If you watched the debate, you noticed a fly stuck to Pence’s head for two minutes. I believe that flies have a place in nature’s balance, so with no intent to malign the fly, I share the symbolism of what we saw last night.

When the fly spirit animal makes its way into your life, this usually serves as a warning that there’s danger lurking somewhere.

It means to catch your attention when you are spending too much of your time with someone or on something that has a destructive influence.

The fly meaning brings the focus to anything that’s causing harm to your life, whether of your own choosing or not. An example of this is giving in to societal pressures and indifference.

Just like the cricket spirit animal, the meaning of the fly also speaks about hate, spite, malice, or blame. It buzzes to be heard and flies overhead annoyingly until you are forced to swat or kill it with anything you can get your hands on.

The fly totem has also been known to represent lies, gossip, excuses, and anything that’s dirty or impure.

However, before you dismiss the fly as nothing but bad and undesirable, the fly symbolism also speaks about cures for sicknesses (just like the deer symbolism).

The meaning of the fly also serves as a reminder that you reap what you sow.

Interpret as you will but I do wonder how a fly got into the debate. Perhaps Ruth Bader Ginsberg watches and speaks from above. Enjoy and savor this precious new day!! The good and righteous continue to buzz.

I suggest we make it take a fly to lunch day. It will be a cheap and gratitude full date.

As David Frum wrote today: Through all of the scandals and the crimes and the disasters of the past four years, Mike Pence was the man who pretended not to notice. And now there was a fly on his head, and he pretended not to notice that too.

My youngest son is 43 today.   I wonder if as one grows older, your children’s birthdays are more important than your own.  His age means  I have to look at my own, and I can relate to 43 more than my upcoming 71.

His gift request was an “autobiography” from his father and me.  It might sound simple, but it is an archaeological dig going back through what to share especially when you start at the beginning.  I was born.  I weighed.

I sent what I’d written to both sons last night and they both appreciated it and requested more.

I’m with that this morning, the journey backward in time.  It might sound easy but it’s like peeling an apple to get to the core.  What’s important for them to know, for me to know, for me to bring forth and share?

I want them to know me, and yet there’s this place of tenderness right now on what I regurgitate, like a mother bird feeding her tweeting babies chewed worms.

I’ve been going through my journals of which I have multitudes.  In 1999, I was going through something painful.  I wrote that there was a crackling pain in my chest like fire, prying me open, lacing ash and silt with space to grow new form.  The crack in my trunk felt like a burning.  I was split by fire like a redwood tree that expands into a family of trees growing in a circle.  

I’m with that now and these words from Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  

“Everything that has already happened is particles, everything in the future is waves.”

I look at my doodling from that time period and it is as though a woman is a rocket ship taking off into the waves.

I’m going through journals of the past.  The air has cleared, and temperatures have dropped.  I closed windows and doors last night and added an extra blanket to our bed.  What a shift.  

In 1993, Jon Carroll published a column on his daughter who was a trapeze artist.

He wrote: “The wonderful lesson of trapeze is that if you pay attention, if you stay within the timing of the moment, if you consider that every dead spot is just the place where you start to do your trick …, well, then you can learn how to fly.”  His daughter said, “Once you get the timing down, anybody could do the tricks.”  “Timing is more important than strength.”

I sit with that today as we’re knocked back and forth like billiard balls by the latest from the Trump campaign, and what members of the White House staff are calling the “Rose Garden Massacre”.  

I loved seeing the decreasing moon in the sky this morning.

Change is a given, like timing.

More and more I appreciate the value of skill in listening. For me it’s about receiving, reception, connection.

Here’s some inspiration on listening, on RASA: Receive; Appreciate; Summarize; and Ask.

As Paul Hawken says:

“When we listen to people, our language softens. Listening may be the cardinal act of giving

… it is the source of peace.”

Today begins the last quarter of the year, an exciting quarter even with, or perhaps because of continuing events. Because of smoke in the air, the moon last night was orange like a pumpkin, a sign of fall.

Tears come as I intake this poem by Wislawa Szymborska. The more we’re bombarded with “news” filled with lies, the more I go to poetry to survive.  

Questions You Ask Yourself

What do a smile and

handshake hold?

Do your greetings never

keep you as far

apart as other people

sometimes are

when passing judgment

at first glance?

Do you open each human

fate like a

book,

seeking feelings

not in fonts

or formats?

Are you sure you

decipher people completely?

You gave an evasive

word in answering,

a bright joke in place of openness-

how do you tally your losses?

Stunted friendships,

frozen worlds.

Do you know that friendship,

like love, requires teamwork?

Someone missed a step

in this demanding effort.

In your friends’ errors

do you bear no blame?

Someone complained, advised.

How many tears ran dry

before you lent a hand?

Jointly responsible

for the happiness of millennia,

don’t you slight

the single minute

of a tear, a wince?

Do you never overlook

another’s effort?

A glass stood on the table,

no one noticed

until it fell,

toppled by a thoughtless gesture.

Are people really so simple

as far as people go?

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

(Map – collected and last poems, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, edited by Clare Cavanagh)

Today I’m with this quote by Vincent Van Gogh:

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.

May your day, my day, be one of peace, trust, reverence, and ease.

Friend fog returned in the night.  The fog horn sounds, a herald of cool air.  As the day comes to light, I see fog on the ridge.

I’m guided today by a Serbian proverb: Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.  

Last night I watched the highly recommended Fantastic Fungi.  If you want to dance through a network of hope, this is it.  Here’s the trailer: 

I wake to the smell of smoke in the air and check the news.  Yes, the Glass Fire is raging forcing evacuations.  The sky is gray with smoke and my eyes are burning, so again, we close up the house and turn on our air purifiers grateful we’re able to do so.

I finished Cave in the Snow and I’m with how we may not be able to isolate in a cave but there are many mindfulness practices to invite during the day.  One is allowing a half-smile for three breaths.  Just that, and repeat.  I find it amazing what a soft lift of my lips can do to my mood and system and awareness of the world I’m in.  

Today I’m guided by words from Pema Chodron: It is only to the degree that we become willing to face our own feelings that we can really help others. So we make a commitment that for the rest of our lives, we’ll train in freeing ourselves from the tyranny of our own reactivity, our own survival mechanisms, our own propensities to be hooked.