Tag Archives: love

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Red rock

Two days ago I went on a bike ride near the C & O Canal and we walked to this old stone cutting mill. Rocks were cut at the Seneca Quarry and and down the canal, which ends in Georgetown, and used for many buildings and monuments. Seneca Red Sandstone is used for the Smithsonian Castle. Beautiful.

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #75. He has sand and this is sandstone.

 

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Choosing love

My sister and another writer posted essays under the title Choosing Love here: http://everything2.com/title/Choosing+Love. My sister’s was written in 2002. I posted mine there last November.

Choosing Love

I choose love
I have no enemies
I hold you close in my heart
and hug you close if I can
and if you hurt me over and over
I can still love you
I choose love
I have no enemies
I hold you close in my heart
from far far extremely far away
I choose love
I have no enemies
I hold you close in my heart
I hug you from a safe distance
I choose love
I have no enemies
I hold you close in my heart
even if I will not allow contact again
I choose love

The photograph was on the beach. The gull and the crow were interacting. After I watched for a while it was clear that the gull was following the crow and trying to take things from the crow. They were not friends.

 

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Rock trail

My daughter and I spent four nights at Larrabee State Park this week and hiked down the Rock Trail and back up: http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/rock-trail

When birds chirp at me, I often talk back. Sometimes we have conversations. They think I have a terrible accent and also just talk nonsense. This Pacific wren was very vocal and right by the path. My young adult children are used to this, so my daughter just rolled her eyes and waited. After a while I got this photograph, hooray for zoom lenses and for delightful wrens.

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Mergansers

These are some of the creatures that I saw last summer at Lake Matinenda. A whole family of mergansers swam around the point in the early morning. I was drinking tea and writing in the very early morning. Suddenly they startled at something in the water and all rushed up on the rock ten feet from me. I froze and when they didn’t notice me, I slowly picked up my camera.

What were they scared of? There are pike and lake trout and otters…

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I will marry only he who defeats me in battle

he
I am not really that attached to gender.
I’ve always thought that love is love
and who cares what birth sex or chromosome arrangement
people have
since nature’s diversity
is beyond insane

marry
I am not sure I would marry again
there is so much attached to the archetype
of a married couple
and no two are alike
in their conscious
much less unconscious
and then project the unconscious expectation
it makes me tired just thinking of it

battle
I agree that we are all fighting a battle
but I think it is always with ourselves
avoid avoid avoid
things that we fear
when we should go towards them
and embrace them
for our fears are the demons
we’ve chained in our unconscious

defeat
what is defeat?
loss of money?
loss of power?
the only defeat I have
is when I try to avoid myself
my true self
my dark self and my light self
there is no defeat
except my own failure
to admit my true self

I love who I love

whether they love me back

or not

 

I took the title from here: http://everything2.com/title/I+will+marry+only+he+who+defeats+me+in+battle and published there as well

 

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End of Life Plan

My End of Life Plan and Wishes are as follows:

1. My plan is that my life should end after a half day of skiing for free at age 125 or 126.
2. My wish is to ski quite brilliantly, smoothly and gracefully, though not as aggressively as at age 110 and below.
3. My plan is that other skiers will ask who that brilliant skier is and that all the lift operators will know.
4. My plan is that I will have a delicious lunch, with a glass of champagne, in a condo overlooking the slopes.
5. I plan to have a hot tub and then a massage from one of the many handsome men who flirt with me.
6. My plan is that I will sit in a comfortable leather armchair with my feet on a foot stool, while three of my male friends vie to be the one to bring me the second glass of champagne.
7. My wish is that I will not need any cosmetic surgery or false eyes or ears or teeth or joints or heart valves and will retain my spleen, teeth, gall bladder, appendix and brain in full operating order.
8. My plan is that I will not be on prescriptions, medicines, vitamins, supplements, medical foods, or nutraceuticals nor under the care of any quacks of any sort.
9. My wish is that my male flirts will all think that I am not a day over 75.
10. My wish is that I will be listening to live music, a woodwind quartet or string quartet, just dropped in to say hello, along with three of my great grandchildren, showing off their olympic ski medals, summa cum laude graduation documents, or Nobel prizes.
11. My plan is that after the quartet leaves, I will fall asleep….
12. ….and not wake up, and that though my attendants are sad, none of them throws themselves off the balcony over the cliff and are all surprised at my true age and at the bountiful gifts I have left to each of them with proof that a long life and compounded interest have excellent results. My children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will live long and prosper as well.

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death in childbirth

When I was in residency, one of the obstetrics-gynecology faculty asked us, “Women died in childbirth. What did they die of?”

We were silent. Stumped. Infection? Well, when there was no infection control and the male physicians went from room to room with no hand washing, yes… but….

Preeclampsia? No. Not that common. Eclampsia? Ditto.

“What if a woman is in labor and the baby is stuck? What do they die of?”

Ick. “Bleeding?”

“The uterus contracts until it ruptures. It contracts until it is thinner and thinner. If there is fetal malposition or a hand presentation or transverse or certain breech positions, the uterus ruptures and both bleed to death.”

We were all silent.

When I hear people bemoaning caesarean section and too much surgery and too many interventions…. I remember what women died of. All the stepmother stories. In the 1797 diary I am reading, the “lady” dies of a fever. She is 24 years old. There is no surprise, just sorrow. The author writing is the same age and grew up with her and grieves, but goes on.

We would like to think this is in the past, but it isn’t. It still is going on, right now, inΒ  poverty stricken areas and war zones where the hospitals have been destroyed, the medical people have left, there are no services…

When I was still delivering babies, I would tell patients: my ideal labor plan is the baby comes out and I hand it to you. And the placenta comes out and the baby nurses and I don’t seem to be doing much. But that is not always what happens. I do not have control nor do you. I will only intervene if I think it is your life or the babies life or both….

http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-14-43

http://www.msf.org/en/article/perils-childbirth-democratic-republic-congo

http://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/documents/childbirth/en/

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/

Donate:Β  http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/

The picture is me on my maternal grandfather’s lap. I was one very lucky baby. My mother had tubuculosis through the pregnancy. She coughed blood in her 8th month. If there had not been medical care and a Tuberculosis Sanitorium to be born in, I would not be here.

 

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Art at Quimper Family Medicine

I change the art at clinic, these for the summer. We had four reproductions up before, of alchemy paintings from the 1400-1600s. I thought they were creepy but also interesting and beautiful.

The painting on the left is by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway. On the right is an oil by an artist that I don’t know. It looks like my father. I inherited art, but I keep finding beautiful pieces. At least I can display a little and rotate them with the seasons…