Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Perception

I spent the last two days with my four year old grandson.   Part of the time we were at his school as he likes me there and I like to be there.  The children seem so grown up with their questions and desire to touch and be near me.  I feel drawn into noticing and the curious intimacy of individual and group play.

I appreciate the children’s choice in their array of clothes.  I wasn’t sure about my grandson’s choice of red sequined pants for the day but then I saw another in his Christmas pajamas and girls waltzed by as princesses and fairies, and I realized every day is what we perceive of as Halloween when you’re four.  The hair of some of the girls dances with barrettes, ribbons, and bows.  

I brought grandson a book on the eyes of various creatures, showing the different eyes that see us, from owls to dragonflies, snails to cuttlefish, parrots to gorillas, horses, dogs and cats.  We are seen even as we’re seeing and the world is rich with collecting rays of delight.  

Soccer practice
And rest –
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Light

The pineal gland is a tiny endocrine gland in the middle of our brain that’s shaped like a pine cone.  It helps regulate our body’s circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefulness  by secreting the hormone melatonin.  

I notice how aware I am of light and dark this time of year.  There’s an intensity to my noticing that light now comes earlier in the morning and lasts longer in the evening.

To augment my noticing, I light candles, keeping them going much of the time to massage my intake, my inhalation of smoke, flame and fragrance. I honor the passage and flickering motion and reach and touch of light.

The moon, a crescent, in the sky this morning
Candle flame – matter melting – fire and light to air
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Sausalito This Morning

We woke up with an impulse to greet the morning in Sausalito.  

Emily Dickinson:

Wonder is not precisely knowing. 

San Francisco comes to Light
The sun draws us near
The tide laps over the rocks
The lower walking path is a pool

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Our Teachers

Yesterday I walked along the fairy trail. It was raining an hour before, and then the sun came out though I was sheltered in an Oakwood Valley of ferns, trees, and streams. It felt magical and now I peruse the photos and see images in the water, trees, moss, and lichen to explore. When I returned home I saw the camellia bush offering buds and blooms. 

In being with so much transition, I’m with these words of Robert Thurman:

When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating, than of dying.

Entering the Trail
Images in the Creek
Fairy mushrooms light up in decaying a log
Sunlight leaks through
Leaning In
Mushrooms like mouths
Where holes invite
Images in the bed of a creek
I thought I saw two eyes, but it’s leaves caught in a web
More decomposers
Camellia Bud
Open with Scent

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Perception

As I settle into the newness of 2024, as though walking on fresh sand, I reflect on how a four year old views the world.  When I told my four year old grandson we were walking toward a special bench, he saw a tree bent lengthwise like a log and ran to it.  Is this the bench?  Well, of course, it was.  It was a place to sit.

When we walked around our yard, most of it natural, he saw a stack of dead bamboo piled to decompose.  To him, it was a treasure trove.  We now had magic wands, staffs, swords, and walking sticks.  When we came upon some fallen branches, he saw antlers, so he and his grandpa made a headband of cardboard and attached the antlers with duct tape, and he was Bambi, the “adult” Bambi, not the baby one.

Today my brain froze as I dealt with computer issues, and I knew it was time to take the advice of Wendell Berry in his comforting and inspiring poem The Peace of Wild Things, and go to the water and birds.

“For a time

 I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Exploring
Egrets gather at the marsh – Five Golden Slippers and One Great White with a yellow beak
Differentiate egrets by looking at beaks and feet
A wider embrace and expanse

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Opening the Door to the New Year

From the Headlands looking east through the Golden Gate Bridge
Egret at the Lagoon at Rodeo Beach
Great Blue Heron at the Lagoon at Rodeo Beach
Rodeo Beach
Angel Island from Sausalito
Looking down into the water in Sausalito

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The New Year

This day offers space, a white sheet, a blue sky.  

What calls us now?  What meets us?  What relationships beckon like tides moving in and out?

How do we meet this day as never before? 

What comes together and breaks apart and comes together again?

As this box of Picasso Tiles says: Be creative. Be unique. Be you.  

On the outside of the box: Be Creative. Be unique. Be you!
Ginger is currently hurt, so Ebi stays by her side. Friendship. Companionship. Care. Words to spark and secure the New Year!

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

The Power in Language

My four year old grandson has been staying with us.  He loves words, and is fluent in our language and a language of his own.  It’s clearly fun to play with sound as air winds round and round and plays with tongue and mouth as meaning and nonsense resound. 

Today I removed the Christmas books from the wall system, and browsing through the bookshelves re-discovered The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. 

They wrote it as a “spell book”, to conjure back twenty words lost from the most recent version of the Oxford Junior Dictionary.  Words like acorn, adder, dandelion, newt, otter and willow had been replaced by attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail.  The outdoor and natural world had been replaced by the indoor and virtual.  The lost word that most surprised me is “otter”.

The page on otter ends with this: 

Ever dreamed of being an otter? That 

otter underwater, thunderbolt, that 

shimmering twister?

Run to the riverbank, otter-dreamer, slip

your skin and change your matter, pour

your outer being into otter – and enter 

now as otter without falter into water.

And so now on this last day of 2023, do just that – “slip your skin and change your matter”.  Today and tomorrow are days to conjure new ways to speak, be present, and play.

 

Otters play in the sand at Abbott’s Lagoon
Mother and baby otters swimming home
Mother and Baby Otter
Posted on by Cathy Edgett

New Year’s Eve

For me this is a day of contemplation and reflection.

I’m with the poem Dew Light by W.S. Merwin. 

Dew Light

W.S. Merwin

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that

as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no

before or after and the dew looks up

without a number or a present age

Invitation
Contemplation
Climbing up to greet a new year
Absorbed in Perception

Posted on by Cathy Edgett

Candle, Heart, and Fire Light

It’s the time of year where we light candles and inhale the scent of winter, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.  I’m savoring the shared cheer.  It’s a tender time, and may this pause to absorb all the holiday traditions nourish us on our journey into a new year.  

Some favorite things!
At a BMX track awaiting the coming of Santa’s sleigh
Firelight
As we travel through the tunnel from one year to the next