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!
Yesterday it was hot and clear here, but then, I felt the wind shift from east to west, and knew the fog was moving in on its journey to cool and embrace. The branches of the trees played in the breeze, and in an hour or so, I saw wisps on the ridge. In the next hour, all was completely gray, and in the night our motion detector kept lighting up with the sway of the trees. This morning when I rose, I was surprised to see fog only on the ridge, and then, 20 minutes later, it was gone. Impermanence.
I sway now gently, back and forth, forward and back, circling like bamboo, the symbol of enlightenment in Japanese gardens, or like kelp in the sea. Swaying, feeling, moved by breath. Memories filter through like the dance of fog, like mist, sprinkled with fairy dust.
And now I look again at 7:54. And so it goes, in and out, like breath.
A friend is retiring from her career as a therapist. As she comes to final meetings with long-term clients, she asks how to receive their gratitude and accolades. I sit with that as I look out on a beautiful blue-sky day. All is receiving. Being is receiving, Radiating is receiving. We live in relationship.
The flower opens to receive the bee.
Today I was in the Sausalito book store Books by the Bay talking to a friend who works there and who was just at the Monet Exhibit at the De Young. She read a poem to me, one I love, and hearing it read aloud is different than reading it silently and alone.
The poem is: “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52577/monet-refuses-the-operation-56d231289e6db
Yesterday I was in Sausalito. It’s even more welcoming with tables and chairs and a piano to play.
Walking around my neighborhood I crossed the bridge to Eastwood Park, and took a photo of the creek. When I looked at the photo, I saw a perfect reflection of the sky. I was brought to consider even more deeply my steps, and where I place my feet. The ground and I reflect.
Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom. She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.
She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out. I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air. My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.
Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid. When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.
As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again ..
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
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