Living Rootless

5 Years Ago: Rootless: The Last Monday Letter

2026-04-02T07:00:00.008-05:00

Five years later, there's nothing more I can add to this. I think of my mom often.

Monday, March 29, 2021

Rootless: The Last Monday Letter

Carol Cottage, Missouri. January 2011.

Dear Mom,

I've written you a letter almost every Monday since mid-December 2018.

In that first weekly letter, I was at the end of an interregnum Missouri visit, about to depart for a Christmas-New Year layover in South Louisiana before heading westward to my next tourist-in-residency --> Tucson.

When I wrote you that letter, I still had my 1995 Toyota Camry. When I wrote you that letter, I didn't know that, two weeks later, I would say good-bye forever to that sturdy stalwart of my rootless life.

It looks like this will be my last Monday letter to you, and I'm putting it here, seeing as how you don't live at Carol Cottage anymore, seeing as how you've died, of course. You, too, were a sturdy stalwart in my life. I think you'd chuckle at being compared to a car. Or you'd be annoyed.

Carol Cottage, Missouri. January 2011.

So let me tell you about your funeral and burial. It was everything you'd asked for.

You lay in your casket in a long-sleeved, white cotton nightgown. White-thread embroidery just below the neckline, a band of hand-stitched eyelets below the neckline, a pleated bodice. Pretty details, yet still in the range one can call simple. Exactly your style.

The James Lee Burke book, Pegasus Descending, featuring our mutual hero, Dave Robicheaux, rested on your belly, propped against the open half-lid of the casket. You had a perverse fondness for Dave's violent, psychopathic side-kick, Clete Purvis.

As you'd asked, we ordered your casket from an online supplier and had it shipped to the funeral home to side-step the markup costs assessed by funeral homes for their caskets. We selected a poplar casket in a cherry finish that, like your nightgown, had pleasing details of interest, but overall, evoked the comfortable warmth and intimacy of your living room. And, gosh, did you know you can buy a casket at Costco? We chose yours from a different company, but knowing Costco's got caskets is something to tuck away for future reference.

As for how you looked in the casket, you didn't just "look good" like in the cliche about such things. You were beautiful. Astonishingly so. I'm serious, Mom. Even your nails were manicured and polished (with the barest of pink blush), just as you would like. And you wore the exact right shade of lipstick for your complexion. I'm not saying you looked beautiful "for your age," a woman of 91. No, you were beautiful in that casket irrespective of age.

You wanted Ave Maria sung at your funeral. The soloist, a young woman, sang it to you, to us, in a clear, warm, mezzo-soprano voice, from the balcony behind us. The notes of that transcendent song washed over me.

Your Ave Maria was gorgeous. But when the young singer began to serenade you with Amazing Grace while your descendants escorted you from the altar to the waiting funeral car, well, that took my breath away.

The car procession that followed you to the cemetery ... an unremarkable journey.

No Fellini-esque plot twists on the way, as happened after your brother, Clement's, funeral. Remember? When dozens of us, including you and Dad, idled outside the church, seemingly forever, waiting for the priest to lead the vehicular cavalry? And when you asked the funeral director what was taking so long for us to get started, he conjectured that maybe the priest was eating a sandwich.

We eventually did get going, one car following another, as they do in a funeral procession. We seemed to drive a long time, first on a congested arterial road, then on the highway, then off the highway onto another arterial road and then, oddly, the funeral car took a right turn onto a small side street. A dead-end, in fact. We followed, of course, only to understand that the funeral car driver had taken a wrong turn somewhere and he'd only entered this street so he could turn around (turn all of us around) and get onto the right path. Remember how we all poked our vehicles' noses into residents' driveways so we could then back up and restore our places in line behind the retreating funeral car?

There had been so much idling in front of the church before getting underway that your youngest child had to pull out of the funeral procession so he could gas up his truck before he ran out of fuel.

Oh, what a dramatic third act that was!

But getting back to your memorial day. It had rained earlier, but the rain abated for the final stop of our long good-bye to you. Chilly, though. If you'd been among us en vivo, at the cemetery, under the final-words canopy, you'd have been rolling your eyes and sighing while the priest used his bully pulpit to convince us of how fun it is to be in heaven. Me, I just shivered in the cold and waited impatiently for him to cut the commercial and get back to the program: you.

Daughter Kit had a mission to visit Dad's grave (where you were about to join him) and her paternal grandfather's grave. She'd already obtained their grave 'addresses' and their locations on the cemetery map, and following your closing ceremony under the canopy, she and her family and I drove to Dad's cemetery neighborhood.

So it was that we came upon the newly dug grave, into which you would be interred. We watched while the cemetery crew brought you to the grave in, let's call it a carriage, albeit a humble, utilitarian one. We watched how the crew pulled your casket from the carriage, centered you into a harness of sorts, and carefully lowered you into your grave with straps and winches, guiding your slow descent by hand.

You would have been quite interested in watching this process.

It felt good to be with you in your most final of final moments.

OK, then. This is my last Monday letter, Mom.

Love,

Mzuri

Related posts

Post office and cows, Topawa, Tohono O'odham Nation, Arizona. July 2019.

Word of the Year 2026: Light: Let in the Light, v.2

2026-04-01T07:00:00.001-05:00

Light enters kitchen window in Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Photo credit: Mzuri

I re-run my 2021 light-therapy post. Today I'm in a different year, a different state, in another small place, that alas, is miserly in its bestowal of light.

Nevertheless, my morning welcoming-in of the light persists, although the stinginess of the light here demands the addition of artificial light, using daylight LED bulbs.

As I write this, I smile, remembering the bleak hotel room in Lalibela, Ethiopia, in which I proclaimed to the hotel clerk during the first of two meltdowns in that city, when he flipped on the room light with no measurable effect: "This is the room you give to someone who no longer has the will to live!" (The Karen designation had not yet been birthed, but, oh yes, Karen was my name in Lalibela.)

As I write this, we live in a time of appalling acts of violence against the bodies, minds, and civil rights - with impunity - against our fellow beings, be they women, men, or children - over which I have so little control, and which can push me into my soul's murkier corners ... But I do have the power to open window blinds, I can turn on lights, and I can pull my eyes away from a device and look out a window.

I do have that power.

Friday, October 1, 2021

Word of the Year: Joy 10: Let in Light

Leaf in light. UTEP campus, El Paso, Texas. March 2017.

A morning ritual sends a small joy to my soul.

I open the wide slats of my white window blinds, push the blinds up to the window tops, and let in the light of the day.

My morning ritual also connects me to my mother's morning ritual. She had white, wood window shutters, which she, too, opened each morning, in her bedroom, in her living room, in her dining room, in her tiny kitchen. This daily connection with her pleases me.

Light through Carol's living room windows. January 2011.

Feel the light

Morning light through kitchen window. Ferguson, Missouri. March 2018.

Morning light in my Rustavi, Georgia (Caucasus) window. July 2011.

Light through my living room window in Opelousas, Louisiana. March 2015.

Light through my El Paso kitchen window. October 2016.

Light through my living room windows in Ferguson, Missouri. April 2018.

Light through the dining room window in my rooted house. Featuring Princess. May 2007.

Joys so far this year

Joy 1: Word of the Year: Joy

Joy 2: Music

Joy 3: Surprise Vista

Joy 4: Happy, Joyous, and Free

Joy 5: The Science of Joy, Interrupted

Joy 6: Color

Joy 7: Birdsong

Joy 8: Here and Now, Boys

Joy 9: A Tomato and Onion Sandwich

Word of the Year 2026: Light: She Kept the Light on For Me

2026-03-01T07:00:00.002-06:00

Assortment of Light 1, Maison Bergogne, Narrowsburg, New York. Photo credit: Mzuri

I'm saying "she" kept the light on, but it could be a "he" just as well. I'm saying "for me," but it was "for all."

I'm a member of a 12-step fellowship. In pre-COVID times, in my annual migrations, one of my first settling-in actions at a new tourist-in-residency was to find my fellowship's local meetings.

During my tenure in Alamogordo, there was only one meeting. When I attended it the first time, I found one person there, waiting.

She came every week. Brought meeting materials. Brought program literature. Unlocked the small conference room. Turned on the light. Straightened the chairs around the table, if needed.

She turned on that light every week, knowing that she might be the only person there, as this was the reality more often than not.

In the 12-step fellowships, healing balances on a three-legged stool: the physical, the mental/emotional, and the spiritual.

I had the physical abstinence, and it turned out that she had not yet been able to sustain that.

But she was light years ahead of me in the other two legs: emotional and spiritual maturity.

Turning the light on for anyone who might stumble in from the dark, week after week - that is a woman whose inner light shines.

2026 Word of the Year: Light

2026-02-01T16:36:00.001-06:00

British Park. Mobile, Alabama. Christmas 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

Light.

In these dark times, I need light. Maybe you do, too.

For the joy, the promise, the inspiration that light brings, I revisit the song, This Little Light of Mine.

My favorite is this by the Soweto Choir:

New to me this year is from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in a 1960 performance:

May I find light in each day.

15 Years Ago: My Exclusive Vacation Homes on the Missouri Riviera

2026-01-02T22:44:00.001-06:00

In January 2011, I had sold my house in Missouri, but hadn't yet set off on what has been a 15-year slomadic ("slow nomad") journey . Thanks to four women, I had the most marvelous guest homes in Missouri.

My mother, the proprietor of Carol's Cottage, died in spring, 2021. I don't know if I think of her every day, but I do often. The day before yesterday, for example, while I made my bed and lay down a blanket on the mattress, one from my childhood, I smiled, remembering her phone call one day decades ago: "Do you want to go to a sperm auction with me"? And, of course, I said yes, not knowing in the moment what to expect. (The auction was at a well-known farm with prize-winning bulls, and it was their sperm up for the highest bid.)

Co-hostess of Catrisse Bluff, Charisse, died last summer from a long and painful auto-immune condition,. On the day she died, I was in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, en route on buses to my intended destination of the tippity-toe of South America. That evening, I bought a strong stout from the bartender at my lodging, which I intended to raise to Charisse's spirit. I told the bartender my friend had died. She said to me: "Our people are only on loan to us."

Pamela House is home to other people now. Pam's flame dims from a different sort of auto-immune malady. She requires care in a skilled facility for the acts of daily living.

What about Chez Kathryn (which is actually the correct rendition of her name), you might ask? Well, she always keeps the light on for me, and I most recently landed on her doorstep for at least six weeks while I recovered from the pneumonia I picked up in Panama, Ecuador, or Peru in September, and searched for a new-to-me car. Kate features prominently in the Kate on the Loose episodes, in which Pam co-stars.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

My Exclusive Vacation Homes on the Missouri Riviera

I have three.

At each, I enjoy expansive garden-level suites with full kitchen and public-room accommodations up on the terrace levels.

At Catrisse Bluff, I enjoy a serene, monastic bedroom in soothing southwestern colors, with a full, private bath across the hall and an adjoining living room that has a wonderful stone fireplace. Upstairs, through a wall of windows, I can look from "my" bluff, across the vast, picturesque Missouri River flood plain, to the distant bluffs on the other side.

At Pamela House, I sleep in an ornate, antique bed in a bedroom with an en suite bath. There is a cozy sitting area next to a large picture window that looks out on pretty foundation plantings. Upstairs, as I sip fresh coffee, I step through the french doors onto the immense screened-in deck with fireplace. It opens into a friendly yard and garden.

At Chez Katherine, I am in a Parisian apartment, sleeping in a bed so high I need a stool to get in, with a dainty crystal chandelier in front of the garret-like window, and a huge map of Paris on the wall. Yes, I do need to traipse down a tiny corridor and across a roomy family room to get to my private bath, but, well, it is a vacation home, n'est ce pas? One makes do. Upstairs, I enjoy coffee in one of several sink-into-comfort upholstered chairs or couch, or I may walk out to the huge screened-in deck that overlooks a secluded wooded yard; the enclosed deck is reminiscent of a mountain lodge. And did I mention the outdoor shower? The hammock? The swinging, turquoise bench under the arbor?

And, of course, my current, main pied a terre is at Carol Cottage, a sunny yellow place highlighted with Dutch blues and whites, and black and white prints, which sits prettily on a small-town lane.

Carol Cottage

Being rootless does have its perks when one has friends and family who "keep the light on" for you.

Word of the Year: 2026

2026-01-01T09:56:00.001-06:00

Sunrise on Grand in Las Vegas, New Mexico, 2007. Credit: Mzuriana

Before I roll out my 2026 word of the year next month, below is a recap of years past:

2018: Courage

January 2018: Courage 1: Malala
February 2018: Courage 2: Audre Lorde

2019: Action

January: Action
February: Action: Legal Observers
March: Action: Penpal
July: Action: Escaping Despair
August: Action: Lipstick and Salvation
September: Action: A Refugee Shelter

2020: Build

2021: Joy

November 2020: Reserving My Word for 2021: Joy
Joy 1: Word of the Year: Joy
Joy 2: Music
Joy 3: Surprise Vista
Joy 4: Happy, Joyous, and Free
Joy 5: The Science of Joy, Interrupted
Joy 6: Color
Joy 7: Birdsong
Joy 8: Here and Now, Boys
Joy 9: A Tomato and Onion Sandwich
Joy 10: Let in Light
Joy 11: Scentsuality
Joy 12: Remembrances

2022: Disciplines

January: Introduction
February: Showers
June: Daily Walks
July: A Work Schedule
August: Gone Dark

2023: Fear

January: Looking Into the Abyss Without Falling In
February: Fuck Everything And Run
March: Forgetting Everything's All Right
April: "Take More Risks"
May: Feelings Expressed Allow Relief
June: Face Everything And ... Rise
July: Frustration, Ego, Anxiety, Resentment
August: Face Everything And Recover
September: Freedom and Imprisonment

2024: Migration

2025: Meditation

January: Introduction
February: Meditation
March: Into Action
April: May You Be ...
May: Writing Meditation
June: Walking Meditation
July: Beads and Seeds
August: Coloring
September: Qigong
October: Land Snorkeling
November: The Facial
December: Listening

10 Years Ago: Opelousas: Death in Black and White

2025-12-02T05:00:00.043-06:00

So, 10 years yon, how goes the disparity between Black and White life expectancy?

Missouri:

"In 2022, Missouri’s life expectancy rebounded from 74.6 years to 75.4 years having fallen steeply immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the 2022 life expectancy is still about two years lower than our state’s life expectancy was in 2019 and remains about two years under the national life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. Further, the disparity in life expectancy between white and black/African-American Missourians remains substantial, with white men living 8.5 years longer than black men and white women living 4.4 years longer than black women.

"Pregnancy-related death rates among Black/African American mothers were three times higher than white mothers.42 Of the 68 pregnancy-related deaths, 57 (84%) were preventable.

"The infant mortality rate among Black/African American residents was over double the rate for white residents (11.7 versus 5.1)."

I don't have comparable stats for Louisiana.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Opelousas: Death in Black and White

Myrtle Grove Cemetery, Opelousas, Louisiana.

There's a good chance that if you're brown and you live in Opelousas, you'll die 15 years sooner than your white neighbors.

How do I know this?

Soon after I moved to Opelousas, a couple of events got me looking at local obituaries.
I looked at the obituaries of two local funeral homes: Sibille and Williams. The first thing I noticed is that Sibille is the funeral home for white folks and Williams is the funeral home for those of color.

Over time, as I periodically visited the obituary listings, it seemed that the ages of death over on the Williams obituary page were notably younger than those at over at the Sibille page. This was odd.

To test this perception, I looked at all of the obituaries at Sibille and Williams for the people who died in October and November 2015:

White: average age of death = 79.36 years
Brown: average age of death = 63.67 years
79.36 minus 63.67 = 15.69 average difference in age

OK, what about outliers? Brown people who died extraordinarily young and white people who lived well into their 90s? They skewed the average for these two months, yes?

I crunched the numbers again, this time tossing out the oldest white decedent and the youngest brown decedent. Results:

White: average age of death = 78.24 years
Brown: average of death = 65.0 years
78.24 minus 65.0 = 13.24

In this adjustment, Opelousas residents of color died THIRTEEN years younger than their white neighbors, still shocking.

Now I needed a control group, so I looked at deaths in central Missouri, whence I came, using two funeral homes there: Millard Family Funeral Chapels and May Funeral Home. Unlike Sibille and Williams in Opelousas, there is some integration of services at Millard and May, but there is still a strong bias in the clientele served. Generally, Millard's clients are white. Generally, May's clients are brown.

Results for October and November 2015 in mid-Missouri:

White: average age of death (served by Millard) = 72.85 years, after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents
African-American: average age of death (served by both Millard and May) = 60.17 years after excluding the oldest and youngest decedents
72.85 minus 60.17 = 12.68 years average difference in age upon death

So from a slice of mid-Missouri, African-American decedents died an average of TWELVE AND HALF YEARS younger than their white neighbors.

Note: In the Missouri sample, there was what seemed to be an aberrational number of infants who died (at least I hope it was aberrational), both white and black. So for the Missouri comparison, I excluded the oldest individual and the youngest individual in both white and African-American groups.

Side note: Jesus. Why are mid-Missourians, generally, dying so young? And it's astounding to compare the average age of African-American deaths in mid-Missouri to average age of white deaths in the Opelousas area - almost TWENTY years difference!

Centuries of institutional racism have a long, long reach.

But maybe you think that I happened to choose two months in a particular year that were non-representational of the facts. Wonderful! By all means, please dig deeper. Please do.

Word of the Year: Meditation: Listening

2025-12-01T08:00:00.206-06:00

I'm not talking about listening to a guided meditation, although those are certainly good.

I'm not talking about listening in a way that I might pause to note the travel talk of geese as they fly north in the spring in their arrowhead formations.

No, I'm talking about this → for five minutes, with eyes closed, I actively listen, with the intention of meditation, to the ambient sounds wherever I am at the moment:

In my bedroom.
In a coffee shop.
In the woods.
On the beach.
In my parked car. With the windows up. Or the windows down.
In my yard, my patio, my porch, my balcony.

Intent and action are the keys for me in a listening meditation. Intent: mindful meditation. Action: For five minutes:

Be still
Sharpen my focus on hearing
Blur my other senses

Credit for this video:

"An eight-part series (Poetry of Perception) on representations of perception and sensation made for fundamentalsofneuroscience.org. "We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think." Oliver Sacks

Words by Walt Whitman
Animation by Daniela Sherer danielasherer.com
Narration by Peter Blegvad
Sound + Music by Skillbard skillbard.com
Produced by Nadja Oertelt nadjaoertelt.com"

Brought to my attention by The Marginalian.

10 Years Ago: The Church of Zydeco

2025-11-02T05:00:00.041-06:00

This 10-year old post happens to feature Curley Taylor. He and his band re-entered my post-Louisiana orbit in June 2019, when they performed at Tucson's Monterey Court.

Monterey Court in Tucson, Arizona. May 2019. Credit: Mzuriana.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Louisiana: The Church of Zydeco

Performance center, Vermilionville, Lafayette, Louisiana. June 2015.

Every Sunday afternoon, Vermilionville hosts the Bal du Dimanche ("Sunday Dance") from 1:00 to 4:00. Usually they alternate Cajun and Zydeco each week, with the occasional "swamp pop" or blues thrown in to the line-up.

I love both Cajun and Zydeco, mind you.

But. ... On every Zydeco Sunday, the same strange phenomenon occurs: I walk into the gift shop, show my membership card, get my paper bracelet, walk out of that building and into the courtyard, pass by La Cuisine de Maman's, and as I hear the Zydeco waft from the nondescript Performance Center in front of me, my mouth begins to form into a smile. It's an involuntary response, I tell you.

The nearer I get to the Performance Center, the louder the music gets as it flows through the cracks of the doors, and the wider my smile becomes. Heck, it makes me smile just writing about it.

A pale, pale sample of this phenomenon is in the video below:

On this particular Sunday in June, the Most High Reverend Mister Curley Taylor preached, along with his holy men, Zydeco Trouble.

Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble. Vermilionville, June 2015.

We celebrants confessed our sins and were blessed for another week. Or until later the same day for serious sinners, who congregated at Whiskey River [now closed, following a fire in 2023]. Or again that night, maybe at Randol's or O'Darby's or Feed n Seed.

Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble. Vermilionville, June 2015.

When a Zydeco band gets into a special groove, and the band members are in the music, and they lead us, the audience, up the road with them, and we add our energy to the band's energy, and the entire room thrums with a soaring, transcendent force, it evokes to me a trance dance that brings euphoria, of connection with humanity of today and humanity going back, back, back all the way to our very beginnings.

It's not just Zydeco music that does this, of course. Any music can do it. I remember a singular experience at the Lupus Chili Fest in 2013, in a garage. I described the feeling like this:

Sometimes when you listen to music, live especially, it pushes against you like an ocean wave or like a force of air, where you feel exhilarated and breathless at the same time, where your head actually falls back a little from the strength of the sound coming at you.

This is what it felt like in the Lupus Garage when The Harvest Season played, as the band's flow rolled up and back in small waves, then pounded the shore in a rush against the beach.

If they had been calling to people at the back of the church to come to Jesus, why, I might have been tempted to do just that.

Amen.

Word of the Year: Meditation: The Facial

2025-11-01T08:00:00.111-05:00

Face From a Cosmetic Spoon. Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art

I'm good for a five-minute meditation. Five minutes is achievable for me; any longer and I'm going to put it in the category of a chore, thus less likely to fold into a daily routine.

This month: a meditation of touch.

I lightly move my fingers over the terrain of my face, staying in the physical moment, feeling the sensation of skin on skin, how my face receives the touch of my fingers, and how my fingers feel the touch of my face.

I note how the texture of my lips differs from the texture of the skin on my chin. I feel how my eyebrow hairs lay. I linger over the ridged skeleton of my forehead beneath the skin. I notice the warmth or coolness of my fingers on my face. Along my jawline, are there stubbly bits or is all smooth?

During this meditation, I know that tender memories will arise of my mother caressing my skin when I was a child and of me, in turn, caressing my daughter's face. I'll feel these memories, but I'll allow them to float by as I return to the meditation of my touch in the present, letting go of all else.

10 Years Ago: Learning to Dance: The Pause

2025-10-02T05:00:00.160-05:00

In re-visiting this post of 10 years ago, I remembered "Caroline" and the power of a pause. Caroline is the protagonist in the book, The Camel and the Scorpion, about a young associate professor pulled into the case of an American woman arrested in Israel for espionage in the 1970s. Despite her innate shyness, Caroline had been a champion member of a college debate team; she knew that the force of a well-placed and well-timed pause is an effective tool for debates, speeches, sermons, and calls to action. [Disclosure: I know both the book's author and the real-life person who Caroline is based on.)

As a guide for daily living, there is also the acronym STOP to help us respond instead of react to an emotional or physical trigger:

S: Stop: Remember to pause.
T: Take a few breaths.
O: Observe my emotional and physical reactions in the moment
P: Proceed with awareness, choosing our response

Perhaps I will claim self-actualization on the day I conquer the art of the pause.

Monday, October 12, 2015

Learning to Dance: The Pause

Dancing La Marinera in Tularosa, New Mexico. San Francisco de Paula Festival 2013.

Last year, at the Feed 'n Seed, I danced with an older gentleman. A slow-ish song. About 30 seconds into our dance, he said quietly in my ear, "Slow down, we're not in a hurry to go anywhere."

This centered me right then, and for the rest of the dance, I could be in the moment with where my partner was going and which rhythm line of the song he was choosing.

Holi Festival 2014, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Earlier in the year, before the Feed 'n Seed experience, at a Vermilionville Bal du Dimanche, a woman generously tutored me on a zydeco movement. I had taken zydeco lessons a month or so before, and I'd learned a basic zydeco shuffle in which every beat of the eight-count in zydeco was accounted for with a step or tap. But this woman was showing me something different. I didn't see the eight counts in her steps, I couldn't replicate her movements, and it confounded me.

I asked her about the step count, and she said - bless her generous heart - "don't worry about counting, just move with the music." I couldn't do anything with that information, so I asked her to keep demonstrating her steps until I could solve the mystery. She graciously complied.

Finally, I saw it.

On the third and seventh steps, she PAUSED. The fourth and eighth step were there, but "silent." Ohhhhhh.

When I excitedly shared my newfound understanding, the woman looked a little puzzled, and then shrugged, as if to say "whatever," apparently not excited as I about my tremendous breakthrough in understanding. I'm guessing she had so internalized her step movements, she didn't even notice the pause, and thus didn't think to explain it.

Feed n Seed, Lafayette, Louisiana.

These two experiences planted seeds in my neonatal dance mind, but they didn't stick until I took a new round of zydeco dance lessons this month.

The instructor informed me several times that I was going through movements too quickly. He EXPLICITLY directed me to pause. He hammered these points when I struggled to make turns correctly, so that I'd finish on the right foot at the right beat.

Finally, I got it. I have to PAUSE when I take that first turn-step.

The pause makes all the difference.

There is a maturity, an elegance, a sensuality, in the dance pause.

It's gratification delayed, it's listening and feeling, it's a breath.

Related posts:

Learning to Dance: Solving for X
Learning to Dance: The Tao of Following

Word of the Year: Meditation: Land Snorkeling

2025-10-01T08:00:00.180-05:00

Caterpillar. Big Spring, Missouri. 2007. Credit: Mzuriana.

The title Land Snorkeling popped up whilst I was tunneling an online rabbit hole about something or another and it surely did grab my attention. I'm not gonna link that article here because its website throws up an egregious quantity of pop-ups into the faces of visitors in addition to making it too challenging to customize one's cookie settings.

The founders of a different website, aptly named Land Snorkel, state they invented the term and its attendant philosophy.

"Land snorkeling is taking the time to savor aspects of nature we ordinarily don’t see or pay attention to. Land snorkelers wander through nature with no real destination."

I'm happy to report to myself that I have engaged in land snorkeling for much of my adult life, although I didn't have a name for it.

To make my foray a meditation, I abstain from phone use and earbuds, and slide up the volume of my senses: sights, sounds, smells, the touch of a breeze or the lack thereof. My focus is outward, not inward. What I mean by that is that I let go of self so that I can make room for other.

10 Years Ago: No. Fifteen Years Ago: I've Gone Rootless

2025-09-02T05:00:00.024-05:00

2023.0429. Cozy bed in Chez Prius. Ellis, Kansas.

September is the anniversary of my having gone rootless.

It's been 15 years now.

If all goes according to plan, I will re-root myself soon. But that's tomorrow and not today.

In the meantime, a visit to my past:

Flashback to September 2010: "I'm Going Rootless"

Gee whiz, it's been five years since I wrote my first post:

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I'm going rootless.

I've sold my house. Move-out day is October 15, and, as of today, I don't yet have a forwarding address.

I'm going rootless.

Word of the Year: Meditation: Qigong

2025-09-01T08:00:00.082-05:00

More than 20 years ago, the local parks and recreation department offered a class in tai chi. I was the only student who enrolled. The instructor, Brandon, would have had every right to cancel the class, but he didn't. Brandon and I met once a week for six weeks and he introduced me to both qigong and tai chi.

Brandon used qigong as the prelude to the tai chi, and I interpreted qigong as a warmup.

Below is a video with a morning set of qigong movements. I like this video because there's no chatter other than the intrusive sound of the ocean waves, which I turned off.

Credit: Qigong Meditation

I always like the story of one of my favorite movements. It goes something like this:

The sun comes up
You push open the window for a better view
You spread the curtains wide
You reach down and gather the sunlight
Toss it up into the sky
Pull what falls to your abdomen and rest your palms there

In my emerging meditation practices, the qigong movements help me focus on my physical being in its parts and its whole, pulling me out of my brain's incessant talk talk talk.

10 Years Ago: Louisiana: Sweet Potato Talk

2025-08-02T05:00:00.019-05:00

I do love sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes. Longmont, Colorado. June 2023. Credit: Mzuriana.

The original source, from Al Jazeera, about "troubling work conditions for North Carolina laborers" who harvest sweet potatoes is no longer accessible. Here is a November 2015 replacement source from NPR: Behind Your Holiday Sweet Potato Dish, Hard Work in the Fields.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Louisiana: Sweet Potato Talk

2010 Yambilee poster, Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Louisiana

I was standing in line at my neighborhood grocery store the other day, and a man came up behind me with only one item to buy, so I invited him to move ahead of me. A happy consequence is that he noticed the two gigantic sweet potatoes I had among my stash, and this sparked a memory for him.

Yam sign outside Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Louisiana

When he was a kid, he dug up sweet potatoes during the harvest from, he said, first thing in the morning til the end of the day. It was terrible hard work, he said, but at mid-day, the labor was suspended for a large meal, which gave him energy to re-commence with the work in the afternoon. The man allowed as how it made him feel strong and good. ... though I suspect this is more how it feels to him in retrospect than at the time.

Sweet potato patties, Walmart,t Lafayette, Louisiana

The man observed that digging the sweet potatoes is no longer necessary, as there is a machine that can do it now.

Yambilee Festival Building, Opelousas, Lousiana

Recently, I've been buying sweet potatoes in bulk because the price at my local grocer is so giddily low right now and I love the durn things. I bake two racks of them at a time, skin them, distribute them into portions, then freeze the portions in freezer bags.

Sweet potato chips, Louisiana

The man's story got me to thinking about sweet potato agriculture.

The American leaders of sweet potato production, in order from largest to smallest, are:

North Carolina
California
Mississippi
Louisiana

Louisiana State University produced the video, The Sweet Truth About Sweet Potatoes, which focuses on commercial sweet potato agriculture, from planting to harvesting and curing:

Based on what I've learned in the above video, I'm thinking the sweet potatoes I'm buying today are those that were harvested last year.

What I see in the LSU video about commercial sweet potato agriculture in Louisiana is at odds with the troubling work conditions for North Carolina laborers that I'm reading about [in 2015]. In the LSU video, I see mechanical harvesting (which conforms with what the gentleman at the grocery store told me), but the reports about North Carolina refer to hand-harvesting, which is where labor abuses come in.

North Carolina Sweet Potatoes [said] this about mechanical vs. hand-harvesting [at the time of the original post in 2015]:

"Sweet potato roots are turned up on top of the ground by a side angle disk plow and partially exposed to aid the workers in picking and sorting. Sweet potatoes are very susceptible to damage at harvest; therefore hand-harvest is preferred over mechanical harvesting. ... To harvest, the field rows are usually plowed with a modified disk or moldboard plow with a spiral attachment. Roots are then hand harvested and graded in the field. Sweet potatoes can also be dug by a chain digger or a riding harvester that conveys the roots to a sorting crew using a harvest aide. Potato harvesters are sometimes used to harvest sweet potatoes but damage is usually unacceptably high."

Even though Louisiana might use mechanical harvesting, and therefore maybe there aren't all of the same labor equity concerns here as in North Carolina, there is still a question about how commercial farmers in Louisiana protect workers during and after pesticide spraying.

Just as the movement builds to protect people from second-hand smoke in businesses .... when we have an opportunity to do so, let's encourage our food suppliers, legislators, and local, state, and federal regulatory agencies to create and enforce safeguards to protect agricultural workers (and their families - and consumers) from unhealthy work and living conditions (when provided by the farmers). Some advocacy and regulatory organizations include:

Farmworker Justice
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
United Farm Workers

On a different note ... Do you notice how I side-stepped the whole yam versus sweet potato conversation?

Word of the Year: Meditation: Coloring

2025-08-01T08:00:00.122-05:00

Adult coloring books aren't anything new, of course. Coloring can get us into a flow, allow us to relax. There is also the idea of coloring to practice mindfulness and meditation.

There are legions of mandalas out there to color, but that's not where my interest lies. I like birds. And I like drawings I can color to completion in less than half an hour.

Both Thriftbooks and BetterWorldBooks have Audubon Bird Coloring Books for sale.

There are also coloring books that self-brand as "mindfulness coloring books." A mindfulness coloring book by Emma Farrarons drew me in right away with the cover's smple and soothing waves that would suit me well:

Book creator: Emma Farrarons. Publisher: The Experiment Publishing

What coloring tools work well for this mindful coloring?

Art Therapy Coloring recommends what we should and shouldn't use for adult coloring books. The following is among the shoulds:

Colored pencils
Colored pens
Gel pens
Fine tip markers
Watercolor pencils

There are online coloring apps for touchscreen devices. I've looked at a few, but I want to spend less time on electronic devices, not more. So for now, I will let that option rest.

10 Years Ago: Rootless Brow-zing

2025-07-02T05:00:00.037-05:00

I ventured into threading again while in Tucson. Ouch.

In my search for past posts that touched on waxing, threading, plucking, or razoring, I uncovered one from 2014, in which a stranger in Louisiana uttered this proposition to me:

"I'd really like to wax your car."

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Rootless Brow - zing

The other day, I had my brows waxed. While I lay on the table, I remembered other such times.

In Awassa, Ethiopia, two men at a salon threaded my brows. After my brows got cleaned up, I continued my walk "home," and saw:

... there were 15 giant storks. Huge. One alighted, then disgorged food into the mouths of two gangly "teenagers." I watched, agog. A short walk further, directly before me, another tree filled with storks. Walking underneath (glad I had my hat on), I looked up and counted more than 10 oversize nests. As with the Bale Mountain forest, this was the stuff of medieval fairy tales.

Around the corner-ish from my temporary digs in Istanbul, I got my whole face threaded. Amazing how that works, cause you wouldn't think it would.

In 2010, on a road trip with my mother, I had my face cleaned up in a Walmart in Canyon City, Texas.

In Rustavi, Georgia, there were a couple of rugged waxings at a local salon. Yeow. But speaking of Caucasus Georgia, the Georgian women have spectacular brows.

Here's one woman's experience getting her brows done in Nice (waxed) and Palestine (tweezed).

Word of the Year: Meditation: Beads and Seeds

2025-07-01T08:00:00.188-05:00

Mala beads from lotus seeds. Attribution: SecretLondon on wikicommons.

As I explored how meditation / mindfulness could flow into my daily life, I remembered my maternal grandmother, who prayed with her rosary.

In its explanation of how to pray the rosary, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops includes this:

The repetition in the Rosary is meant to lead one into restful and contemplative prayer related to each Mystery. The gentle repetition of the words helps us to enter into the silence of our hearts, where Christ's spirit dwells. The Rosary can be said privately or with a group.

I'm agnostic, but the value of "entering into the silence of our hearts" resonates.

While on this mental journey, my road journey put me alongside two women who create jewelry with beads. One woman I already knew; the second was a woman I met in an Alaskan airbnb. The former was a colleague from my time in Caucasus Georgia - following our tenure there, she traveled to Ghana to learn about beads in jewelry-making. The latter has created jewelry with trade beads for decades.

Thus the natural turn of study onto the use of beads in a meditation practice.

I paused my draft of this post to poke through my cache of broken jewelry pieces for beads that I might fashion into a circle for meditation. I discovered I do have the beginnings of something. I am enthusiastic about what I will create.

Candlemas Day. Artist: Marianne Stokes, Tate Britain Collection. Public Domain.

So far on 2025's word of the year

January 2025: Word of the Year

February 2025: Meditation

March 2025: Into Action

April 2025: May You Be

May 2025:

10 Years Ago: Opelousas: The Fall of a Blessed Tree

2025-06-02T05:00:00.043-05:00

There's nothing I can add to this ten-year old post. Unless I were to add cat pictures. Which I won't.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Opelousas: The Fall of a Blessed Tree

Blessed tree, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.

Once upon a time, I read a magazine article by a man whose hobby was to travel to different parts of the world while history was being made in those exact parts. When the Berlin Wall fell, for example, he scooped up his kids and they flew to Berlin from the US to be witnesses.*

I've often thought about that practice, it's damn cool, but how many of us have the means to do the same? Not me.

Well, not me on such a large stage.

But I can be a witness to some historic events, and the recent fall of a blessed pecan tree was one of them. When I say blessed, I mean the Virgin Mary appeared in this tree during the 1970 and 1990s, prompting many folks to visit the backyard of a house on Larry Street, where the pecan tree stood.

Blessed tree, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.

I read about the tree in this Opelousas Daily World article: A Dramatic Final Act for a Famous Local Tree, by Cheryl Devall.

I couldn't get over there for a few days, and I was a little worried that it'd be all chopped up by the time I did get there. But it wasn't, and I was even able to chat with the owner's caregiver and grown daughter.


Blessed tree, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.

And the daughter let me take a stick that came from the blessed tree. Personally, I don't put much truck in these kinds of things, but I don't demean them, either. Blessed sticks are no less magical than nutritional supplements, juicing cleanses, or Warren Buffett, and we know all those things to be holy.

It feels good to have this stick from a tree beloved by many people, and some day I'll come across someone who needs it.

Blessed tree, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015.

I like the intimacy between the sacred and mundane in the picture above - a holy tree with pretty offerings, next to a stubby, cheery barbecue grill. There's a little flavor of the magical realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the impossible and the possible get along just fine.

There's nothing I can add to what the article covered, except for one thing: I asked the daughter if it had been a good pecan producer in its day, and the immediate response was a chortled no!

I am pleased to offer a cat pic (!) on this blog, thanks to the blessed tree visit. She bewitched me into taking her photo and publishing it here, that green-eyed temptress:

Opelousas cat on Larry Street. June 2015.

*This reminds me of a sci-fi story where people from the future came to the past and rented rooms in a - let's call it a form of airbnb - house somewhere in Italy. They knew this particular house in this city in this country would have a commanding view of the sun going supernova or something, and they wanted first row seats. .... Then there's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, one of the books from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where people can travel far (really, really far) into the future, just before the universe collapses, but have a good meal first.

Word of the Year: Meditation: Walking Meditation

2025-06-01T08:00:00.070-05:00

Plank trail, Deer Isle, Maine. Credit: Mzuriana

I've known folks who have created a walking labyrinth, and I've walked a handful. Of course, we don't need a labyrinth for a walking meditation.

I walk each day, but for one of my walks to be a walking meditation, I must take that walk naked, in a sense. In other words, no music or podcasts in my ears. No rewriting history. No constructing a future. No problem-solving. No conversations with people who aren't walking with me.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote The Long Road Turns to Joy, his book on walking meditations. An excerpt here, shared by mindfulnessandwellbeing:

Walking in mindfulness brings us peace and joy, and makes our life real. Why rush? Our
final destination will only be the graveyard. Why not walk in the direction of life, enjoying
peace in each moment with every step? There is no need to struggle. Enjoy each step. We
have already arrived.

Here's a plainspoken instructional for how to walk in meditation, even in a small space.

Pan-American Road Trip: The End of the Road For Two Old Friends

2025-05-19T15:56:00.006-05:00

We met in 2010, and bonded quickly. Together, we traveled to:

I had to let them go this month. One, hopefully, to a new home by way of a thrift store donation. The other, regrettably, to its grave, as its body finally succumbed to years of hard labor as my portable office.

My green, wheeled bag. Re-homed in Fairbanks, Alaska. May 2025. Credit: Mzuriana.

My portable office, expired after years of service, in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. May 2025. Credit: Mzuriana.

In the years since I bought the two bags, my green bag had outgrown airlines' current size restrictions for carry-on bags, and the backpack's weight and mass, empty, exceeded that of more modern backpacks. So their loss, while sad, opens the door to lighter, smaller bags.

For the southern portion of my Pan-American Road Trip, I will join the legions of travelers who seek The Perfect Backpack to carry most of my stuff.

Maggi Fuchs is one such seeker.

Pan-American Road Trip: Introduction

2025-05-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

Roots in jar, Mobile, Alabama, 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.

When I began my rootless life more than a decade ago, I decided that when I turned a certain age, I'd re-plant my roots.

That age comes this year. I've decided where I will put down my roots.

But I have a couple of loose ends I want to tie up, one being a visit to the Arctic Circle that my daughter and I forewent back when she was 16 and the two of us took a road trip from Missouri to Alaska. The other was the romantic idea, that when I turned another (earlier than now) milestone age, I would quit my job and walk from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. Am I grandiose?

I kiboshed the walking plan IMMEDIATELY after I read this account in one of those online long-walk journals that prevailed before the advent of youtubity ubiquity:

[Paraphrased by me] "I was driving north along the Alaska Highway and I spied a young man, wearing a backpack and carrying a hiking stick, walking south. I slowed so that I could speak to him. I said, 'Have you looked behind you recently?' The man said, 'No.' I said, 'There is a mountain lion following behind you.'"

Or maybe it was a bear, but I'm pretty certain it was a mountain lion. Either way. That one story did it for me. And, hell, even if the story were apocryphal, it could be true despite my not wanting it to be true. (And today's post offers a fabulous excuse to link again to this hilarious story of a woman taking a solo hike in the Tetons.)

Thus the plan for this capstone road trip: The Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

My journey to the Arctic Circle commenced on November 16, 2024. I traveled from Missouri, through Oklahoma, Texas, California, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska.

As I write this, I'm in North Pole, Alaska.

So I've got blanks to fill in, eh?

I'll move hither and thither in the chronology of telling the tale, as per my whim.

10 Years Ago: Fear and Adventure: A Skydive Story

2025-05-02T05:00:00.041-05:00

Paraglider off Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. June 2023.

The above photo isn't a skydive photo, it isn't me, and it isn't from 10 years ago. But I did take the photo.

The skydive story happened more than 10 years ago, and it happened when I was still rooted.

However, I did share the story on my blog 10 years ago.

With disclaimers proclaimed, here ya go:

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Fear and Adventure: A Skydive Story

Starting with an Important Birthday Milestone years ago, I decided to create an adventure for each of my future birthdays. The criterion for choosing the adventure was that it had to challenge me emotionally, mentally or physically.

One year, I was pondering on what my birthday adventure should be. In this particular year, three choices came to mind, all of them very challenging. One was to go out dancing. Another was to participate in a gestalt therapy exercise, which entailed the exploration and release of great emotion, culminating perhaps in that proverbial primal scream of pent-up feelings. The third option was to jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet. After considering these options over a number of weeks, I decided that of all three choices, jumping out of a plane was the least frightening.

I didn’t really want to do this by myself, so I invited family members and friends to join me. Many said, yeah, that sounds cool! Maybe I'll do it! As the time for the jump loomed closer, however, those who’d expressed interest dropped out, until at the end, no one intended to go with me - not even to watch.

One of the things I've learned about life is that if I really want to do something, I’ve got to be willing to do it alone. Otherwise, I may never get to do it.

I decided to do a tandem jump, where I’d jump while connected to an experienced skydiver.

I drove alone to the airport and upon my arrival, started a series of bathroom trips every five minutes. I also watched a short video that provided a bare-bones review of what it would be like to jump and that I’d need to pull up my knees upon landing so the instructor with whom I’d be connected by a strap could hit the ground first, as he’d be immediately behind me. The video also noted how dangerous the sport was, that I could die or become paralyzed or suffer any myriad number of other bad things. After watching the video, it was time for me to read and sign the consent form,which again told me in HUGE PRINT that I could die or suffer serious injury and I waived all liability from the jump school, the airport, the instructor, the airplane, the fuel supplier, the road construction crew, and the guy who mowed the lawn. If I were going to die through this exercise, it was going to be by my own free will. I signed the papers.

The next step was a five-minute “training” in which someone had a small group of us show him that we could jump off a picnic table bench while bending our knees and holding on to them. I passed this with flying colors.

The next step was to get into a jump suit. Now, at this point I was feeling no fear. Some nervousness, certainly, as evidenced by my frequent bathroom trips. But I was feeling no fear because my brain had checked out. It was waiting in the parking lot in my car, refusing to have anything to do with this ridiculous enterprise.

So anyway, it was now time for the jumpsuit. Let me tell you about this suit. It was bright pink and it was Spandex. You know how Spandex is, right? It fits you like a second skin. It shows everything. It reveals every flaw. I was not a svelte woman.

I put the suit on. I was so relieved that it fit! I was feeling OK. I walked around a bit, getting the feel of it.

I walked in front of a full-length mirror.

I gasped. The sight of myself in this Spandex suit was so preposterously preposterous I had no other words to describe it. I JUMPED out of the view of the mirror.

From then on, I stayed out of range of any mirrors, and convinced myself that if I could not see myself then no one else could either, like a toddler who believes that she's invisible when she covers her head with a cloth.

The next step was to get me into a harness. This was a leather contraption with wide straps that went between my legs and around my thighs, with a brace up my back, and then straps that went around my shoulders and upper arms. It was pulled VERY tight. The result was that it affected my ability to walk with my legs together or lift my legs, and my back was pulled so straight with the brace, I could hardly bend over. Therefore, that entire five-minute exercise of jumping off the picnic bench in a tuck was utterly pointless. I could barely walk.

Ah, but too late. It was time to board the plane. I walked to the plane just like one of those science-fiction robots from cheesy sci-fi movies in the 1950s.

And then I saw I’d have to climb two or three steps to get into the plane. Oh my God. Carefully and awkwardly I somehow managed to do this. The next challenge was to bend over as I moved to the front end of the plane because the ceiling, of course, was low. The plane was outfitted with two benches along each side of the plane, and everyone straddled a bench, one person tucked in front of the other, like a roll of Lifesavers. My instructor went in before me, straddled the bench, and I straddled the bench in front of him. It was REALLY hard to be bent into a sitting position with the harness on. I was like a stuffed animal with legs that are permanently outstretched, and when you try to sit it on its butt, it keeps tipping over onto its back. My body kept wanting to fall backward, into the instructor, and I grasped for something to hold to keep my balance. I found the tiniest ridge above the window to clutch, but the instructor yelped a little bit and said not to hold onto that, as it could pop the window out.

Somehow I negotiated an uneasy balance until it was time for me and the instructor to get up in preparation for the jump. We would be the last ones to go. As I walked toward the plane door, I concentrated on bending over sufficiently so the instructor - much taller than I – could use some of the space over my head to bend over himself so he wouldn’t hit his head on the ceiling. I focused completely on taking one robot step after another while trying to bend down.

I arrived at the open door and I could see down into the depths of sky and land so many feet below me, and I was suddenly appalled. Not because I was about to hurl myself from this tiny plane into the empty sky. (Remember, my brain had washed its hands of the whole affair.)

No, I was appalled because between the airplane floor and the open doorway was the tiniest little lip of a ridge. Maybe a half an inch tall. And I knew that somehow I would have to lift my foot that infinitesimal height, while bent over in this harness, and stand on the lip before I could jump. I didn’t know if I could do it.

Somehow I did and thus FELL out of the plane.

They don’t really tell you how to land until you’re in the air and falling. Therefore, as we plummeted to the earth, the instructor told me, “OK, now we’re going to practice how to land. What you’ll need to do is practice pulling your knees up and grasping them so my feet can hit the ground first.” Now remember, I had lost most of my flexibility due to the harness. So here was the instructor asking me not only to pull my knees up, but to bend over to grasp my knees – and to do this all the while I’m plunging to the earth.

But it seemed pretty important, so I tried it. I pulled my knees up, or thought I did, but there was barely any discernible movement. The instructor observed this, and said, “Well, we’ve still got plenty of time to practice this, so let’s try it again.”

I did, and again there was only the tiniest of movements. And the instructor said, “Well, we’ve got some time still, but that’s not quite going to do it. Let’s try another way. Why don’t you do this: Stretch your legs straight out in front of you and hold them up straight.”

So I tried it, and asked, “Is that enough?”

“Well, no, but let’s just try it again. Next time, hold your legs out straight and hold onto the seams of your jumpsuit to help keep them up. ” I tried it, and asked, “Is this enough?”

“Uh, no .......... but we’ll figure something out by the time we get to the ground. Just try to do the best you can.”

And I said, “OK!”

In the end, I basically landed on my stomach. It didn’t hurt. It worked out OK. As a matter of fact, I laughed. Relief. Embarrassment. The absurdity of it all. Or all of the above, I don't know.

Here's what I do know: In order to jump out of that plane, I had to give up control and trust that it was going to be alright. If I was going to practice living my life to the fullest, I had to be willing to do something I wanted to do by myself, without waiting for someone to do it with me. I had to be willing to look really stupid. I had to risk embarrassment.

Something I'll always remember is that the instructor never treated me with anything other than the greatest respect and kindness. He was professional and calm at all times, and he played a big part in the positiveness of my experience.

It took weeks before I fully appreciated what I did – before my brain was willing to talk to me about it, so to speak. One night in bed, just as I was about to fall asleep, I relived my experience of falling out of the plane – no! - VOLUNTARILY jumping out of this plane 10,000 feet in the air – and it was only THEN that I felt fear. WHAT HAD I BEEN THINKING!?!?!?

Word of the Year: Meditation: A Writing Meditation Practice

2025-05-01T09:00:00.204-05:00

Terrace at Seven Olives. Lalibela. February 2011. Credit: Mzuriana.

Many years ago, I did a summer study in Ecuador. It was a collaborative program between Oregon State University and a university in Quito. The most memorable classroom experience from that six-week trip was this:

The professor said to us - "us" being university students from the US - and I'm paraphrasing him from memory:

Americans and Latin Americans have a different view on life. Americans take the view that as long as there are pressing problems in the world, we can't (shouldn't) fully enjoy life. Latin Americans, on the other hand, take the view that we appreciate and actively enjoy all the riches that life has to offer AND we work on the pressing problems.

As a member of two 12-step groups, there's also the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 127:

We have been speaking to you of serious, sometimes tragic things. ... But we aren't a glum lot. If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn't want it. We absolutely insist on enjoying life.

A reason that meditation is the word for 2025 is that there is just so much distress swirling about us. It is a struggle for me to attain and sustain a serenity, to be mindful of each moment, a string of moments, in which there is beauty for any one of my senses, and to know this moment will not recur, so I need to breathe it in, soak in it, while it's there.

A writing meditation practice is a tool I'm employing to live in the moment I have now, to observe, for example, as I type on my laptop keyboard, the movement of my fingers, thumbs, the joints, my wrists, to acknowledge again how that 8th grade typing class I took so many years ago has stood me in such good stead for my life ever after that. I observe the muscle memory my fingers hold of the QWERTY topography, see a flashback of my mother, decades ago, on a black Underwood typewriter on the dining room table, tapping out The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog to check the health of every alpha key.

In the midst of drafting this post, I conducted a writing meditation, noting the physical movement of my fingers, the tension in my forearm, then remembering a Tumblewords session in which the leader of the week prompted us with an example of corporeal writing. A writing meditation is all about our corporeal mindfulness, as our brains work in concert with our fingers and hands to spin thoughts, memories, insights, tears, fears, and the softening of our hearts perhaps.

In my current, neonatal practice of writing meditation:

I set my timer for five minutes.
Using a pen on paper, I write whatever comes to mind. Perhaps better said: I write whatever comes out of my mind.
I notice how my physical body engages in the act of writing.
I don't censor anything that I'm writing.
When the timer goes off, I stop writing.
The end.

Maybe profound insights will result; maybe not. My focus is on the process, not on any outcomes. It's the process, the routine, the ritual itself that is the ... not-purpose.

10 Years Ago: Lafayette: International Festival Intersections

2025-04-02T05:00:00.001-05:00

"Cast" updates since the original post in 2015:

You can watch the completed movie, Dirt Road to Lafayette, on Youtube, Tubi, and Amazon Prime (and Freevee).
Pamplona's is still open in Lafayette.
I wish I had updates for Alfredo, Ms. Orelia, and Mr. Lawrence, but I don't have enough identifying info on them to find out.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Lafayette: International Festival Intersections

You never know what the standouts of a festival or a trip are going to be. This was true for the International Festival.

One fun thing was that a movie was being filmed at the festival, called Dirt Road to Lafayette. On Saturday, when it was so rainy, I watched a scene play out at Pamplona's Restaurant on Jefferson.

I took my own little movie of this scene:

Consider the shakiness of the video to be an intentional bit of cinema verité.

After the Scottish laddie (who is the movie lead) did his bit, I noticed awhile later a gentleman carrying the young actor's accordion, wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain. I have no idea why, but I was so taken by this. Having an accordion-carrier.

The next day, Sunday, at the Heritage stage, Corey Ledet performed with his band, and the movie crew was there again. When I saw the laddie pass through a dance crowd with the accordion, and then the same gentleman from the day before subsequently have the accordion in his arms, again wrapped in plastic, I had to check it out. Which resulted in me meeting the very pleasant Alfredo. He does more than carry the lead actor's accordion, but at this moment, that was his responsibility.

Alfredo, International Festival 2015, Lafayette, Louisiana

Shortly after my visit to the Heritage stage, I scurried over to the International Stage where I had volunteered to do security for the Buckwheat Zydeco performance. And this is where I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Lawrence and Ms. Orelia. They share the exact same birthday, a fact they didn't discover until they were married. It was common for Buckwheat Zydeco (aka Stanley Dural) to practice how to play the accordion on Mr. Lawrence's and Ms. Orelia's front porch. See, before then, Mr. Dural had been a blues and funk musician, focusing on the organ. Mr. Lawrence said it was not a big jump to move from the organ to the accordion.

Ms. Orelia and Mr. Lawrence, International Festival 2015, Lafayette, Louisiana

At the end of the day, which coincided with the end of the festival, I found myself walking down Jefferson Street, past Pamplona's Restaurant, the street now empty of festival-goers, en route to the shuttle bus. Three guys talking in the street. One telling the other two about the movie being filmed and how he was in this scene where .....

And, you know, it was this guy:

Filming Dirt Road to Lafayette, International Festival 2015, Lafayette, Louisiana

OK, so I'm a nosy wench, and I stopped and listened outright while he told his adventure story to his friends. Presently, I interrupted, and said, "You know, I think I may have a video of you doing your scene. I'm not positive you're in it, but I'm pretty sure, and I've uploaded it to youtube if you want to go look." I told him how to find my youtube channel.

Do you know how good it felt to bring such pleasure to someone because of the dumb luck of happening on the movie scene the day before, filming it, and then the dumb luck of walking by this guy the next day while he told his friends about his experience? It felt very good, indeed.

So in this one day, I had the good fortune to intersect with four congenial people.