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.
Yesterday I went to the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts to see Holly Wong’s Guardian of the Spirits, a “suspended installation of cellophane, dichroic film, silk and polyester organza, gold fabric, vinyl tablecloth, transparencies and thread”. That may sound strange but it’s a beautiful, flowing, clear and patterned airiness. It moves as one walks by, and then, guarded by the spirits, one looks up to the second floor, and there overhanging is a long gun sticking out from the turret of a tank. Walking up, one sees the tank with a teensy-tiny Russian flag atop is breaking through a wall. The flag of Ukraine hangs from the gun.
Art!
Heart stops and beats even more receptively again.
Guardian of the SpiritsClose In The whole displayRussian Tank by James VogelTank with flag of UkraineThe Russian flag atopIn my yard this morningOpening and Reception are Everywhere
Joni Mitchell’s song The Circle Game is whirling through my head. And “we go round and round in the circle game”.
I’m doing eye exercises which makes me aware of the roundness of the eyeball and how I can use exercises to stimulate and visualize movement and fluidity there. I’m widening and nourishing how I see, how I receive. It’s about intimacy with ourselves and with the world.
The earth is round, twirling, and circling the sun. We are motion and movement spinning change.
Charlotte Selver, my teacher of Sensory Awareness, work I came to in 1993, said of the work:
“This work is a very spiritual work. It has to do with waking up, with getting spirited to the last molecule. Spirited. Because it sits everywhere in us. Everywhere.”
Everywhere!
Enjoy the curves, awakening the spirit in living aware.
Morning Fog now gone to return when earth and air combine to invite formation again
I just watched the movie Thirteen Lives. Truly inspiring. It shows what love and courage, and people gathered together can too.It would seem unbelievable and yet it is true.
I’ve settled into wearing glasses and am loving the fun of it. I’m playing with eye exercises, trusting what a delight it is to have air touch my eyes directly rather than through a contact lens.
I hadn’t realized all that is involved with contact lenses but now fluids are put away to give away and I’m adjusting to new ways of seeing. I’m using pinhole glasses which I only learned about recently. I paid $20.00 on Amazon for plastic ones with round holes. Using them, beginning with five minutes and expanding the time period stimulates peripheral vision.
The idea is to wake up the visual system and develop a sense of the visual pathways. I’m visualizing fluidity, movement, and expansion in my eyes, in my life.
In learning that pinhole glasses stimulate the retina and the pathways to the thalamus. I checked out the thalamus and I’m enthralled. I’m enjoying participating in healing and health as I await what the medical world can do when that world and I coincide.
In my pause, I reflect on and absorb these words of Eknath Easwaran:
To love, we need to be sensitive to those around us, which is impossible if we are always racing through life engrossed in all the things we need to do before sunset.
Yesterday I learned that I can’t use soft contact lenses, so I will be wearing glasses until the cataract surgery which I now learn will probably be available in six months, not three. For every decade of wearing hard contacts, it takes the eye a month to adjust back, so in my case, 60 years, six months.
I know this is an opportunity, and that I’d been stuck in a rut, and so this morning I sit here – hmmm – what is my mood?
I’m extremely aware of vision these days and I feel my vision cloud when I read and watch Marjorie Taylor Green deny wind turbines and solar panels because she doesn’t “wanna have to go to bed when the sun sets”. I thought it was a joke but no, I watch her saying it, and there’s applause. After all, who wants to go back to washing their clothes in a tub? Those who expose the dangers of Trump, what he tried and is still trying to do, that those people aren’t re-elected I find sobering.
A democracy can’t survive an uneducated populace and as much as I choose to stay positive, it’s hard not to wonder about this country and how we are now viewed in the world, especially since Trump’s theft of classified information endangers us all.
And with that, I’m with the changing clouds in the sky.What a gift!
I hoped Liz Cheney would win yesterday but she did not. Here is her inspiring concession speech. This is courage in action. May her words unite the country to preserve what so many have fought and died for.
When I was 13, I was thrilled to get contact lenses. I could see both forward and to the sides. I’d worn glasses since fourth grade and now the world opened. Each time my eyes were checked, I stayed with hard contacts because they worked for me. At some point, my prescription was changed to one contact for distance, and one for near, so I could see all ways: books, computer, far. Wonderful!! Habit entrenched. No need for changein sixty years.
Yesterday I saw the opthamologist. I already knew from my optometrist that I had a cataract in the right eye so I was prepared for surgery. I learned though that I had cataracts in both eyes and 60 years of wearing hard contacts had shaped my eyes, and therefore I had to wait three months for the eyes to adjust to their natural form. After three months and an evaluation, I could then schedule surgery for one eye, and two weeks later the other would follow. That meant six weeks of healing, so lifting nothing over 20 pounds or getting the eye wet. That sounded okay since I would be able to see without glasses or contacts. One eye would be set up for close and the other far, just as I was used to. Great!! No ruts in my road.
I put the hard contacts back in to drive home, feeling happy and a little off-kilter from the dilating. I took the contacts out for the last time and sadly put them away. I put on my not up-to-date prescription glasses that I never wear. Why would I? Contacts work great.
Then I went to the computer. It was a blur. I strained this way and that to make out the words. Hmmm! Not so fun. I knew I could call my optometrist to order some soft contacts but for now I felt a little uneasy. I went to bed early and rose in the night to meditate.
Now, this morning, I can see the words on the computer so my eyes seem to be adjusting to these glasses, and I will investigate and order soft lenses. I’m in the curious exploration of what it is to see, and not taking seeing for granted.
These words of Sogyal Rinpoche comfort me:
Samsara is the mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections. Nirvana is the mind turned inwardly, recognizing its true nature.
Outside the medical officeWalking Tennessee Valley the other day
This morning I was using seeing as part of my meditation, so focusing on an object. I was focused on the oak tree outside my window which sits in front of the redwood tree. I could see morning light through the trees still untouched by light as our house faces south on a hill on the side of a valley.
When I closed my eyes to rest them from seeing, and then opened them I saw a squirrel sitting outside the window on a branch looking in at me. He or she then scampered away. Perhaps my attention scampered, too, as I reflect now on the gifts of pausing to see the dimensions in liveliness, to honor and savor the connected realms in which we live.
I was so focused on the tree and dimensions and light that I had forgotten all that hosts where I live and how we twine. Of course, my pause might be of interest to a squirrel outside, and it could have been my imagination, but I don’t think so. It was part of a bond, a momentary branch.
Pema Chodron:
If your everyday practice is to open all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that – then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
View through the window – squirrel was sitting on the low branch dipping to the left The wonders of a branch resting without a squirrel
Cathy's Blog! 