Yesterday I was invited in my Sensory Awareness group to tear firm paper into strips. Just that, might have been enough, the sound and the hesitation in my hands and in the paper to bring those fibers apart, to separate what was once together in a tree, and then, brought together again, to now be rendered and gently tendered apart.
We then separated strips of tissue paper. I had Christmas tissue paper at hand. A different sound and feel as this texture found space with new edges and shape.
We then wrote on strips of firm paper, and strips of tissue paper.
We wrote: There is something deeply within us that knows.
We wrote Charlotte Selver’s famous words: Every moment is a moment. The question is how we answer it.
We wrote our own vow. My vow these days is to melt the icebergs within. Lately I’ve been with all that’s hidden underneath that I haven’t yet discovered or uncovered. I’ve been thinking about how it was for the iceberg and the Titanic to meet and break apart.
Anna, who was leading us in this experiment, spoke of how we use the same word for tear and tear. When one pauses to consider, the same word for what appears different on the surface, makes sense.
We made boats of our thicker paper strips, and twisted the ends of the tissue paper and allowed them to float together in a bowl of water. On some, the ink dissipated like smoke. Even with waves, mine stayed, until this morning when I came to see that all had settled, a bowl at rest and peace, a gentle oasis reflecting this day in me.
Sunday morning, we rose early to a moist wrap of fog and flotilla after flotilla of pelicans flying by our deck by the bay. We counted fifty pelicans in some of the groups, and there were also individuals, couples, and smaller gatherings of flight.
We didn’t know if it was a wider circle than we saw coming from the sunrise and heading west so we were seeing the same ones more than once, or whether each one was unique to us, but I was reminded of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring where she pointed out that DDT was destroying our wildlife. Rachel’s book saved the pelicans, osprey, and other creatures and birds, and now we watched groups of as many as fifty birds swoop by, some high and some low just skimming the water. It was as exhilarating as a fireworks display, and quieter though we did hear the swoosh of wings.
One seal bobbed in front of our deck, also entranced.
It’s a different rhythm in Sausalito than West Marin and yet again there’s the rhythm, motion, and comfort of the waves and changing tides. We took this week to reflect back on over fifty years of knowing each other and what that means. We honored how we each contain both young and old. As Steve’s doctor reminds him, we’re not in the “young sapling stage of life”, and yet, there is a resilience, a reception as of the waves reaching and changing the shore.
It’s been a beautiful week as the planet shifts now in its reception of light. I feel refreshed and invigorated, calm and motivated, both young and old, as my individual wave connects with other waves and this whole planet we share.
A friend proposes we give ourselves time with photos and texts of and about Black people, note what comes up and how we feel. How do we embody the experience of another? How do we cultivate presence in ourselves while we take in and empathize with the experience of another? How do we reap kindness and root?
The fog is in this Monday morning where I live, and I’m grateful for the wrap as I give my heart space to open and feel a little more of the gift of each breath and the gratitude that nourishes each life as we pause to open and receive. I believe I need to give myself time for reception and absorption, and so I do.
These are complex times as we navigate opening to lives other than our own. May we be kind.
Saturday morning sunrise over San Francisco Bay Saturday morningBirds of Paradise facing the rising sun Ivy finds a spot to root and grow
And then I stopped taking photos, and seeped in simplicity absorbing what’s written and taking place in and on my inner and outer walls. Gratitude and grace – two pillars anchoring unity and diversity in ourselves as shown in rocks.
Steve and I were married 50 years ago tomorrow. Because of the pandemic we chose not to travel so we celebrated at Nick’s Cove and now tonight and tomorrow night we’ll be in Sausalito. 50 years seems unimaginable but it was 1971 and this is 2021. Gold.
And now our anniversary will always be a federal holiday. How gratifying it is to honor two momentous events.
50 years allows one to experience highs and lows and inbetween. May we all be well and happy, celebratory and appreciative of what comes our way, the seasons and tides our guides.
Great Blue Heron feeding at low tideHigh tide looking down from the pierEgret feeding!Sunrise with high tide on approach – the rock covered and uncovered with two highs and two lows each day
We’re home now to heat, 92 degrees, after two glorious nights at Nick’s Cove on Tomales Bay. We left here early on the 15th, the day CA reopened. Stopping at The Parkside in Stinson Beach for breakfast, we were greeted with smiles. Because we were the first people inside in all this time, they took our picture and fed us for free. What a treat!
We headed up the coast and out to Abbott’s Lagoon where patience allowed us to see a mother otter with two pups swimming and then climbing up onto the sand dune, and then back into the water.
We checked into our abode, pure heaven, and as though on a boat lived enchanted as the tide moved in and out.
Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Rhythm slowed as we watched the sun, moon, and stars, and even saw the Milky Way, a glow in the sky.
Heading towards Abbott’s Lagoon Look closely to see Mama Otter and her two babiesLook in the waterCrossing over Otters on the dunes Evening comes SunsetMorningAnother sunsetMorning again as the earth turns and we do too!
I was awake in the night and rising, felt called to move and massage my spine and sacrum with the air and the floor. Gravity was a cloak pulled back and forth.
Then, sitting in a chair next to a bookcase, one book called to me. Awakening the Spine by Vanda Scaravelli.
“The pull of gravity under our feet makes it possible for us to extend the upper part of the spine, and this extension allows us also to release between the vertebrae. Gravity is like a magnet attracting us to the earth, but this attraction is not limited to pulling us down, it also allows us to stretch in the opposite direction towards the sky.”
We see it in nature, plants rising up.
I watched the movie “The Courier” with Benedict Cumberbatch. I recommend it as an example of courage, and what one or two people can do to change our world.
We rise early these days. Today I realized I had the idea it would keep getting lighter and lighter, earlier and earlier, but as with life, there’s change, so we have these lengthening days until the 21st and then a shift backward again, a slide back to dark. I light a candle this morning in honor of all the ways to light.
Because we’re on water rationing, I’m out early to give the plants a drink, rare now as twice a week is their gift. Roses are blooming.
Driving down to Menlo Park this week, I was listening to “Oldies but Goodies” when the song “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire came on. Released in 1965, it’s sadly appropriate today.
For some unknown reason, WordPress is not working correctly for me these last few days.
This African saying calls: The times are urgent; let us slow down.
I’ve been working/not-working with presence, cultivating and allowing its flow and movement, its ease.
Today I read these words of the poet Nikki Giovanni – “Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t. … If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
Empathy.
Reflecting on it, I feel the connection between presence and empathy, the way to widen presence in this whirled world.
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