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.
I felt the 4.5 earthquake at 10:33 PM last night. It was centered in the East Bay so a mild shake for me, a small rattle of the room I was in. I’d forgotten until I read the news this morning.
I remember a memorial service I attended years ago. The priest, new to CA and the Bay area, said he felt that’s why we’re more open to change here. The earth literally moves under our feet. It’s certainly a nudge of awareness that life can change, and does.
I feel awake this morning, clear, as though some rust is shaken loose.
Yesterday a small group of us were talking about how we bring Sensory Awareness into our lives. Stefan Laeng says simply pick up a rock and put it down, no need for drama, a simple up and down, an experience of reaching, attachment, and letting go. Perhaps when the earth moves, that’s what it’s doing, simply lifting us up, giving a little shake, then putting us down, so we can notice, “What’s moving in me now?”
Charlotte Selver, my teacher of Sensory Awareness said: Without watching, without judging, just be awake. Simply be present with what you need and what is meeting you.
What do I need right now? I close my eyes, and lift stones of gravitational trust up and down, as the ocean plays with rocks on the beach.
The ocean and humans play with the arrangement of rocks – collage –
One day when the electricity was off, and my “to-do” list gently closed, I sat on the couch with tears – just tears – no story – a cleansing, tender with grief – ah, maybe there was a story – grief for the Kurds and for a country with tremendous wealth deserting an ally, and then, grief.
Today I felt moisture arrive again, simple moisture in my eyes, a caress spreading in my heart.
This morning on a Zoom call this quote by Pema Chodron was offered and shared. You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
One person on the call is working with collage and we imagined the immersion in choosing and manifesting what churns in us now.
On the call,I spoke of what it means to me to sit and watch the ocean, and my friend sent me these words from Herman Hesse in Siddhartha.
“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”
That might be enough for a day but I was introduced to the music of Don Shirley, which led me to this probe into the movie Green Book.
I just learned that a friend is out of surgery. Time to make chicken soup.
I find myself in transition, the butterfly in the chrysalis, the moth in the cocoon. In this place, I monitor stimulation. Photos seem too much. Perhaps it was the time without electricity, the being in the dark that brought me here.
Maybe it’s also related to this being the time of my birth. It’s a time for rippling outward, as another circle is added to the stone thrown into the fluidity of this world with my arrival. I open out with each year until I reach a different type of shore.
I feel tender, aware that this dismantling of ego to receive the flow that is always here for us, is no simple task, and yet, viewing it as a task is the problem. It’s simply to open to the connectivity we are, the interbeing as Thich Nhat Hanh says. Everything relies on everything else in order to manifest.
Joseph Campbell says, “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
The experience of being alive, and in that, I feel the partnership of veins and arteries, the beat and pulse that carries blood to and from my heart, and the veins and arteries that running unseen, connect us all.
Today I pulled into rest. I woke this morning, a heart of contentment.
I’m savoring spider webs, so striking in autumn light.
The shining webs remind me of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White where Wilber asks his spider friend Charlotte why she did so much for him and saved his life.
“Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
Resting, I’m with Thich Nhat Hanh’s book How To Love.
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.
When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.
Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.
I’m also reading Jojo Moyes book, The Giver of Stars. It’s historical fiction, based on the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. Encouraged by Eleanor Roosevelt, a mobile library was set up by the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. Women on horses and mules brought books, materials, and connection to those unable to come into towns.
All of this has me awaiting the rising of the Hunter’s Moon. Tomorrow it will be full, but tonight, it’s a glorious beacon in the sky, announcing how radiance from one object shines on and affects another.
Rest with the ease of the moon reflecting light from the sun.
Power is back on which means seeing lanterns, candles, and a headlamp lying about ready to be put away for next time. Perhaps there is something about the dark which indulges and includes, but the dishwasher has run, and laundry is happening, and I find myself considering grief.
I realize it’s six months since my brother passed away – six months.
I think of pain, how deeply it carves the flesh. And it’s not just about the pain of losing my brother, which may be tied to loss in general, a loss of family members and friends, and a different type of loss, a loss of democracy, a loss of order, which requires a recognition that we don’t have control. I have tons of inspirational quotes on surrender, but today I sit with a wider awareness, an expansiveness that allows me to touch the different forms and ways in which spirit flows through.I watch Bella, my beloved cat, as she sleeps and breathes.
I am a 2 on the Enneagram, which means relationship is important to me. I find pleasure in giving, in anticipating what another might need, but how can I know what another needs? How do I know what I need? When I work with John Baron and the Alexander Technique, I see how ready I am to help. I tighten in expectation of how to help. It’s hard for me to let go, to curve into letting go, rather than what I perceive as a more straightforward holding on approach.
I understand that as I change habitual patterns, my world will change, and I feel that happening, and still there will be a return, and all of it is so visceral. I struggle with this letting go, and these two days without power perhaps gives me more of a leaning into what can be, and what is.
All of this has me considering what we’re up against in this country right now. We have outside forces working to disrupt, and a government that appears compromised with a head who has no awareness or concept of morality, ethics, right action or right speech.
In high school, I learned about the Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. I believe in compromise, and yet compromise didn’t halt the horrors of the Civil War between 1861 and 1865.
The nation is divided right now. I sit with that, sit with sorrow and grief, as I watch first Trump, and then Steve Kerr, a master of morality in opposition to what must end, and soon, for all of our sakes.
I returned home to see a huge buck jump over my neighbor’s very high wood fence. Wow!
In the past, there were no obvious fences here, and the deer roamed freely and had their babies in our yards, but now new neighbors put up fences, so we’re fenced in, and I feared the deer might be fenced out. Therefore, I was delighted to see this buck jump right out of their newly landscaped yard. What a treat! Because we’ve been outside so much at night with the power outage, we’ve been hearing browsing down below our deck, and it was wonderful to see in full leap the reason why.
Also, it seems complaints about PGE and their lack of response leapt into gear today, leapt as high as the deer, and so power is back on which means we can water our yard and children can go back to school. Hooray!
There’s no wind, another day of no wind. My nine wind chimes are silent sentries, hanging straight, and yet PGE has continued to cut power to my area because they insist there is wind.
This continual bombardment of non-facts is getting to me, and yet I can be grateful. It allows me to work with balancing on same-same, and Is that so? I think to myself, “shoulders have space,” and in response, shoulder blades float apart, left and right, each a sail open to catch the wind, like wings in flight.
I don’t mind when I don’t have electricity because of wind and/or rain, but when there is neither, and the only sound is the sound of neighboring generators, I struggle with equanimity. I don’t live in the wilderness. I’m a ten minute drive from San Francisco when there is no traffic, which is rare. Yesterday traffic was grid-locked much of the day. We talk of evacuating during a fire. We can’t even move cars on a clear, calm day.
I note though that the Blue Angels haven’t been practicing for their weekend display. Perhaps someone realized it might appear insensitive to hear jets screaming and rumbling overhead when we sit below without power, knowing our president has given permission to slaughter people as well as the environment. Maybe cancelling the Blue Angels flying over the Bay Area might make sense.
We live in a world of interdependence, and that requires each organism to function at the height of intuitive and intellectual powers though we seem to be struggling with an honoring of that. Meanwhile, PGE insists the wind is coming, and while food spoils, there is no update, and there is no wind.
I comfort myself with the words of Thoreau. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” What I see, in this moment, is sunlight spreading gold over a landscape so still it could be a photo.
Meanwhile at 5 this morning, I enjoyed a lovely conversation with a local man who was grateful his coffee stand had power. I was grateful too. I bought two lattes, two hard-boiled eggs, two bananas, and two baked goodies for $14.00. I kept insisting he undercharged me. He said he doesn’t believe in $5.00 lattes. Maybe the whole lesson in this is an affirmation of what we already know. Shop local and support the person who provides coffee at five in the morning and eggs from chickens that live down the street. Coyote Coffee. Hooray!
I don’t want to appear in a less than positive mood. Aware of my occiput, I bend my head forward to beckon elasticity, and in response, the laughter of the universe, the ringing, twinkling of stars in the sky bell, chimes.
I wonder if God/Goddess isn’t playing with PGE as something must show there is wind when all is as calm as can be. They wouldn’t mislead, would they?
And so it is to enjoy the universe at play, and be with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh.
When we walk like we are rushing, we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth. Be aware of your contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you’re kissing the earth with your feet.
I can do that. Breathe in calm. Breathe out peace.
And now it’s afternoon.I wrote the above this morning content with a private vent. I didn’t have wifi and figured spewing anger into the air was even worse than walking angrily on the ground.
I decided to go outside and water the yard, but then I got another emergency text that outdoor watering was not okay, and indoor use was limited. Pumping water requires electricity and since PGE, well, you might begin to see. I was absorbing that, yes, okay, fine, we’ve done water rationing before but then I looked at my plants wilting in the heat, and explained the situation to them, and while we, well, while I, was trying to calm, Blue Angels rumbled and streaked overhead. It’s Fleet Week, and clearly not too windy for Blue Angels to fly.
And now I read of a fire in Moraga that was quickly extinguished, though the Moraga Police Chief Jon King said of the power shutoff. “Honestly, it made it more difficult. We rely a lot on technology.“
He added that, with no light and spotty cell service, the evacuations were a challenge. Police, firefighters and fellow neighbors went door-to-door to make sure residents got out.
Our power is out so I’m camped at Steve’s office after early morning coffee at Peets, and a return to home to shower.
This morning I watched people stagger in for their caffeine lift. Two women had pulled a coat on over their flannel pajamas, and as though sleep-walking moved along murmuring coffee, coffee, as they wound their way to their chosen source of renewal.
Before that though, an early morning gift was going outside around three or four to place blankets and pillows on the deck, and resting face up, watch the stars. With all the lights out in our area, I could see dimensions and layers of stars, knowing some were whole galaxies, not just stars. I saw five meteors flash.
All of this meant I didn’t read the news until 1:30 today. I find it hard to believe.
It’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. One man’s son is here also as his high school is closed to honor the day, and, yet, we are observing a humanitarian crisis, innocent people killed. Why?
All day I’ve received text and phone messages that PGE will be turning off power in my areaduring the night. They don’t know when it will be back on. Local schools and libraries have been informed so they will be closed. Tomorrow will be an interesting dayas I’m wondering what will be open and how far the range. Candles have been lit and will now be blown out. It’s Dream-time.
This morning in my meditation I felt layers in my eyes, levels of perception within the living mechanism of my head, and considered how that inner noticing might affect the patterns and dimensions in my visual and sensory intake. How do I parcel what I see? How minutely and wholly do I bring the outside world into my being?
The hands and feet contain more than half the bones in the human body. Each hand has 27 distinct bones.
I play with flexibility in my hands and feet, probes that meet, touch, receive, and change my world.
Barefoot, I stamp on a mat made of river stones. Stimulation rises in me like sap in trees. I greet the interface, connect what swirls, a Mobius strip.
