I was in Redwood City yesterday and spent time in Red Morton Park where my grandson was attending a half-day Circus Camp. I walked around amidst an array of summer camps: soccer, skateboarding, woodworking, baseball. The grounds are beautiful and there’s a new senior center. Rainbow Bridge playground is inspirational for all ages. I even slid down a slide.
Yesterday I visited a friend at a Skilled Nursing facility in San Rafael. Everyone was lovely, and I helped the physical therapist with rehab for my friend which was minimal and painful movement in her condition. The physical therapist emphasized touch, intention, and connection. She said to imagine the bones coming together to heal, to not speak the intention, but to imagine and visualize the movement. The body responds to pictures, images. We visualized water, bones flowing like water. In visualizing, we touch, heal, connect.
I then went to the Las Gallinas sanitation facility where there are reclamation ponds providing nesting areas and homes for birds, and respite for those who walk around the ponds, sit on benches, and photograph the scenery and birds.
And as I post, my phone alerts me to an earthquake detected. I’m advised to “Drop, Cover, Hold On, Protect Yourself”. And all seems calm in the moment. I hear my gate rattle but all seems intact. Life. Never dull these days. Invitations to notice and connect with what’s happening abound.
I love the fog but today, after my dentist’s appointment, I needed summer warmth and smells so I drove to the top of Mt. Tam.
Where I live we often hear sirens heading out highway 1, especially on the weekends. There’s always a feeling of sadness for whoever is affected and what has happened. One never expects it to be someone you know, but this time it was. A good friend fell asleep driving back from Commonweal. Her car went off the side of the embankment on Panoramic highway and her car with her in it fell and turned over for 200 feet. It was quite a rescue effort, involving our local agencies. She’s in the hospital and she’s alive. She will heal.
I sit with it. My father died in an accident. It brings up fragility, something I’ve lived with since I was 19. Like that, a person you love can be gone. Take care – give care to yourself and those you love.
We were married June 19, 1971 so 55 years ago. We celebrated by spending the night in Sausalito where I took a slew of photos, and this morning had great fun interacting with a Great Blue Heron. Being in Sausalito in the mist skews distances, so, at times, I felt as though I could have been here with the Coast Miwok sailing across the bay in a tule boat.
I walked Tennessee Valley early this morning in an environment wet with mist. I walked with these words from Neil deGrasse Tyson.
We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.
Immersed, I was surrounded with birds singing, flying, scurrying, feasting. I noticed the changing smells and the array of greens. I thought of algae changing the color of the reflecting pool in Washington D.C. to green. Plants rule, and yes, “the universe is in us”, and it’s for us to notice and live aware.
A photo of a mountain lion capturing a deer was temporarily removed from our local Nextdoor when someone complained about it being disgusting to show such violence. Now, it’s back and I think of the spectacle Trump allowed on the White House lawn so he could graft even more money and revolt most of us. I wonder how someone can see the cycle of life and find that in need of censorship, and not question what was allowed on the White House lawn on Sunday night.
To counteract the news of Trump and the horrors, lies and financial cost of him and his administration, I come to Anne Frank who died at the age of 15 after being sent to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen.
Anne Frank: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually turning into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Last night I was drawn to re-read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Perhaps it was a response to our White House being taken over by thugs.
Today on NextDoor I read that a mountain lion was caught on camera bringing down an adult deer by Eastwood Park, the park I walk to regularly. It was 7 PM so it was still light though the fog was embracing the ridge and valley in mist and gray.
The comments on the photo were on the grace of living here, of observing and living so clearly with transformation in nature and energy exchange.
Go to YouTube and watch The House of the Epstein Crimes. That may lead you to the grannies singing Things That Go Trump in the Night. The tide is turning. Celebrate!
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