I've written three books, each a part of my journey to elderhood. Now with this blog my intention is to give a moment to moment accounting of my life as it is now, and now, and now. I'm a leader and student of Sensory Awareness, and a practitioner of Rosen Method. I believe in the connective and collective power of Love.
When I again drove to the Civic Center for my second shot of the vaccine, tears of gratitude came just like last time. There are three check-ins staffed by happy volunteers. My flashing St. Patrick’s Day shamrocks added to the mood though I wasn’t the only one flashing green.
There was a slight delay as the vaccines were late and no one complained. Disneyland may have once been called the happiest place on earth, but I can tell you these vaccination sites outpace that by a zillion times.
Last time Adrian vaccinated me and today, David, a retired doctor.
I walked out and felt I was seeing differently, more expansively, gratefully. It’s quite an operation and a heart-lift of gratitude for the energy that brings us all together to save and protect as many of us as possible.
Where I live we are moving into a loosening up as more people are vaccinated. When might we get together? How will that feel and be? We’ve been cocooned, and what is it now to open up and out and spread our wings? Trees are budding and flowers are blossoming. Spring is in the air. I’m reminded of Wind in the Willows when Mole smells the fresh air and goes to the river where he meets Rat, and they fool around in a boat and become friends.
I woke this morning thinking of the famous picture of the two people kissing at the end of World War II. There was a clear end. This is different, will be and has been a gradual opening and then closing, and of course, we’re hoping this opening will continue to expand.
Meanwhile it is for each of us to feel our way to how we step back into a wider world of personal touch and connection.
I’m with these words from the Gospel of Thomas.
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
May we all bring forth what is within us, honoring there.
Michael Atkinson led sensory awareness yesterday on Zoom and I and others were deeply affected. I believe his intention was expansiveness and connecting with and extending what we might perceive of as boundaries. We began holding a blanket in one hand, two hands, hands extended palms up, and I felt how when my feet fully feel and connect with the ground, the blanket is light and connection is effortless. He spoke of movement as gesture, gesture for in and the world, gesture in and for ourselves. Play with it. I was up in the night playing with movement as gesture and what that does to head, mouth, ears, eyes, and my connection with a wider world. Perhaps you needed to be there, or perhaps not, but see what that one word – gesture does for you today as you celebrate an irrational number that goes on and on circling and enlivening our nights and days.
I’ve never seen a square rock so round your corners today and sing of circles
I’m baking pies because tomorrow is Pi Day, a day to celebrate the consistency and wonder of the circle. Where would we be without circles?
The importance of pi has been recognized for 4000 years. By 2000 B.C. the Babylonians and the Egyptians recognized the constant that every circle has the same ratio of circumference to diameter which is 3.14 and counting. By the start of the 20th century, about 500 digits of pi were known. With computation advances, thanks to computers, we now know more than the first six billion digits of pi.
So think 3.14 and go from there on March 14th.
Here are some images to delight, as you make or buy a pie to celebrate.
This morning I woke feeling myself sinking calmly into a pond, anchored like the lotus, content to sink into mud, and then, I thought of mushrooms and mycelium, mycelium running all through the earth, connecting, unseen, and then, I felt myself as that reproductive body, the mushroom, popping up and out with rain. We’ve had rain.
I should check my yard and see what’s growing there but now in this moment, sprouts rise and bloom from my heart.
I feel content these days. Garrison Keillor writes of that place. Perhaps it’s a Midwestern thing that signals connection with a few, and yet …
Ken McLeod in Reflections on Silver River writes this:
As my teacher once said, “If you could really take away the suffering of everyone in the world, taking all of it into you with a single breath, would you hesitate?”
And then he introduces Tonglen meditation as a way to begin.
Today I float up and down like a jellyfish trusting immersion in my environment and unfolding in and as what comes and goes.
We learn that Ebi, the rescue greyhound, did race. She was in 15 races and won one. She wasn’t even two years old. No wonder she’s so grateful to just snuggle now. Racing dogs are kept in crates. The girl crates are on top of the boy crates.That’s their life, a crate and a chance for a sprint. That’s it.
Her name was Super C Rumor, a rather odd one. I like Ebi.
I watched the movie Awakenings last night. It was my third time, and again, like with Ebi, it leads me to wonder what is this immersive connection called life. Bella is here on the chair next to me. I’m caressed by her curled sleep of contentment, her breath.
It rained in the night and more rain comes. I feel the streambeds fill and roots reach for water to drink, cleanse, and raise. Offering abounds.
I read that this year is just like last year only this year we have toilet paper. Ah, and one can only laugh and the rain pours down, pure grace.
Friends are going through chemotherapy right now which may be why I’ve wondered what to post. My experience comes back, and I remember the beauty of connection, the clarity and gratitude that we are all one and we do a great deal to save the life of another.
Lately I’ve been with the uniqueness of each one of us, the uniqueness of our experience and perception.
Recently I read The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. As reading does, it allows one entry into the mind of another, a man with Aspergers. It’s laugh out loud funny in places and yet there’s a deeper stream of compassion and strength holding it all together. Though it’s a trilogy, I only read the first book. It was enough, and I’m with enough these days, knowing enough.
I’m grateful to be alive and well and able to feel the reverberations of all we create and share as we balance the tides and embrace and release with care.
Ebi, the rescue greyhound, thinks she’s a Lap Dog.
The De Young museum is opening up in San Francisco. I feel such hope when I’m in a museum and then walk outside to see what we endeavor to capture in a frame or form. The museum is presenting a conversation between Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso. I’ve always related to Calder, especially his mobiles.
Alexander Calder wrote: “The Universe is real, but you can’t see it. You have to imagine it.”
In 1951, Calder observed: “At that time and practically ever since, the underlying form in my work has been the systems of the Universe, or part thereof. What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form.”
Picasso in Life with Picasso wrote: “If one occupies oneself with what is full, that is, the object as positive form, the space around it is reduced to almost nothing. If one occupies oneself primarily with the space that surrounds the object, the object is reduced to almost nothing. What interests us most – what is outside or what is inside a form?“
I sit here now, a perceived form, feeling size and shape, texture and vibration, moving in and out celebrating the changing fields I influence and am influenced by. I swing and am swung, interacting fields of exchange. Gratitude ribbons the chains.
John Muir –“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
It’s another beautiful morningandI’m with the news which is sobering.
Heather Cox Richardson points out:
Today’s biggest story about the previous administration, though, came from the Senate hearings about the January 6, 2021, attack, held before the committee of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the committee on Rules and Administration. While there is still confusion about what happened when, it became clear that there were some serious lapses in the protection of the Capitol, and it appears those lapses originated with Trump appointees in the Pentagon.
From another source: During this moment of crisis — an attempted coup in the Capitol — the defense secretary and the Army secretary were “not available,” Walker testified.
As I struggle to understand, to stay in a place of peace, I find comfort and support in these words of Rachel Naomi Remen.
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence.
Our days continue exquisite with such a clear circling of movement as the sun rises and sets, and the moon is still a shining orb in the morning.
CA law is now requiring sensitivity training for companies with five employees. Steve fulfilled the requirement yesterday, on-line of course.
California law requires all employers of 5 or more employees to provide 1 hour of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to nonsupervisory employees and 2 hours of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to supervisors and managers once every two years.
Steve then learned the company that created the training is right across the street from his office in the old post office. It’s a small world.
I’m thrilled with the requirement and again it makes it hard to reconcile with a former president who clearly violated all sense of decency, and with his blatant lies still does. I’m working with balance today, grateful for increasing teaching and awareness, and mind-boggled at how a man, any man, can spout lies without consequence over and over again.
And I’m with the sun and the moon, grateful to be alive.
I’m keeping David Whyte’s beautiful book Everything Is Waiting for You, here on my desk. Today I light on this poem. May poetry find you today.
