Feeling the shift in light, I put out pumpkins and change candles to yellow and orange. I breathe more deeply, receive the fresh stirrings in the air activating and energizing the moments remaining to me. I read that people my age are happy because they recognize the gift of each breath, the air moving in and out.
Yesterday I walked to and from Tennessee Valley Beach. Photos speak in the mist.
I’ve been with my grandson who is three, almost four. It’s pure delight to enter into an imagination where we are moles, lions, jaguars and bears as we protect and feed our baby animals, which are an assortment of all the stuffed creatures he’s been given over the years. I feel myself as fluid when I become another animal, feel what it is to use my mouth and claws to hunt and defend. I see grandson exhibit patience as he waits to pounce on prey, and twists and turns in all sorts of ways, and I do too.
We become the gentle rabbit hiding in the grass, and the curious monkey who peers through a handle-hold in his bed which is lifted so we climb up and down a ladder as we move from the floor to the safety of our blanket and pillow-filled den.
It’s an immersive world being with him as he interprets differently than I so I’m constantly adjusting interpretation and explanation . The blind hanging vertically becomes a carwash for the matchbox cars.
I sit here now looking out on blue sky with a soft touch of fog. How many animals am I today? How do I meet the floor on all fours? What is it to sit in a chair as a bear and type?
I’m reminded of a book by Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age. It’s about racism, and the joy of being with a three year old. I recommend it as a way to live even more aware.
When I was driving him around town, I took a wrong turn and we stumbled upon a library. When I saw the sign, I slammed on the brakes and parked, and grandson was as excited as I. Books – another way to expand. He chose one about a woman born the same year as I, 1949, and her journey to becoming an astronaut after seeing Sputnik fly overhead in 1957. Dreams fulfill.
My son is 49 today, a magic number, seven times seven, an entry number as he gathers all together before a half century comes to pass. I pause in contemplation. 49 years: Birth branching connection in waves of immersion and growth.
We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically.
– Neil DeGrasse Tyson
August is folding wings and September is on approach. My family has four birthdays as we move through September and October, so, for me, it is a time of birth.
The sun rises later these days but with such clarity, I simmer like a leaf in awareness of release.
Two quotes guide my day today.
Robin Wall Kimmerer:
Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them an intention and compassion – until we teach them not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a “who” but an “it,” we make that maple an object. We put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying “it” makes a living land into natural resources. If maple is an “it,” we can take up the chainsaw.
Rabindranath Tagore:
Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.
Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.
– Eckhart Tolle
This is a time for straying, for losing one’s way, for asking new questions. A sacred activism. A slowing down that knows enchantment is not in short supply.
Bayo Akomolafe
I was unfamiliar with David Solnit but now I know what an amazing man he is. You can Google him and learn the work he does.
My friend Jane Flint is part of this group The Lamentors. She says:
We are the Lamentors and we are associated with 1000 Grandmothers (elders)and with Extinction Rebellion, also known as XR (youth)
David made the contraption that anchors the puppet. Jane made the face out of paper mache so it would be light. Someone else made the hands.
These photos are from the ferry building in San Francisco. Each of us is a wave in the ocean and we each find our own way to say what we must say. Here’s a gathering of cohered waves.
I’ve been in Inverness. Yesterday I was at Abbott’s Lagoon with a low tide, so birds were abundant and otters were resting in their reeds.
Rilke in The Book of Hours translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows:
All becoming has needed me
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
Rhythm pulses in me!
Usually I keep vases around the house filled with water and flowers, but lately I’ve kept one vase empty of flowers and partially filled with water.
A vase – water – space.
Cathy's Blog! 