Author: Gin Getz

It’s what I do.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Today it rains. It is like an exhale, gentle, letting out, letting go. A soft, easy rain, like tears, not from grief, just from a heavy burden. And sometimes you simply need to cry, to stop holding it in. The sky understands, offering just enough to dampen my dirty jeans, but not darken the earth into which I dig with calloused hands.

Yes, I am still writing. Still. I am ready to be done with this book, but the words are not there yet. Finish what you start. I do. Slowly.

I am not fast, can’t sit still for long, have other things that call me like irrigating fields, growing food, baking bread and working with the horses.

Distractions. Balance. Completing the bigger picture that paints my world.

That bigger picture. I look around, and at my empty hands, wondering what I have to contribute, to give, from this simple quiet life I live, and see that in my palms, I hold wonder.

Words. Giving. Receiving. Listening. Sharing. Holding space sincerely.

Is this enough?

Are we enough?

The simple life is never as easy as we make it look.

I live along the river yet have yet to take time to swim. Things don’t grow looking like this.

“What do you DO?” they ask, a question we smile at, rather than respond to.

If you know, you know…

Some days its more complicated than I can handle, at least, that is how it feels right now, weighing heavy, that burden, those tears, when what I want is to feel light and expansive and free.

Life as a worker bee.

Entangled with the soul of a poet.

And with the sometimes turbulent tossing of two sides of the coin that is me, I look around and within and still see I wouldn’t want to trade my life for anyone’s. So if it means I’m slower, I’m slower.

And the other side of my coin says: yes but… I am ready to finish what I started. It is time.

And so I hole up, bring my gaze back from the river and garden and horses, and with a dog on each side of the stool on which I perch to write, I dive in. Leaping. Weaving my net along the way.

And I remind myself as I braid my life, of the expansiveness of creativity. To have the courage to choose that which over-rides the constriction and restriction of fear, insecurity and anxiety. Creativity by its very nature is expansive, inclusive. Rather than shutting down and out, it opens to and of. Creativity is the radical act of awakening imagination and inspiration.

Create, my friends. Create. Maybe it will be beautiful.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Next!

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Sharing some deep thoughts, as I’m known to do – and a slew of photos as I’ve not taken the time to check in for a couple weeks. Three years since getting my first phone and setting up this Facebook account, and I can’t say I’m really rocking it. Nor especially keen on it yet.

The last few weeks found me polishing up the proposal for A Long Quiet Ride. Now it’s time to kick it out of the nest and see if it can fly… time for magic and prayers… while I move onward, back to burnishing the rest of the manuscript.

What’s next?

For now, I intend to have my cake and eat it too but I’ll explain what that means when I figure it out.

What’s next? I don’t mean what adventure. What move. What I’ve got planned. Or even what horse. If you’re curious, ask me. Though I don’t know if I have the answers.

What’s next? What I want to share is that deeper thing. A thing about life, or rather, stages of life.

How’s this for a stage?

I read recently that menopause is going from taboo to trendy, so hang in there while I bring it up. (Still feels like forbidden fruit to me, and maybe just as dangerous.)

What happens after you step out of the stage of life that was the transformation from The Mother to… The Matriarch? Or is it the Crone? Or is it something else entirely?

Call it what you will, it happens. Thank God. You do leave menopause behind. At some point you look around, with an unfamiliar sense of brilliant clarity, and realize you slipped out of the sticky skin the She Dragon had enwrapped you in.  

And then… who are you now?

That is a lot of what ALQR is about – trying to figure out who the hell I am and the how the hell I got here.

We go through stages of life like that – stages that shake us up like an Etch-a-Sketch, and when we’re done, the screen is clear and it’s time to draw ourselves anew.

Am I there yet?

Do we ever arrive?

Where I am at is where I want to be. But here and now is ever changing.

If in fact we do only have this one wild and precious life, I intend to make it very wild and very precious. So far so good.

What do I choose? Do we have to choose? Either way I win.

And yet, I wonder why at nearly sixty I still feel so far from… what is it? Grown up? Together?  Settled down? Mature – at least in the way that word held meaning when I was growing up?

Well, at my age I can make my own definition, thank you very much.

I’m not much of a practical, stable, sensible shoe sort of gal. I color outside the lines.

At the same time, I look forward to being the old wise one – when I get there. The crone being the stereotypical model of that woman. Long gray hair, deep wrinkles, gnarled fingers, and soul seeped in her eyes. I am getting there. But I am not there yet. I am not her yet.

In the meantime, where am I? Who am I? What I see when I look around makes me smile. This is good.

Perhaps it is another stage. Or is it the time in between? The ever living Bardo of transformation that life seems to be.

There’s more to many of us than maiden, mother, matriarch or crone. Simplified by the triple goddess moon like the tattoo inked on my shoulder at a shop in El Paso when I was working at a midwifery clinic, where helping women birth brought it all together with pain and bliss and blood.

Whatever it is, it’s a good place to be. A good stage of life. And sure as hell beats the last one.

We are left to create ourselves and define our lives, beyond the constricting parameters of labels and title and roles. Define ourselves. Be ourselves. Not based on others opinions, judgments, assumptions, or social norms. I’ve never been big on normal.

Why must we be defined and confined? Rather than simply step from one neat and tidy box to the next, get messy. Have fun. Play around with your life. Kick the cardboard, set your spirit free, and soar beautifully. That’s how we each can make the world a more beautiful place.

Have the courage to create. Your self. Your dreams. Your life. Your way.

Begin and watch the universe unroll before you, welcoming you to your true nature, your highest and best self, the best you can show up with and bring to this beautiful world.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Where I’m at.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

The past couple months have found me at Riverwind, grounded, silent, content. Humbled before soil and seeds and starts in the ever blooming garden. Humbled before the cold blue screen upon which a story breaks ground and grows. Both need nurturing, tending, feeding and weeding, digging in and turning entire sections over. And then it begins to come together. In the garden, glimmers of hope seeing every bed brought back to life with a new season of beauty and bounty. On my computer, the story begins to fold to close (though the editing process remains ridiculously consuming still).

The security and stability I have spent much of my lifetime searching for, figuring I would find the answers I longed for in a place. As if place defined me. Instead it confined me.

The radical act of lifting boundaries and flying free.

And the paradox of finding freedom in place.

I am challenged to find the answers within, crafting my own, rather than clinging to an outside source.

Oh yes, I soften my gaze. Look around and within while remaining in place. Until your wings have dried and spread and you feel what wind can do to them. Then you soar. And that’s okay too. You can’t see the bigger picture from inside your box.

Fling open the door wide and set the gates of your spirit free.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Seeing green.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Simply sharing the view back home from our big back yard.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

The view from outside the circle.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one out there, on the outside, looking in, and you wish you could be in there too.  In the circle. A part of it all. Accepted. Allowed. Included. Embraced.

But maybe that’s not where you belong. And you remind yourself it’s okay. And that you’re not the only one. There’s a lot of us satelliting society. Not quiet fitting in to the norm. Maybe that is the norm.

Remember, stars were born in darkness, creativity sparks in stillness, passion takes root in the void.  Some of us need silence. That’s the only way our souls can sing. Maybe being on the outside isn’t such a bad place after all.

Somewhere out there, beyond the circle. Apart.  In your own unique space. Loving the time, the place, the peace and calm, the beauty and space for the imagination to roam wild. And maybe that’s where the circle extends after all.

Since completing my Long Quiet Ride, several people have shared links to other folks who are doing or have done long rides. Seems like lots of folks out there are doing it. Maybe what I did and am writing about isn’t so special after all, though it sure felt huge at the time. And as I am deep in the throes of writing about it, it is not feeling any smaller.

Still it was a long, quiet ride. Quiet was a prevailing theme. Most of it was not shared. I couldn’t share it. First because I didn’t want to get in trouble for being where I was and going the way I went. Second because I chose to remain present, with my horses, where I was, with the people I was meeting – not distracted by a screen. But most importantly, it was not something to be shared at that time. It was an inner journey as much as an outer one. No, even more so. It was a pilgrimage more than an adventure. Something not meant to be shared until the trip is behind you and has settled into your weary bones and weathered skin and well-earned graying hair.  

It is tempting to compromise one’s trip for recognition and financial support – but that is a different trip.  I was encouraged to make it a TikTok challenge –  and though the idea of being “something” and “someone” tempts us all, truth is, dancing center stage is not my trip and so I bowed out. I think I’m one of those who dances like no one looking because I believe no one is. At least most of the time. Bob looked. And I’m glad he did and still does.

The story I’m writing about and will share with you soon is something I did for me – proving myself to myself. I’m  too old to still be trying to prove myself to others. At least, I should be over that. By now I should have learned to live without acceptance and approval from family, community, society – though I think we’re hard wired to want and even need those things. It’s survival. Fitting in. Being a part, not apart.

Some things we never outgrow.

Some of us never did fit in.

The outlaw, outcast, outliner, drawing outside the lines, living outside the circle.

It’s not what we want, but at some point, we accept who we are, and learn to revel in the freedom it brings.

Those of us outside the circle dance in the stars rather than with the stars.

What if there were no boundaries? Nothing to contain us, define us, confine us? What if it was all open space and we were all in it together?

Opening the circle.

We see the same moon.

We breathe the same air.

I am not separate from you.

I will not turn my back, close my eyes , close my heart.

May I forever be the curious child. Reveling in the sovereignty of days before assumptions, separations, road blocks and blinders closed my circle.

May I always be able to open a conversation, a harmonious song, a melody blending notes, a whole composition, as a holy act. Dare to dream of a life exempt of boundaries and barbed wire, locked gates and closed hearts.

Instead, having the courage to craft an open circle big, broad, wild and free.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Simply silver and gold.

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Call me simple – and indeed, I strive to be – but I’m not a colorful gal. Black and white is more my thing. Give me a gray sky any day when aspen are turning gold or I just stand there and stare overwhelmed.

This week has been colorful. Oddly enough, or so it still seems to me, inundated with the color green. Something you get a lot of here in the far northwest of California. Nothing I’m used to seeing in southern Colorado since the beetle kill decimation fifteen years ago or so. I wish I could capture it better in images to share with you now, but my camera doesn’t work well in the rain. And rain remains a prevailing theme. Rather I’ll try to capture it all in words.

In blue nights

White washed over in shades of grey

I dream of blood red days

And yet I awaken

Finding myself held

In a sea of dazzling green

Lush wet grass from last night’s rain

Into which I plunge

Letting it permeate my rawhide skin

As I lay back in damp darkening jeans

And heavy rubber boots

While over me fog hangs molten silver

Until sky is pierced with a golden sword

And emerging through steel mornings

The vibrant verdant bowl that holds me

Is suddenly awash in flaxen light

Though maybe my mood remains magenta.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Ode to the soil.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I’ve spent more time than usual sitting the past few weeks, the only way to gain momentum and leap ahead with progress on a book. It’s working. But you know what they say about all work and no play.

I reward myself with time in the garden. Sipping hot tea while wandering through the rows, touching and talking to tender growth. Tending to spring crops, watering the greenhouse, planting cover crops, spreading wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost and manure – manure that has been ritually shoveled every day without exception that I am home, for the well being of the horses and health of soil. This is why the garden grows.

Most days it’s hard to tear away and return to work.

Right now I lay on the grass with my fingers penetrating the soil like little rounded trowels, pulling a weed, disturbing an earthworm, connecting with soil and space.

Soil is humbling. A basic need. From which it all grows. Life, hope and dreams.

Funny how one learns to love their soil.

The dogs traipse it in after every rain. It lingers under my nails, between my toes and the creases of my soles are emblazed with it. It also grows my food and feeds my soul and brings the community of life, wild life, together.

Digging deep into the soil now, I pause to watch the earthworms wriggle around wanting to return to the cold, moist black gold they have helped me build.

Couldn’t find one worm when we moved here. They may have been there hiding, but in my haste I ordered a bag online (yes, you can buy live worms) and got the magic moving.

Couldn’t find a garden either, of course, because there wasn’t one back then.

Now, nearly seven years later, I look around and can’t say I created this unless I am some magician – though often it feels like there’s magic here – I simply helped awaken it, brought it to life, and moved a helluva lotta dirt along the way.

I’m grateful for the experience of witnessing the awakening of the land, as if it were waiting, just waiting, to be tended to.

It is an honor to be steward of the land. Growing respect and responsibility to leave land better – healthier and more beautiful – than how it was found.

It all pays off – not just in ways you want and what you can get out of it. You must ask yourself: what can I give the soil, not just what can I get in return.

And oh, I get so much.

A  beautiful place.

A healing place.

A sacred space.

It is far beyond the food it provides. It’s the nourishment it brings body and even soul, feeding the collective realm – beneficial bugs and birds, earth worms, grass that welcomes bare feet and rolling dogs, and clover that will shine all summer to feed the bees and reaches down into deep dark places, sharing some secret goodness with the soil.

And yet, it does provide. Bountifully. It might not be a gourmet grocers produce dept all year, but it is plenty. We eat simply. Seasonally. I am hardly lacking. I may not have a tomato in April but my artichokes have already started, the asparagus are almost obscene, there’s onion and garlic greens and last year’s leeks, lettuce overwintered in the greenhouse, spinach just about ready, kale left from volunteers that reseeded in last year’s cover crop, cauliflower cabbage broccoli fresh chard and kale nearly ready to be shared, and last spring’s chard has yet to bolt.

And then the crown jewel of the soil, of the garden. Next week begins the show. Well over thirty rose bushes will begin to share their abundance. The symbiotic relationship with soil in all its glory, ever growing.

Oh, the beauty, bounty and blessings of soil!

Alright, woman… go back inside and get to work…

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Unfurling.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I’m trying to keep this short and sweet. But lo and behold, you know my tendency leans towards long and deep. And often a little dark.

It’s a section I’m working on from A Long Quiet Ride.

Something I was going through then.

The motivation for that journey. Kinda like the cattle prod or kick in the butt that drove me down the road.

I didn’t really understand this then.

It’s hard to have clarity when we’re fully fixated on just trying to stay afloat.

It takes time, safety and love to look back and figure thing out.

And then… write about them.

Alas today in the still dark morning at the kitchen table by candle light, the pen poured red across the journal page.

A few thoughts emerged from that mess. Bare with me as I untangle the fragile, sticky thread.

I’m at that threshold, facing transformation.

It is the day that breaks me down. One of them. There are a few.

Tomorrow I will mop up the pieces. I get a lot of practice with that part, too.

In the meanwhile, I’m standing there, vulnerable, exposed, naked if you will. Torn open from the soul.

Wondering how many more layers of the onion must I peel. What else can I release? What else will I lose?

I want someone to peel the skin from my snake, crack the shell open and let my chick emerge. But we both know part of the process is painful.

If every day we die, some days more than others, than every day we can be reborn.

Birth isn’t easy. It’s messy, you know.

Transformation can be painful.

Leap, the story goes.

The first step I took toward facing who I was becoming, was almost my last.

Like Alice, I fell, and fell, and fell.

Finally finding myself on solid ground, barefoot I stepped onto the frigid deck in the tenebrous storm.

The only light was something still within me, scarcely flickering.

And then the wind stirred the spark, barely bringing it to flame.

And slowly, something within me raged. Transformation ignited.

Rising, somewhat slow and feeble. Nothing powerful and profound like the Phoenix I would have liked to be.

More like a delicate butterfly recently emerged from the sticky cocoon

Slowly unfurling damp delicate wings

Waiting for first light

To see what the net she wove, her chrysalis, did.

~

The birthing of the Crone.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Let it bleed.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

This old photo popped up online recently. Always liked it. (Thank you, Bob, for taking it probably 18 years ago.) And always loved that horse. Quatro. I used to call him my Marlon Brando. My bad boy. In a good way. He could step out like no one’s business. And flip around faster than a flapjack if I got the pack line under his tail.

He is long gone. It happens. We grow. We age. We die. Our horses even faster than us. Our dogs even faster than horses. We hold them all dear in that box found beside our heart, maybe a part of our heart. A secret place no one knows but you. Mine is full. So full. Too full it feels at times as I cram more pain, more heart ache, more loss and regrets, and always more love, compressed with time and tears and a tinge of bliss.

I imagine mine to be a small metal box, with lock and key, perchance like an old diary I had as a young girl back in the 70s into which I poured out my pre-teen grief. That diary turned out to be no more than cardboard and was easily torn open one day in fifth grade by Paul Procnoun whose desk was right behind mine. I still remember his name. A wanna-be boyfriend. It didn’t charm me. What do we know about love at age ten beyond if you are loved, or loved not enough? This was his way of expressing a crush on me.

I was crushed.

It ripped open a part of me.

Sharing is still hard to do.

I’m sitting here trying to write A Long Quiet Ride. This morning started my third re-write. Is turned out to be harder than I planned (most things are), and taking far longer (most things do).

Sharing.

How do I share what I saw out there? What I did? Who I met? How I felt? Stories of the kindness of strangers. And the blindness. And the often unorthodox way we made our way through.

Stories.

That is all I have to share. And yet it frightens me at times to do so. Like ripping open your head, your heart, the past. It hurts in a place I cannot see but from which I cannot tear myself free.

As Ernest Hemingway may or may not have said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

I am bleeding.

And for those of you who are writers, you’ll understand this: My darlings are bleeding too.* I am killing them. One by one. They disappear from pages, screaming with a light bright blue highlight on their way out. Vanishing into a sky of white screen.  

So begins re-write number three, in a pool of blue blood as mine pours forth forever fiery red.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

* Thank you, Marc, for the reminder…

A teaser.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

I guess this is called a teaser. From “A Long Quiet Ride”… words in the works.

I lay in bed, sheets warm and worn, pacified by gentle wind from open bedroom windows. I’m listening to the song of the river and my husband’s gentle breath. He lays beside me, still asleep, limbs still intertwined, back to belly, belly to back. My nose in his neck taking in his familiar scent of sawdust and hay. The lullaby of crickets and tree frogs slowly fades into the chatter of early awakening birds, wrens and robins, phoebes and flickers, as the sky begins to take on color with fomenting light, and the honey fragrance of flowering madrone find its way in moving air through yawning windows.

Here I am. Sleepless beside my sleeping man. Listening to white noise drifting up through morning’s breath. Serenaded by the ever background murmur of flowing water over anchored rocks, reverberating with the promise of perpetuity.


Somewhere already out there, my thoughts ramble though my body remains still, savoring the familiar. This bed. The wind. The warmth. The fragrance. The old dog, the young dog, both in their beds on each side of ours. Even the view of familiar curves like broad, ample hips as are the hills peering between waving oak leaves out the open window. I hold a little tighter to Bob and he lets out a dreamy sigh.

Ah, the carrot that lures the horse back to the barn. And the rider.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin