An introverted woman of a certain age sells her house, gets rid of her stuff, and goes rootless.
I'm currently back in the South, so it's timely that I revisit this five-year old post. Although Juneteenth remains a legal public holiday, President Trump unilaterally deleted both Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Day from the list of days when we can all* enter national parks for free. In their place, the president proclaimed his own birthday as a day when we can all enter national parks for…
Wow. May 2011 marked the start of a remarkable year in the Caucasus . At this point, I had dotted the I's and crossed the T's on two important chapters in my life, having: Sold my house and distributed most of my household belongings; and Taken my two-month solo trip to Ethiopia . And I had poured a new foundation for my envisioned future by earning a CELTA certificate in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.…
My typical food menu remains the same today as it did 10 years ago, as do my prejudices about food trends that purport to perform miracles of super-health. Fortunately, I'm a person who feels satisfied with the same foods day after day. Maybe that's because my daily food is sexy to me, so I don't lust for paramours. OK, well. There is kettle corn, a long-time lover with which I pass a little time…
Five years ago, I contemplated a life as a full-time tenter. There's no downside to envisioning different futures in one's head. I decided not to hike down that particular trail, and in fact, I don't even have a tent at the moment, and I have a different car. My new-to-me-car is a Prius, and there are plenty of folks who trick theirs out for camping, but a Prius isn't as camper-friendly to me as…
Light, El Rosario Church, San Salvador, El Salvador. August 2025. Photo credit: Mzuriana . In Spanish, " to give birth " is expressed by " dar luz " - to give light. So beautiful. Recently, I listened to an NPR podcast: Hurricane Katrina Had a Silver-Lining for Some: Post-Traumatic Growth . Yeah, yeah, there are all of the cliches, such as " what doesn't kill us makes us stronger ," and alas, that…
Five years later, there's nothing more I can add to this. I think of my mom often. Monday, March 29, 2021 Rootless: The Last Monday Letter Carol Cottage, Missouri. January 2011. Dear Mom, I've written you a letter almost every Monday since mid-December 2018. In that first weekly letter, I was at the end of an interregnum Missouri visit, about to depart for a Christmas-New Year layover in South…
Light enters kitchen window in Mobile, Alabama. June 2022. Photo credit: Mzuri I re-run my 2021 light-therapy post. Today I'm in a different year, a different state, in another small place, that alas, is miserly in its bestowal of light. Nevertheless, my morning welcoming-in of the light persists, although the stinginess of the light here demands the addition of artificial light, using daylight…
Assortment of Light 1, Maison Bergogne, Narrowsburg, New York. Photo credit: Mzuri I'm saying "she" kept the light on, but it could be a "he" just as well. I'm saying "for me," but it was "for all." I'm a member of a 12-step fellowship. In pre-COVID times, in my annual migrations, one of my first settling-in actions at a new tourist-in-residency was to find my fellowship's local meetings. During…
British Park. Mobile, Alabama. Christmas 2021. Credit: Mzuriana . Light. In these dark times, I need light. Maybe you do, too. For the joy, the promise, the inspiration that light brings, I revisit the song, This Little Light of Mine . My favorite is this by the Soweto Choir: New to me this year is from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in a 1960 performance: May I find light in each day.
In January 2011, I had sold my house in Missouri, but hadn't yet set off on what has been a 15-year slomadic ("slow nomad") journey . Thanks to four women, I had the most marvelous guest homes in Missouri. My mother, the proprietor of Carol's Cottage, died in spring, 2021. I don't know if I think of her every day, but I do often. The day before yesterday, for example, while I made my bed and lay…
Sunrise on Grand in Las Vegas, New Mexico, 2007. Credit: Mzuriana Before I roll out my 2026 word of the year next month, below is a recap of years past: 2018: Courage January 2018: Courage 1: Malala February 2018: Courage 2: Audre Lorde 2019: Action January: Action February: Action: Legal Observers March: Action: Penpal July: Action: Escaping Despair August: Action: Lipstick and Salvation…
So, 10 years yon, how goes the disparity between Black and White life expectancy? Missouri : "In 2022, Missouri’s life expectancy rebounded from 74.6 years to 75.4 years having fallen steeply immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the 2022 life expectancy is still about two years lower than our state’s life expectancy was in 2019 and remains about two years under the national life…
I'm not talking about listening to a guided meditation, although those are certainly good. I'm not talking about listening in a way that I might pause to note the travel talk of geese as they fly north in the spring in their arrowhead formations. No, I'm talking about this → for five minutes, with eyes closed, I actively listen, with the intention of meditation, to the ambient sounds wherever I am…
This 10-year old post happens to feature Curley Taylor. He and his band re-entered my post-Louisiana orbit in June 2019, when they performed at Tucson's Monterey Court . Monterey Court in Tucson, Arizona. May 2019. Credit: Mzuriana . Monday, November 23, 2015 Louisiana: The Church of Zydeco Performance center, Vermilionville, Lafayette, Louisiana. June 2015. Every Sunday afternoon, Vermilionville…
Face From a Cosmetic Spoon . Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art I'm good for a five-minute meditation. Five minutes is achievable for me; any longer and I'm going to put it in the category of a chore, thus less likely to fold into a daily routine. This month: a meditation of touch. I lightly move my fingers over the terrain of my face, staying in the physical moment, feeling the sensation of skin on…
In re-visiting this post of 10 years ago, I remembered "Caroline" and the power of a pause . Caroline is the protagonist in the book, The Camel and the Scorpion , about a young associate professor pulled into the case of an American woman arrested in Israel for espionage in the 1970s. Despite her innate shyness, Caroline had been a champion member of a college debate team; she knew that the force…
Caterpillar. Big Spring, Missouri. 2007. Credit: Mzuriana . The title Land Snorkeling popped up whilst I was tunneling an online rabbit hole about something or another and it surely did grab my attention. I'm not gonna link that article here because its website throws up an egregious quantity of pop-ups into the faces of visitors in addition to making it too challenging to customize one's cookie…
2023.0429. Cozy bed in Chez Prius. Ellis, Kansas. September is the anniversary of my having gone rootless. It's been 15 years now. If all goes according to plan, I will re-root myself soon. But that's tomorrow and not today. In the meantime, a visit to my past: Flashback to September 2010: "I'm Going Rootless" Gee whiz, it's been five years since I wrote my first post: Tuesday, September 28, 2010…
More than 20 years ago, the local parks and recreation department offered a class in tai chi. I was the only student who enrolled. The instructor, Brandon, would have had every right to cancel the class, but he didn't. Brandon and I met once a week for six weeks and he introduced me to both qigong and tai chi. Brandon used qigong as the prelude to the tai chi, and I interpreted qigong as a warmup.…
I do love sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Longmont, Colorado. June 2023. Credit: Mzuriana . The original source, from Al Jazeera, about "troubling work conditions for North Carolina laborers" who harvest sweet potatoes is no longer accessible. Here is a November 2015 replacement source from NPR: Behind Your Holiday Sweet Potato Dish, Hard Work in the Field s . Friday, August 14, 2015 Louisiana:…
Adult coloring books aren't anything new, of course. Coloring can get us into a flow, allow us to relax. There is also the idea of coloring to practice mindfulness and meditation . There are legions of mandalas out there to color, but that's not where my interest lies. I like birds. And I like drawings I can color to completion in less than half an hour. Both Thriftbooks and BetterWorldBooks have…
I ventured into threading again while in Tucson. Ouch . In my search for past posts that touched on waxing, threading, plucking, or razoring, I uncovered one from 2014, in which a stranger in Louisiana uttered this proposition to me: "I'd really like to wax your car." Wednesday, July 29, 2015 Rootless Brow - zing The other day, I had my brows waxed. While I lay on the table, I remembered other…
Mala beads from lotus seeds. Attribution: SecretLondon on wikicommons . As I explored how meditation / mindfulness could flow into my daily life, I remembered my maternal grandmother, who prayed with her rosary. In its explanation of how to pray the rosary , the US Conference of Catholic Bishops includes this: The repetition in the Rosary is meant to lead one into restful and contemplative prayer…
There's nothing I can add to this ten-year old post. Unless I were to add cat pictures. Which I won't. Sunday, June 28, 2015 Opelousas: The Fall of a Blessed Tree Blessed tree, Opelousas, Louisiana. June 2015. Once upon a time, I read a magazine article by a man whose hobby was to travel to different parts of the world while history was being made in those exact parts. When the Berlin Wall fell,…
Plank trail, Deer Isle, Maine. Credit: Mzuriana I've known folks who have created a walking labyrinth , and I've walked a handful. Of course, we don't need a labyrinth for a walking meditation. I walk each day, but for one of my walks to be a walking meditation, I must take that walk naked, in a sense. In other words, no music or podcasts in my ears. No rewriting history. No constructing a future.…