Desert Interlude – A Winter Experience in Introspection

Tree Silhouettes

enter site Trees in Blizzard © 2014 Bo Mackison

Buy Tramadol Without Prescription “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ~ C.G. Jung

https://vegaoficial.com/vegaeivanferreironuevosingle/ There are lessons to be learned in the depths of white winter, when vision is blinded and the fierce winds chill even the deepest, innermost recesses. When even heart and soul shiver, and seek warmth by looking inside.

https://destinylootcave.com/ace-of-spades/ There is a certain strength that is uncovered when all aspects of the future are clouded, dressed in a white blizzard of nothingness, when only the shrouded present exists, tense with uncertainly and questions.

Ambien Buy Online There is peace to be sought, a search undertaken within. In quiet. In reflection. In a surround of self acceptance and love.

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Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, Gate B13, Salt Lake City Airport – A Valentine Poem

Salt Lake City.

go to site Salt Lake © 2014 Bo Mackison

go Twelve faux wood tables greasy with biscuit crumbs.
Twenty four red metal chairs, unforgiving on the spine.

go site I choose a corner table, the walls at my side and back, protection with
a panoramic view of other diners, the terminal.
Wide windows frame the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Rachael hustles in her wide-screen TV kitchen, preparing Valentine Specials:
blood orange champagne cocktails, bacon and egg spaghetti.
Tarragon and onions sizzle in the skillet. They glisten.

Diners huddle over their chicken and fries
as low clouds move in, delaying connections.
Colorado, Long Beach, Phoenix. Cancellations. Re-booked flights.
The fast food joint fills with tension from rushing,
and worse, boredom and waiting.

The TV audience explodes with enthusiastic applause.
Rachael exclaims, “Stunning.” She swirls pasta on her fork.
Toasts with her blood orange drink. “Happy life.”

The chicken and biscuit crowd ignore her.
Overweight, balding or baseball capped, ear buds dangling.
A man seated one table over, he taps his foot, wipes his fingers with a paper napkin.
And slides a fancy card from a paper sleeve that advertises Deseret News,
studies the basket of roses on the front, then reads the message.

You have a pen? he asks, shrugging. Red faced.
I mean, can I borrow your pen?

I pass my pen, he nods, studies the card again.
Sucks on the end of my pen, then writes slowly, with deliberation.

He lowers his gaze and returns my pen, motions to the card.
My first one, he says, shrugs again. Valentine, I mean. Never had no cause for one before.

I nod.

For my wife. Our first one. I’m on my way home. It’s a surprise.
He stuffs the card into his duffel, steadies the duffel upon his back.

Thunderstorms have moved in from the north. Rain obliterates the view at Gate B13.
Another delay. We wait.
He stares at the window, clears his throat, checks the time.

I check the departure board. I check the time, too.

Valentine’s Day at the airport.

The Essence of Place – Exploring King’s Canyon in Saguaro National Park

Three Cacti

Three Saguaro © 2014 Bo Mackison

Saguaro National Park is all about saguaros!

There are deep canyons, endless desert, blue forever sky, the play of light and shadow, but the biggest draw are the iconic cacti of the Sonoran Desert, the giant saguaros.

Saguaro Cactus - A View from Above

Saguaro Cactus – A View from Above © 2014 Bo Mackison

It is not often the tip of a cactus arm is easily captured, but on the Kings Canyon hike in Saguaro National Park, the mountain path rises above a stand of mature saguaros.

King Canyon, Saguaro National Park

Kings Canyon © 2014 Bo Mackison

Kings Canyon is dry on this sunny February day.

But after a heavy rain, raging flood waters can fill this canyon and overflow to the surrounding desert. A rock dam blocks this part of the canyon.

King Canyon, Saguaro National Park

Saguaro National Park © 2014 Bo Mackison

A stand of 50 to 75-year-old cacti, none yet sprouting arms. Typically a cactus will develop arms between 70 and 100 years, and can live 150 to 200 years.

Petroglyph Canyon Wall

Petroglyph Canyon Wall © 2014 Bo Mackison

Deep in the canyon, the desert varnish is marked with ancient petroglyphs. Snakes, spirals, human and animal figures are just a few of the many symbols.

Yipes Stripes, Saguaro National Park Visitor Center

Stripes, Saguaro National Park Visitor Center © 2013 Bo Mackison

Light and shadow is a large part of the desert experience, and even the buildings offer a light/shadow experience. The Visitor Center at the Tucson Unit of Saguaro National Park has a large outdoor ramada.

Stripes and saguaros!

San Xavier Mission – Sacred Space, Sacred Art

San Xavier Mission

San Xavier Mission © 2014 Bo Mackison

The calm within the storm is where peace lives and breathes. It is not within perfect circumstances or a charmed life… it is not conditional. Peace is a sacred space within, it is the temple of our internal landscape. We are free to visit it, whenever we seek sanctuary. Underneath the chaos of everyday living, peace is patiently awaiting our discovery… go within. ~ Jaeda De Walt

The mission church at San Xavier del Bac is a special place. Built in the late 1700s, the church is still run by the Franciscan order that originally built it, and continues to serve and minister to the Tohono O’odham people.

The church is an amazing space, filled with statuary and murals, and dramatic elements such a painted theatrical curtains, painted walls to resemble colorful marble, and faux doors and decorative panels. Though I typically go to the desert in search of sacred spaces, I return to this unusual church again and again to sit in its space, touched by the culture, the art, and the sacred.

Failed Relationships – How to Survive and Then Thrive

Cactus Border

The Cactus Boundary © 2014 Bo Mackison

Knowledge is learning something new every day.  Wisdom is letting go of something every day. ~ Zen Saying

I sometimes rehash the rupture of a treasured relationship.

I still see this person on occasion. And the conversations on these occasions often include barely concealed criticisms – and I choose to take those wounding words to heart.  I accept them. I own them as truths. With pain and shame and thoughts of “what could have been, if only I had . . .”.

These infrequent contacts lead to intense shame — it’s all my fault, I should have ____ (fill in the blank). Why am I so crazy, intense, sensitive, blind to my own faults? I engage in obsessive thinking, sleepless nights. I indulge in over-reaction.

I know this is not the preferred reaction, the healthy reaction, the reaction based on self-love. I know it is not about me, and yet I once again swallow the hook, line and sinker. And the worm, too. Don’t forget the wriggling worm.

This morning I read a blog post on Susan Piver’s website entitled Buddhism and Heartbreak: How to Heal and Live in Love. Every word struck a chord. In fact there were so many striking chords, it sounded like a symphony chiming in my head.

Susan wrote of three ways of addressing failed relationships, all reasonable and doable, and although they require persistence and awareness, they also offer a way to refocus and return to full life living. I read Susan’s blog post carefully, took notes on how I could adapt her wisdom into my routine, and then I decided they were worth sharing. Surely I am not the only one who gets embroiled in haunting, failed relationships. So here is my take on Susan Piver’s thoughts on relationships.

1. Assert control over monkey mind.

Instead of trying to devise ways to change what has already happened, or embarking on a “program of change so I will magically become acceptable,” I can choose to practice feeling what I feel. Not only during my timed meditation practice, but throughout the day. And at night, too, when dreams and thoughts of failure awaken me from my sleep.

As Susan Piver explains, sitting with the feelings, as in the Buddhist tradition, is a “more expeditious way of metabolizing sorrow”. The pain does not disappear, but at least there is the offer of healing and moving on.

Along with meditation, I find it helpful to journal and create art dealing with the experience of “feeling the feelings”.

2. See the pain of the lost relationship as a lesson in attaining wisdom.

Even Susan admits this can seem ludicrous. There are constant reminders of what used to be; there are glimpses of what might have been. There is magical thinking; there are comparisons. There is loss.

A visit to a special garden, a place of shared memories, evokes feelings. A favorite book evokes feelings. A restaurant, a work of art, a song on the radio – these all evoke feelings. Long after the ending of the relationship.

I can allow these feelings to evolve into feelings of unworthiness, sadness, longing. Or . . . I can steer these feelings into a practice of openness and the opportunity to offer loving kindness to others.

That is the key — not how do I replace love lost, but how do I send love out into the world.

Susan promises — yes, she uses the word promise — that when one gives to others, the effects of loving kindness rebound and heal the self, too. She also reminds us not to take her word for it, but to try it out, and see the results. Yes, indeed!

3. Accept that all is impermanent and that life is change.

This is the hard part. All relationships are in flux. Living a full life is living with constant change. Susan advises “letting heartbreak transform one into a warrior god/goddess”. Know that every relationship is impermanent, but is also precious and worthy, a life-sustaining source of learning and connection.

Here is the important part. Be willing to love anyway, accepting the possibility of loss, taking the chance to love and connect. Risking all, because of the preciousness of love. As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in his poem In Memoriam, composed in 1850:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.