Category: deep thoughts

  • sporty

    Because unipeds can be athletes, too (even those of us who suspected our sporty days were long past). Just sayin’
    :)
    Pic by John

  • canoeing


    Jana’s Outrigger Canoe., originally uploaded by mind on fire.

    Sitting in seat 4 in this picture as we’re bringing the boat into shore, just an hour or so after the first time I steered the boat on the open ocean. The swells were gentle and it was far easier than I thought it would be (a bit of irony in the picture: see my crutches lying in the blue boat cover to the left of the pic?)

    It’s actually a bit tough sometimes to paddle one-legged, simply because I can’t push with my right leg to get the trunk twist when I paddle on the left. But I’m holding my own and there’s something pretty exciting about doing a sport where what’s above the waist means more than what’s below.
    :)

    Pic by John, my own personal paparazzi

  • I love you.

  • a good deal


    rudebeckia at Alcott’s, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    I have travelled a good deal in Concord.
    – Henry David Thoreau

    I’m realizing today how much I love travel, how enticing it is now that airfares are low. To just go. To walk away from the familiar again. For awhile. (Boston & environs, you are calling my name)

    Pic taken just after touring the Alcott’s home in Concord with Sara and Sandra


  • It’s a rare thing to meet a kindred spirit, much less one whose body is so akin to my own and who knows the terrain of cancer even better than I.

    Sara, when I think of you I remember our adventure-filled days together, your amazing baked goods, your love for all things cat (especially that wily Sam-kitty), your persistence at living by your conscience, your cozy book-filled home with its crazy slope-y wooden floors and our sharing a rich dark brew while gazing out over your garden. And of course, paddling together down the Concord river last fall when the leaves were turning and the sun was so bright that it made my eyes water…just as they are now, upon learning of your death.

    You were beautiful and good and real. Thank you for sharing your self with me.

    Picture of Sara and me on the banks of Walden Pond, Fall 2007

  • Walt Whitman is my trump card…

    This weekend I played the bestest-evah game of “Apples to Apples” (and not to worry, I quickly converted everyone to Irvine-style rules…)

    And when I got home, as I reflected on the happenings of this weekend a phrase from a favorite poet came to mind:


    I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

    I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.
    ~Walt Whitman
    Leaves of Grass

    PS: pictures to come soon, I promise!!
    PPS: We found a most colorful way to send Brooke on her way to CT wrapped in the snaky love of sisterhood, several sistahs learned how to crochet by the power of inspiration, and we spent time a-plenty musing on p-words. Oh, and we had us a bit of R&R along the way. :)
    PPS: It’s so lovely to be home once again and to feel the safe arms of my beloved.

  • time to celebrate?

    I’ve been thinking, that maybe I need to have a wee bit of a party here in a couple of weeks. To mark the anniversary of this event, and to celebrate health.

    This morning as I read through my entries from last April, my heart was pounding hard in my chest. Watching the events unfold day-by-day that led to my 6-month struggle to fight the infection in my leg (see here, here, and here)…was tough reading.

    And I am not taking even one day of health for granted now. Life is so delicious.

  • you are…


    dream rose, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    You are unlimited

    Or so says the note on my teabag this afternoon (love Yogi Tea for Meditation and their thought-provoking teatag quotations). It came at a good time, at a moment when I’m feeling rather finite and hampered by so so so much that need to get done.

    This rose is blooming in my garden right now and has a delicious grapefruit-rosy scent. Unlimited, indeed.

  • by any other name…

    John was sorting through a bunch of memorabilia last night that his mother shipped down to us. She’s downscaling and cleaning out the garage.

    It occurred to me as I saw John’s name on various articles, awards and papers, that his name is still the same as when he was a young’un (duh, but it was the first time I’d really felt the implications of that). When I see my name on the items from my youth, it feels like relics from a different person’s life–that of the girl known as Jana Bouck.

    I love my married name. I love it so much that I never for a second even considered keeping my given name (it’s French, it’s short, it’s easy to spell!). But it hadn’t hit me before…the loss of continuity from my girlhood self.

    Jana Bouck is relegated to the dusty boxes on our storage shelves. Jana Remy is me.

    PS: I think this is the first time I’ve written out my first and last names on my blog. That ought to send the search engines spinning my way with greater accuracy…(hoping I won’t regret it…)

  • question authority

    This weekend I scraped off the tattered bumper stickers from our car (Another Family for Peace, Live Simply so Others May Simply Live, and Just Say YES to Equal Marriage Rights) and put on three new ones. One of them, “Question Authority,” was John’s first choice. The others: a large peace symbol and “Consume Less, Share More” were more of my choosing.

    However I had a musing this morning that affirms the significance of the “Question Authority” slogan for me. As I was writing a comment on John’s post about the temple ceremony portrayal on the HBO show “Big Love,” I had a strong flashback of something that happened many years ago but almost made me cry as I recalled it today.

    I’m not someone who has a strong tie to talismans, but I do find that certain items bring back a lot of memories. For example, I can tell you when and where I’ve acquired every item of furniture, or books, or the plants in my garden…I love the stories of “things” (which is probably why I love my chosen profession so much).

    Many years ago John gave me a simple pair of earrings that had small white flowers dangling from them. I will emphasize the small part (I’d say there were about 4-5mm in diameter). Now those of you who’ve read my New Era story know that part of my affinity for flowers and gardens comes from a particular moment with my Dad when he gave me encouragement after my amputation surgery. So these small earrings that John gave me I wore to my Dad’s funeral and then every time after that it was in some small way linking me to my Dad and to that special moment that we shared. I took to wearing these earrings to the temple, given that they matched my white clothing nicely and because they reminded me of how special my Dad was to me and they represented my carrying his memory with me in a symbolic way. It seems silly now as I write this, but it was important to me at that time–I’d grieved so deeply when he died.

    So one day when I was stepping out of the dressing room at the temple and going to the area to wait for the next endowment session a female temple worker stopped me and told me that my earrings were inappropriate and I would have to remove them before I could pass into the ordinance areas of the temple. I questioned her lightly about why and explained that I’d worn them frequently in the temple before. “No dangly earrings are allowed,” she said firmly.

    I went back to my locker and curled up and cried as I took off the earrings. I don’t know what has happened to them since then and I don’t remember ever wearing them again.

    So many things in my life have happened that are beyond my control…the loss of my leg, the loss of loved ones, and a lifetime of related health problems. And for much of my life I submitted the dictums of LDS authority, surrendering much of the control of my life to the sometimes-arbitrary though often-institutionalized leadership of the church. Perhaps this is why I have some ‘control issues‘ now. There’s a headiness to being able to chart my own course and decide what I will wear and when, or what I will drink, or where I will spend my Sunday mornings.

    And today I put on these earrings before I even knew I’d be writing this post. They are reminding me of flowers, family, and how much some things change and how much some things stay the same.

    UPDATE: As I was teasing back the layers of this memory while I ate lunch on my back porch (love the new table!!), I remembered one more very salient detail: the temple experience happened during a time when John did not hold a temple recommend (because of his loss of belief) and I was going to the temple alone. The earrings were a tie from me to him to my father (a man whom he had loved and respected so much). Again, such a small thing, but it’s funny to remember how badly I was already wounded then and I was struggling to find comfort in the smallest of object and rituals. Of course I didn’t stop being LDS because some stranger didn’t like my earrings. But I was so fragile then and it couldn’t help but contribute to my feelings of sorrow, of loss, of doubt, and of weariness with a tradition that no longer gave me the strength for my journey.

  • but own it not…


    bright garden, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    I was reading a bit of Thoreau this morning (for a research proposal that I’m drafting) and came across this passage…

    We have complicated our lives by seeking so much more than is needed: “From the cave we advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and bough, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we do not know what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think…We no longer camp as if for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.”
    The design of our “shelter” has become superfluously complex and so expensive that it bankrupts our very existence: “the cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it.” To Thoreau’s way of thinking, how much better it is not to own a house–only to be enslaved to its care and upkeep–but to feel “at home everywhere” and anywhere! “Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. . . .Enjoy the land, but own it not.”

  • identity crisis

    Can someone help me figure out what this blog is about?
    Is it about being Mormon (or not)?
    About living simply?
    About an atypical OC family?
    About all the world that’s found in a flower photo?
    About procrastinating one’s dissertation writing?
    About a girl who hasn’t yet figured out that she’s all grown up now?