I watch the fog move in and out, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes wisps, and other times a clasped presence. Sometimes I see it moving but it doesn’t advance. It dissipates, unseen.
As I watch the fog, I read from The Hidden Lamp, learn that in Chinese lore it is said that the chicken listens with her heart to hatch her eggs.
I read of the El Paso shootings.
I listen with my heart.
I’m enjoying a Master Class with the marvelous poet Billy Collins. He comes to me in my very own room.
Today I watched Collins and Marie Howe, another amazing poet, discuss a poem by Emily Dickinson, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”.
I’m sure I’ve read this poem before but I never took it in as I did today. I think I was more deeply affected because yesterday I read of the suicide of a 22 year old woman. She had been dealing with depression and the weight of it became too much.
Can a poem save a life? I want to believe so. Could this poem have helped her know that Emily Dickinson made it through, and she might too?
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My mind was going numb –
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –
The scent of jasmine floats on the air carried on a gentle breeze. In this place, full ease as though I’m a bee gathering pollen for the hive I share.
Last night I bit into a bright red cherry. The flesh was so full and sweet, it took my tongue ages to find the pit. Life is like that sometimes, and yet, the cherry grows around a pit, like a pearl grows around a foreign intrusion in an oyster shell.
I feel a bit discombobulated this morning as though so many riches have come my way I need to just sit and absorb. Am I the pit or the fruit growing around the pit? Of course I am both, and knowing that, I attach wings to my day and fly, nest, rest.
Each morning I rise and after a time come to this window that looks out on the ridge, rising bushes and a redwood tree. The branches were pruned to a foot above deck level a couple of months ago but now rise higher and higher each day, light green new sprouts delicate in this soft, morning fog light. I know there’s a heat wave elsewhere but here it’s summer Bay area cool and my eyes dance in the lightness of ever-changing and nourishing light.
The sky is soft this morning, the fog tender. I am tender. Perhaps it is that my mother would have been 92 today. I feel her here.
I look up meanings of the word tender since I feel a tiny boat chugging in my heart, softly content to create a gentle wake, a simple hum.
Tender can mean to offer something. It can be a little boat or a boat that attends to other boats. I suppose we’re all boats in our own way, floating along, separately or in a flotilla, alone, and not, connected in an ocean of air.
Again this morning I learn of a death. A good friend’s mother passed, and yet in preparation the family has been gathering sweetness and shared memories. I see a bouquet of hearts, a rainbow in the tears.
I’m with this softness in my heart, like a balloon, or parachute, or maybe an Angel’s Trumpet flower. Maybe it’s simply a pool open to offering what comes to me today, soft as petals falling, and trumpets calling.
I’m reminded now that at my friend’s house high on a hill overlooking San Francisco bay that various neighbors go out on their decks and blow trumpets at sunset. It’s like a call of birds, each one in a certain order.
There are so many ways to honor passage, so many ways to stir our insides with the nourishing taste of love and care. This morning for me, peace stirs the air I share.
Yesterday in the Sensory Awareness workshop one person asked: “What’s the difference between being grounded and feeling the ground?“
I’ve been sitting with that and have come to understand that the point is unity. Unity is a place of grace.
I was at the vet early this morning with Tiger. He has hurt his ankle and was not pleased to be in a crate going to the vet but we’re home now and all is peace.
Construction is happening next door, and noise will be my friend for the next few weeks, or perhaps a month.
It brings me to unity, unity in myself and with the world. Peace.
Fog and sun balance on the ridge. I feel balanced this morning, grounded. I walked with a friend yesterday afternoon/evening embraced by the trunks of redwoods. We watched the sun set and the nearly full moon move like a ship in the sky.
I read about how we need quiet, silence, how quiet places are being developed where people can pay and be taught how to listen. We’re so bombarded with noise that we’ve forgotten how to listen. I listen now, the only sounds the clicking of my keys when I type, my stomach growling requesting nourishment, and birds. All is still except the slow movement of pink fog. I feel myself pulled on its exploration, its ease. Sometimes it rushes in but this Sunday morning all is quiet.
My brother was born on July 17, so would have been sixty-six in three days. My mother who passed in 2005 would have been 92 on July 16. What is it about birthdays even when the person is gone that strikes a match inside? I’m tender, tender today, tender with ease.
My sensory awareness group met today. As I settled into myself and felt the support of the floor and the chair, a tear came and rolled down my cheek. My throat felt tight and scratchy and I began to cough. Grief extended into my heart and down to my feet.
I shared that I was experiencing a visceral feeling of grief from my brother’s death on April 14th. I had hoped I’d moved on.
Later, a woman who’d just completed a workshop at Spirit Rock on death, dying and aging asked if I thought what I was feeling related “just” to my brother’s death. I knew that it was more than that. She suggested that my feelings related to impermanence.
I could feel how true that was.
Later we worked with flexibility using partly inflated balls. I felt my holding and inflexibility. I was trying to hold a stance of strength. I felt the work of holding back tears, what it does to my legs, neck, and spine.
What I learned today is that flexibility and impermanence relate and when I can honor the waves of both, float a little more openly on the natural movement I am, I can breathe, and tears may come, but in and through the tears there are waves, and released, I breathe, and am breathed.
Allowing immersion in impermanence, I hold both joy and sorrow, no dividing, and there I celebrate the wonder of being alive. Vitality is my wand and spring when I honor that impermanence is the ocean and land we share. There’s nothing to do and nowhere to go. I’m here.
Because the fog is in today, I look into the eyes of sunflowers. At first, I’m entranced by their petals but then I focus in more closely and what do I see – infinity.
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