I’m learning the news of this houseboat community from a neighbor. She took me through their boat – 2300 square feet – exquisite, and so I see one can create what works for them if so desired. I’m content in my Little Gem.
Meanwhile I’m entranced with the birds. A Great Blue Heron strolled by just now, a leisurely look around.
I’m sitting on a houseboat by the bay reflecting on this statistic.
As of Monday, the Gun Violence Archive had counted 67 mass shootings in the United States this year. The archive, a nonprofit research organization, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people were killed or injured. There are only 44 days so far this year.
Yesterday afternoon I followed a Snowy Egret as he or she stepped carefully around the houseboat at low tide. Now, the water is high. I wonder why so many humans struggle to flow up and down with the tides.
Someone swims by the dock today, no wetsuit. The water temperature in Richardson Bay is 53 degrees. I’m cold in a wool sweater and jacket, and I’m in the air.
Birds fly by, together and alone. They sweep and flow, know when and where to land. There’s so much beauty around, and in us, and tragically a few are lost. Then we as a community and ecosystem struggle with their actions as we deal with pain and loss.
I wonder as I read about humans killing one another. Animals only defend themselves when threatened. Do we feel threatened? If so, why? We live on a planet of abundance. A rattlesnake doesn’t use its venom unnecessarily because it takes time to replenish. A skunk is careful with spray.
On a houseboat, I watch the birds and tides. I walk along the bay, seeing the niches and how they change throughout the day.
Today is cold and the wind is howling so wildly, I turn the sound up on my computer to hear inside the houseboat. The gulls play with the wind; they dance, and without my glasses the white caps of the waves look like their wings.
I’ve now learned the Great Blue Heron who welcomes entry to our pier is a she. And egrets abound.
For those of us who like to think we have control, I post some photos of morning from the houseboat. Currently I’m wrapped in fog – very little visibility at all.
My three year old grandson loves Sausalito, loves the word, loves four syllable words. They’re fun to say: Hallelujah, Maserati, Lamborghini – and now I am with meditation, awareness of embodiment, the gift of connection, the pulsing gathering of flow. At first, I typed four letter words, and I wonder now about syllables, letters, and words, and how we divide and merge our thoughts and pictures.
This morning, I meditate in the dark facing an unlit fireplace, and yet with eyes half-open, I see flames.
I’m with these words on reincarnation.
Katie Cannon quoted in The Body Keeps the Score:
Our bodies are the texts that carry the memories and therefore remembering is no less than reincarnation.
I open A Year with Hafiz, Daily Contemplations by Daniel Ladinsky to February 12.
THE BODY A TREE
The body a tree, God a wind.
When He moves me like this, like this,
angels bump heads with each other
gathering beneath my cheeks,
holding their wine barrels, catching
the brilliant tear, pearl rain.
Love, a tree. When it moves us like this.
How can our soul’s limbs not touch?
Yesterday I was enjoying taking pictures of egrets when a man showed me a most wonderful Great Blue Heron standing statuesque behind some fronds. Such a gift!
I wake to the boat rocking, and the dock creaking with the up and down. At first, I thought I drank too much wine last night but no, the boat is softly moving. I’ve now learned that because there is no motor, it is a “floating home”. It can be towed but not move on its own except for this back and forth like a cradle right now.
Last night a friend and I went to a presentation, a celebration of Thornton Wilder. Sponsored by Sausalito Books by the Bay, it was at the Spinnaker Restaurant in Sausalito, a beautiful place on the water. There were two purposes. First, was to celebrate the works of Thorton and second to launch a new program, Literacy by the Bay. Thornton’s nephew spoke, and then four actors presented parts of Thornton’s works.
Many of us probably saw the play Our Town performed in high school and left it at that, but I see how important it is to revisit what we may have seen when young. That is true of all great works, of course. Reading Anna Karenina after having children is different than before.
There’s an homage documentary on Thornton Wilder called “It’s Time”. Time is his theme and it’s worth watching as an invitation to his life and his massive amounts of works, both novels and plays. I’ve always loved The Bridge of San Luis Rey since I first read it in high school. It’s one I re-read periodically.
The day is coming to light and the birds and I come even more awake. Ah, awe, and now I see fog or clouds over the hill, and the moon is still a light in the western sky.
Ducks float around my boat. I’m the center of a carousel, a stillpoint, a pole.
I’m with these words of Pablo Neruda:
Does the earth chirp like a cricket in the symphony of the skies?
Which leads me to wonder what sound stirs the water as the feet of the ducks paddle around.
In Charles Genoud’s book, The Body as Presence, he writes;
Munindra, a 20th-century Indian teacher from Bengal, taught that if a meditator is sitting and he knows that he is sitting, then he is meditating.
Sitting, we know we are sitting. Then, standing, walking, lying down, we know the bars that hold the notes, the tune of our heart, harmonizing the parts.
I’m going between two places, a floating home, and a more permanent home. I’ve been struggling with navigating doing laundry and such at night in the permanent home since that requires going through a kitchen that is being remodeled as it is completely emptied and torn apart. Wires burst and hang sadly forth from open walls. It seems 1950’s wiring is not up to code. Who knew?
I feel like a spelunker when I put on my headlamp to navigate through the kitchen in the dark to the garage and the washer and dryer. Why am I not doing it during the day? Because it’s filled with men who know what they’re doing and I don’t. I stay away on a magical float, a houseboat complete with birds surrounding it in its up and down float.
