I’m going through volumes of notes, both printed and on the computer.
I read that a Desire Path is “a term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn’t designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points”.
Isn’t that what we do when we allow our lives to unfold unplanned?
This morning I’m with: What is here when there is no problem to solve?
Listening to what’s around, then, opening and closing my eyes, I notice breath moving in and out, bringing clarity and peace.
It helps to counteract the news of Trump’s continuing and now blatant treason.
It also allows me to honor a young friend’s letting go. She is a treasure of a person who’s been battling cancer for ten years. Now, fifty years old, she will move from SF to North Carolina to live in an ADU on her brother’s property. She had a “goodbye party” Saturday night for her many friends who live here. Each friend received a magnet made just for them with photos of the two of them together .
Not everyone has the opportunity to say goodbye so clearly and generously or maybe, we do.
Rumi: Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.
We enjoyed an amazing weekend anchored by grandson’s seventh birthday celebration. My heart was touched watching six and seven-year-old boys gather together and figure out how to play the planned soccer in the shade. The theme was The World Cup. Then, when the day cooled, they moved to the soccer field.
My other son’s neighborhood is decorated for Halloween. I couldn’t resist photos of that. It’s a day to honor friendship, celebration, and the love that connects and honors us all. Nothing and no one ever trumps that.
We sat down together tonight to go through our ballots. Most choices were obvious, but not all, so we checked online and discussed and now our ballots are closed and signed, and ready to drop into a nearby ballot box.
Completing the task, I came to Einstein’s words recalling his father’s gift of a compass.
“A wonder of such nature I experienced as a child of 4 or 5 years, when my father showed me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into the nature of events, which could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (effect connected with direct “touch”). I can still remember – or at least believe I can remember – that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”
I’m with that as I vote. I want certainty, even though I read that unlike true north, magnetic north moves constantly. One source says: The North Magnetic Pole, located in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia, is drifting toward Russia at a rate of roughly 22 to 35 miles per year.
And yet, the Earth’s magnetic field lines point straight down vertically. And with that, I hope my vote aligns with my idea of morality, clarity, compassion, and ethics.
My friend Lee Klinger Lesser in her Substack Post shares about her wonderful journey through Japan. On the trip, they took a strenuous, four-day hike through countryside along the coast guided by “Walk Japan”. At one point, they’re walking along, tired and thirsty, when they entered a small town, and heard a truck with a sweet melody playing. Lee was reminded me of her childhood when the “Good Humor Ice Cream” truck would travel through the neighborhood. Thinking ice cream might be available, they looked around and saw a compact garbage truck stopping nearby. “A man came out with his garbage and put it into the truck. He and the driver gave a little bow to each other. Then the truck continued on its way.”
If you’d like to read more from Lee, here’s the link: https://leeklingerlesser.substack.com/p/protecting-our-humanity?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#media-de1dba9d-b807-4f81-9018-5daecc23cefc
I build momentum, and then, pause to notice and be with the steps.
Ram Dass:
Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?
Two realtors were just here to evaluate our home. They say it will sell. The question is our timing, motivation, and what we hope to receive. I feel ready. I have flat boxes in the garage. They put some together for me, and I come to this room, a room with a huge amount of books. I find two that can easily go, and then get caught up in The Poetics of Space, The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places by Gaston Bachelard. I read:
Anne Balif: “Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in deeply-rooted foundations.” She goes on to describe what a drawing of a house reveals. I sit with this as I think of what this house reveals about me. This house is beautiful, loved, and cared for. It’s safe. It’s protected us all these years. It’s private. We have wonderful neighbors. Why are we moving? I want to be closer to our grandson, and family. That’s the door-opening key.
And now I open On Art and Mindfulness by Enrique Martinez Celaya. What sparks in this choice to move? Am I lengthening the rays of my life like sunlight this time of year? Lengthening a place on which to stretch and listen to the wind?
From the book: Art reconciles the conceptual and the sensible and makes connections between ideas and world that are difficult to make otherwise. It reconciles aspects of experience that are rarely considered together. Take Michaelangelo’s Pieta: Is it marble? Is it death? Is it loss? Is it compassion? The power of the sculpture rises from the co-existence of all these questions.
And this move. Is it a sculpture that’s mine to mold and unfold?
If I’m a river, does the river ask where it’s going? It simply flows and navigates rocks and banks and eddies and either keeps going or stops. And now today, my task is to move books like stones, to enhance the song my river currently sings, and see what comes.
I’m reading the latest book on the Lewis and Clark expedition. It’s a more whole, incisive, and personal look at why it took place and who and what was involved. It’s the perfect book to honor the original people who were here, and how they lived. According to this, the native people didn’t eat dogs, though they did trade them to the Lewis and Clark group who, when hungry, did.
I recommend This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark by Craig Fehrman. I was hesitant to start reading, and now I’m riveted. Unfrostbitten and well-fed thumbs way up!
I woke early this morning but then thought it’s Sunday and a three day weekend, so just a little bit more. I fell into a dream that when I woke I thought my mother was alive. She was alive in the dream and so with me, and I feel her here now. Love. Support.
We bought this house in 1978. It was meant to be temporary. We both moved a great deal as children, and thought that was how life should be. Every few years, a new home, a new place, but then, we settled in and saw how wonderful it was to see our children’s friends grow into adults, to know long-term friendship and support. And, now, we’re getting older. We need to move. Yesterday I walked with a friend of 47 years at Rodeo Beach and we both agreed we want and need to live near our children. It’s time. Which brings me to the task of what it is to downsize.
In The New Yorker this week is a cartoon I cut out to put on my fridge. A couple is standing in front of their house looking at a Storage Pod container. The caption is “They grow up so fast – remember when it was just a little junk drawer?”
I think of vases. I have every size and color of vases. I love each one. Which ones are now released to travel out into new worlds? This morning’s dream supports me. My mother is here. Everything is here, and I’m full as I begin the task of spreading my wings, after cleaning each feather – and yes, I have a collection of feathers, rocks, and I’m full with the space for breath. I am a multitude, and as a multitude, I move along in the journey of breath becoming air.
The tide was pouring in so we couldn’t check out our usual haunts. Oddly it was low in the lagoon, though up by the ocean, and the whole beach was wet from the high tide before. Being with the ocean helps with the continuing shock of the political news.
Alan Watts: I think this is why I love the ocean. It’s the most difficult part of nature to mess up with emblems and symptoms of man’s dissociated consciousness. It’s an environment in which the awareness of our roots can awaken, in which space (so real because of the light and color) can be seen to be joining things instead of separating them. Yes. And I’ve just discovered that knocking on the wall of space and consciousness was my own heart beating.
When Anne Carson was informed she won the Nobel Prize in literature, there was a short talk and then the poet responded she was “in Iceland,” where she was “listening to the wind“.
What a beautiful response to winning such a prize.
It’s Fleet Week in San Francisco, and on a beautiful, warm, blue-sky day, the Blue Angels are rumbling the air overhead. I love seeing the response of the birds It’s as though they want to show how easily and relatively quietly it can be done.
Today I read there’s something in educational circles called the “400-word wall”. It seems after reading 400 words, not pages, words, people “begin to feel fidgety or need distraction or need to look at something else”.
I think most of us are noticing our attention span isn’t what it once was, but for me, this is even more motivation to stay with what I’m doing and “listen to the wind”.
