Last night I lit a fire and sitting by it, opened two new books I recommend.

One is Together in a Sudden Strangeness: American’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Alice Quinn.  It’s filled with juicy, comforting and provocative offerings.

In the fourth stanza of George Bilgere’s poem “Facetime”, I learn this.

While in the closed down Tokyo Aquarium

these tiny eels – garden eels, they’re called –

are forgetting what we look like.

The aquarium keepers are worried

that the eels are getting lonely,

so they’ve hung iPads on the tanks.

They ask on their website, “Could you please

show your face to the eels from your home?”

And of course everyone is phoning the eels

which makes sense and is reassuring.

Part of me didn’t want to check if this was true, but then, I did and, yes, it’s true.

https://www.sciencealert.com/tokyo-aquarium-needs-your-help-reminding-their-eels-to-not-fear-humans.

Then, such a treasure,  I open Barack Obama’s book, A Promised Land, and settle in with his humor, openness, and intellect.  The book begins with two epigraphs.

The first is from an African American spiritual.

O, fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.

The second is from the Robert Frost poem “Kitty Hawk”.

Don’t discount our powers;

We have made a pass

At the infinite.  

And then I travel back a few years in time and place. Steve sends me a photo from a tram soaring about the Rhine in Rudesheim.

And the rain pours down on a Sunday of King tides and no need to be outside.

It rained in the night and the morning is quiet and calm.  I look out at clouds and trees, graced in exchange. 

Edgar Degas wrote: Art is not what you see but what you make others see.  

This morning I balance on these words of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you.

That’s what I think a meaningful life is.

One lives not just for oneself, but for one’s community.“

We have a president-elect who lives for and creates community. May kindness, love, and generosity prevail.

The sky this morning is pure delight, and helps counter the sobering news of the day even as many people begin the celebration of Hanukkah and the lighting of a candle each night.

I light candles these days because I love the flickering light.

Like waves in the sea, the movement is never the same.

In the past, I’ve written a letter from the North Polar Bear to the younger people in my world.  Tolkien wrote the Christmas letters to his children when he didn’t have money for presents.  Each year the clumsy North Polar Bear managed inadvertently and accidentally to destroy the gifts, and the beautifully illustrated letter explained what happened.  

This is such a strange year I suppose no explanation is needed, though Dr. Fauci has reassured us that Santa is immune to Covid and won’t be spreading the disease when he rides through the sky in his sleigh and slides down chimneys on December 24th.  

Recently I read that Santa’s reindeer are female, not male.  We know that because male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.  

Female reindeer retain their antlers until after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, even Rudolph, are female.

They need new names.  Perhaps Dashita, Dancerly, Prancine, Vixtoria, Comcie, Cupida, Dondorthy, Blixina, and Ruby with her shining red light of a nose.  

A friend used the isolation of the pandemic to go through 25,000 photos.  I’m still prancing around and maybe like the North Polar Bear my intention to light is floating flickering over the northern ground.  

On further reflection, I’ve now re-read Twas the Night before Christmas, and there’s nothing that gives the sex of the reindeer, so the original names are gender neutral, and Rudolph came later. The story is scientifically accurate, well, if you believe reindeer can fly and carry a sleigh, and maybe the point is we can name the reindeer however we choose. Enjoy the play!!

Yesterday I found myself moist with tears.  I read what it is to be a nurse in the ICU right now.  It’s horrifying what we’re asking of these people as they deal with the pandemic, and then, they go outside and see people refusing to wear masks.  It’s so simple.  It’s like seatbelts.  At first, we resisted, and now most of us can’t imagine driving without one.  Now, I can’t imagine not wearing a mask.

When I read that Jimmy Stewart used his PTSD experience flying B-24’s out of England during World War II to film the intense parts of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I realized I’d never seen the movie.  I watched it last night.  More tears.

Yesterday I read that “A herd of elephants marched twelve hours to the home of Lawrence Anthony after he died – the man who saved them. They stayed there in silence, mourning for two days. Exactly one year after his death, to the day, the herd marched to his house again.”

How do we explain that and do we even want to?  Simply receive.

My healing mantra today comes from Malcolm X:

When we change the ‘I’ for the ‘We,’ even Illness becomes Wellness.

Ellen Bass’s poem “Ode to the Fish” concludes with these lines.   

But beyond the cliffs

a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic

ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,

I could swim through into its thousand pound heart.

Yesterday my heart felt heavy.  Today I allow it to expand like the blue whale heart trusting the ladle and scoop.

In the Winter issue of Orion magazine, Rose Thater Braan-Imai offers “notes on living in kinship with nature”.  Each “note” is a treasure.

I offer one. 

When the senses are open,

they can freely come to agreement

about what is being perceived, or consensus.

In an experience of harmony

with the natural or temporal order,

can come an experience of certainty, 

you can say that you “know”.

That experience, embedded in our cells,

is the memory of that field of harmony that births all life.

To live with time as an ally is to be in harmony with life.  

I spent the day decorating for the holidays, always such a joyful journey down memory lane.  That contrasted with lockdown starting tomorrow and a red flag warning of fire danger from wind and dryness, so I was out watering again today.  It’s odd to hum Christmas carols and think of snow while the windows and doors are open and the plants all say, “Water, please!”  

I think of the word evening. I suppose each day lately is an evening, balancing, and smoothing our outlook as we balance new rules and restrictions to wipe the virus out.

We’re again moving into tighter restrictions.  I think of touch, of how we need to cultivate touch within and with ourselves.

I come to this wonderful poem by W.S. Merwin

“Separation”

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

A friend asks how we give to ourselves amidst so much going on.

I come to this quote by Albert Camus.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Giving all to the present includes including ourselves. 

Starting there, feeling within. 

What’s birthing within as we enter and dwell in the beauty, wonder, and awe of this new day?

This morning I refresh on the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.  

Tears and resolve come and then I read of the shooting death of 15 month old Carmelo Duncan in Washington D.C.

Perhaps the only way to meet these days is with tears, tears of liquid love honoring connection and the wells of grief that spring.

Merriam-Webster announced that “pandemic” is the word of 2020. “Pandemic,” they wrote, “is the word that has connected the worldwide medical emergency to the political response and to our personal experience of it all.” 

Also, Quarantine originally meant “40 days,” which was 226 days ago and counting.  

And from an unknown source:

Forget “dance like nobody’s watching”.  Dance like a toddler.  They don’t even care if there’s music.

Enjoy this fourth day of December as you honor what calls you with kindness and trust.  

Right now a friend’s discarded shell of a body is being cremated at a nearby cemetery.  I look into the air, receive transition, matter to air.  

My neighborhood is decorated both naturally, berries on the trees, and with wreaths and lights.  I love this time of year, the falling leaves juxtaposed with our, just like the trees, need and desire to open to light.

In his December newsletter, Michael Lerner from Commonweal called yesterday Wisdom Wednesday.  I think of today as Tuning Thursday, tuning myself ever more delicately for this play of dark and light.

In his newsletter, Michael wrote:  Many of you know that four months ago I had a major surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm at UCSF Medical Center. The surgery and the recovery have been a life-changing experience. I was catapulted into a new stage of life.

At 77 I am exploring in new ways the joys of what I could call active elderhood. I feel vital. I feel clear. After over half a century of thinking of myself simply as being useful, I am now discovering what it is like to take more time simply being.

Simply being – that is my tuning fork for this day.