I drove to Stinson Beach this morning. I was early enough to be alone on the beach at low tide. When I lay back on the sand, I heard the waves from underneath and all around, pounding jets, surround sound. Sandpipers skittered and one turkey vulture enjoyed a breakfast of decaying seagull.
“Awakening is truly nothing more or less than being right here in this moment, just as it is, and just as we are.”
— JOAN TOLLIFSON
Yesterday I gave myself a meditative walk down Tennessee Valley to the beach. Today we have rain. I’m with the words of Emily Dickinson:
I dwell in possibility.
The other day I watched a little girl struggle to open a heavy door at Blue Barn restaurant. Her father kept offering to help until finally she allowed it, and when the door opened, she closed it, and went for it again. Finally, together they again opened the door, and entered the space, but she wasn’t finished. She turned around and pushed from the other side.
My grandson likes to be the one to open the door to their home when we arrive. We knock and wait, as we hear scurrying and discussion inside. Perhaps it is the energetic feel of the movement of the heavy door, the power involved, or something about inside and outside, but I find it intriguing to consider how I might pause before I open and close each door. How do I transition each precious breath?
This is the first, wildest and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.
– Mary Oliver
Yesterday my four year old grandson set a towel on the grass and invited me to sit on the boat. Another towel was the “cabin”. He then carried a plate of hard-boiled and colored Easter eggs outside to place inside our cabin.
Ebi, the dog, was allowed to join us on the boat. I was pretending to steer but unsatisfied with our navigational progress, he dragged his sit-on digger/excavator over, placed it in front of the towel, and sitting on it, began to steer the boat. Some plastic fish were thrown into the “water” for us to catch. He informed me he needs a haircut so he’s sleeker in the water for scuba-diving. He then “dove” into the water for that. When I returned home, I reflected on it all. What might I create with what’s here?
Because I’m aware each moment could be my last, I set intention for mindfulness, which is quite a task. I keep looking for reminders to reinforce my focus on presence, even though I know this is about knowing enough, and not needing to “seek” because all is here.
I’d been following the search for Caroline Meister, a 30 year old member of the Tassajara community. After an exhaustive search that included Search and Rescue teams, she was found. She’d fallen by a waterfall on a solitary hike, and hitting her head, died.
I read that a few days before she disappeared, a friend asked her, “What would you do if you knew you only had 48 hours to live?”
Her response, “I’d go for a long hike alone in nature.”
Yesterday I walked with a friend to the beach at Tennessee Valley. Though I was there ten days ago, it was completely different. Part of it was the light, filtered through a cold wind, but, also, despite rain, the creek had slowed, and it was possible to cross without taking off one’s shoes.
Also, the willows had filled in and the landscape was denser with plants. We didn’t see a bobcat but we did see a long, brown snake slithering into the path for warmth from the sun.
Snake paused when we paused so I saw he was harmless with his thin neck and sliver of a tail. I was reminded of Stanley Kunitz’s wonderful poem “The Snakes of September”. He writes of hearing snakes in the shrubbery all summer long, but then with autumn’s chill, he sees two of them, “dangling head-down entwined in a brazen love-knot”. The poem continues:
I put out my hand and stroke
the fine dry grit of their skins.
After all,
we are partners in this land,
co-signers of a covenant.
At my touch the wild
braid of creation
trembles.
Last night I watched the Worm full moon as it began to eclipse, and then, this morning there it was, a full disk shining through the trees. In two weeks, we’ll see a solar eclipse, and meanwhile the increasing light is beckoning buds to emerge, and birds to mate and nest.
Alan Watts:
You are something not that comes into the world, but comes out of it – in the same way as a flower comes out of a plant, or a fruit comes out of a tree. You are an expression.
We live, immersed, held. I’m listening to meditations with Sam Harris. He suggests we have no free will. There is trust in entering the ocean of waves knowing suspension and whirling as air flows in and out.
The news is so depressing on many fronts that sometimes I wonder what to post and then I read these words of Emily Dickinson and feel inside, and go outside.
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
I’m up in the night with a moon almost full, and a huge circle around her. The Pittosporum are blooming offering scent to a magical world.
On Friday, I walked Tennessee Valley with a friend. We saw a bobcat on our way to the beach, and a Great Blue Heron on the way back. The bobcat reminded me of my cat Tiger, just as friendly and playful. We watched the bobcat hop for and trap lunch, and the heron catch a fish.
I’m with this Australian Aboriginal proverb:
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.
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