Heavenly Realm

 
My dear friend took this photo of me this morning during a dawn beach walk. I've been struggling with some things and feeling lost in the fog of depression, loneliness, and like there is difficulty finding anything to look forward to. Then this morning happened, with such beautiful light; it is like a hug and a reminder to keep taking one day at a time, because you never know what morning you may wake up to.

The Knot

A prisoner of the knot, not enough;
How to dissolve this, I don't know,
But I feel myself grow.
I feel myself feel the way to truth -
to find I watered this beast and tethered it to myself;
Bound to the weight,
because it was safer to be held than to be free.
I don't know what I shall be without it.
I will be me.

Pray tell, Well?

I've been writing little poems and painting quick watercolors to go with them. Here's one I did today:

An echo in an empty well
hobbled up the stones
and sang in fading tones
sorrow from my soul.
I gave into that empty space
pieces of my heart,
dropping slowly, part by part -
waiting, hoping, fading.
It's too deep to clearly see
What is looking back at me.
So I turn and look up high
To places I can't see,
And pray the words that I let fly
Will bring an answer back to me.

Between

Today was a gift, and a strange blend of sadness and joy. Today was a day where I felt the divide between memories and now. I sat between where the ocean was vivid blue and steel gray, with clouds edging away from the morning sun. I didn't realize how I was gasping, or how desperate my spirit was, until I felt the swell of the ocean rise under me and thunder forward. It is strange how we can go about our days, almost starving for something we're not sure of, until we figure it out. The swell of joy afterwards is almost painful.

And today, I tried to paint something really silly, but the otter's eyes look crazy, and watercolor is really hard when you are trying to control the colors. I feel like I'm on the edge of figuring something out, but I'm just at the edges trying to feel my way in.

Watercolor shapes

I'm trying to remember how to paint with watercolors. It is fun to see the colors swirl together in unpredictable ways - you really have to give up control and let the paints surprise you. I tried painting a watercolor version of a recent acrylic painting, and I noticed that in this watercolor version, there is a dragon shape facing the ducky. Art usually uncovers something we are not totally aware of and it can be uncomfortable to face. I think this dragon is nice, though.

A painting when I couldn't fall asleep...swirling colors

Forest of dreams

I keep seeing this forest in my dreams, but I can't get the colors right. I am the duck and there is purple light coming out of my heart. Also, sorry for the bad photo quality...I use my flip phone camera. lol!

Unexpected Blessings

Life. What a ride. Some storms come unexpectedly, but they reveal blessings. This week was full of unexpected blessings.


Easter Sunday evening, I fainted and faceplanted on my wooden porch. My neighbor saw it happen and gave me first aid. I didn't break any face bones or my hands or wrists when I fell, and I didn't break my teeth or cheekbone from landing directly on my face. 

I had a horrible headache the next day, so I went to Doctors on Duty and they said I had a minor concussion and wanted to do an MRI.

The MRI showed a cyst in my brain...

The thought crossed my mind that it was a blessing I fainted and hit my head so I could find this out. I never would have gotten a brain MRI otherwise.

I had my appointment with the neurologist. He said the cyst isn't impeding the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, so I don't need surgery (yay!); he said it is the kind of cyst that is benign, so it doesn't have the cells for cancer (double yay!). I was surprised  by how big it is (the size of my whole eyeball right in the middle of my brain!). He said I might have had it since I was a child. I have to get another MRI next year to check the size, or sooner, if I get bad headaches and then reassess if it needs to be drained. If it grows larger and blocks the canals for my cerebrospinal fluid, then I will get something called hydrocephalus which would require drainage through a shunt. 

However, he wants me to contact a cardiologist to see if there is anything wrong with me heart. I fainted a few times when I was a teenager, but not since then.

A symptom of this type of brain cyst is fatigue. I have felt increasingly tired since 2017. I had a gut feeling something was wrong, but I chalked it up to stress. I got to the point where I stopped competitive paddling, stopped swimming, and even walking to the beach was too much after work. It will be interesting to see the MRI next year to see if it grew at all and if there really is a correlation between the cyst and my energy levels.

It was really cool to see the MRI and all the lumpy bumps of my brain. I noticed my right hemisphere is more bumpily at the edges than the left hemisphere (the right side of the brain is more creative, the left side is more logic-based). I will call that one bumpily part my Melissa imagination.

I didn't tell a lot of people, because it seemed less scary that way. However, I am very thankful for the blessings - prayers for healing and courage, rides to appointments since I'm not supposed to drive for a while, broth and yogurt deliveries, and phone calls to give me company. A friend even came over and trimmed my hedge so the sun can shine on my seat on my porch. It has always been very difficult for me to accept help or being taken care of, so it has been a blessing in my heart to show me that I am not alone. My heart is very full with gratitude.

This week was definitely an exercise in faith and it helped me realize how blessed I am and I am so glad it wasn't worse. I am resting in the truth that I am loved. I am very thankful to God for giving me peace and courage this week when I was waiting for answers. I know that He loves me and I will never be alone, no matter the storms that come. I wrote this poem to describe how this has made my faith deeper:



"With all my heart I sought in vain,
A pleasure to relieve my pain.
Hours lost in searching wide,
How to fill the void inside.
What of life has anything
Lasting, peaceful, comforting?
The only truth that I have learned
is love and forgiveness isn't earned.
The price He paid and freely gave
was done with love and so I'm saved."

In the works

These paintings need more detail...but I'm just painting from the ol' imagination...sometimes I feel like that little duck, wandering in the woods of life.

So smelly distancing...when 6 feet isn't enough

Your butt is in my face

I found this old sketch I did a few years ago about dinosaurs trying to be astronauts. It reminded me of my four siblings and I riding in the family suburban growing up. I can still hear it now: "Your butt is in my face!!" Ah, the good old days when I actually longed for social distancing...

My Patch of Sunlight

Some days, I feel like someone should send me a volleyball so I can have my own Wilson to talk to. Other days, I sit in the patch of sunlight on my top step, read a book, and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my skin and the wind that rustles the page. Everything in me feels hyper sensitive to everything right now, the good and the bad. We have to learn how to weather the bad in the right way so it doesn't destroy us. Enjoying a small patch of sunshine on the top step is a start for me. Every day will have a new start. I know, someday, I'll run through a sunlit forest, I'll make sand angels on the beach, and I'll sit on a rock in the middle of my favorite river with the curling clouds above me. These are the things I think about when my patch of sunlight is my world

Dog

I wanted to tell you a story about the dog that lives on my street. He is a huge, lanky, black German Shepherd named Ziggy. He is almost two and runs like a Gumby dog with no bones in his legs. He has huge ears and his tongue lolls out of his mouth whenever he runs towards me. I honestly think his wagging tail propels him forwards, otherwise he’d move like a grocery cart with wheels going off in different directions. Yesterday, I went on a quick walk around my block, and Ziggy saw me. He often hangs out in the yard in front of his home. When he saw me, he started speaking a doggy language that consisted of prolonged howls and chewing barks; I felt like he was gently scolding me and also saying "“I am so happy to see you! My life is complete!” Then he got fixated on a giant fly and trickle of water running down the sidewalk across the street from me. It made my day just to see him. Dogs don’t understand social distancing. I wish I had a dog right now. Anyway, just imagine a giant black German Shepherd that runs with legs all akimbo. It will make you smile.

"Cashew" sounds like a sneeze

Squirrel: "Hey, what kind of nut is that? Looks good!"
Rodney, mouth full: "Caffmewff"
Squirrel: "what?"
Rodney, still chewing: "CaffMEEEWWFFF"
Squirrel: "what?"
Rodney: "CASHEW!!"
*all the squirrels run away from Rodney and his nut stash*

Held Inside

Skies knit together,
Threads unraveling,
Fall to the Earth
as tears.
The thunder of
a breaking heart,
after a silence of years.

Depth

Someone recently read my blog/poetry and told me, "you have surprising depth." I wondered at that, after they told me that I seemed like such a happy, positive person in real life. What is "depth" and what is surprising about it? Everyone has secret heartaches that have ripped them asunder, and their public smiles and courage to navigate the world amidst their pain and grief does not mean they are not "deep"? I am trying to understand this, and why there is this division of what is meaningful and what is not. We all live lives of courage and pain, with love and surrender. All of it is deep. What we share is a gift, and what we keep to ourselves to heal from is our own.

Polly's Pet

"Polly's Pet" was one of my favorite books when I was little, and I remember my grandma reading it to me (this was before I could read). It is amazing how illustrations you see as a child seem so huge and real, like you might slip into them if you look at them long enough. The story is about an unhappy cat. His owner, Polly, dresses him up in baby clothes. He hates it, but he never tells her to stop dressing him up because he knows that it makes her happy. He lets resentment build and build until he finally runs away to go skiing and ice skating and doesn't tell her where he is. However, after a while, he realizes how lonely he feels, even though he gets to do everything he wants to do. One page, I remember, always made me cry as a child (below). The story has a happy ending, but there is a lot of truth to Polly and me and our greatest fears and sorrows; it is strange how stories can reach something in us and speak for something we can't quite say. Even more so that it comes from a children's book.

Ruffins McFluffmaster

I doodled a dog character and wrote a little, silly poem to go with it...I present "Ruffins McFluffmaster":

Ruffins McFluffmaster, ruffs through his fluff,
Though it's rough having fluff fluffing off him
Wherever he goes, and onto dark clothes, where it shows up
as white as the first winter snows.
These are some of his fluffy fluff woes:
His fluff always tickles and sticks to his nose,
and he has tufts of hair between all of his toes.
But wouldn't you know, or even suppose?
Hugging his fluff close will cure all your sadness,
but brushing fluff off clothes will incur sure madness!

*he is making this face, because someone asked him, "why are you so fluffy!?" He doesn't know why.

I found a piece of fatty bacon wrapped in a napkin in my zippered jacket pocket on Monday....

backing up the story....

On Sunday, while beginning a nice walk in the warm, drizzly morning, I saw a beautiful, black wolfish-looking dog lying down in the middle of my one-way street. He wasn't moving, but didn't appear to be injured, and he had no collar or tags. I walked up to him slowly and then circled around him so he knew I was there. He had been eyeing me for a while, still unmoving, so I crouched down about ten feet away from him, held both arms out, and softly said, "hi boy!" I put out as much loving energy as I could. He immediately leapt up, tail wagging furiously, ears flapping like a puppy, tongue lolling as he trotted right into my arms and put his forehead so hard into my chest I almost fell over. He then gave me the ultimate dog body hug before turning around and sitting in my lap while I gave him back scratches. I stayed there petting him for about 5 minutes secretly hoping I could just adopt him, but then the owner came out and started laughing, because apparently "Ziggy" is a lover-boy and does this often in the middle of the street. Since I was on my way to meet a friend for breakfast, I said bye to Ziggy, but he started following me until the owner called him back. I told Ziggy I would bring him back a piece of bacon and I could swear he winked at me. On my way back home, I knocked on the door where Ziggy lives, but nobody answered, so I still have that bacon in my pocket...I guess I should throw it away. Now my jacket kind of smells like bacon; not that I mind....maybe the smell will attract more lovely doggy encounters.

Random Memories....

Random memories...

When I was 3, I had to use a little step stool to reach the toilet. It was a big, blue ceramic toilet that was cold in Missouri winters. One day, I leaned too far back and fell in like a collapsed beach chair. My little, chubby legs were sticking in the air, and my armpits were wedged against the sides. I tried to wriggle free, but it was no use. I thought of the children's book about the tugboat in the bathtub that got sucked down the drain and ended up floating to the ocean. Panic rising, I called out, "Mommy....?" The door to the bathroom opened, and my six-year-older brother came in and looked at me with a smile. Then he reached forward and pressed the flush lever. I started screaming, because I knew I was going to get sucked down the toilet hole like that little tugboat got sucked down the bathtub drain. The water rose and rose, over my belly, higher, higher. Then mom came in and plucked me from the toilet. I still use the toilet, so I've conquered many fears in my life. ;-)
Oh, and siblings. Haha, they prepare you for life.

More memories....

I was a very quiet and content child (just ask my mom; I only cried if I had dirty diapers or if I fell in the toilet). As a young girl, I spent most of my time outside, reading my Nancy Drew mysteries while snuggled against my favorite steer while he chewed his cud. The first time I went to summer camp in Missouri all by myself, I was 8...and terrified. I'd never really fit in with kids my own age. But there was a magical piano that was in the chapel. One afternoon, I went into the chapel and started playing the theme song to Charlie Brown. Suddenly, the piano was surrounded by kids. They asked me to play the song again and again! After that, camp was easier and suddenly the skinny, little quiet girl with glasses was included in games. It was a transformative moment for me, realizing that somehow it was easier for me to connect through art/music than through any other means. I'm not as quiet now as an adult, but I still have those same feelings of not fitting in and that who I am is best expressed through poetry, music, art, or even now...in this little snippet of memory.

Last memory for now....
Once again, a camp memory. I was 8. It was my first year at camp (this was before I played the magical piano). Our cabin won some type of piggy wiggly/scrubbly bubbly cabin cleanliness award, so we got to go on an inner tube float down the nearby river. While on our float trip, it started to storm. Warm, summer storms in Missouri are something! The clouds pile up, like mashed potatoes, lightning streaks high above, and you can feel the thunder in your feet. The leader of the float trip group called out that we needed to get to the river banks. With our bare feet, we stumbled up the muddy banks, through stinging nettles, tall grass, and other squishy things. I thought it was pretty exciting. As a child who grew up spending every summer inner tubing down the rapids of the Upper Sacramento River, this was just another adventure. However, we had to walk 2 miles back to camp through muddy fields...muddy fields with soft, slurpy mud that squelched and sucked my little feet down with each step. Halfway back, it started the rain. Cold rain. We shivered in our bathing suits. 2 miles seemed like a long way. The older girls in the group started to scream when they found a snapping turtle "blocking" their way in the muddy field. I remember feeling very tired; the mud squelched up my legs, and I started to cry because I was now cold and tired, and the feeling of adventure had worn off; worst of all, I couldn't keep up with the 12 year olds. I stopped walking and they kept walking; I was going to be left there, all alone. All alone. Then, a tall boy camp counselor showed up, like a hero, out of the rain. He walked right towards me, picked me up out of the squelching mud, and carried me in his arms like a princess in a fairy tale. I remember feeling so safe and so overwhelmed with being held like this, like I was seen, valued, and protected. Little, 8 year old me. Little, quiet Melissa, with her skinny self and glasses. Then, when we got within sight of camp, my hero unceremoniously planted me back on my feet and said, "you can make it the rest of the way on your own." It jolted me back to reality, and also gave me a gift that I've never forgotten. I can make it on my own...and on my own is what I've been for so long. Although, I really do long for that right man to come sweep me off my feet, except maybe we could carry each other, in turns. This crazy life.

The bunny toy

A New Year and Goodbye to an Old Year

"As these days close, I stand on the cusp of one year and another.

Chapters end;

The cover closes upon the pages full of stories written. 

The light has fallen into the abyss of the past.

The hollow of our voices and memories echo, a song our hands cannot hold. 

A new year before us,

Rising mightily, joyously

For new words, new stories, new memories, and new songs."

-Melissa Ulrich

Christmas and Hope

The sweet expanse of darkness

makes the sinking even seem

so effortless; a weighted pull, a solomn dream. 

We search for meaning in this blank;

heavens prick, as darkness tugs

against ourselves, as we drown into nothing. 

What meaning, have we, in this expanse?

As light in heavens pulls back, retracts,

As light above water, fades, as we sink?

I'm not sure, 

But as I sink,

I pray and I believe. 

Recent sketches....story in progress!

fabric painting

Otters painted on fabric

Life is One Long Goodbye

Life is one long goodbye.
Won't you walk with me, a little way
While the sun is warm?
I see two shadows, side by side
Sharing in the light.
The time will come when we must part -
I know not when.
Then there will be a hollow in me,
Where the light will go.
I will be alone, and less of me remains.
Inside a light grows,
Until all of me is gone.
And all there is is light and sun, and stars and tears.

My life

Today, I had a strange feeling all day, just thinking about life and how it is but a vapor. This poem is a pouring out of that reflection about place, purpose, and the brevity of life:

My life is but a planting
in a garden I must leave.
What of me will stay behind
I cannot perceive.
I sit in heather hollows
and in the dark womb
of the Earth.

A nagging question haunts me-

What of me has worth?

What of me will bloom someday?

In my garden, I can't stay...

I scatter in the wind's
lonely howl and longing;
The strange yearning cry
echoes with belonging.
I rattle in the leaves above-
a music of sweet sorrow;
Someday the leaves will drop
It may be tomorrow.
tangled in the berry brambles
and shy mountain flowers,
the sun slowly sinks;
I've few blooming hours.
I stand alone - one tree -
in the space of sun and moon.
my roots sink deep and cling,
Night comes much too soon.
though pin-holes of hope
pierce the inky sky...

I stand alone,
Alone,
waiting to fly.

I am a fragmented soul
fragmented by dreams
I am unknown shape
Always becoming, it seems.
Yet I am this much of me, and no more.
I confess-
Sometimes my garden feels like a mess.
I peel away from myself,
down to my core.
Like petals uncurling,
There is the promise of more.
My life is but a planting
of my dreams, and me.
What grows is something-
This is what I see.
-Melissa Ulrich

Letting Go

I found you in the sand,

so perfect, smooth, and pink.

You tumbled in the salty sea - 
I'm so glad you came to me...

But you must soothe another soul,

So from my palm, I let you go. 

I found you in the green,

An amber, glowing thing. 

With veins of life and roots so deep,

Your strength alone is yours to keep.

In this world your color shines - 

You were never to be mine.

I found you by my door

Your softness white and shy

Grateful for this tenderness,

I felt someone else should be blessed.

I kissed you once and let you fly

high into the wild of life,

free to sing your whole song.

We slowly find where, and to whom, we belong.