Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

The Angle

Americans are going through a big shift today. What are the odds that the Bohemian is en route to the offices of US Homeland Security this morning, where they will fingerprint him as part of protocol? It’s standard procedure in the process he’s in, naturalizing as a US Citizen on Inauguration Day.

This photo of me was taken in Prague, Czech Republic, the Bohemian’s native land. He had to stand in just the right place, see things from just the right angle, in order to be able to capture the stretch of possibility behind me.

Perhaps the whole world is a house of mirrors. Reflections abound, and we get to choose our angle. We decide how we want to perceive what’s before us.

I choose the corridor of infinite potential. A pathway to all things good and true. A world elevating each other in love. Humanity dreaming its biggest dreams.

That’s my angle.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

A Dare to Pause for Poetry

This Hope came through as a Facebook message on the 2×5 inch window of my smartphone yesterday. I’d been bushwhacking through paperwork, surrounded by computer screens and spreadsheets. I was feeling in the weeds, but far from loamy earth.

The beauty of these graceful words just grounded me. Made me wish I was a poet. Reminded me that art will save the world.

I know that we’re all busy, and when screens deliver messages we often only quickly scroll. And this, well, this is poetry, and we all know the trouble with poetry. The notion is romantic and lofty, but reading it takes time. It doesn’t give it all away on the first pass.

So here’s my morning dare:

Read this Hope twice. (At least). It’ll still take less than five minutes. Let it settle through your cells.

Comment on this post that you took time for poetry today. Forward to a friend. Ask them to do the same.

Listen to the serum of these words.

Hope

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

~ Lisel Mueller ~
(Alive Together: New and Selected Poems)

Thank you Steven, for taking time to share

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Transformation Foundation

We know that change is the only constant. But what about when we want a certain change and it constantly feels impossible?

There have been periods in my life when I embraced the possibility of change with wholehearted enthusiasm. I stretched myself to venture into foreign terrain (figurative and literal), open to anything that emerged within me and around me. I felt myself growing, evolving, and I reveled in the shifts. Life was good!

Perhaps that perspective was most profound in my twenties, when I had little responsibility and an wanderlust spirit. I pushed myself into my personal, scary places and lived the proof that I could rise to the challenge and thrive.

In my forties now, with a few more bills to pay and a much more sedentary life, I can appreciate some mellowness. I don’t feel the call to walk the edge of metaphorical cliff sides as much anymore. Yet in this comfort zone there has still been a longing.

There are things I want to change. Ways I want to grow. Habits I want to let go of. Bigger dreams I want to be living. Contributions I want to share with the world.

For a few years now, I’ve been aware of things I’ve wanted to change but felt helpless to make any truly authentic shifts. I can read plenty of inspiring words by the masters on how anything is possible, that change can happen in an instant, yet I haven’t been able to apply this wisdom to my everyday life. I can glance up from that metaphysical book of sage advice, see Jeb’s muddy footprints stamping a path to his bedroom door, and be gripped with impatience, anger, and frustration. Who cares about enlightened words, I just mopped the floor!

So how to make real change?

For so long I just haven’t felt strong enough. The yearning for the change, coupled with the repeated experience of everything playing out in the same old, painful way has been deeply disheartening. I’ve struggled in this reality for a good while now. It has seemed my mind has not been powerful enough to hold the shift. That my heart has not cracked open deeply enough to completely transform.

So recently I rested the heart and mind and tried the body. It is my vehicle, after all, and it’s with me every day. I chose to dabble in biochemistry. Stop putting certain substances in, start putting specific plants in. The results (40+ days into this experiment) have been remarkable.

I promise every post here on the Archives won’t be about superfood ingestion, but these are my chronicles of the everyday, and these days I’m fueled by phyto-nutrients that are shifting my consciousness and assisting in the changes I’ve been struggling for years to make.

As if by magic, I don’t have to tightly will myself to be patient with Jeb’s red-dirt footprints, I’m just less tense about it. Rather than hurrying to the post office, hoping I don’t see anyone I know in this small town, because I’ve got things to do and I don’t have time to stop and chat, and I don’t really feel that great today anyway, so I just don’t want to make connections with anyone… (yes, that was my day-to-day for a long time).

Rather than that, I’m open. I’m in a more relaxed space in the post office parking lot. My schedule demands haven’t necessarily lessened, but I’m much more available to seeing someone I know (or even someone I don’t). When I do cross paths with a friend, I ask how they are doing and I genuinely want to hear.

I’m not forcing my heart to have more interest in my fellow humans because I should. It’s because I want to.

This is an organic shift within me that I am simply observing with an intrigued curiosity. What changed? My food. That’s it. And by simply changing my food, the world within and without has shifted.

I think about the fat, bulbous, low-crawling caterpillar devouring plant-life in order to spin a cocoon. Does it have awareness of its mission? Does it know what it’s working to become? Or is it simply acting on ignorant instinct?

Regardless, those plants fuel an alchemy that would be unbelievable if we didn’t see its living proof. A radical transformation occurs, taking that thick and squishy body and changing it into a gossamer-winged, flying flower of delicacy. From crawl to flight. A completely altered organism. One and the same, but totally different. Evolved. Reimagined.

I’ve been gorging on the greens, and now I think I’m emerging from my cocoon. It’s a whole new way of being in the world.

I can be a stubborn, skeptical, worry-prone, doubter sometimes. But I held out a little hope when I friend suggested that superfood fuel had given her some wings. I’m so grateful to have met her on the path and followed that arrow she was pointing in the direction of superfoods.

I want to offer the same signpost for anyone that is wrestling with change. Affirm here, that yes, change is possible, and the body can be the foundation for that transformation.