Seeing, Saying and Listening: Earth Level And Beyond

It would be hard for me to tell you where I’ve been since last I wrote here. But it goes something like this: I’ve been traveling, inside myself into the Great Beyond and at home with close friends as I rested and relaxed, taking things a bit easy since my cornea transplant surgery in mid-December. Then I traveled some other places on the earth plane, back and forth into a few nearby states. Still taking it easy. 

I’ve talked to more people than usual  in conversations of such richness and depth I sometimes felt full enough to not need to eat for days.

Along with this I’ve  kept, always, the year-long physical healing agenda of my blessed new cornea at the forefront of my “vision.” Nonetheless, realizing that today is the last day of February – and – a leap day to boot, I wanted to just say a few words before March comes in as a lamb tomorrow as she is scheduled to do, at least in my neck of the woods. And, before I gear up to a more engaged schedule of activities, projects and plans, beginning sometime in mid-March.

The celebration of spring seems to be in the air up here in the mountains where I live though today is a bit windy and chillier than yesterday.  Tomorrow, again, is predicted to be warmer like yesterday.  And, oh what a day that was – yesterday!

I’ve been practicing a new spiritual discipline these past few months, listening for the voice of G-d. Limited as I’ve been with the monster snowstorm in January and the need I had to take things easy while the wound in my right eye healed some, this seemed a likely endeavor. Then came yesterday’s near seventy degree weather and off I was walking up and down my dear mountain road to drink in the ambiance.

My new discipline had me listening carefully, as I walked to hear G-d's voice, as some might describe it, or as I have done in the past, calling this focus “catching the voice of the wind.” So I walked a good long hour and one-half hearing that voice of Mother Nature or Father G-d or whomever beams it into me; carefully and much more fully aware than formerly.

I heard small mountain streams burbling, leaves rustling, birds twittering and singing.  I smelled the fresh fragrance of rich earth coming back out and alive after the winter freeze. And, possibly, most delicious of all, was putting my hand up to cover my left eye, the good one, and realizing, with my heart bursting with joy, that I could see the cracks in the blacktop of our road and the yellow line that marked the middle of the road with my “new’ right eye! It was a wonderful treat.

It had been a long time ago since I could do that!

I felt – joy so HUGE inside of me that it was as if I had left the earth while still standing right on it; so all right with the world as if my own personal springtime was meeting up with that of the whole earth. 

Certainly now I was truly home in ways I had not been for months.

Today I Am Dreaming Of What I/We Could Become!

There is nothing like doing a radio show, designed to be, in part, a rite of passage to inspire my grandest dreams.  In summary that is the effect my Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show had on me today!

It is still too early for me to say much more about it other than that it was all I had hoped for and more. But after all it is just a little more than three hours since the program titled,  Trading In The Costs Of The Quiet For The Riches Of Dialogue, aired.

I am dreaming.

Nonetheless, already it has prompted me to write up and post a “Study Guide” to complement the program and the series planned to follow, “Conversations With Anastasia On The Art of Dialogue.”

Check out the radio show and the “Study Guide”!  See if they inspire you, even a little.

I am so high I can almost fly! But then I'm the mom.

Flying, well not exactly, for real.  But in my mind, why not!

Trading In The Costs Of The Quiet For The Riches Of Dialogue

New Radio Show Series Begins Tomorrow!
"Conversations With Anastasia on The Art of Dialogue."

After a lengthy hiatus from my Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show I am returning, beginning tomorrow morning, with a whole new series of programs.

"Conversations With Anastasia on The Art of Dialogue."

It seems it took me a year of co-designing (always with my dear collaborator, Sue deVeer), organizing, presenting and learning from New Horizons’ Coffee House Conversations, a cornea transplant, the outrageousness of Bill Cosby’s serial sex abuses being disclosed – and – a lifetime of personal and professional work to get me back on the air with this show.

Now here I come!

What I’ve got has helped me fight for my own freedom and dignity – and – WIN to get me to where I am now –

Trading In The Costs Of The Quiet For The Riches Of Dialogue.” 

With all of this as background, expertise and skill development, here I come, now, ready to tell all that I know -- through storytelling, guidance and support on my new series of programs titled "Conversations With Anastasia on The Art of Dialogue." 

In the service of enhancing the collective conversation through storytelling, sharing -- and -- teaching a pointer or two or three on how to move from debate to dialogue, uprooting the resistance to doing so as we go -- let’s do it!

Join me tomorrow morning – or listen in on podcast—as I introduce this new series "Conversations With Anastasia on The Art of Dialogue" on --

Trading In The Costs Of The Quiet For The Riches Of Dialogue

Monday, February 8

11:30 a.m.

Joining me for this show – and – likely to be my new radio show sidekick – will be Kim Beckett, wife and mother, horse lover and wise woman in her own right. Kim will assist me in developing tomorrow’s topic, “Trading In The Costs Of The Quiet For The Riches Of Dialogue” and introducing our new, forthcoming series, "Conversations With Anastasia on The Art of Dialogue" 

Look for future programs to have invited guests as well as a Coffee House Conversation by Conference Call portion, following the on-air broadcast, where guests can hang out, informally, for "Conversations with Anastasia On The Art Of Dialogue."

Seeing (and Saying): Essentials for ME (YOU) Being ME (YOU) In The World

I’ve had a hard week. There were times during it when I wished I could just leave my body and go elsewhere. 

I’ve done that OOBE (Out of Body Experience) shtick in days past so I know what it’s like. But it wasn’t so much that I wanted to find myself up on the ceiling looking down on my body, lying prone in my bed, as it was with my first OOBE. No this time I was more deliberately conscious that I just wished I could lift myself out of the stress and distress I was feeling. 

Not that I wanted to end up all the way on my ceiling! 

What started that whole stress cycle for me was that I ventured out this past week for one of my first outings into mainstream life since my cornea transplant. 

I’ve been so far removed from ordinary life this past month or so. When folks at a meeting I attended were planning their next get together date as being in March, I piped up to ask why they were going to be missing February.

Actually we were, right then and there, having the February meet up. That, of course, prompted people to tell me that I was the one who had missed a month (and more) from the calendar.

Well, for sure calendar and clock time have not been “my time” of late.

Oh well. At that meeting it hadn’t really mattered much.  Our agenda was about making a better world; thinking global, acting local. That’s a fairly timeless, boundary-less issue, especially in this day and age.

Once I had, at last, removed myself from the foray, after a day “in town” at meetings and doing errands, however, I was so overwhelmed with future shock, data overload contamination I didn’t know what to do. It seemed as if my generally serene, well-centered balance had left me, buried under by mainstream debris. Realistically, compared to the norm for most others, I had had a rather leisurely day, especially as it was comprised of fresh, healthy mountain air in the beginning, the middle and the end of it.

Apparently that hadn’t been enough for me. My norm is mountain living all day long!

But it wasn’t always that way. 

Before blindness I spent three or four days per week in my psychotherapy office in suburban Washington, D.C. and did just fine with it. But I have been purposefully leaving city life behind for a good part of the week now for close to thirty years.  And have found it to be so much more my nature to be constantly immersed in country ways.

My eight year sojourn into blindness and recovery from blindness (1998 – 2006) definitely tipped the scales for me to be as far away from “in town” and/or urban life as one can be in this day and time.

Now mountain living is so much a part of me that I have actually been known to take plastic baggies of the earth and leaves and other greenery surrounding my house with me to smell when I am away from home. 

Weird, you say? Home connected is my take!

My saving grace these day, however, or so it seems – is that I am beginning to be more vocal in publicly defining myself as a mountain woman -- and otherwise -- who comes to town only intermittently. 

I love being in my neighboring town, Frederick, Maryland, once I am there. But “it” isn’t quite ME – this “in town” life!

I love connecting and interacting with the many friends and associates I have made over the years; the community activities, restaurants and relaxed dining and cultural activities. And, the activities of New Horizons and myself, personally and professionally, that link me to this wonderful community.  

Still I am not an urbanite who visits the mountains (or oceans) now and then.  I am a true, 24/7 mountain woman; in monster snow, ice and rain storms, cutting wood with my own chain saw sometimes, without electricity or running water on occasion.

But it has been a long time coming, it seems, that I have grown more fully into being a true mountain woman, known here and there as the Wise Woman of Elk Mountain where I live on the border between Maryland and West Virginia. 

Take me home, Shenandoah!

Little by little now, my public voice is becoming stronger and more able to clearly and authentically define who I am;  a mountain woman who loves my “in town” community but yearns, always, for my home in the hills.  

(I find it curious on occasion to continue calling West Virginia “the mountain state” given that erosion and other ecological changes have reduced much in our mountain ranges to little more than hills. But no, no one is ever going to call West Virginia “the hill state,” you best believe!)

Today, having regained my serenity and balance once again, I leave you with the following thought --

Sometimes it seems that the motion of moving from chaos to community can be as much within oneself as it is without.  

And the learning to “see” (and say) whatever is true for oneself is a challenge that must be surmounted in order that one openly define oneself, as well as be truly connected to others.

This, it seems to me, is essential for ME (and YOU) being ME (and YOU) in the world; a rich and wonderful national treasure wherever you are!

Lessons and lessons and still more to learn.

Living In The Light, Kissed By An Angel

I think I must be far away from knowing this new me I am becoming. But as amazing as it felt this morning for me to awaken feeling bathed in, of all things, Light – this morning there it was!

I even felt myself embraced by an Angel that seemed, without doubt, to be my “Mom” (i.e. stepmother) who has been deceased for a few years now.

As I do not even believe in angels this was truly astounding!

At the same time I also felt myself awakening, filled somewhat with concerns about my next right steps for today and the weeks and months ahead.

Last year’s New Horizons’ Coffee House Conversations Project events, nine in all, was overall a gorgeous, gratifying, uplifting experience, over all. But only a first step on a path laden with challenges, fraught with obstacles, if a true exceptional community in our local, somewhat ordinary yet beyond ordinary community is an objective for New Horizons which, indeed, it is.

What to do next? What to do?

Not knowing, I decided to just be quiet a bit longer this morning and listen and see if my Angel would show up again for me today.

I’m still waiting but the door is open.  The mind is indeed capable of magic!

Dying As A Blind Person

Of all the many threads of my “being” and “doing” that have surfaced for me in the process, so far, to which I pledged myself; taking a full year to heal from my recent cornea transplant, one, in particular, stands above all.

What it might mean for me to die as a “blind person” and be born again as “fully sighted.

The notion, as I discussed it, and, as you may recall, Oliver Sacks sugggested, in an article titled “To See And Not See” (The New Yorker, May 10, 1993) (based on an earlier article of Alberto Valvo (“Sight Restoration After Long Term Blindness: The Problems and Behavior Patterns of Visual Rehabilitation”), that –

“One must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person.”

…embraces my present challenge fully.

But how does one go about this exactly; dying as one who cannot see and, then, becoming one who can?

Identity is a tricky issue to come to terms with completely, under ordinary circumstances,. 

However, my situation is not ordinary. And, while I have only been blind intermittently other than my eight year sojourn into darkness (1998 – 2006), I have consistently lived under the cloud of threatened blindness since college.

Sometimes I read of other college-age young people needing to face up to the ordeal I have lived with now for decades. Their struggles are similar to my own. However, today they have resources, especially through the internet and advanced medical research and treatment, that were not available for me.

My prayer for them is that they will, not only survive the ordeal, which will, likely, be a lifetime of challenge with their keratoconus diagnosis. But that they will learn to live with it and thrive as others have done with similar conditions.  

I believe that overall I have done this in spite of my personal set of obstacles.  Trevor Thomas who I read of on the internet is another who has allowed his life to be an adventure in spite of blindness.

For me, on the other hand, is the added complication of an overlay of hysterical blindness. And, no way to ascertain, especially at this late date, which came first, hysterical blindness or keratoconus. My self-help, self-healing assessment is that the hysterical blindness was the precursor. Based on that viewpoint I am presently formulating my healing strategies.

But where to begin puzzles me at this stage of my maturity.

I thought I had answered the question, “Who am I,”  sufficiently, numerous times in the past. 

Philosophers and theologians have sought to discover the answer to this since time immemorial. As if it held, on its own, the single most important answer to the very essence of the existence of life

As a corollary I am asking myself , “Who am I to whom?”  To you? To me?

In how I feel inside? In how I behave? In the perspectives you hold of me?

Where is the truest me? Does it lie in one or the other of these; how and what I feel inside, how I behave or how you perceive me?

Obviously these questions are part and parcel of a long-term investigation. 

I will keep you apprised of my discoveries as they are uncovered.

My hope is that, with or without physical vision problems, my “insights” will enhance your clarifying how well you “see.”

I’m Getting My Mojo!

Or is that Marjah? 

OMG, look what’s happening now! 

Now that I’ve made my pledge to myself to do all that I could, should or would by “naming” what I see and speaking truth to power, if I need, I think I might almost be in danger of behaving like an unbroken, bucking bronco, fresh out of the gate. 

OMG! My actions almost bordered on chaos-creating the other night.

To introduce the story,  it goes a little like this – 

It certainly seemed like I might be a chaos-creator the other night; a part of the problem, not the solution although I hadn’t consciously intended it to be that way.  

But my oh my, when we get into “naming” and speaking truth, almost anything can happen. 

 And this time it did! OMG.

The scene presented itself a few nights ago at a Martin Luther King Commemorative Dinner where I was so direct and forceful in my message delivery that I even had myself a bit worried.  

As it turned out the outcome appears to be almost magical, at least so far.

Dontch’a want to hear about it!  

Aren’t you even a little bit curious to find out how Anastasia walked her walk and ended up almost in a pile of s..t. On the other hand it just might  be the start of a wonderful transformation for all involved, even for a whole community, if....... 

We will just have to see how the next steps play out in the days, weeks and months ahead.

For starters, I’ll be talking about that scene on my –

Possible Society In Motion Radio Show tonight. 

Beyond Rhetoric: 

The Challenge of Creating Sustainable Communities

And, most likely, again, in my new series of programs, “Conversations With Anastasia On The Art of Dialogue,” on my –

Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show 

Trading In The Costs of The Quiet 

For The Riches of Dialogue

Monday, February 8 

11:30 a.m.
(Changes made due to monster snow storm amd clean up.)

I hope you can join us, Jack and myself on the Possible Society In Motion Radio Show, and my new on-air associate, Kim Beckett, for Anastasia The Storyteller.

Both shows are also available on podcast and each has a conference call forum that follows.