I wake and all is silent. I read Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes” and then these words of Thomas Merton:
Let me seek then, the gift of silence and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into a prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer.
Emily Dickinson now comes to body and mind.
To live is so startling that it leaves little time for anything else.
Guidance arrives and settles – lands, flows, flies.
I’m reading The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul. I recommend it. I’ve always understood my need for nature, and I also resonate to the chapter “Thinking with Built Spaces”.
I was reminded of my time in Assisi a few years ago when I read that in the spring of 1954, Jonas Salk was stuck in his work trying to develop a vaccine for polio. He was exhausted from working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week in a small basement laboratory. He traveled to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, a 13th century monastery.
He spent weeks there, reading, thinking, and walking. He experienced an intellectual breakthrough which he attributed to the buildings themselves.
“The spirituality of the architecture there was so inspiring that I was able to do intuitive thinking far beyond any I had done in the past. Under the influence of that historic place I intuitively designed the research that I felt would result in a vaccine for polio. I returned to my laboratory in Pittsburgh to validate my concepts and found that they were correct.”
Less than ten years later, Salk with the architect Louis Kahn set out to design a space for scientists to work. The inspiration for the design was the basilica at Assisi. The result is the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA completed in 1965.
There’s natural light and unobstructed space. When the scientists are in their studies, they view the Pacific Ocean.
There’s a new field called “neuroarchitecture”. I’m reminded of feng shui, the study of elements, movement, and energy. I can feel the balance that nourishes me. Where do I rest, trust, expand?
The book goes on to discuss the importance of walls as opposed to the open concept work and study space. I think of Virginia Woolf’s book, A Room of One’s Own, and how when I’m in a library I often head for a cubbyhole, a place to go within to reflect, cohere, and learn.
The chapter concludes that we need both social interaction and undisturbed solitude. Studies show we perform best in a space we’ve made our own. We’re more productive and healthier when our space reflects and nourishes our self-image.
I look around my room. This isn’t clutter. It’s who I am. There are plants and I face a view of the ridge. I feel safe here surrounded with my chosen books and gifts.
I give thanks for a room of my own except when my grandson comes and I joyfully share my space with him and his crib. After all, the point of creativity is adaptability, and our ability to respond.
And going back through memories, I remember when my son Chris and I took a mother-son trip to Yellowstone. On the return, we camped by a lake in Idaho.
What’s that sound? The creek is running again.
We enjoyed a fire in the fireplace, savored the comfort and crackle of flame, not as fear but as warmth and entertainment.
What a lovely entry into my new year. My birthday was Saturday and I felt and feel the shift a new year brings, the entry into wonder as all the years gather together like an unfolding fan.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche:
When we trust our creativity we encounter a supreme kind of enjoyment – an amazement at the natural unfolding of life beyond our ordinary way of looking at things.
Rain!! It was a weekend with two birthday celebrations augmented with the joy of rain. Even in CA, two year olds have rain boots and raincoats and there’s nothing cuter than watching them bounce and prance about.
And today, the clean air invigorates and birds are happily out and about.
My grandson turns two today. He has a brand new sweatshirt with red fire trucks and a beautiful, sweet smile that continues to encompass more and more.
My heart balances on the beauty of this little being and the loss of Bella which still provides an ache, and yet, I feel her here.
A friend mentions this quandary – her absence and presence at one time which may be the contemplating step out of duality. May this be so even as this child turning two walks into a future that cultivates peace and kindness, that honors the connections we share.
We won’t take the buckets out of the shower and we won’t go back to a shower every day but what a gift to hear and see moisture falling from the sky. Our cat Tiger doesn’t understand and keeps asking to go out different doors hoping for a different experience but it’s raining everywhere in his sphere of what’s outside this house.
And I, honoring the shorter days and longer nights, sink into the place of roots, absorbing and weaving what moves through the soil of my being, the living within and beneath.
Because of Covid, my driver’s license was renewed automatically, no need to go in for the over seventy test. I’ve got four more years and the rain pours down and I’m grateful for a roof and a sacred place to be.
Grief has hit. I continue to learn how there is a protective barrier at first as we deal with what must be done. We gather, eat, share, and then, there is the place of realizing they are not here.
Bella and Tiger were siblings. They shared a womb, though they had two different fathers. Over 15 years ago, Chris and I went to the shelter, and there they were in the same cage with Tiger in front like a circus barker and Bella hiding in the back. We were told Bella as a calico would always be aloof. That was untrue.
Last night grief hit and this morning I thought I couldn’t get out of bed. My sacrum is sore and I try to visualize the lungs that are there, the movement, the place that connects heaven and earth and it’s a slow process. I feel all my cells vibrating, like the apps on an Iphone when you push to make a change. Yesterday I was cleaning out and putting away her things. The waves she loved are set to give away. Though she loved to rest in them, Tiger chooses instead to scratch his two tough cardboard models of the World Trade Center.
I feel the physicality of adjusting to this loss. She would be next to me in the chair but instead the chair is empty and bare. I’m off-balance and tears fall.
Today in Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem “Porosity” she writes:
In a dream, I was told,
The body is permeable
to life and to death.
She is grieving the loss of her son and though I may feel this grief is for Bella, as of course it is, it’s also grief for loss of mother, father, brother, cousin, and friends in all forms.
May I honor the openings and closings that embrace and expand porosity as I vibrate and shiver and moisten with tears the changes in grief.
When I went to bed last night I felt the portal opened by the passing of Bella. I lay there in the light, and slept until I woke at 4:30, wide awake and with an aching heart, but as I felt the ache, I felt it more as a feeling, as the deepest feeling permeating my whole being.
I came to the computer and when I turned on the light, the most beautiful moth flew up and fluttered about my face. When I went to sip my coffee, there was the moth, laid out beautifully like a heart. I took the moth outside and gave it to the yard.
Yesterday I told the lovely nurse who helped us that there would be no more pets for me. When Tiger goes, that’s it, and then, this morning I felt how that’s why we’re here, to feel this transition, the beauty of life here, and the passage to what comes.
I’m blessed. We’re blessed. May we live in Gratitude, Appreciation, and the shared feeling of connection that is Peace!
Little Bella, aka Little Sweetie, was put to sleep today at 2. Jeff, Steve, and I were there. Sadly, it was time. The caregiver she was, she held on as long as she could and it was time.
Many tears and as we’re telling little Keo she’s living in the rainbows now. May there be many rainbows in all the tears.
I love books and as we continue to explore downsizing and moving, I contemplate, even as I treasure, which books might find their way to a new home.
We’ve been checking out open houses, often beautifully staged. In one, all the books on the white book shelf were covered in white. I thought of all the work that goes into a book and it’s cover, and there they were, whitewashed, stark and blank, the same.
I just finished reading State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny. Thumbs way, way up. It’s a “real” thriller, uncomfortably close to the truth.
State of Terror begins with this quote by Tom Peters:
“The most amazing thing that has happened in my lifetime is neither putting a man on the moon nor Facebook having 2.8 billion monthly active users. It is that in the 75 years, 7 months, and 13 days since Nagasaki, a nuclear bomb has not been detonated.”
As we watch autumn leaves fall to nourish the ground, may we live in cycling gratitude for adding days, months, and years to the continuation of that.
On Friday I was at Filoli Gardens. I looked at their library and then came home to appreciate mine. It was a sign. Like the falling leaves, it’s time to allow some of my books to find new homes, homes where their covers can shine and proclaim entry into magic, wisdom, majesty, and intent.
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