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.
Today simplicity softens as I look out and float on a trail of bunny tail clouds.
I’m reading a biography of Thomas Berry, and pause with his words.
Each of us is as old as the universe and experiences our greater self in the larger story of the universe. So we are as old as the universe and as big as the universe. This is our great self. We survive in our great self. Our particular manifestation is distinct from our universal presence to the total process. We exist eternally in our participation in the universe’s existence.
His words lift a weight off my shoulders as I rest and renew in words of John O’Donohue.
FLUENT
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
Outside my local grocery store, explanation of their Living Wall
I was slow to rise this morning, stayed in bed absorbing the fullness of yesterday, and now this new day, merged.
Yesterday, I left home early to arrive in Redwood City, sip a latte, walk around, and spend time in the library. I read and people-watched until my son Chris arrived and we enjoyed lunch and walking around the historic part of the town.
Sitting outside the San Mateo County Museum, we watched young people practice a variety of dance routines. It was a peaceful mix of people and ages. Then I went to the “Celebration of Life” which was beautiful and heart-filling.
This morning Steve and I watched our cat Tiger as he watched the morning come to light. He loves to sit seemingly participating in the change of light. He looks like a Zen master sitting there, absorbed, and maybe he is. He also loves to watch the moon as it moves across the sky and he calls to us to come out and be with him. Who would want to miss such a display?
When the lights in the house go out, he comes to bed.
I am with the subject of light because a few days ago I saw a photo of a sculpture titled “Addiction”.
The sculpture sits along the water in Amsterdam and shows three people sitting on a bench absorbed in their cell phones. You can sit on the bench between them and feel and be in the light from the phones.
Today I read that the sculpture is actually called “Absorbed by Light”.
The article points out that people used to sit on benches reading newspapers and books, so perhaps this way of isolating among others is not new.
Today I’m with the meanings and ways of being “absorbed by light”.
Today I attend another “celebration of life”. My son pointed out that lately my life seems to consist of a great many “celebrations of life”. I reflect and agree.
The first funeral I attended was my father’s in 1969. He died in a motorcycle accident when he was 47 and I was 19. Because of his age, the church was filled and a Soprano sang Ave Maria during the mass.
Because we moved a great deal when I was young, and transport wasn’t like it is today, when my father’s mother died, he flew from San Diego to Chicago for the funeral and when my mother’s mother died, she flew from San Diego to Bloomington, Indiana for her mother’s final goodbye.
We didn’t talk about death in those days. Now, people my age are studying aging and dying, wanting to meet it openly and fully, and so what was once called a funeral, and then, a memorial, is now a “celebration of life”.
I’ve always resonated to the artwork of Paul Klee, and now I sit with his words.
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
A line is a dot that went for a walk.
A simple flourished line is an active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal. A walk for walk’s sake. The mobility agent is a point, shifting its position forward.
I wonder if a funeral is simply “a line going for a walk”. People gather in a sacred place usually wearing black. Voices are quiet and subdued. They come to listen and reflect.
With the memorial, the dot goes for a walk, but with a little less of a container. There are no sidewalks. I see a dirt path with grass along the sides, a little more freedom, flowers a little more colorful and looser in their vase clasp .
Now, a celebration of life includes a video of all the years. Photos and music, laughter, food, and wine are offered and shared.Often, the deceased has planned it all, has planned a celebration where the funeral and wake are combined.
Fred Astaire comes to mind, dancing in his top hat and tails, swinging his cane with precision and grace.
My plan is simply to be scattered, each person scattering and remembering, silent as the movement in leaves.
Yesterday I rode the ferry from Sausalito to San Francisco and back again. I was content to sit, watch, and feel the movement of fog and waves. I’m still with the rocking and the float, the carriage. In some ways, it’s like climbing up into a tree, being held as the earth turns round.
I met my daughter-in-law for lunch, and because I was early, sat in the shade and watched an array of people parade and stroll by. We are a diverse bunch, we humans, and I wondered what was going on in each person as we were gathered together in one place, the ferry building and its surroundings, for a time. And yet here we are on one planet, gathered together for a time.
This morning I ventured down to our local grocery, Good Earth. The produce is a gathering of summer light and delight. I chose peaches, raspberries, and blueberries, and two kinds of lettuce from Green Gulch, a few miles away. I came home to make a fruit salad, eased in honoring the seasons as they turn in each of us.
Students are back in school. We turn toward fall as the sweetness of summer fills the grocery store bins, our stomachs, our hearts.
This morning, eyes moist with tears, I consider different types of tears. Today’s tears feel sweet, like dew drops, acknowledgment of connection between earth and sky, and the vulnerability that is Love.
I spent over seven hours yesterday with a friend along the shoreline at Point Isabel dog park. In my usual way, I arrived early to sit with a latte and watch dogs bounce and play, ears flopping, tails wagging. It’s a happy place.
My friend and I walked and talked, sat and ate, walked and talked.
The subject was grief. She feels I’m not “over” grieving my brother’s death, which leads to false valor perhaps, my words, not hers, though she did mention, a shield.
We talked about my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale. She knew me then, but didn’t know the thrill I felt when I bicycled in New Mexico, speeding down one hill in the early morning light, shouting and singing out, “I feel good, I knew that I would now, so good, so good,” and though James Brown says it’s because he’s got “you”, I think in that moment, it was a full embrace of who I am. I was invulnerable in that moment, one with my bike and nature, love and the world. I felt free, and she knew that place, and we both understood.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at times, a word I’m hearing and feeling more and more. I think now of the words of William Wordsworth.
The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours.
And yet here we are: Nature, Power, Love.
If you live in the Bay area, Point Isabel is a lovely place to be, walk, and enjoy a bowl of chili. A dog is not required, though my friend has two who love to snuggle and warm the feet.
Unusual for me these days, I took no pictures. The view is never still. When I arrived, there was an enclosure of fog that cleared bit by bit, so there was Mount Tam, the bay, and then, the city of San Francisco. I felt the movement reflected inside, the movement of fog, fear, love, grief.
And now my husband sends me this column by George Will.
The fog snuck in during the night. I went to bed with stars and woke up enclosed.
I saw Tea Obreht speak last night at Book Passage. Her latest book, Inland, A Novel, was already highly acclaimed and then Barack Obama announced it’s on his reading list, so she’s pleased, excited, and gratified.
What most struck me about her talk was her life in Yugoslavia until she was twelve years old, and then her family had to flee. When she says she is Yugoslavian by birth, people say but that country no longer exists.
It exists for her.
I went to the event with a friend who teaches poetry to middle schoolers. She’s hoping to get a little more bite into their poems this year so is thinking of asking them to write about the landscape of where they live. It’s beautiful here, and perhaps they could delve like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry into sharing the landscape of their home.
I’m reminded of the poem “Home” by Warsan Shire. The poem invites us to be even more grateful for where we are now, and to be open to refugees when they’re forced to come here for refuge and adapt to a landscape which then becomes their home.
My neighborhood book group met last night. Walking home in the dark, I heard rustling in the bushes. My flashlight revealed that a skunk was rummaging through grasses; he or she was intent. At first, I felt a bit of trepidation, oh, great, I might get sprayed, but then, there was such serenity in the encounter, each of us with a mission and destination, one for food, and one for home.
I continued on, honoring that we each have our niche, our paths, and our meeting in the night was simply awareness, one with nuzzling, and one with steps.
I’m with arriving. What it is to arrive and be with ourselves all along the way?
I’m reflecting on arriving because two friends and colleagues, Pamela Blunt and Francesca Khanna, are offering a monthly workshop on Presence and Sensitivity. One can be anywhere on the planet and call in or participate in a Zoom call.
Their invitation and introduction shares the words of Rumi from his poem “Bird Wings”.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced as birds’ wings.
Sinking into that invites a pause. I feel the beat of my heart, it’s transmission through arms to hands and fingers that touch this keyboard sending thoughts who knows where and who cares. Shoulder blades and neck wing, whisks stirring the lift in air. Spine responds, answers a call.
The Presence and Sensitivity invite offers the words of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, “Don’t say I depart, I am arriving …”
A few years ago I participated in a Sensory Awareness workshop with Lee Klinger Lesser at Tassajara. Tassajara is a sacred place of enchantment, and after I’d checked in, I was standing in front of the office smiling, feeling gentle with peace, joy, and gratitude. Lee walked up to me smiling, and asked, “Have you arrived?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have arrived”, but after being there working with stones, lying on rocks in the creek, walking back and forth, aware of cleanliness being more than body and teeth, but also mind, a cleansing and flossing of mind and space and intertwining, I knew that with time and this space, I’d embodied a new understanding of arriving.
This moment, right here, enough.
Perhaps arriving is knowing enough – fullness and emptiness and all that is between. My head comes forward and rises, occiput soft to receive.
And now I introduce Crissy. The woman who hosted book group last night has a daughter with special needs. Crissy is in her 30’s, and unabashedly creative in what she wears. Yesterday when I walked up the stairs to their home, she saw me, and gave me a great big hug. She doesn’t know my name, but that didn’t matter. I was clearly there for a hug.
When we gathered in a circle outside, she went around and everyone received a hug, and not a touch of a hug. This was a full body hug that went on and on and on. What a way to begin each moment, with a full body and spiritual hug. It’s not always possible perhaps, but then, intention can be set.
In 1966,Thich Nhat Hanh learned the power of hugs when a woman friend took him to the airport, and asked if it was okay to hug a monk. He thought since he was a Zen teacher, that yes, it must be okay, but then he realized that he was stiff and uncomfortable with the hug. In response, he created hugging meditation.He teaches:
According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances, patting him on the back to pretend you are there, but breathing consciously and hugging with all your body, spirit, and heart. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.
That might be enough but he continues on.
Hugging is a deep practice; you need to be totally present to do it correctly. When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You can train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.
Before hugging, stand facing each other as you follow your breathing and establish your true presence. Then open your arms and hug your loved one. During the first in-breath and out-breath, become aware that you and your beloved are both alive; with the second in-breath and out-breath, think of where you will both be three hundred years from now; and with the third in-breath and out-breath, be aware of how precious it is that you are both still alive.
When you hug this way, the other person becomes real and alive. You don’t need to wait until one of you is ready to depart for a trip; you may hug right now and receive the warmth and stability of your friend in the present moment.
You won’t physically hug in Pam and Fran’s offering, but if you want more information, contact me, and meanwhile enjoy the continually expanding and contracting, the breathing hug of air we all share.
Yesterday I learned of the Ok glacier in Iceland, which was declared dead in 2014 because it was no longer able to move because of its shrunken size due to climate change.
On August 18th, mourners gathered to commemorate its loss and climbing to the top of the mountain on which it once lived, placed a plaque to mark its loss.
The words written by Icelandic author Andri Snaer Magnason, melt the heart. May our melting hearts bring greater connection and awareness, not more loss.
“Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier. In the next 200 years all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
Today in my Zoom call quartet, one person mentioned an anecdote from Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully. He’s in a consignment shop with his daughter when he realizes many of the items for sale wear tags “As Is”. He thinks how great it would be if each of us wore a tag saying “As Is”, and believed it.
We decided our little group should sport t-shirts pronouncing, “As Is”.
As I peruse The Five Invitations once again, I come across two death poems from Japan where the tradition is to write a poem on the last day of your life or soon before.
Here is the death poem of Dogen Zenji who died in 1253.
Four and fifty years
I’ve hung the sky with stars
Now I leap through –
What shattering!
Here, with a different tone, is the death poem of Moriya Sen’an, who died in 1838.
Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak.
And with that, I consider how we meet the moment as it comes, honoring gathering and scattering as One.
Losing a piece, this rock wears a new face, continuing a tradition “as is”
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