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.
My brother passed 48 days ago, and today, I sink into honoring his passage, honoring the eve of the 49th day. The fog is in and I can’t see the ridge. I’m wrapped in movement as the fog passes slowly along, a flag of ease in the most gentle of parades.
I wake today feeling a shift, an honoring of knowing enough, of knowing more clearly how to nourish this world we share, honoring with gratitude my little piece and place.
Meanwhile chainsaws start up at 8 AM, one to the left and one to the right. Two neighbors below have chosen this day to prune.
I wonder what is mine to prune this day as I open my eyes wide enough to feel their origin in my skull, two balls round like the earth, open to see all sides and points of view.
This morning I wake aware of my sacrum, the triangular bone at the base of the spine.
I wiggle around, rippling the muscles that hold it, imagining breath moving through the sacrum like butterfly wings lifting the bow of my lungs.
Perhaps this desire for movement is because I spent time with a gopher snake yesterday as it crossed the path I was on. I wanted to ensure it made it all the way across so I enjoyed its sinuous movement and the constant flicking of its tongue as it tasted its way to the other side and slipped into the grasses to camouflage, food, and safety.
It’s the 47th day since my brother passed. I feel him here, as though his essence is sprinkling down and through me like flakes of gold. I feel caught in balancing like a bird flying into the wind, caught on receiving a horizon moving in and out of time and space.
Friend Gopher Snake traversing what may be his or her view of climbing Everest
I’ve been honoring the days since my brother’s passing, preparing myself for the 49th day when the Buddhists believe a choice is made by the one departed.
I’m flooded with memories of all we shared and my heart breaks and comes back together over and over again. It’s like the tides slowly wearing away and piling up sand.
I plan to honor my brother on Saturday, the 49th day. I prepare.
Today I wash and touch with tender fingers and soft heart a feminine figure he gave to me years ago when I felt a bit stuck. Her lap is a cauldron, a heart, a bowl, a place to hold wishes and incubate desire and need for fulfillment and creativity. He used it to manifest his art and the next stage of his life. I use it now to manifest what is meant to come. How can I know?I trust that the universe brings me more than I can imagine. I trust what comes to me now.
Trust what comes
The creek in Mill Valley yesterday, soft, gentle, and tender in flow
It’s the forty-fifth day since my brother passed and I feel him here. He was a cheerleader for me in life, and now in death, I feel him pushing me to speak. I’m uncomfortable with that, at times, and even as I type this, a crow flies to the railing of my deck and peers in. Crow symbolizes shape-shifting and now friend crow flies past my window to land on the roof and tap, tap, tap, over my head.
This morning I’m with John Lennon’s song: “You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one.”
I was inspired this morning to send an op-ed submission to the NY Times, and then, I realized a letter to the editor might be more appropriate so I applied to both. My husband said that Nepal needs the money generated from climbing permits, that I need to recognize income disparity. The people of Nepal need to make a living. Yes, I agree, and so I wonder if my proposal is outlandish, but isn’t that what it’s about?
I’m requesting we step out of the outer landscape into an inner landscape, so we can honor even more the landscape of which we’re part.
Submission to the NY Times:
In my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale: Trekking through Nepal & Midlife, I explore my experience in 1993 in the Everest region of Nepal, Khumbu. I focus on death because I almost died there. Ego and the belief system in which I’d been raised, mind over matter, led me to keep stepping up Kala Patthar, even though it was obvious I was pushing beyond what made sense.
With mixed feelings, I read the news of overcrowding and lax permits leading to people dying on Everest. I suggest, like Jan Morris before me, that we cut off climbing and “conquering” this mountain. We change her name to mean the “peak of kindness” in whatever language is being spoken.
I have personally experienced that there’s something about the region that leads one to lose boundaries around life and death. Perhaps it’s because it’s said all souls circle Everest when they die. It can be tempting to circle right there but I believe we can have the same exploration by turning within, and exploring the landscape we are, the mountains climbing and rivers running in each of us.
I understand Nepal needs the money the permits bring to the country, but perhaps as we more thoroughly meet what circulates within us, we could donate to this land that inspires, that leads us to look upward and meet in the clasp where mountain touches sky.
Perhaps then we can allow Everest to represent a landscape we humans leave untouched.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Let’s Dream!
Elaine’s photo of the Imagine Mosaic in Strawberry Fields in NYC
It’s the 44th day since my brother passed and a day to honor those who’ve died while serving in the Armed Forces.
I pause, slightly stunned, as though I’m a bird who’s flown into a window and fallen for a moment. I shake myself awake, sit outside as squirrels run up and down the trunk of the redwood tree. A woodpecker pecks into the trunk of a tree on the other side of the deck. I feel that peck as though my insides ask for a nest, request room for breath and rest.
I’m reflecting, reflected like the marsh I photographed this morning. I stood therefeeling how what’s reflected is simply that. It causes the water no pain.
This morning my breath lengthens on the strength of the light. I feel fulfilled – full – filled.
Rain is predicted and birds are singing. Tears fill my eyes but they aren’t tears of sorrow. They are tears for the beauty that is here, the beauty of trees, clouds, sun, and rain.
It is a weekend of remembrance, and I remember my brother – so many memories and in this moment, I smile with the memories, grateful. My heart unravels its ball of pain and spreads light to welcome growth and response to lengthening days.
It’s been 43 days, six weeks today since he passed, and for me, there is healing in appreciating the time he was here as he transitions to what, for me, is unknown, yet stretches support in the marrow of my bones.
On this 42nd day since my brother’s passing, I’m with the deaths on Mount Everest and the photos of people lined up in a traffic jam to get to the top.
When I was in the area, twenty-five years ago, we bypassed Everest base camp because even then it was a garbage dump. My sense of my trip there, my four weeks in the mountains of Khumbu, was it was a spiritual journey, a quest to know myself and my direction. I’m stunned to see what it’s become.
In my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale, I write about Mount Everest. I say:
On May 6, 2015, Jan Morris published an article in the New Statesman that was reprinted in The New Republic May 16, 2015. Morris, a former male, now female, had welcomed Ed Hillary and Tenzing Norgay down from the first ascent of its summit on May 29, 1953.
In the article, Morris requested that Mount Everest, Chomolungma to the Sherpas, “Goddess Mother of the World,” be closed to climbing, violation,and greed, and honored as a World Heritage Site and as a “universally recognized Site of Holiness.” She suggested calling Mount Everest The Peak of Kindness.
Like Jan Morris, I knew Everest had something to teach. With distance, I’ve come to understand more of what Mount Everest represented for me. She was elusive, like the deeply complex, receptive feminine. She is sacred, and in her sacredness, brings us to our knees. What frightened or stunned me when I first saw her in person was that although she was part of a mountain range, she appeared to stand alone. She was center stage. I turned away and wanted to hide. I was struggling to claim my own life, my own center stage. She was too much for me, too dominant in her apparent ability to stand alone.
Everest represents strength and majesty. I claim that visibility now, that majestic mountain around which we all circle as we die, that mountain representing the central earth spine. I also claim my full power, male and female, as I balance strength and tenderness, wild and tame.
I suggest, like Jan Morris, that we honor our teacher, Mount Everest, and allow her to be a preserve, a place of respect—not something to conquer. Instead of placing flags representing division on her slopes, let’s leave her alone, untrampled. In allowing her to rest, we do the same for ourselves. We, too, stand, as peaks of kindness, havens, witnessed, witnessing, blessings, blessed.
The prayer flags that wave in Nepal and Tibet, often strung along Himalayan mountain ridges, are arranged in five colors. Blue symbolizes sky and space. White symbolizes air and wind. Red symbolizes fire. Green symbolizes water. Yellow symbolizes earth. Each of us is made of the five elements. To heal is to be made whole. My work now is to harmonize the elements within me as I breathe mindfully in and out, and in that, to live, exhilarate, and celebrate the joy in knowing enough. In my opinion, we don’t need to climb Everest to prove something to ourselves. We need to look within at the nature we are and climb into a deeper knowing of reverence for this earth we share.
I chose to put Ama Dablam on the cover of my book not Everest. Ama Dablam means Mother’s Necklace. Her grace invites me to step with care and look with awe from afar. Her slopes, like the slopes of Everest, are meant to uplift, not be the place of tragedy and death.
It’s the 42nd day since my brother passed away. I wake aware of the directions, east, west, north, south, up, down, and how they come together to encompass and embrace a whole, a hole, a synergy expanding life and death.
For me, the three day Memorial weekend is a time to pause and reflect. I look out on stillness tapped with the chirping of birds.
Yesterday I listened to Jonathan Maberry’s speech at the Bram Stoker awards which inspired me to read Shirley Jackson’s story, The Haunting of Hill House which then led me to re-read her story The Lottery, written in 1948 after WWII.
I sit now with this balancing of in and out, of what my mind may create within the larger structure of which I’m part. How willing am I to break with the crowd?
Certainly this weekend asks us to examine what is worth fighting for, what is worth dying for. It asks us to open our hearts to what is true for us, to open to what enlivens and enhances the connections in our lives.
I am with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Life goes headlong. Each of us is always to be found hurrying headlong in the chase of some fact, hunted by some fear or command behind us. Suddenly we meet a friend. We pause. Our hurry & embarrassment look ridiculous. Now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of our own heart until it supersedes sun & moon & solar system in its expanding immensity. The moment is all, in all noble relations.
Walk with the weight of petals opening out to touch
Today I rise visualizing myself as an orchid flower, intricate within my petal spread.
I open the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar to its advertisements for books, one of my favorite things, and what comes is “less is more”. I look at the list of Democrats who are running for president, and I find myself leaning toward Marianne Williamson who has added herself to the flock, covey, herd, swarm, and bringing in fragrance, bouquet, of candidates running, and it does feel like running as we’re bombarded with who is best able to handle a tragic, complex, and tangled mess.
This quote is often attributed to Nelson Mandela but it’s hers.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
What if we listened to a candidate who presents a vision of love, as we honor our gifts, knowing there’s more than enough for all?
It’s been forty-one days since my brother passed. My head is beginning to clear and I’m moving into readiness to step back into this world I love and share.
It’s day forty since my brother’s passing and I wake feeling refreshed. I notice I’m breathing fully. Perhaps it’s the nap I gave myself yesterday which was followed by bed at 8:30. I woke dreaming of my mother who passed away in February 2005 but she was alive and well in the dream. We were looking for a place where all of us could live.
Forty days is a spiritual number that comes up in many religions and practices. Our skin cells take, on average, forty days to renew.
I am with the words of Jelaluddin Rumi:
What nine months does for the embryo
Forty early mornings
Will do for your growing awareness
This morning when I woke I felt the reins of the horse loosening as though I didn’t need to hold on. I felt a new awareness of the consciousness we all share. I felt my cells expanding out, but that is for me, sister, not wife.
At 6:40 my brother’s wife calls. They were married thirty-three years and together longer than that. They were/are soul-mates. I can’t imagine what this is for her. Grief. How do we make it through? How do we offer support?
When my father died in an accident in 1969, I was 19 and my brother 15. My mother was 42. She said if it weren’t for us, she wouldn’t get out of bed. We all slept in the same room for a time, but the daughter of my brother and his wife is 24 with a life of her own, and, she, too, is grieving.
I sit with that now as the fog brings wisps of white to the blue sky. The coming of fog shimmers the trees, offers change – fog, saliva for air.
The moon and fog
Who calls to whom?
Recently I learned of the work of Professor Kathryn Geurts with the Anlo-Ewe speaking people in southeastern Ghana. She discovered that balance is a sense there, the primary sense, and is physical and psychological, literal and metaphorical.
They have a word seselelame which means “feel-feel-at-flesh-inside”. They are connected to the wisdom of intuition. In that, I touch into what another might need. I offer support, relationship, leaves to tree.
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