One blanket is too few,
two are too many. It's 5:55 AM
and I've been awake too long.
The nurse scolds me gently
for not asking for pain meds sooner.
It's easier, she says, to keep pain down
than to get it back down once it's up.
Yeah, but... I was asleep
and woke up too late, too hot, too cold,
hurting, with a core moan going. Now,
the pain is much less, but the whimper is still there,
requiring, as it does, very little to maintain it.

I have these techniques and skills, learned
over the years to help others. Now I place my hands
softly on my own pain, and gradually it gentles.
It's somewhat harder
to be both healer and healed... a bit schitzy-like,
but necessary. Holding the focus while
totally surrendering... two people in one skin
doing different things.

And to think I've spent all these years
learning to undivide myself, becoming whole.
Whole is good, but there is a hole in my middle
where people played for hours with sharp knives
and where 32 stainless staples
now hold me together on top with Goddess knows
how many inside.

Why were there not
33 - a number with charm?
It would have been more fun.

I feel neither rational
nor reasonable. Later I shall go
to the painting class
and hope there to banish
the night's shadows
and set a better tone
for the day.

Don't
cheerfully tell me
to "hang in there!"
I'm hanging - I just don't like it.

None of this
is what I meant to write about
here today-
it's just what is.

From above, wind blows
through Kokopelli's flute unstopping.
On the shore, giants drum.

Three days in a cabin on a wintry shore, wind blowing, water pounding. Somewhere in the roof was a windcatcher, singing sometimes very softly, sometimes loud enough to be heard through in every room, never silent, notes always changing. Plate glass windows showed storm waves piling close by on the shore and foaming up the cliffs opposite. Someone asked last night, was it scary? I said no, it was like listening to the Great Ones drumming, playing. Not human-sounding at all, but poignant, exalting, transcending anything I can say. Tom and I talk for three days and evenings, but our eyes are always on the windows, our ears always listening to the haunting flute behind our words. The conversation is fascinating and easy--Tom has been there, done that with so many things. For the underlying drums and flute, I could find no response but reverence.

For details, see Tom Linton's blog.

. Megan's cherry tree.
I planted it the day after she was born to have something blooming at home on her birthdays. Now I'm not there any more, but the tree is doing very well.

. Close up of Megan's cherry tree.

. Where Marigold rests.
Daffodils, white heather, and in the ground, seeds
of marigold (of course!), sunflower, and forget-me-not.

I was over there today (yes, I'm still packing and moving!) and the sun almost came out, so the camera did too. Nothing exciting, just a peaceful day in the spring-time forest.

As you may have noticed, I've been playing around with very closeup photography lately. There are two reasons for this - one is a wonderful new camera, and the other is radical change in my eyes. Three weeks ago I had a cataract removed and suddenly I live in a different world. I hadn't realized that the world had become not only quite blurred but a grubby yellowy-brown.

The policy here is to do one eye at a time with about a month in between, so I've had three weeks so far to compare the difference. Through my left eye the world is now a much more colorful and clear place. So I go around looking at things through one eye and then the other for comparison. What color is that rose really? How dark is it really? My computer screen continually amazes me, as does everything else. Last night I went out and walked around specifically to compare the night vision of both new eye and old and am pleased to report that the new eye is better, sees more light, and I'm getting my old unusually good night vision back. Love it! It isn't surprising that I sit here happily looking at the screen and switching from eye to eye, white whites against dirty tan whites. And the detail!!!

As in the closeups with my new camera, my new eye sees all kinds of things I'd been missing. The deterioration in the natural lens was so slow that I didn't realize how much I'd lost. The increasing difficulty with reading street signs and blurring of print, even with strong glasses on, was apparent. But the color and the light! I didn't know what I'd lost! I commented here a while back about not being sure whether it was my old camera, my eyes, or both that was at fault in photos that looked fuzzy to me. Turns out it was both! This is, as my granddaughter would say, soooo cool! In another week the doc will do the right eye and my vision will take another leap into light and color.

Would I recommend this surgery for anyone else? You betcha! Absolutely! Especially if you can find a picky perfectionist to do it, as I was lucky enough to do. I'm still going to need reading glasses - have needed them since I was 16, but both my distance vision and my night vision are back. And when I look through the viewfinder of my new Canon I can see clear and sharp detail. My reading glasses for my left eye have gone from +3.25 to around +2.25. It may still be improving. Before, even with the glasses, it was still blurry and no amount of magnification changed that. Now? Wow!

Yes, I absolutely recommend it. I shall have the eyes of a child again. What could be better? No longer will Megan say, "O, Gramma, look at the beautiful bug!" and me see nothing but a dingy moving blur. I have my beautiful world fully restored.

My Faeries' Oracle card for the day? The Faery who was Kissed by the Pixies! How appropriate! Every morning I open both eyes, then close my right one, and just gloat about what I can see out of the bedroom window. I feel blessed and, yes, loved.

I have to go run some errands this morning, but will get some pictures for you of the cherry blossoms on Megan's tree, if I can, this afternoon. Bright skies to you!