Chain saws are roaring next door, and my nervous system feels the whirr and the roar, so today’s words circulate unable to land, unable to bond and form a band.
My Ditty for Today
I vowed to post every day
But in this moment I’ve nothing to say
The moon last night was almost half
Thoughts like glaciers drop and calf
Mind spins round like a centrifuge
Separating words
from my hue-gathering
muse
An oak in my yard waves
legs in the air
head rooted, imbibe
all moments with care
I love stones. Stones call to me, and people give me stones. I’m reminded of the poet Robinson Jeffers wonderful Tor House in Carmel, CA. where stones gather, collected from all over the world.
The story in the New Yorker this week is called The Stone and is by Louise Erdrich, a writer whose work I love.
She has this to say about the story and “the stone”.
“In the Ojibwe language, nouns are animate or inanimate; the word for stone, asin, is animate. One might think that stones have no actual power—after all, we throw them, build with them, pile them, crush them, slice them. But who is to say that the stones aren’t using us to assert themselves? To transform themselves? One day, the things we made out of stones may be all that’s left of our species. Of our complex history of chipping away at and arranging stones, what will be recorded or known?”
Words to contemplate as we sit with a stone in our hand, or tip-toe through stones in a stream or on a beach.
Meanwhile, I again offer one of my favorite poems by Charles Simic.
STONE
Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.
I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.
Last night before bed a friend shared with me the compassion she was feeling around some challenges in her life. I’m re-reading Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book The Five Invitations, and I’m in his chapter on love.
He writes that there are only two questions that matter. “Am I loved?” “Did I love well?” Since there is no separation, we can include ourselves in that love. He speaks of resting in love, and then concludes the chapter with this.
“When we live from the vantage point of boundless love, we begin to see all the points of connection that join us together. Love breeds love.”
I read those words and come to this video of a horse that knows where he’s needed, a horse that radiates, and is, Love. I’m reminded of Challenger, a horse I worked with when I went through equine therapy after cancer treatment. I remember his presence, his eyes, heart, lungs – huge and healing, and I carry him with and within me thirteen years later. Tears come and heal, liquid Love.
The sky this morning is a dance of clouds, formations changing with wisps of fog threading through. Perhaps it’s how the flower feels when a hummingbird dips its beak in to sip, though maybe I’m the hummingbird sipping nectar from sky and trees.
We live in a natural world-wide web. Trees breathe in and out, twine through roots, and send carbon to neighboring trees when needed. We’re wired to connect.
My son Jeff will be 45 tomorrow. I remember back as I talk to my other son Chris who will be 42 in October with a new baby delivered soon. We talk about babies and breast pumps. Last night they learned that the breast milk pumped from the morning wakes the baby up. The breast milk pumped at night puts the baby to sleep so label the bottles placed in the frig.
Rhythms. I think of how different it was when I was young. We were told we had to compete with the Russians so when I started high school in 1963 I was placed in accelerated math and science programs. It was a left-brain world with no time for art. Competition ruled.
Then when my sons were young and I trained to become a Terwilliger nature guide, I learned a whole new view of science. It’s a living study, a study of life. I wasn’t dissecting a frog or fetal pig. I held a sparrow in my hands, felt her quivering fear, stroked the dry fluidity of a living, moving snake, pure grace.
Yesterday was my sixth Alexander session. The work is to be experienced and lived, not analyzed, and yet, something in me wants to understand how the balancing in my organism allows me to open into feeling myself being breathed. There’s no effort, only ease, no fear like I felt in the little sparrow held in my hands. I ooze a sap of kindness, kindness for myself, and in that, the world of which I’m part.
In fourth grade, I was the fairy godmother who gave kindness in the play, “Sleeping Beauty”. I’ve never forgotten the power of saying those four words as I waved my wand. “I give you kindness.” Now kindness is given to me.
I’m reminded of a quote by Ramakrishna. The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail, and perhaps in this moment, Alexander Technique allows me to trim the sails I raise.
Last night a crescent moon dropped gold in the arms of trees, and stars stayed perched in place, and then, this morning, a quiet wrap of fog. I didn’t hear it come and still the birds sing.
Mary Oliver guides this morning with her counsel:
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Margaret Atwood’s poem “Up” is also a wake-up call as she writes of changing our attitude when we struggle to get out of bed, by imagining it as our deathbed, and then we are given one more hour to live and forgive.
And then there is this:
I sit on a bench down below in our yard, commune with a giant redwood tree. I feel its gratitude for the hose of running water I’ve placed at her feet. We appreciate the hum.
When we moved to this house over forty years ago, the tree was a quiet presence at 12 or 14 feet. She was surrounded and protected by giant pines. Over the years, the pines became diseased and had to go, so the protected tree now stands tall and alone in her reach for, and touch of the sky.
One of her offspring grows nearby protected by her branches and shade. Also protected are two little redwoods from Chris and Frieda’s wedding. They were sprouts and now they are four feet tall. That’s exponential growth in 11 or 12 years.
As may be obvious, I love stillness. Right now I’m surrounded with activity as squirrels scamper through the branches of the trees, and jays squawk, crows caw, and smaller birds add higher notes on which to raise and rest the spine. And yet, for a moment, there is no time. I have no idea what time it is, no need to know. It’s Labor Day, a day of rest. I see light coming to the tree, so movement is happening, but time, what, in this moment, is that?
Last night I listened to a Sensory Awareness recording. As I’ve shared, Sensory Awareness is a practice, a cultivation of awareness of the inner/outer environment, recognition of the one world we share. It’s simple really, and yet, like meditation, it’s considered “work”. We’ve been trained to habit which may allow a zoning out, rather than meeting each moment “new”.
Francesca was leading on the recording, and invited us to bring awareness to a daily task. As she released us to our journey, she said “Bon Voyage”. Those words reverberate through me as I sit here now. I see myself waving goodbye as those on shore shout “Bon Voyage”, and yet, I, too, stand on the shore waving. I’m ship, both, all.
I woke this morning saying Bon Voyage to myself, seeing myself rising and carried on the journey of this day.
I performed my morning tasks, ah, performed, no, I was “in” my morning tasks, tasks and I meeting as one. I remembered a Huma session I experienced years ago. I was on the table, and the words “Nothing Matters”, reverberated through me. The practitioner affirmed, “Yes, nothing matters,” and I said, no, that’s not it. Nothing matters. I wanted her to understand that I was feeling that Nothing matters too.
For me, awareness of what we what perceive of as nothingness supports this examination of stillness and movement. I may look like I’m still but my heart is pumping, ears and cells are antennas open to receive, and lungs are processing oxygen and carbon dioxide in a living exchange with trees. Plus, I’m on a planet that’s moving and turning in space.
Stillness hums like water running through a hose.
Bella and I are enjoying the breeze and afternoon ease.
I’m reading Ocean Vuong’s book, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I can’t read it straight through. It’s a meditation, a poem, a history, a story of love, compassion, generosity, fear, hurt, and sorrow.
I come to these lines, and pause, step back, embrace more fully and wholly the ocean of his name and what he’s saying.
He writes of a man speaking of his son’s death – “I’m broken in two.”
And the author says, “In two, it was the only thought I could keep, sitting in my seat, how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.”
He goes on and then writes: “Into – yes, that’s more like it. As in, Now I’m broken into.”
I think of the passing of those I love. Yes, I’m broken “into”.
Outside watering, I pluck golden plums from the tree and, like the birds and squirrels, I feast. The plums are small, bite-size, and come in abundance each year. I water the wind chimes of which I have many and consider support and how I receive the early morning light as it moves, a dance of shadow and brilliance, exchange and touch, with garden, earth, and me.
The joke about where I live is that when it rises to 74 degrees, people ask, “How are you doing in this heat?” We are delicate flowers but I slept with windows and doors open and woke to birds twittering and calling me to come outside where the words “holy, holy, holy” fill my chest.
Since it’s fall, I figure the birds are singing with pure joy since it’s late in the year to look for a mate.
Perhaps because I was born in October, this time of year feels super-sacred to me, as though I’m still in the womb, adding an extra pound or two, well, unfortunately that part is still true, but there’s such reverence for me on this first day of September.
Yesterday a friend and I planned to go to our local Shakespeare in the Park and we were near. We saw the actors and stage, but then it was so beautiful in Old Mill Park, we moved down by the stream to talk. It’s quite something to hear Shakespeare from afar. Perhaps it’s how the stars feel as they listen to our calls. Surely our drama and complaints vibrate the gravitational field both near and far.
I’m more aware of vibration these days, more aware of what I put out into the world as to anger or blame, and what I bring in to myself as to “shoulds”. I believe there is a place to let all that go, and rejoice, and call like the birds in fall. And now one cheeps and chirps right outside the window. “Come out and play,” and so I will.
Blessings for us all!
I sit outside with my laptop, aware of the changing light. The wind blows through the trees, and the fog is on approach.
I know this is a hectic weekend for some, Labor Day weekend, though the intention was, and the purpose is, for renewal and rest.
My long-term book group has been looking for a light, happy book but not too light, obviously, but happiness has an appeal. This month we chose a book by Miriam Toewes, All My Puny Sorrows.
I thought this weekend would be the perfect time to read it, and it is, and because it deals with living and dying, I often need to pause.
In this pause, I check out the author, renowned and loved in Canada, but my book group wasn’t familiar with her. If you want to learn about her and her books, click here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/a-beloved-canadian-novelist-reckons-with-her-mennonite-past
There are many wonderful lines from the book, but I am most struck with the pianist’s advice to a student on how to play the piano. “Learn to play around the notes on the piano.”
I sit with the broader meaning, the awareness of space, and its expansiveness, and how the space between galaxies is increasing.
Aligned with the universe, I, too, can expand, can increase the space between, and in, my cells.
A friend recently “diagnosed” me as a Seeker. I receive that as a compliment even as I release the ties that seek.
Yesterday I was at the Presidio in San Francisco, one of my favorite places. I share its spaciousness here.
