Nature | Telling the Truth

October 24, 2018

silence of dense fog | health update

pinpoint clarity
flashes bright light on needles
silence of dense fog
wraps thick trunks in mystery
highlights tiny spider web

Despite gorgeous crystal-like drops of water, the overall scene is beautifully murky and mysterious. Which is how I’m feeling today about what’s happening in my life and in my body.

For several weeks I’ve wanted to find a few connections outside my everyday circle of friends and acquaintances. Today I have several wonderful options. Not too many, and not too few. Just the way I like it! More about that in a later post.

In addition, I’ve had some disconcerting health stuff hanging around the edges for several weeks. Nothing specific, but it all takes me to a murky place I don’t understand. Among other things this has included anxiety, lethargy, tremors, and some confusion from time to time.

On Monday I had a 3-month checkup with Dr. K, my wonderful integrative medicine doctor. She reviewed my latest blood work. It looked much better than it did when I began seeing her just over two years ago for adrenal exhaustion.

Dr. K also told me I have three of four genetic markers for CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome). Think of CIRS as cumulative, chronic inflammation that’s often mistaken for other things. The primary cause: mold buildup in the body. When unaddressed, mold-induced problems can be a contributing factor to Alzheimer’s Disease. About 25% of the population have versions of CIRS.

Unfortunately, people sometimes don’t recognize or attend to symptoms of CIRS in senior citizens. They’re interpreted as part of old age.

I’m taking a couple of easy tests to help figure out what’s going on. One involves a kit that will identify where mold resides in our house. I’m also going to take an online Vision Contrast Sensitivity Test. Then Dr. K will get me started on a treatment plan.

Today I’m cautiously hopeful, and am taking extra care to treat my body well. Like a little baby that wants to be loved and cared for.

Thanks again for listening. I decided I’d rather tell you this than sit on it and try to keep going ‘as usual’ — whatever that’s supposed to mean these days.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 24 October 2018
Photo found at wallpaperweb.org

7 Comments

October 18, 2018

My Dear Meadow,

How kind of you to welcome me
Yesterday when I arrived unannounced
And uninvited

You looked weather-worn and weary,
Sometimes disheveled and barely able
To stand upright

Leaning one tired limb against another
You seemed to be managing, though clearly not
For long

The air above and around you seemed deserted
Without its usual commotion of butterflies and birds
And beetles

Still,
When I saw you bravely doing your meadow thing
Against all odds, tears came to my eyes

Weathered
And leaning in on yourself you made my heart
Happy to be alive and visiting your aging presence

Tiny blossoms
Winked at me from the sidelines and reached out
To remind me that little things matter

Patches
Of muddy footprints pressed into half-dry mud puddles
Happily told me I wasn’t the first to visit you recently

Clouds
Of fluffy meadow seeds sped by on unruly gusts of wind
Distributing next year’s bumper crop of wild spring beauty

Bird houses
Empty for the season stood sturdy and brave prepared
To weather the coming freeze beneath ice and snow

Just in case
You’re not open the next time I stop by, I wish you
A long winter nap and restoration to your youthful vigor

Which is exactly what I hope for all of us.

With admiration,
Elouise♥

5 Comments

October 16, 2018

autumn wind

sturdy evening breeze
rides first waves of autumn chill
chasing leaves my way
it sends cricket songs soaring
through layers of fading light

I wrote this poem yesterday evening after a late walk around our neighborhood. For now, we seem to have exited cycles of wind and rain from the South, followed by the same from the North and Northwest. Maybe the fall chill can finally do its work and turn at least some trees and shrubs into flaming beauties.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 16 October 2018
Modern Art Nouveau painting by Wilhelm Kotarbinski, found at wikiart.com

3 Comments

October 9, 2018

The morns are meeker than they were

Here’s an Emily Dickinson poem for all children, including you! Plus my note to Emily below.

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.

Emily Dickinson: Poetry for Young People, edited by Frances Schoonmaker Bolin, illustrated by Chi Chung. Published by Sterling Publishing Co. (2008)

Dear Emily,

It pains me to say this, but I never thought of you as a trinket kind of girl or woman. But then again, it shouldn’t surprise me. You have a way of seeing beauty and even the entire creation in the smallest bird or flower.

I wonder if you had a trinket box like the one above. It comes from your century, and has a mustardy yellow autumn look about it. To say nothing of those pretty leaves and that bird in the center.

It’s too bad we don’t have photos of your trinkets. I was always told they could make or break a woman’s image. Nothing too big. Nothing too gaudy. Nothing that would call attention to me. As though I were saying, ‘Look at me!’

But your little poem has a different outlook. You want to be part of nature’s annual parade of colors. Or maybe it’s a great production. Or better yet, a grand ball in the ballroom of fields and forests glowing with bright colors.

Whatever it is, it won’t do not to smile back when nature smiles at us. So I’m off to my oldest trinket box to find something to wear today to the ball. I think I’ll look for that topaz birthstone ring my mother gave me when I was a child.

With kind regards,
From grown-up Elouise and baby Marie

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 9 October 2018
Photo of 1800s Trinket Box found at pinterest.com

10 Comments

October 8, 2018

Small gifts

Small gifts grace my eyes
Bursting with life and color
They command the scene
Announcing their calm presence
in the garden of my life

It’s difficult to think of my life as a garden. But that’s just what it is, isn’t it? A small patch of earth populated by new growth, the occasional stunning blossom, weeds, trampling of feet, the stench of manure, and all the rest that goes into the pot.

It seems nature, aided and abetted by a Master Gardener, combines the good, the bad and the ugly within one spectacular display. Seen from afar the garden glimmers almost like a desert mirage.

The photos above are from Chanticleer Garden. It’s a magical place. Even so, weather happens. People happen. Bird poop, poison ivy, weeds, and predatory mosquitoes happen. It takes a team of gardeners to keep up with pests, damage and overgrowth on the ground.

As for my life, I’m at peace with my past. Still, I can’t dispense with a team of gardeners, much less the Master Gardener. There’s work yet to be done beyond my limited eyesight and capacities.

Above all else, I want to keep the ability to see and appreciate small gifts sent via nature. Gifts that arrive unannounced, just when I need them. Like the photos in this post.

Happy Monday!
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 October 2018
Photos taken by DAFraser, July 2017, at Chanticleer Garden.

10 Comments

October 4, 2018

What next?

Standing alone
Holding what’s left
Of a lovely old body
Weary and dependent
She now begs for mercy
And justice from me
Her semi-absent keeper
Of too many years

What now?
Where now?
What next?
I haven’t a clue.
Have you?

The dilemma of each day. I don’t feel sorry; I feel sad. Last night I had a plan. Then I woke up this morning and my body begged for mercy and justice. My plan changed.

I want to save the world. Or at least what’s left of it. Now. Not later. My body stands there staring at me in the mirror. And what about me? Don’t I count for something?

The responsibility to take care of myself, not the rest of the world, weighs heavy. Not because I don’t know what to do, but because I’d rather be out there fighting for justice and mercy!

How ironic. Looking back, I see patterns that drove me. I also see the high cost my body is paying. Then I think of all the students and friends I’ve exhorted over the years to ‘take care of themselves.’

The title of a book I read in the last year or so comes back to haunt me: The Body Keeps the Score. Indeed it does keep the score. Mercilessly, yet mercifully when I’m willing to pay attention. This is now. Not then. I have choices.

So this morning I cancelled my plan and am listening to my body. Keenly aware that my new baby doll stand-in for me, 10-month old Marie, knows exactly what it means to be abused and taken for granted by someone who claims to love her. Sadly, I have sometimes been my complicit enemy, especially as an adult driven by ghosts from my past.

The sun is out; fall is almost in the air; it looks like a good day for a walk in the neighborhood! And a long look at that lovely photo at the top–a dock that reminds me of my favorite childhood getaway.

Happy Thursday!
Elouise♥

2 Comments

September 25, 2018

life takes the long road

life takes the long road
through majestic terrain
gleaming and foreboding

daylight falls quickly
below horizons
of narrow vision
ablaze with dying day

This photo, taken in Scotland, is breathtaking. As breathtaking as a single life that burns out boldly before fading into darkness.

It reminds me that what’s happening in and behind the “news” is often not good news, and easily becomes a distraction from the larger picture. The long view doesn’t promise me an eternity. It does, however, invite me to keep my perspective clear.

One of my readers left a wonderful comment in response to yesterday’s post. In it she shared a comment from a friend of hers in India. Here it is–a way of putting things into proper perspective:

WORLD: How could you stay in the Church after all the scandal?
ME: You don’t leave Jesus because of Judas.

Here’s to a thoughtful Tuesday.

10 Comments

September 21, 2018

remnants transformed

She dwells in days
Layered with moss memories
Accumulated remnants
Transformed into melodies
Of mercy and grace

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 21 September 2018
Photo taken by DAFraser in September 2016, roof of an old house at Loch an Eilein, Scotland

4 Comments

September 20, 2018

wild random beauty

wild random beauty
explodes through summer bounty
brilliant remnants flash
against tangled undergrowth
painting the old canvas red

That’s how I’m imagining my life today. A mess of tangled undergrowth, already beautiful in its own lively way, surprised from time to time by wild random beauty exploding from nowhere.

D took this photo at Chanticleer Gardens in late summer 2016. It invites me to consider my life today, and what might yet be waiting around the next corner. I feel like a child; I want to know how the story ends before it gets there. Not because of death, but because of all the good stuff that’s hiding, waiting along the way to surprise me with brilliant red.

10 Comments

September 18, 2018

red fruit vanishes

red fruit vanishes
into bulging chipmunk cheeks
summer’s final fling

Seen from my kitchen window this morning. Not the squirrel above, but our resident chipmunk.

For several days I’ve watched birds and squirrels raiding our giant yew shrub. One ripe red berry at a time. The shrub is loaded with them. This morning our small chipmunk was storing them up for a feast. He lives inside one of the large concrete blocks that form a low wall in our back yard.

And…in case you don’t already know. Yew shrubs and trees are totally poisonous to humans except for the red flesh on the berries. Don’t swallow the seeds! And, above all, don’t try the bark or the shiny green needless. You can read more about this right here.

This morning we’re still getting a bit of rain from Florence. Hoping for clear skies and a chance to walk outside soon.

Tag: Nature

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