Posts Tagged ‘Perceptions’
Bad Vibes
Sometimes things fail, but why would failures necessarily come in clusters? I don’t have an answer for that right now. Maybe that is because I don’t feel as though I have sufficiently moved past a current cluster yet, and am not able to perceive it from a distanced perspective that will better reveal the complete situation.
Maybe it is just random happenings. I do allow for that possibility.
Yesterday morning I didn’t feel my best when I woke up. Other than a very noticeable headache, I couldn’t identify more than a general weakness and malaise. I considered the idea of willing myself to a healthier vibrancy with mind over body, and mustered a rudimentary effort toward that end. It got me out the door.
Other than a few moments of reward, noticing a visible difference in tree leaves popping just hours apart and pausing the car on our street to share a greeting with our neighbor driving by, the day turned into a series of unfortunate events.
I was mowing the labyrinth path with our reel mower and about halfway through the task, the handle of the mower broke. They sure don’t make things like they used to. Sure, it is probably lighter weight than mowers of old, but lighter tubing doesn’t hold up to normal use! I finished the job by wrestling the mower forward despite the handle being attached on only the left side.
Not feeling up to doing anything particularly strenuous, I decided to take the 4-wheeler out on our trails to establish tracks in the rapidly advancing undergrowth. I guess the worms haven’t completely taken over our forest yet.
Click-click-click-aack-ack-ack-ack was the only sound I got out of attempts to start it. It seems to me the battery is strong enough, and that a solenoid is failing, but I could be wrong. My brain just wasn’t up to the analysis, so no actual data was collected in my crude attempts to force it to work as designed. I’ll need to return to that when in a better state of mind.
I found the landscape pond was so low that the pump for the waterfall was partially exposed. I turned off the pump and inspected for leaks in the tubing or filter. Finding nothing, the likely alternative would be a leak in the lining, which appears to be a rubber fabric they laid over the dirt and then covered with rocks. A lot of rocks. Which will need to be removed to inspect the fabric.
This morning, I walked into the bathroom in the early light of dawn and pressed the rocker switch to turn off the night-light. I turn it off during the day because that little appliance runs so hot that it discolored the plastic cover around the bulb. A moment later, I noticed the light was on again and began to question my sanity.
Luckily, I hadn’t lost my mind. I had turned it off, but somehow the switch was shorting out and the bulb was back on again. I think it wants to try to burn down our house! I toggled the switch back and forth and the bulb stayed lit in every position.
This morning, that just doesn’t surprise me as much as it should. I’m not sure if it is possible to wield mind over matter to the extent I need at this point, but I am going to set my goals well within reach today and hope for success, health, and well-being to rule the day.
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Not Stinky
Pondering smells…
I didn’t live with cats until Cyndie and the kids successfully achieved adding one to our family unit. I didn’t have a strong aversion to cats. It was more what I would describe as a lack of interest in them. When I found myself facing the reality of having one in our home, my main concern was the smell of the litter box. I didn’t want to know it existed in our house. In time, I came to appreciate cats, but the litter box remained Cyndie’s responsibility unless I absolutely couldn’t weasel a way out of it.
When Cyndie landed work that provided good income, but would demand most of her time and attention, I was approved to take on the role of Ranch Manager. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but the reality of tending the litter box was included in the many daily tasks about to become my sole responsibility.
I seem to have adjusted my sensitivities and am having no difficulties managing the chore of regularly cleaning the litter box.
I didn’t live with horses until just a year and a half ago. I knew manure would be a significant issue to manage, but I tended not to dwell on it. I figured it would be nasty necessary evil. I have come to realize the I don’t find it nasty at all.
Since the snow melted off the fields, we have slowly worked on spreading the droppings that had accumulated over the winter. I’ve tried a variety of different tools for the job, but so far the best results come from simply kicking the piles apart. While I was fervently flailing away in the back pasture yesterday, I became aware of what I now find to be a pleasant smell of the dry manure being broken apart.
There are certain smells typically associated with the keeping of horses. When a barn is well maintained, the aroma is a combination of hay, maybe a little dust, and probably some remnants of dried manure. To a horse-lover, it is an appealing smell. It resonates like wood smoke or the scent of leaves on the ground in the fall.
When I bury the pitch fork deep into the pile of composting manure and turn over the portion that has been breaking down, the smell is far from stinky. It is a rich, earthy smell that I find very appealing. It is a rewarding success to take fresh horse manure that can be offensive smelling and, in a relatively short time, convert it to something that smells pretty good.
It is an interesting twist that I tend to find the smell of perfumes irritating. Along the lines of beauty being in the eye of the beholder, I guess appealing aromas are in the nose of the breather.
Although, who doesn’t like the smell of fresh-baked bread? That one must be universal!
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I’m Curious
If you read yesterday’s Words on Images post about the simple choice that we make every day, how do you interpret the suggestion about accepting the obvious as the only plausible explanation?
After I wrote those words, with one thought in my mind, I got the impression that it likely implied the opposite of what I was thinking. I considered changing it, but then decided to let it go out into the world, as is, for readers to take from it what they will. We each come to our individual conclusions from a place of preconceived notions and personal perspectives that color our perceptions.
I expect some will align with the version in my head, and some will perceive the opposite.
Let me just say that I believe that there are unknowable possibilities, likely beyond imagining, available as explanation for what we sense and experience in our world, which others choose to miss by constraining their options exclusively to the one they construe as obvious.
I may be wrong.
And that’s the key.
Imagine the possibilities of embracing uncertainty.
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Commuting Again
I’m going to take a little sabbatical from the full-time ranch management gig and go back to the old day-job for a couple of weeks to help them process a large volume of orders they have received. I wonder if I remember how.
I expect the change of environment might reveal how precious my work on the ranch is to me. Being able to spend every day, all day, tending to projects and caring for our animals is a very rewarding experience. Just like everything that becomes routine, it gets easy to lose perspective of just how special that routine can be.
Even though I am often bothered throughout my day with responding to the constant demands Delilah puts on me, I expect that she may be one of the things (that doesn’t sound right, she’s not a ‘thing’) I miss while being away at the work-place.
Yesterday, I needed to make a run to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy, and I decided to bring her along for the ride. She doesn’t usually ride in the car with us, unless on a trip to the vet. To keep from putting her in the kennel (since unbeknownst to her she will have some day-long stints there starting today), I chose to give her an opportunity to ride in the car when it didn’t end up with a vet visit. She got a bonus when the pharmacist tossed a couple of dog treats in with the drugs.
Here’s hoping I am able to help the work-place get caught up, our animals will do okay with me being gone again, I manage to stay awake while driving to and from work, and that I discover how unconscious of my exceptional situation I have grown in the time since I first made the transition back in July.
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Amazing Journey
I used to live in a city neighborhood and I used to live in a suburb. Now I live in a rural setting. The differences are dramatic, as well as subtle. The common element of each is, me. Obviously, I bring my perspective to each setting. The different environments influence me, yet I interpret each place through my personal filter.
As a human being, my filter is basically similar to all the other humans interpreting their environmental influences. I feel what everyone feels about each of the three habitats. As an individual, my perspective is not identical to all others, but specific to me. We can generalize about the hectic pace of crowded places and the mellowness of open land, but individuals have the capacity to find their own mellowness in a hectic environment, or excitement over all that is found in being alone and outdoors.
People have the ability to compartmentalize their lives, and as such will become isolated and detached from that which is less familiar. For most of my life, horses were a mere blip on my radar. I knew of people who were horse lovers, but I was not so inclined. I married a person who was interested in horses, but she was far from consumed with a focus on them, so the impact on me was negligible.
Now I have a close relationship with a herd of 4 horses. I have become another person in a huge group of people with strong interests in horses. I am new to this group, and I bring my unique perspective, but I expect that I appear to the rest of the world as just another horse lover. On the surface, that is accurate, but there is more depth to all of our stories and I am inspired to figure out what about mine I should be endeavoring to tell.
Some days my amazing journey leaves me speechless. Oftentimes, I simply write about what I do, putting one foot in front of the other and tending to daily chores. There is more to it, I know, and I have a sense it is percolating within me in preparation for being told.
I’m letting it simmer a bit, while continuing to embrace and savor the breadth and depth of my wild ride.
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Grand Unveiling
Our master plan has come another step forward toward possibly actually playing out someday. We now have a logo for Wintervale Ranch.
Based on your perception of us, gained through reading the ongoing adventures I have chronicled here, or if you’ve known us longer than I’ve been blogging, how well do you think this fits us? Can you see Legacy in that face? He was the model.
Guess it’s time to crank up the marketing campaign and splash our brand all over the target audience. I wonder what our Superbowl commercial will be like next year…
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Repost: Weeks
I did an impromptu search of the archives and found something from the first month I started this daily regimen of posting to Relative Something (about 6 years ago) which reflects my recent thinking about days flying by leading to months flying by. Here it is again, in case anyone else is freaked out that we are in the 3rd month of the year already:
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Words on Images
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Horse Talk
There aren’t a lot of people who gush over their dental care team, but I can’t help myself. I went for my regular 6-month check up and cleaning appointment yesterday and as always, had such a great experience that I wish I didn’t need to wait 6 more months for the next one.
Early in the exchange of pleasantries with the hygienist I was meeting for the first time, I revealed that I care for 4 horses. Soon, horses became the main theme of our staccato conversation, carried out in the brief pauses between my mouth being filled with hands and dental tools.
She told me about wild horses that still roam the outer banks of North Carolina. She briefly visited the area to attend a wedding, and never got a chance to see those horses. It would be an awesome sight to see wild horses running along the shoreline.
I shared bits of my brief history with horses and received a response of such amazement that it caused me to see anew the remarkable story I’ve been living for the last few years. Since I have heard myself tell this tale over and over, it can seem a little worn out with each new telling. It is refreshing when it evokes an impassioned response of awe and appreciation.
It helps me to stay present in the thrill and wonder of a precious experience that every day grows more routine for me.
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Two Things
While trudging through new drifts on a walk with Delilah yesterday morning, it occurred to me… there are two things. I’m sure it can be argued that there are more than two things, but that is a topic for another time. I’m just writing now about the perception of two things. There are always two and though they may be distinct, they are undeniably, inextricably linked.
Case in point: there is Delilah pulling me up the steep hill at the end of our walk, and there is me being pulled up the hill by Delilah. Two things.
There is happiness, and sadness. Hope, and despair. Winning, and losing. Those are obvious. How about, almost there, and not quite there yet. Dreaming your reality, and realizing your reality is a dream. Waiting for tomorrow, and wondering where tomorrow went. There is pondering how this could have been a poem, and seeing how likely such a poem would seem trite.
The thing that I find most fascinating about all this silliness, though hardly surprising, is how it is revealing the chasm which inevitably swallows all the creative momentum and ingenious possibilities between the amusing period of conception and the time-delayed attempt to build the idea into a rewarding post.
Yesterday morning, it was vapor, filled with potential. Then it evaporated. So I tried anyway, long after my brain was wallowing in the distractions of being back in the house. My poor brain, which more than anything enjoys every opportunity to take naps whether the eyes are open or closed. Maybe I think of naps because that has become the length of time I can do anything of my own agenda. It is the duration of Delilah’s naps.
Luckily she naps frequently. When she is not napping she is begging for attention beyond my capacity to engage with her. It’s right out of the breed description: “not typically recommended for people who are inexperienced with dogs. His temperament and activity level can be overwhelming to people who haven’t had a working dog before.”
When I went down and sat with the horses on Thursday, I had left Delilah in the house. She hesitated about accepting her leash and I wasn’t up to the game of enticing her. I went out without her. That is why I was able to spend a full half-hour of blissful serenity with the horses.
Two things. I was sitting in observance of the horse activities, and I was with them as a member of the herd.
Two things inextricably linked: my daily inspirations that become blog fodder, and the hard-fought battle of doing those inspirations justice in words, sentences, commas —or not— and paragraphs. No wonder I always try to include images.
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So Windy
Not today, please. It’s too cold. All night long the wind has been making its presence known with gusts that cause our log home to creak.
With a little sunshine and calm air, the bitter cold of arctic high pressure systems is tolerable this time of year. Sure, we would prefer to bask in the warmth of mild waning winter days, but we are still in cold-mode around here, and it is February, after all. We can do extreme cold.
But the wind, that is another thing. It literally puts the bite in biting cold. Today, that bites.
We have company coming to soak up the vibes of Wintervale Ranch, be with our horses, maybe do a chore or two, and definitely play with Delilah. I’m afraid the wind may just push the activities indoors where we will sit by the fire or work in the kitchen on something that involves baking in a warm oven.
Since taking ownership of a property that involves multiple acres of wooded land, I have gained a new awareness of how significantly the blowing wind impacts trees in a forest. I feel an increased trepidation about the well-being of our trails and fences.
Not a day goes by that I don’t find evidence of new pieces of trees laying in the snow. Usually, they are small, probably snapped off by the activity of an aggressive squirrel. After a windy day, the size of branches finding their way to the ground increases dramatically.
There is no mystery as to the phrase “winds of change.” Our woods are changing constantly from the gusts of moving air. That is a new perspective for me. The growth of trees happens slow enough that we often don’t even notice. I tended to see forested land as protected space, preserved from development.
On the contrary, the woods are probably developing more than the grassy fields around them.
Even the dead and dying trees have a little life left in them. Outside our sunroom door on the side of our house that I refer to as the front, there is a tree that is folded over in two, after the upper half snapped in a fateful wind. In even the slightest breeze, that tree wails and moans from the wound. It makes a wide variety of eery sounds, especially at night.
The ability of wind to change the trees of a forest causes me to feel increased marvel over the majesty of the oldest and most grand of our trees. For a hundred years or more, these trees have braved countless gusts.
It occurred to me recently that in the years of life I have remaining, I will not see any new trees on our property achieve the grandeur and majesty of a hundred-year-old tree. What we have now is all I get. It makes them all the more precious.
It also makes the gusting wind all the more ominous.
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Relative Something 