so I better get it together before the end of February or I’ll lose another month.  I’m searching for quotes to add to monthly pages.  I have a picture (painting) I like for a cover that I hope is not infringing on any copyright.

The day I was to leave for my trip I pulled a Medicine card from its deck. It was an Eagle--upside down. It said I ought to go on a Vision Quest for I have felt my wings were clipped. And I should build my nest higher—whatever that means.

It is self-preservation to take care of oneself.

In Europe, they send people to spas instead of to the doctor. A time to heal. I think my decade birthday was weighing heavily on me. When you begin wondering how many days you have left it’s time for a break.

The other day, my friend asked her 102-year-old mother, if she’s ever lonely for her friends who have passed on. She smiled and said, “Heck no, I never liked the pressure of being constantly amicable—now I can be as ornery as I want.” What a woman.!

Yesterday sitting at my breakfast table in front of a bank of windows, I squinted across the river—way over into Washington State (Oregon and Washington divide right in the middle of the Columbia River), and I saw a building I recognized as one our family visited years ago. Daughter dear still has a tee-shirt from there that reads “Peace, Love, and Crabs.” The building was Joe’s Crab Shack.

Hold on. I’m having a bath here and going over there for dinner.

I had a bath too, but can’t go into the restaurant.

Dinner is over. I have clean hands and clean fingernails--all evidence of crab and butter washed away.  I drove across the river, across that clanking bridge, and there I was within a stone’s throw of the Crab Shack but had to drive about 6 miles to get there.

That bridge seems to be hanging over my head.—like someone toying with me. I look up, but the bridge stays right over the top of my head. I can see it, but how do I actually get onto it?

While both the hotel and the Crab Shack are tucked beside the bridge, the labyrinth of roads beside it, make crossing the bridge a challenge.

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I made it to Joe’s Crab Shack where I cracked and peeled the beautiful crustacean before me, indulged myself on crab meat, and butter and lemon, and made a royal mess. No potatoes, no corn. Right now I am on an anti-inflammatory diet. 

 Back in my hotel room, I clicked on the computer, and there was a perfect ending to my Vision Quest.

#Jack Canfield sent a link to a #Dr. Christiane Northrup interview. Her topic, “How our beliefs effect our health.” Perfect.

When she said, “Goddesses never age,” my ears pricked up.

Our emotions are the key, for the body is self -healing.

The following are highlights from Dr. Northrup’s interview:

“What we call health care, has nothing to do with health. It is disease management and disease diagnosis. “

Northrup went on to say that we are used to a bandwidth of emotions. We don’t get too high, or too low. If we study #epigenetics (gene expression) we see that it is the environment (what we eat, think, live, what chemicals are coursing through our bodies, etc. ) that governs the genes.  It is not, as is often stated, “My mother had it, her mother had it. It’s in my genes.”

Northrup  never tells her age because she does not want anyone’s input about her age. Ta Da!

At age 84 Dr. Northrup’s mother went to the Mt. Everest base camp.

Wow, ok. Let’s go for it, not Mt. Everest, just whatever we want.

Upon postmortem examination- on Nuns who gave their consent-- researchers found that people with dementia and people without it had the same Alzheimer’s plaque in their brains.

Dr. Northrup has found that people the world over who have lived to 100 and beyond have one thing in common. They are future orientated.

Her affirmation: “I love and accept myself right now.”

When you go on a vision quest, honor whatever shows up.

Live long and prosper,

Love from Joyce

This Place is Going to the Birds

Yesterday, on an overcast morning, as I went out to feed the chickens, I saw there on the chicken yard fence a creature disguised as a weathervane.

Soon the sun came out and I got a good look at his glorious color. And I was honored to feed him.

This peacock roams the neighborhood, and I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months. I was worried. Seeing him, though, tail intact and all beautiful, I wonder if perhaps he, like my hen, was molting.  She looked as though she had been attacked by a mountain lion. Maybe neither he nor she wanted to be seen in that condition.

Now both are beautiful--new feathers, happy countenance.

 Lookin' good

You probably read my peacock story, about the first day I saw him here at the empty house before we moved in last December. He was sitting on the fence outside a bedroom window

I had brought boxes of dishes from the other house. I was washing cupboards, putting dishes away, putting up knickknacks, and of course, I had to look in every room. There in the bedroom, out the window, what did I see on the fence, but a peacock!

I was beside myself, calling our dog: “Sweetpea, come look!” She came, she looked but thought I had gone bonkers.  (Yeah, I knew what she was thinking.) “But, Sweetpea, this is my totem animal.”

Can you imagine, this is the third peacock I have seen associated with a new home. One in Riverside California, One in Marcola, Oregon, and here in the sleepy little town of Junction City.  

I would never have thought it.

Blonde has recovered from her molting where she lost her tail and three-quarters of her feathers but look at her now—Isn’t she beautiful?

 

The three baby chicks I acquired last October are grown up birds now.  

I’m afraid I goofed on these chicks for they are skittish and not tame as my other two hens were. Harriot and Blonde would come and sit on my lap. Especially, Harriot, the hen who laid the green egg, but alas, she disappeared one night without a trace.

It could be that I didn’t hold these three baby chicks as much as I did the others. Another possibility is that these three chickens were about a week old when I got them, and they had already imprinted on each other, or learned about life— that one ought to run in the face of danger—real or imagined.

When we lived in Temecula, California, I volunteered to feed our landlord’s chickens and turkeys, for a reduced rental fee of course. The turkeys knew me and whenever I called out,  'Hello guys," they answered with a chorus of "Gobble, gobble gobble." He also had a dozen or so quail that were so tame they poured as a unit out the door when I opened it. I had to push them inside to get into their pen. Later on he got another group of quail that were so wild they fluttered and squawked and ran from me whenever I approached their pen. He had enclosed them in a little pen with a door on the top. One day I opened the door and one quail high-tailed it out of there, never to be seen again.

You are the first person I have told. Confession time.

“Sharing enhances everything you experience,” –

-Tony Robbins.

Yes, Tony, but do people want to hear it?  It is rather one-sided, isn’t it? But words need eyes, and that’s where you come in. I suppose every writer wonders if their words are worth reading. Are they engaging, enlightening, educational, or entertaining? 

There’s the rub.

I wonder many times what I am doing here. And then Maria Forleo comes along and says, “Give your gift.”

Yes, but, what’s under that wrapper?  I’m afraid to look.

"The author & the reader know each other: they meet on the bridge of words.”--Madeleine L'Engle  

                                                                                         

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