Coming off a Cleanse

Richard and I are in Indiana visiting my sister for Thanksgiving, connecting with our Midwestern roots (I’m a born and bred Hoosier and Richard grew up in Illinois) while feeling the New England tug on our hearts. Vermont travels with us wherever we go with thoughts of the hills, the pond, our chickens, cats, and geese. Oh God, we’re hobby farmers.

We just came off a 9-day cleanse, something we had been talking about doing off and on over the past few months and suddenly, without much forethought, we saw an opportunity to squeeze it in right before the “season of gluttony” officially begins. I’m being a bit harsh and judgmental there for Thanksgiving is my favorite of all holidays, Richard’s too. This year we’re spending it around family, a rare occurence for both of us. I have a feeling that goes against the norm for most Americans, but for me it has fit well with the nomadic lifestyle of an actor where each year I get to gather a family of friends around me with whom I choose to share this day of gratitude. That said, it’s good coming at the holiday in a different way this year. We’re enjoying it. After a day of travel, we’re at my sister’s house by ourselves today, making the very beginning motions of preparation for Thursday. It’s laid back and meshes perfectly with the grey November day outside.

But back to the 9-day cleanse. For the most part it was a breeze, save for the first 2 days when withdrawl short circuit jolts your system, not only the literal withdrawl from things like sugar and caffeine, but withdrawl from ritualizing everything to do with food, from having your day built around the preparation and eating of meals, from the world itself. Then you settle in to the world of cleanse and everything looks and feels different, slightly heightened, a bit dreamlike and woozy, and you feel more yourself, let loose from the roller coaster spell of sugar and caffeine highs and lows replaced by a steady and sure energy. And a voice inside whispers “Oh, so this is how I’m supposed to be eating; oh, these are the portions I’m truly hungry for; oh, this is the weight I should be; oh, this is the way my face, skin, eyes should look; etc, etc, etc.” You feel HEALTHY, resilient, spry, renewed, reborn, grateful. Seeing your face emerge out of baby fat, watching your belt hitch in another notch, space appearing in pant’s waistlines. This isa good thing. Good cleanse, nice cleanse. Thanks you, cleanse.

And then the cleanse ends.

And you return to the world, the world of eating. And it feels as if you’ve been gone a looooonnnnnnng time. Culture shock. “Now how do I do this again? How do I keep what I have and incorporate food back in? “ For instance, coffee. I love coffee (I think). I know it’s a bit of an addiction, I know it can get out of hand, but ooooooh I love it. And yes, I could easily replace the word “love” in that last sentence with the words, “crave,” “jones,” “itch for,” “could kill for,” etc , but …. well, no buts, there you have it. During the cleanse, after the first 2 days of withdrawl, Richard and I were quite content drinking non-caffeinated tea, surprisingly so. It was warming, satisfying and delicious, especially with a spoon full of New Hampshire maple syrup to sweeten it. Yum. So yesterday was the first cup o joe for a while. And it was good. Just one tall cup midday instead of what had been the norm before the cleanse – a goodly amount on rising and another pick me up around 4. This morning though, I mildly resented the cup of coffee I had. It was tasty, yes, hit the spot, good to the last drop and all that, but I didn’t like what it did to me. It jacked me up, made me slightly edgy and irritable, and I knew the energy wasn’t me, not the pure me I’d spent some good quality time with over the past few days. And I have a feeling I’m on the edge of border crossing. Now is my time to either stay in that country of me or go back into the country of coffee where I’m slightly, ever so slightly an automaton, slightly, ever so slightly at the mercy and whim of a stimulant, as if I’m lacking something in myself to stimulate me, as if I NEED it. A cleansing thought. No resolution yet. I’ll keep you updated.

Other cleansing thoughts? Well, it was uncanny how many parallel cleansing activities cropped up during this past week, activities like finishing incomplete chores and jobs around the house and homestead, ridding files of old papers, talking about old issues that may still be barnacleing on to our spirit whether they regarded issues between ourselves or friends and family. Very cleansing. After all these are the days to slow down, to hunker down, hibernate. When I was growing up or in times past, there was an acceleration around this holiday time of year, a beginning of a frantic, obligatory rush, breathless pace, back and forth, “only 30 shopping days left!” scream of activity that I think goes against the grain of what is naturally supposed to be happening this time of year. It feels so right in Vermont, close to the cycles of nature, to take your clues and cues by just looking outside. Energy is being pulled in, green is gone until next spring, time to cut back, mulch, cover up, wrap up, conserve, wrap up, warmth is within not out. This is the time for some quiet time, for some contemplation, to lay seeds for next year, to plant ideas. To cleanse.

Or not.

One more cleansing thought. Our pond is back brimful and sloshing over the spillway down a channel to our neighbor’s pond a quarter mile away. It’s miraculous how quickly it filled back up after the end of our excavation work 3 short weeks ago. The water is clear and pure and the geese are having a ball swimming in it each day, a last burst of freedom before the temperatures freeze it over. How wonderful. And the reflection of the tall trees and sky on its surface makes you feel as if you have double the blessings. Two skies for one, one below and one above; sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which, especially in pictures. That’s how I feel living in Vermont much of the time. Wondering what’s real, what’s not. Feeling this steady, sure, easy and natural happiness. A newness. A buoyancy. A withdrawl from the world to discover my true energy. That’s call for true Thanksgiving.

And that said, I have to end this installment with one of my favorite last lines of any movie. It’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and in the final scene the title character, a young girl, newly graduated from high school, stands on her rooftop in turn of the last century Brooklyn with her younger brother, played by a tough young actor resembling Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys. She is rhapsodizing about life and love and marveling at how everything is turning out well and she turns to her brother and says “I love you” to which he replies: “Ahh, cut the mush.”

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Morning Amblings

Wood fire stove, warm, cats lounging, inside looking out to brown, beige, fir and spruce-greened countryside and woods. A chickadee’s munching on a suet cake outside the window on the bird feeder we just put out. Sofia is avidly watching the munching progress from her perch on the back of our green easy chair, a chair whose nether regions have easily (relentlessly) been frayed into a cat scratch post. Our pond has its first full skin of ice today which has baffled the geese. “What gives? What happened to the cool, liquidy, splattery stuff we like to bathe and flap frolic in?” I’m inside for the day, writing, breaking up the writing every once and a while for a short walk about outside. The cold weather makes me smile inside and out, it awakens something tickly, don’t know what, don’t care. Similar weather growing up in Indiana made me feel bleak. There was a sameness to it. What’s the difference here? Maybe the spruce and fir, the break-up of the brown and beige. Also, the hilly countryside, our rise up back. Maybe a different time in life, appreciating it all more, the moment, the seasons in this ‘50’s season of my life. Whatever, that smile wells up from deep within me and I so appreciate it. Gladsome tidings.

Opposites and contraditctions, I’m attracted to that. Cold without, warm within. Growing older, feeling younger. Writing about depression and suicide, having a greater zest for life. (That may come from the act of writing itself. If I don’t have a creative outlet of some sort, it’s as if a valve has been shut, a flow interrupted, an essential connection severed, oxygen taken out of my blood, breath held.) I marvel at life. It is marvelous.

This morning I woke with Richard early and meditated, stoked the fire, fixed coffee, fed the cats, saw him off and then went up to the goose house to set them free from their coop, had our back and forth wing-flapping dash “hello!” to the day. They accompany me about the property as I wander up the hill and then over to the pond to see its fill progress. Yesterday – or it might have been the day before – I saw an old board washed up near shore and remembered a piece I had begun the week before. Here it is in its unfinished state:

“There’s a board floating on our pond, a board we neglected to pick up from the bottom as we were cleaning out debris during our recent excavation. Every morning it’s in a different place. At first I was disgruntled by the sight of it, peeved, then I felt mocked – all signs of an evolved, unreactionary, at one with the universe state on those particular days. Now (at least for today) I’m seeing it as a floating meditation, something very eastern; I think I should write a haiku or 3 for it. I shall.

Board floating calmly
Nothing else for you to do
Just bored with nature.

Floating like “Wilson”
Dreaming of the open seas
And skinny Tom Hanks.


A lone floating board
Weathered by water and storm
Do you yearn for shore?

I could never float
Never got the hang of it.
I preferred submerged.

Under the surface
That suited me much better
Trying to sprout gills

Looking up at sky
And the underside of boards
Goose butts go by too


Floating on top’s fine
‘midst the reflection of trees
Dream from where you came.”

Thanks for taking a morning amble with me. Have a good day.

I've been remiss, but ...

Okay, here's the deal. I wake up in the morning to the glory of this place - the stark, chill, bracing beauty of it all - and in the midst of the daily letting loose of the geese and our flapping runs back and forth across the hill or the strides up the hill for a view of the browns and beiges of the landscape or a jaunt over to the pond (many times with the quietly observing geese) to see the progress of the fill or the slight shell of ice that's formed during the night or the breathing in of the air and feeling so alive, in those moments I'm all ready to skedaddle across the road and sit and ratatat off a fine installment on my blog. BUT I have prioritized. There's another writing project I too easily can put onto a back burner that's demanding to be put front burner full flame. And so, I blink my eye and it's 9 pm (which in Vermont feels like 1 am) and I'm wiped and have no juices. I've stories to tell and shall, but for tonight I shall simply share a few photos of Richard's chickens, our enlarging and expanding pond, and a fresh moose print in the new soil alongside our pond which recently had been silt at the bottom of it.

PS If you squint while looking at the pond picture, on the left, about midway up the picture in the pond, you can see about 4 feet of our newly put in white standpipe periscoping up. That pipe is now an inch away from being submerged. The spring waters flow on.

Time Change

Time change

We gained an hour yesterday, a little Halloween gift from the ghosts and goblins, a touch of magic in the air. Presto chango, here’s a little more light in the morning. It’ll help you feel like a touch of spring ahead with this falling behind. The catch is now it’s getting dark at 4! Ah well. So time is a little off in the household. Sofia’s meowing away in the early am. (Though I don’t think it’s the time change with her; I think it’s mice getting in somewhere that she wants to terrorize and feast upon.) Richard’s finding it hard to sleep, was up and at ‘em at 4 this morning. I followed shortly thereafter, wide awake at 4:30, so I got up, meditated and breakfasted with him, and saw him off to his job. Around 7:30 I took a walk and it was magnificent out. Clear, fresh, new. The time change looked very good on things. No feeling of death and decay despite the denuded trees. They looked very natural, very like themselves. And oh their silhouettes looked so sharp and bold against the Diebenkorn blue in the sky. And the eastern larches on top of our hill shimmered gold in the sunlight. Man. It’s still a miracle to me that they lose their needles. A deciduous needle-bearer. Magical.

Time change.

You barely notice time changing here. That’s the appeal. Eastern standard, daylight savings are meaningless terms. We’re on nature’s clock here, we turn it over to her. I like that. And without any television, with just periodic check-ins to podcasts to see what repetitive sturm-und-drang the world is frothing up for its addictive amusement, it helps us keep a distance from manmade definitions of both time and change. I’ve always felt a little apart from the regular pace, a “regular” life. Maybe that’s why I chose an artist’s life (or it chose me, who knows). At different stages of my life so far, I’ve enjoyed the nomadic aspect of it, home being the job itself and wherever that took me. I’ve also enjoyed the artist’s schedule that really isn’t a regular 9-5, you have a rehearsal schedule and then it shifts to a performance schedule. And that schedule is completely different if I’m doing something on stage, on television, or on film. Everything’s always changing. And then there’s the stepping into the specific schedule or 9-5 of my character. I get to taste someone else’s life for a period of time and then shuck it. Thanks for the visit, thanks for the change, been great getting to know you, and know me a little bit more in the process, and so, so long, I’m off to the next time change. An additional plus is if I’m doing a character from another time in history, I get to indulge my desire to time travel, an itch I’ve had since I was a kid. Glory, glory, hallelujah. (Funny how that phrase just came up because I’ve frequently been drawn to the American Civil War.)

Time change.

I love the seasons marking the change of time, the circular, comforting change, to be expected. I love how the skies change. Now Orion’s coming back at night like a welcome old friend returning to celebrate the holidays. My birthday’s coming up. There’s another time change. On December 2nd I’ll be 55. Unbelievable. Aging, such a weird thing. I don’t think there’s a lot of vanity attached to it, no regrets, or nostalgic longing for days gone by, an aching for youth. But I did share a belief I have with a friend the other day, a magical belief - somewhat embarrassing to admit, but it’s there nonetheless - that aging, when it comes up in my mom, or my Aunt Sis, and other relatives or friends of my mom and dad’s generation, is something that they can cast off like a common cold and after the cold disappears they will get young again, that aging is really reversible. A magical setting the clocks back. Presto chango. (I can picture my mom reading this section right now and saying: “It’s only a number. I’m going to be around for a long time.” And I’m sure she will be. She seems to defy time and aging.)

Time change.

The same friend with whom I shared my magical aging belief the other day has been and continues to be a stalwart midwife in a creative becoming of mine and in rereading my piece-in-progress he noticed that an additional theme woven into it turns out to be that of aging. No accident there, no matter how unintended. Aging. I think I like how time is changing me. I don’t know if I give it a hell of a lot of attention except at moments like this when I’m specifically reflecting on it. Inside – and I know I’m not alone in this – most days I feel younger, more buoyant, more youthful as time goes on, while outside, well whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I’m just thrown. The reflection back does not jibe with how I feel inside. ‘So this is what the world sees,” I think. And now that I think about, this inside/outside didn’t jibe when I was literally literally “youthful.” My youth may have looked young from the outside, but inside I felt so old and jaded and “know it all”, heavy with important, meaningful thoughts. How funny that time has brought a presto chango in me that what was on the inside in youth is now on the outside of the 54 year old me and what was on the outside is in. Magic.

Time change.

There’s a numerological belief I don’t quite get, but that I find intriguing, namely that there’s some alignment we’re in now that is almost identical to that at the time of the American revolution and that this period of turmoil and shifting ground and crumbling foundations is to be expected and will continue for the next 15 years. It feels right. It certainly explains a lot – Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck being compelled to rewrite Thomas Paine’s works, any side to any argument being so “up in arms”, charging that the other side is being disloyal, being un-American. I think it invites one to not expect or force quick fixes on anything, it urges one to ride it out, to be compassionate maybe, kind possibly, patient, to remember to laugh, keep a sense of humour. What appeals to me most is the idea that time changes and then again it doesn’t. People in different times, under different circumstances are forever springing ahead and falling behind. There’s a timelessness about it. So why not enjoy the rollercoaster ride. Or find a still center. Or maybe a little bit of back and forth between both of those things.

Time.
Change.
Time to change.