Beach Chair Therapy

"A portion of our ego is formed around what we think others think about us...when in reality, what others think about us, is not our business."

We have an inside and an outside—an interior landscape and an exterior landscape. Our interior landscape is our subjective experience of our authentic self, while our exterior landscape is a product of our worldview. The two together create a psychosocial dynamic, but that dynamic has only one reference point, leaving us balancing self- and other-perception.

Lessons From The Sane Asylum

“Searching is everything – going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you.” 

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...

 “To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love,”  Thich Nhat Hahn 

The Art of Living

  “wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life,”

At any given moment you’re failing to see the way things actually are. The manifestation is that you’re failing to be kind. You’re anxious. You’re neurotic. I don’t think it’s so much about external things. I think you could be a very happy, high-functioning person and still note the moment-to-moment failures. George Saunders

Stopped To Ponder...

"A country is only as good… only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become… I don’t believe any longer that we can afford to say that it is entirely out of our hands. We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over." James Baldwin

From The Study...a conversation of possibility

The collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.

My morning walk...

As I walked the beach this morning, in the distance I observed a memorial service to a fallen soldier. I have seen weddings, family reunions, parties of every flavor, but my first for an ocean side memorial and burial. There are those moments that make us stand still, but few that give you the presence of silence...so is was this beautiful morning...just for you my friend and to those that have fallen...may we chose to honor one another...

A southeast wind blowing from the trades,
 The beauty of the azure sky as it kissed the ocean.
The waves gently rolling, just for you.

Four men dressed in blue and a brass bugle just for you
One woman clutching the flag in her arms,
The last moment to spend with you.

In her hands, a simple box,
Ashes...the presence of you.

Taps pierced the morning air,
A sound that has no compare,
Everyone stopped in silence just for you.

An honorable salute from the men in blue,
She carried your box and the presence of you

The children on the beach stopped their play,
No words were spoken
Only silence for you.

She kissed the box,
And shed a tear, just for you.

We all watched in silence,
As she released your soul to the sea.
Even the children shed a tear.

The presence of silence just for you...

A funny thing happened on the way to therapy...

My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways — and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.

The Art Of Living

Cloths of Heaven

William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Beach Chair Therapy

I take beach chair therapy pretty serious...it's not just some random thought with a picture of a beach umbrella or beach chair. You first have to start with a beach. Now I'm fortunate that I spend four to six months living by the sea and it's one that I carefully choose. I love white sandy beaches but I settled on one covered with crushed sea shells giving it a cinnamon color against a gray sandy background. Suits my eye for some reason and always a nice cool ocean breeze. The beach is lined by a reef and on some days if the tide is strong it will uncover the rocks and give the beach dimension and nice places to explore. It's a quiet beach with mostly residents but the usual summer crowd makes people watching more interesting.

On therapy days I try and set up around noon. It takes me that long to get all my chores done...:). I take a good sturdy umbrella that screws into the sand and tilts slightly toward the wind. A linen shirt is a necessity along with a good straw hat. I have this ole Panama Jack hat that has served me well for a number of years. It works great until the wind blows over ten then I switch to my RELAX cap. A good chair with at least three pockets is a must. I fill mine with a Coke, a thermos of rum and an insulated cup filled with ice.

Now let's talk about a few things that will make a lot of difference when it comes to set up...twist your poll into the sand until it reaches the moist layer, then take a bucket of sea water and pour around the poll. This will seal it and keep the wind from pulling it lose. I always anchor the poll with a ten foot cord and spike. Don't hammer the spike into the ground, but dig a a shallow hole and turn the spike side ways and bury it. Just a suggestion from one that has experienced many runaway umbrellas. Always, always open your umbrella into the wind. You will know if you get it wrong.

Music, if course...a selection of songs labeled Ocean on my ole my IPod and a very well placed speaker. On the last visit from my friend Jes B. Rambling he surprised me with this little round speaker called 808. Designed by a French company but I'm sure made in China. At any rate, a good one. Just place it in the apex of my umbrella and I get a rainbow of sounds...thanks my friend. Took a few pictures of Jes's last visit. When I fully recover my mental abilities and recall the visit I will share. Rather distorted at the moment.

Now how does one prepare the mind for beach chair therapy? For me I watch the children play...really don't know why, just seems in their every move you can tell what their little minds are thinking..they have a lot of free behaviors...oh, did I mention the rum and a splash of Coke...;).

Self...tell me what you are thinking...

Stopped To Ponder

"through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy is possible only if today's makes way for it...for each wave owes the beauty of its line
only to the withdrawal of the preceding one..."
André Gide

Sunday Morning...The Wall Cloud

The Wall Cloud
Walter P. Thederahn

With the ebbing of time,
It will take me back to the sea.
Scorpion, the Norseman's life,
Aurora Borealis,
no- Eldorado,
Yet,
August eyes!,
But seek the wall of clouds,
Dark, black clouds,
Holding the thunderbolts,
With echoing thunder- electrify,
The enfolding clouds.
Lighting flash,
Like northern lights.
White wall of clouds,
Of awesome might.
Still air then sudden rain,
Hail falls, this freezing vapor,
From the sky.
The windrose turning clouds,
Sets- twister from the sky.

Walter P. Thederahn was born Novemeber 3, 1930 in Brooklyn, N.Y. to German immigrants. As a young boy he started performing magic acts and later began to dabble in writing poetry. Walt was drafted to the Army during the Korean conflict where he earned his airborne wings in 1952. He served in both the 187th Regimental Combat Team and the 45th Infantry Division. Following his discharge he joined the family bakery business but left to enter the carpenter trade. He married and moved to Griggstown, NJ. The couple had four sons of whom he was very proud. He married his second wife, Mary, the mother of six children, in 1988. They settled in Mercerville, NJ spending many hours with their children who lived close by and traveling to visit their children who lived out of state. He retired from the Capentary Union, Local 1006 in 1992. Walt was a member of the International Brotherhood of Poetry and the Magician Ring of New Brunswick, NJ. He was active in the American Legion, Post 530 and two senior clubs in Robbinsville, NJ. Walter paseed away on October 31, 2009, the anniversary of the death of the famous magician Houdini. 

How fitting I find his words this Sunday morning from carpenter, magician and poet as I capture...The Wall Cloud.

The Art Of Living

I said to my soul...

"Sit without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness the dancing.” ~T.S. Eliot

Beach Chair Therapy

"No one is smart enough to be wrong all the time."