#change • Tenneson Woolf

July 9, 2019

Landslide

Rock icon Stevie Nicks of the band Fleetwood Mac wrote this song, Landslide, in 1975. I was 13. A boy in junior high school. I remember the song, liking the sound of it. I remember the band. I remember the album cover.

As it is with many of us aging, the music of our younger days takes on added meaning later in life. Sometimes as comfort. Sometimes as, “Oh, now I get it.” Sometimes as just plain fun.

Landslide is one of those songs for me. Now I listen to the digital music downloaded to my phone.

I love the lines, “Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through he changin’ ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life. Mmm, I don’t know.”

Whatever the changes any of us face, there is often association to wonder of our individual and collective capability. And the becoming aware of how the moments of our stories, our lives, weave to broader arc.

It’s human to reflect. And to make sense. And to change. With and without others.

Glad for this bit of music now making more meaning.

Landslide.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Mmm, I don’t know.

Oh, I don’t know.

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too
I’m gettin’ older, too.

Ah, take my love, take it down
Oh, climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
Oh, the landslide will bring it down

July 8, 2019

Recalibrate

I suppose if I had a word for the day, today would be “recalibrate.”

I think of recalibrating as adjusting a setting. Like adjusting a dial to get a more clear signal on a radio station. So as to get frequency. So as to get clarity. Or like adjusting from the feeling of this vastness in the photo above, taken last week looking south to Columbia Lake and the Purcell Mountains, to perhaps some less vast spaces.

Transitions require a certain kind of recalibrating. My version of transition today is the adjustment of having been in Canada for a week for family and vacation time. The recalibrate is returning from that to Utah, to a regular work week, and a significant pile of todos.

Canada was family and friends. Shared cooking and eating of meals. Shared recreation. It was walks, sometimes more than one per day. It was forested mountains. It was deer in the sleepy town streets (and this year, a frequenting black bear). Canada was playing card games and ping pong. I suppose a summary for me is that it was prioritized connection — squeezing a lot in to a short period of time. Including some nothingness, but nothingness together.

Return, and recalibration, is to solo dwelling for me. Needed for my introvert side, but noticeably different too. Return is simplified meals. The last half of a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a few slices of cucumber that need to be eaten. Return is reconnecting to several threads of work. Projects to move along and to prepare for. Return is recalibrating to focus, to meeting times, and to a few deadlines.

All of it is good. It’s just that the shift requires this recalibrating. It’s not a good thing to a bad thing. Nor vice versa. I’m grateful for variety in my life. I’m grateful to family that moves to tears in parting goodbye. I’m grateful for friends that indelibly germinate in my heart. I’m also grateful for work that brings connection and learning to the forefront. For people with imagination and determination to work together in better ways. I’m grateful for this that also grows in my heart.

Recalibrating. I suppose it is a bit of welcoming the past and applying it to the now. I suppose it is a bit of directing a kindness and consciousness, a flow with life, into a different environment.

That awareness alone helps me somehow land just a bit more in to today’s recalibrating. I’m glad for that.

May 16, 2019

Maybe It’s Time (to Let The Old Ways Die)

“Maybe It’s Time” is a song written by Jason Isbell. It was featured in the movie, A Star is Born (I recently saw the 2018 version staring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga). I’m drawn to the lyrics of this song, because I suppose, I’m learning like so many of us, to not resist some things dying, but rather, to welcome it. That’s code for welcoming new life, I suppose. Or being with life itself — that’s even closer to the mark for me. In my guitar hobby world, I’m also learning to strum the chords to this song. I both love and need the medium that is artistic expression for things such as letting the old ways die. Garsh!

Let’s be clear, there is plenty for us to hold on to from the old ways, that we should remember in our contemporary living. I often feel that I / we are remembering old ways to honor roots and to interrupt a contemporary pattern of transact and dispose. Oh, that any of us should experience a wisdom to know what to let go of, and to know what to cultivate further.

Enjoy the lyrics. And the simple strum if you know it. And the wondering into the inner world that can so gives access and clarity to an outer world of letting go and letting come, with life itself.

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Maybe It’s Time

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.
It takes a lot to change a man,
Hell, it takes a lot to try.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.

Nobody knows what waits for the dead.
Nobody knows what waits for the dead.
Some folks just believe in the things
They’ve heard and things they read
Nobody knows what waits for the dead.

I’m glad I can’t go back to where I came from [Tenneson here, I think, though I’m often drawn to going back].
I’m glad those days are gone, gone for good. [Kind of…]
But if I could take spirits from my past
And bring them here you know I would
Know I would.

Nobody speaks to God these days.
Nobody speaks to God these days.
I’d like to think he’s lookin’ down
And laughing at our ways.
Nobody speaks to God these days.

When I was a child they tried to fool me.
Said the worldly man was lost and that a hell was real.
But I’ve seen hell in Reno
And the worlds one big old Catherine wheel.
Spinning steel.

Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.
It takes a lot to change your plans,
And a train to change your mind.
Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.

January 28, 2019

The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human — Pema Chodron

Wads

Thank you Pema Chodron, teacher of my teacher. This excerpt below, and the book that it comes from, are never far from me. Reminding me of balance and beauty and impermanence while standing next to something that is never the same twice.

We keep trying
to get away
from the fundamental ambiguity
of being human,
and we can’t.

We can’t escape it
anymore than we can escape change,
anymore than we can escape death.

It’s your fixed identity that is crumbling.

The real cause of suffering
is not being able
to tolerate uncertainty —
and thinking
that it is perfectly sane,
perfectly normal,
to deny
the fundamental groundlessness
of being human.

Pema Chodron
Living Beautifully With Uncertainty & Change