I’m reading Stefan Laeng’s Substack on Charlotte Selver and Sensory Awareness when I notice a helicopter flying back and forth overhead, flying between the ocean and Mt. Tam.  Then I smell smoke and get an alert about a vegetation fire.  Now, the alert says the wildfire is near Rodeo Beach where I almost went today.  Rodeo Beach is right over the ridge, so now my eyes are constantly looking up and watching the sky.  I walk outside and take some pictures.  I don’t see smoke but I am awake.  

My nose is wiggling in the air like Mole in Wind in the Willows when he’s called outside by the smells and sounds of spring.  This is a different smell, not the warm, comforting smell of a fire burning in the fireplace.  This is a call to alertness.  It’s primal.

I look at what I’ve been reading.  

Fritz Perls: We don’t have an organism.  We are the organism.  

Charlotte: So the question would be: is there a state possible in which we can be without watching and without observing—simply awake? Is there a state of awareness possible which is permitted through our whole self from head to foot? So that everywhere we can be aware?

What I have most learned in this work is what it is like to be there for what is needed. It is a very difficult thing to understand that the appetite for having and getting can be transformed into a giving. To the end of her life Elsa Gindler (Charlotte’s teacher) said, “What does this want from me?,” not “What do I want from it?”

I keep returning to Charlotte’s words: What does this want from me? And How do I meet what comes?  In this moment, I’m awake, listening, aware, alert.  A helicopter travels back and forth overhead.  And now the ding of a new alert. Forward progress of the fire is stopped and fire crews will remain on the scene. And helicopters continue to travel back and forth.