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iNTERSTiTiALiTY of Being Alone

1/15/2014

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There is nothing more interstitial than being alone. Really alone. I mean out and out stuck in the middle of the Sahara Desert between a strata of a bazzilion grains of sand below and an equal amount of stars in the sky above. The only sound a rustling of the wind through your ears and a few dry, scrubby plants. Your only companions are, again, the dry, scrubby plants, rocks, maybe a few birds, and if you are really lucky some other four or six leggeds that scurry about. 

Sit for three days and nights in the Sahara with nothing to distract you -  no iPod, computer, Facebook, television, etc. - and being alone takes on even greater intensity. With no technology to suck your attention, you not only sit with the vastness around you, but also with the grand array of voices within that have long been vying for your attention. 

Is it scary? You answer that question. You can't know until you experience it. I offer that being alone is something anyone can do without going half way around the world. You can be alone any time, in any place, but how often do you welcome being alone? That is the challenge. 

Try it some time. Start simple. Do things while being alone, but do things that take you out of your comfort zone. Here's sweet, poetic advice on How to Be Alone by Tanya Davis. Take a risk and exercise your being alone muscles. See what strength it builds.

How To Be Alone


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Nature of iNTERSTiTiAL

9/11/2013

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Allow me to share my musings about a most extraordinary word - "Interstitial". I learned of this word during my invertebrate zoology class in college. It was introduced while describing interstitial fauna - tiny organisms (see the illustration) that inhabit spaces between individual sand grains. MICHAEL ALLABY. "interstitial fauna." A Dictionary of Zoology. envisioned creatures gliding through an environment filled with obstacles, constantly bumping into particles. These species adapted by living in the interstices; moving around in the spaces, thriving amongst the huge grains (at least from their perspective).

Years later the word interstitial bubbled up from the deep recesses of my memory. This time I was pondering the idea from a more human perspective of living life around, amongst, and between the obstacles of life. Like the fauna that innately flow in the interstices of sand grains, what about life flowing in the midst of the obstacles that arise? In other words, working through life's blockages, barriers, and insurmountable challenges not by ignoring or wishing them away, but by delving deeper into the interstices of one's heart and soul where innate wisdom resides

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Life can suck. I've been mired in the dark side and sometimes quite unwilling to extract from the large, heavy walls I build around my heart for protection. I have a pretty strong voice inside of me that likes to dwell in those walls, even though I long for the light. My ego is a strong task master to all the other voices inside of me that love to resist change.

But when you "let the soft animal of your body love what it loves*," obstacles start to feel less dense. Instead of inflexible, stubborn resistance steeped in ego and "supposed-to-be's", there comes a willingness to let go into the interstices. At first it may feel like falling into a vast void of uncertainty, losing any sense of control, but, I ask, how certain is life...really? Step into the iNTERSTiTiAL Heart...…

*from Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese":
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


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    The Interstitial Heart
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    (Photo: Richard McCall)

              AUTHOR

    Lisa D McCall is a Life Coach, former zoologist/animal
    behaviorist, dabbling in cultural anthropology, trained in international health, with a peripatetic nature. It's been a wending and winding life around, amongst, and between, because frankly, straight and narrow eventually gets boring... 
    This BLOG explore all things interstitial



    Picture
    Switzerland Sky (ldm)
    THE  SUN  NEVER  SAYS
    "Even After
    All this time
    The sun never says
    to the earth,
    'You owe Me."
    Look What happens
    With a love like that,
    It lights the Whole Sky.
       -Rumi        

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    "Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."
    David Whyte, from the poem Sweet Darkness

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    Picture
    The Guest House
    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.
     A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.
     Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they are a crowd of 
     sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still,  treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new  delight.
    The dark thought, the shame, the malice.meet them at the door laughing  and invite them in. 
    Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide
      from beyond.
     -- Rumi

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    (Photo: Debbie Williams)
                                      
         Lisa D. McCall © 2014 - All Rights Reserved