Bones Of The Sea

Curly-Q, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

Liz unpacks the spiral shells out of a plastic peroxide bottle with the top slit open to form a hinge. Amy carefully packed them for us before we left St. Joe Beach. Shells, the bones of the sea. Skeletons made of calcium, color revealing the nutrients they ate. Shells scattered on the beaches we visited in the panhandle. Sand dollars washed up at Crooked Beach. You had to wade into the water at first to spot the good ones. Later you trained your eyes to pluck them from wet sand. “It’s like Neptune,” Liz said. “The wave rolls in, all foamy and murky. When the wave washes out, for a moment, everything is clear. That’s when you find your prize.” The translucent jingle shells appeared on Windmark and tiny coquina shells. Surf clams, cat’s paws, and limpets with holes in them on St. Joe. Protection for the soft insides that live outside in the ocean. No backbones.

Shell on the Moon, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

 

Backbone. We say those with backbone are strong, can pull their weight in a crisis. I’m not good in a crisis. I don’t pivot quickly. But Liz does. In chaotic situations, she will grab my hand, say, “I got cha” and weave her way to safety. Many of my friends react to danger in quick response. I am a person that sniffs out danger from a distance. Empathic. I sense energy around and don’t move into spaces that feel toxic. It’s a different way of sensing the world, moving through air, paying attention to earth. Taurus. Moon.

But what I really want to say is that it’s good to be home from the ocean. To be back in the Midwest. At least for a time. The ocean is constantly moving. The 40 mph wind gusts and driving rain against the beach house last weekend, nowhere near the category five of Michael a few years ago. So much did not survive. So many homes and trees destroyed, people living five years later in RVs on their land under carports. They have not rebuilt.

But people are resilient. A better word is flexible. Resilience is the fortitude to will your way back to the way things once were. That’s often not possible. Not after a hurricane. Not after a tornado. Not after a pandemic. Or an earthquake. Or war. So much suffering in this world. Flexibility is the ability to change. To flow into what is new and unfamiliar. Adapting to a world around you that is ever changing. I used to hate change. Too unpredictable, unfamiliar, disorienting. Now I try to embrace it, learning from the people around me. Some thrive on change. They are at their best when things are new and in flux. I am more of a reflector, like the Moon. 

 

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15-minute Writing Practice on Shells, written on an old iPad Mini 4, Saturday, February 18th, 2023

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Roots

SpiralBound, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, on the Day of My Solar Return, July 22, 2022, photo © 2022 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Roots that bind. Binding roots. I came home from work last week to find an empty yellow pot on the marble island. “Look,” Liz said, “I transplanted the rushfoil. It was so rootbound, the roots at the bottom became one with the pot.” I peered into the spiral chasm. “Hmmmmm. That’s kind of cool,” my lips said. My heart translated the fused tendrils as a metaphor for my earthbound feet stuck to unforgiving skeletal bones. Heavy and unmoving. Same old job. Same old routines.

But all that is changing. 

The supervisor at work (only a few months into the position) seems to see us as baggage on his journey through the company’s future. Monday when he wagged his finger at me, I pulled him aside and told him to stop treating us like robots, to cease micromanaging a team that has been efficient and exceeding our corporate goals for a decade. To stop silencing us and treating us like neophytes. He is not rooted to the way things were; he comes from another division. He moves like lightening. He makes mistakes, but he doesn’t care. Forward, at all costs.

For a team who pauses and pays attention to details, it’s maddening. Unnecessary. There are compromises that have to be made in the spaces between the 7000 steps I walk at work every day.

I retire from corporate employment at the end of the year. Next spring we rip 38 years of roots out of the bottom of our Minnesota home and transplant them to the mountains. Liz told me she had to grab a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and scrape at the sides of the clay pot to get those roots to budge. And still….the remainders are part of the clay. The croton (rushfoil is the common name) was a gift from a coworker after my dad died in 2017. She has sprouted new buds in a 13-inch frost green pot butted up to our north facing windows. She is happy. Thriving. I transformed the worn pot into photo art. Another metaphor? On the day of my solar return, I feel scratchy and unsettled.

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10-minute Writing Practice on the WRITING TOPIC: ROOTS, Friday, July 22nd, 2022

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PRACTICE — SPRING CLEANING – 10min

By Teri Blair

This spring I turn 50.

The cleaning on my mind these days is an internal one. 50 is a significant marker, one that won’t be ignored. I saw Bonnie Raitt in concert the year she turned 50. She was playing the Grandstand at the Minnesota State Fair. She called out to the women in the audience, “Don’t be afraid to turn 50! It’s great!” And I could see she meant it, too—not just trying to buoy herself or us up. That was 11 years ago, and I was still in my 30s. 50 seemed like ages away. But it stuck with me. Her attitude.

I went to a 50th birthday party once for a woman who had a ritual to drop everything in her life that had held her back. It was done with drumming and shouting and people. Powerful stuff. She was brave and she made an announcement to her herself that she was turning a corner. A big one.

I don’t feel bad about turn 50. Mainly. There are things in my life I’m not satisfied with, but I don’t suppose that will every change. There’s some sort of release happening inside. A knowing that I don’t have all the time in the world. And because I don’t, I think about spring cleaning, and what needs to go and what needs to be aired out or left behind or turned over to the garbage heap. I don’t have my internal spring cleaning list completed, but it’s formulating. I don’t turn 50 until May 5th, so I’ve got some time.

I’m not sad about youth being over. That sounds bold and so against the grain of our culture, doesn’t it? I want to be healthy and strong. I want to take care of myself. But I don’t want to be 20 or 30 anymore. Nor do I want to pretend that I am. Nor do I want to watch someone half my age for clues about how I should live my life.

I am watching older women now. Elderly women. They seem far more interesting to me. I met one this month named Gladys—an artist/writer who has made it in the art world. She moves quietly and humbly through life. She listens well. She always seems grounded. Clearly, she had done her spring cleaning.

-Related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC – SPRING CLEANING (HOMEMADE CLEANING REMEDIES). Also related to posts: PRACTICE — Spring Cleaning — 10min by QuoinMonkey, PRACTICE — SPRING CLEANING — 10min by Bob Chrisman, WRITING TOPIC — CLEANLINESS, and Wanda Wooley — The Lean Green Clean Machine.

[NOTE: SPRING CLEANING was a Writing Topic on red Ravine. Frequent guest writer Teri Blair joined QuoinMonkey in doing a Writing Practice on the topic.]

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WRITING TOPIC – THE FOUR AGREEMENTS

In 1997, Toltec nagual (shaman) don Miguel Ruiz published a small book called The Four Agreements. The book laid out in practical terms four agreements one can make with oneself, a code of conduct to live by to transform one’s life. The idea is that these four agreements would replace or at least augment the many agreements we’ve carried with us since we were children—many harmful to our well-being—about our self-worth, our abilities, and life in general.

I learned about the book in 2000, after a particularly difficult year. I was on the brink of leaving my career. I was struggling in my marriage and with being a mother. I was unhappy and didn’t know what to do about it. My boss at the time, with whom my relationship was all but broken, gave me the book. She had just returned from a short sabbatical from work. She seemed transformed and credited the change to the wisdom of Ruiz. She handed out copies of the book to members of her staff, and then within a matter of a few weeks or months, she retired.

I remember when she gave me the book, at first I saw it as an olive branch. I had at one point before my boss left on her sabbatical become so enraged at her over matters at work that I let loose with a verbal assault that surprised even me. In my younger days I had the mouth of a sailor, but I rarely let my emotions get out of hand. Not so that year. I dropped the F-bomb on my boss like it was going out of style. In hindsight, it was amazing that she didn’t fire me for insubordination. That she could give me any gift at all seemed hugely generous.

Later, when I opened the book and saw what it contained, I took the gift as an insult. A category tag on the back of the book identified it as Personal Growth / Self-Help. I felt my former boss was trying to tell me that that I needed help; I was immature enough then to believe that I was perfectly fine and that she was the one who needed help. Reluctantly I read the book.


Fast forward to 2010. I think about my former boss now and again. I know now that not only did I in fact need help those many years ago, The Four Agreements was exactly the right kind of help. Had I been living them at the time, I would not have made the assumption that my former boss was giving me the book as way of trying to tell me something.

Recently I had the opportunity, thanks to the generosity of my good friend Patty, to see don Miguel Ruiz in Albuquerque and hear him and his son, don Jose Ruiz, talk about a new book they jointly wrote called The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery. This was the first time I’d seen either Ruiz in person. I didn’t take notes during the packed talk. I sat in the back of the Unitarian church where they spoke. I listened with an open heart. After the talk, the elder Ruiz left (we learned he had only partial heart functioning after a near-fatal heart attack in 2002) while the younger stayed in the church and signed books.

light and love, photos of Patty (left) and Roma with don Jose Ruiz, emanating light and love, May 19, 2010, Albuquerque, photos © 2010, all rights reserved.

Don Miguel Ruiz came from a family of healers. His mother was a curandera and his grandfather a nagual. From the book jacket of The Four Agreements, “The family anticipated that Miguel would embrace their centuries-old legacy of healing and teaching, and carry forward the esoteric Toltec knowledge. Instead, distracted by modern life, Miguel chose to attend medical school and become a surgeon.”

After nearly losing his life in a car accident, Ruiz devoted himself to becoming a nagual. He has passed on the knowledge to his son, Jose Luis, and together they are promoting The Fifth Agreement. I am reading The Fifth Agreement now, and already it has hit home for me the wisdom and power of that original small book.

I have in small but perceptible ways been transformed by Ruiz’s four agreements. They’re not easy to live by. Some are harder than others. Some I recall daily. Here they are, with a short excerpt about each:

be impeccable with your word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

don’t take anything personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

don’t make assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

always do your best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Perhaps you are familiar with don Miguel Ruiz and his books of wisdom, or maybe this is the first time you’ve heard of any of this. In either case, reflect on the four agreements and think about what they mean to you. Write each agreement at the top of your notebook and then do a 10- or 15-minute Writing Practice on each one. If this is your first exposure to this Toltec wisdom, buy the books or check them out from your local library and take the time to learn more about them and their author. Let us know if your writings about the agreements resonate with the writings in the books.

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