Aaltoe’s Blog

When turmoil abounds

The world moves too quickly

Fecklessness pervades

Impatience intrudes

To draw upon the deeper mind

The settled spirit

The strength of being

The inner self

To see the distant view

The larger frame

The deeper meanings

The less visible truths

To nurture the formation of soul

And the foundation of wisdom.

Dangerous openness

to things not known

or well thought through,

loss of capacity

to establish critical distance;

no restraint on apology,

resort to feelings of inadequacy

and self blame;

too ready deference

to the other.

Place of contact

welcoming?

soft, hard, textured

changing by itself,

a life of its own

but responsive to the touch?

to the glance

to the thought

or inviting a response

that, together, can be seen as one,

and bring new ways of being.

Awakening
Slowly
To desires denied
To feelings forgotten
To aspirations ignored

Noticing
The unexpected
The surprising
The annoying

Discovering
New outlooks
New patterns
New vistas
New paths

Revealing
Objects unknown
Directions hidden
Realms unimagined

Holidays

Brought joy,

Lynn’s ingenuity and humor,

Her infinite tolerance and love.

At first the Alzheimer’s

Was something to be discovered,

Regretted, resented, rejected,

A new condition of being in the world,

Where being and world were changed,

Where learning to understand both

Was a new embodiment of love.

Frayed

Fraught

Fractured

Flummoxed…

Fishing

Fouling

Fooling

Fiddling

Finagling…

Founding

Firmed

Framed

Finalized

Finished

Furtive reaches

Into places dimly seen

Let alone understood

Comfort drawn from where I am

But partial comfort only

Not giving back

What could come if I grasped

The where-I-am

With real strength

And the belief that enables

New understanding. 

Furtive reaches

Some the same

But opening more to be seen

More to tantalize understanding

Paths as well as places

As the richness grows

In what I see

That richness adds

To what I can aspire 

To know 

As well as what I aspire to forget.

Looking around this new place

Not entirely unfamiliar

Yet each element has newness

Dissociative from what I knew

Challenging me to find ways to understand it

To find new relationships amongst the elements

And beyond that to glimpse

Larger wholes I had never seen.

6/15/23

Returning 1

Not to the limitations of what had been there

But to places that could be thought of as the same

Yet somehow different from what I had imagined,

Not easily described, even decipherable

Calling somehow for reinvention of one’s energies, perceptions, and conceptions

Not allowing for glib labeling

But demanding invention, investment of meaning

Creating a context for experience of a new sort.

Finding a new vocabulary to actualize experience

In ways that move one to surprising descriptions

And lead to revelatory re-understandings.

 

 

 

6/16/23

Returning 2

Returning to a somewhere I hadn’t been

At least for a long time

To a place shrouded in the shadows of forgotten thought

Yet rich in the color of meaning

And the intricacies of half remembered detail.

This somewhere promises to create confusion, to instigate inquiry

To reveal things otherwise unobtainable.

This somewhere contains a richness

Not limited by its boundaries

For these seem penetrable

And promising meaning on their other side.

 

 

 

6/17/23

Returning 3

 

Well I’m here

Oddly here is to be discovered

At least in it’s implications

But within the limits of my first impressions.

How tantalizing are the hints of what might be

How fragmentary the things that the limits seem to imply

Partial, though vivid

Ambiguous yet freighted with possibilities.

To probe further requires intra- and extra- spection

Simultaneously.

Perhaps the world is not changed

But perhaps it is by virtue of the newly invented possibilities

And by virtue of the need to bring intra- ands extra- into engagement.

 

 

 

6/20/23

Returning 4

 

To a more settled sense of place

Even though vague in its contents and contexts

Other regions seem distant, less demanding definition

How best to exploit its riches, its particularities, its peculiarities.

To breathe deeply

To inhale its ambience

To identify with its elements, giving names, attributing associations

Finding meaning

Second thoughts, some persist others fade, more of those.

What remain gain in intensity

Call for salient relationships

Heightening contrasts among their emerging identities

Creating a vivid and rich resource.

 

 

 

6/22/23

Returning 5

 

To, still, what seems imagined, even conjured

Yet lying between me and deeper understanding.

As if the motion were still toward a center of some kind

A center from which I could reach out, firmly rooted.

My weight, though late arriving

Would allow a reaching out

Uncomfortably far, without loss of balance

With no regret about where I was

To learn without displacement, without diminishment of self

As I recognize the expanding region of reality.