We’re at Nick’s Cove in Point Reyes. We made our usual stop at the bookstore in Pt. Reyes Station, and I bought Brooke Williams book, Encountering Dragonfly: Notes on the Practice of Re-Enchantment. It’s a meditation on nature and connecting our inner and outer worlds through observing and being in the natural environment.It advocates a planetary and individual need to re-enchant.
Meanwhile, we’re savoring our current abode on the north side of Tomales Bay as the tide comes in and the tide goes out. It’s June and almost the new moon, so the change is dramatic. When the tide is high, the waves pound underneath our deck and lodging. Looking out, it’s like being in a boat. At low tide the eye is stretched and the other side seems closer. An egret feeds, and I, too, am nourished and fed.
Egret Fishing as the tide comes in. Looking across Tomales BaySunset last nightLooking west in morning lightThrough the trees
The following poem comes from Stefan Laeng who read it at his meditation class on Tuesday. It is by the late great German comedian Hanns Dieter Hüsch (who was born not far from the birthplace of Charlotte Selver, our teacher of Sensory Awareness,). It’s his translation with the German original below.
When the soldiers come
Lure them onto the roof of the dove
Lure them into the nest of the swallow
Lure them into the cave of the lioness
Lure them into the forest of the deer.
Approach them with open hands
Full of bread, and salt, and fruit, and wine
So that they loose their way in the brushwood of your virtues;
So that they get lost in the maze of your friendliness.
Let them be amazed.
Let their generals and presidents be ashamed.
Let their henchmen run aground.
Be a lowland of courtesy
Intelligence be your weapon
Patience be your strength
Love be your narrative
Your silence be your victory
So that the governors marvel greatly.*
* Some of you may recognize this as a biblical reference. Matthew 27:14
In German:
Wenn die Krieger kommen Look sie auf’s Dach der Taube Lock sie in’s Nest der Schwalbe Lock sie in die Höhle der Löwin Lock sie in den Wald der Rehe.
Geh ihnen entgegen mit offenen Händen
Voll Brot und Salz und Obst und Wein. Dass sie sich verlaufen im Knüppelholz deiner Tugenden Dass sie sich verirren im Labyrinth deiner Freundlichkeit.
Mach sie staunen. Beschäme ihre Generäle und Präsidenten Lass ihre Handlanger in’s Leere laufen Sei eine Tiefebene voll Höflichkeit.
Dein Gewehr sei die Klugheit Deine Kraft sei die Geduld Deine Geschichte sei die Liebe Dein Sieg sei dein Schweigen So dass sich die Landpfleger sehr verwundern.
Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly
A garter snake slides in for safetyClimb like mossGolden Slippers stirs the mud
I went with a friend to Tam Junction near my home. There were 450-500 of us standing at the freeway exit, so we were seeing people close-up in their cars, coming from north and south. It was an amazing experience, a cacophony of horns honking and people waving and smiling. Traffic was slow so there were literal thank you’s as windows rolled down and children and adults smiled and cheered. Dogs were very interested and supportive. Tears come now as I contemplate the feeling of a unity that unintentionally, and in greed, Trump and his cronies have created.
My friend and I both took naps when we returned to our homes. It was a great deal to absorb, so beautiful and freeing to stand with a group of people and sing, “This land is your land, this land is my land.” Yes, this land is our land.No Kings since 1776.
Now, rested, I open a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin.
“The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe.
This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create form, but of the life we get to live.”
The nature we are, and of which we are a part. We are a network, connected like mushrooms in the soil from which we rise.
Researchers have found that land plants evolved on Earth about 700 million years ago and land fungi evolved about 1,300 million years ago. Fungi connect with mycelium; they network.
In reading Robert MacFarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, I learn about Giuliana Furci who is known for her advocacy and research into the fungal kingdom. Her relationship is such that she can be in a car in a dark forest and sense a certain type of mushroom.
She says about hopping out of a car to discover a colony of Avatar-blue mushrooms, “I didn’t see the mushrooms, exactly. I heard them. If you know how to listen, fungi just … tell you where they are. I’ll get this feeling that there’s a fungus around. I feel, no, I know, that there’s something – no, somebody – who wants to see me. You get a call-out from them.”
“The fuzz in the matrix. That’s still the best way I can describe it. I can say very definitely that it’s a communication – a two-way interaction. The fungi know I’m there, as well as the reverse. Fungi have a different vibration to plants and animals. The colours move differently, I find. And fungi has a … shine that’s different to the shine of plants. It’s more … opague. And they have a very different energy than plants – much more of a watery or liquid feel.”
And now we organize a fluid energy to protest against dictatorship and cruelty. We connect and infiltrate to destroy their plans.
As Henry David Thoreau wrote: “This is the only way, we say, but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.”
We are radii, connecting through the environmental webs that nourish and sustain us all.
Mushrooms on the Oakwood Trail in JanuaryUmbrellas for LeprechaunsTransformation Climbs
Saturday is the No Kings Mass Protest. I have three locations within walking distance of my home, so I’m hoping enough people come that the three become one.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince wrote that “there is no comradeship except through unity on the same rope, climbing towards the same peak”.
May we meet in comradeship and climb together towards the same peak for unity, peace, community, protection, and connection in our country and the world.
Yesterday I had a tooth extracted, and a bone graft put in place. In four months, the bone will have integrated with my own bone, so I can have an implant. For now, I am aware of the integration, the curiosity of my bone with this, what may seem like an intrusion, and the care with which the procedure was done. My dentist’s son, who is 18, wants to be a dentist, so I gave permission for him to be there, too. Sometimes I close my eyes for dental procedures, but yesterday when I opened them, I saw three faces peering in, the dentist, the assistant, and his son. Three people were taking care of one small area in the rear of my mouth. How amazing is that?
Plants reach to cover rocks and people with death donate bones for grafts. Transformation!
In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”
The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.
We all know the day.Pearl Harbor was December 7, not June 7th.
Here’s a history of the American Revolution, thanks to Heather:
A friend recommended the movie The Penguin Lessons. I love it. I was then inspired to read the book The Penguin Lessons by Tom Mitchell that inspired the movie. There are similarities, yes, a wonderful penguin, who changes people’s lives, but there is much more in the book, so I recommend both with maybe the book second, though who knows. Notice what draws you.
Meanwhile, enjoy this poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
Spring Awakening
One day you wake up able to name the weight you’ve been carrying.
Realizing it’s not part of your body or your being, not essential in any way to journeying or joy, you set it down gently, without fanfare in the long soft grass at the side of the road and walk on
Surprised to find yourself smiling in the warm sun for no particular reason.
Today at low tide Rodeo Beach was covered with Velella velella, also known as by-the-wind sailors. Though they resemble jellyfish, they are related to sea anemones and corals. With a two-inch-high triangular sail, they are carried by the wind, not the currents.
Velella Jellyfish and VelellaJewelsTwinsTouchingComposite
A friend recommended a book, Morning Altars by Day Schildkret. Last night I began reading it, entranced and soothed by photos of mandalas made from flowers, leaves, shells, sticks, and rocks. Day suggests a journey into nature where you gather objects lying on the ground, and find a place that calls you where you practice the art of arriving. Sit until you know “I’m here.” Then, clear a space, a circle, with your hand or a small broom. When ready, begin by placing an object you’ve gathered in the center of the circle, and then, gather your objects around it in a way you feel called. Circle the objects around to create a mandala. In doing so, you are clearing a space within, and creating a visual representation of what’s happening in you now.
Leave it there, and perhaps come back to visit, and see how the natural world has altered your creation.
Reading this book, I’m able to center, and read Heather Cox Richardson. In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, in counteracting the lies and hatred of McCarthy said, “I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
Last night, Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey told host Jimmy Kimmell, that Republican senators are indeed unnerved by Trump’s behavior and the actions of the administration. The problem, Booker said, is what Thomas Jefferson said: “‘When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty.’”
Where I live, a Buckeye tree is often a place where the native people, the Coast Miwok, gathered. Losing its leaves in winter, the sun shines through, and growing them back, it provides shade. Adaptation and impermanence, and now we adapt to changing conditions, and speak to defend our nature and the nature in which we live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Let us build altars to the beautiful necessity, which secures that all is made of one piece.
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