The sky this morning is a dance of clouds, formations changing with wisps of fog threading through.  Perhaps it’s how the flower feels when a hummingbird dips its beak in to sip, though maybe I’m the hummingbird sipping nectar from sky and trees.

We live in a natural world-wide web. Trees breathe in and out, twine through roots, and send carbon to neighboring trees when needed.  We’re wired to connect. 

My son Jeff will be 45 tomorrow.  I remember back as I talk to my other son Chris who will be 42 in October with a new baby delivered soon.  We talk about babies and breast pumps. Last night they learned that the breast milk pumped from the morning wakes the baby up.  The breast milk pumped at night puts the baby to sleep so label the bottles placed in the frig.

Rhythms.  I think of how different it was when I was young.  We were told we had to compete with the Russians so when I started high school in 1963 I was placed in accelerated math and science programs. It was a left-brain world with no time for art. Competition ruled. 

Then when my sons were young and I trained to become a Terwilliger nature guide, I learned a whole new view of science. It’s a living study, a study of life. I wasn’t dissecting a frog or fetal pig. I held a sparrow in my hands, felt her quivering fear, stroked the dry fluidity of a living, moving snake, pure grace.

Yesterday was my sixth Alexander session.  The work is to be experienced and lived, not analyzed, and yet, something in me wants to understand how the balancing in my organism allows me to open into feeling myself being breathed.  There’s no effort, only ease, no fear like I felt in the little sparrow held in my hands. I ooze a sap of kindness, kindness for myself, and in that, the world of which I’m part.

In fourth grade, I was the fairy godmother who gave kindness in the play, “Sleeping Beauty”.  I’ve never forgotten the power of saying those four words as I waved my wand. “I give you kindness.”   Now kindness is given to me.

I’m reminded of a quote by Ramakrishna. The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail, and perhaps in this moment, Alexander Technique allows me to trim the sails I raise. 

The joke about where I live is that when it rises to 74 degrees, people ask, “How are you doing in this heat?”  We are delicate flowers but I slept with windows and doors open and woke to birds twittering and calling me to come outside where the words “holy, holy, holy” fill my chest.

Since it’s fall, I figure the birds are singing with pure joy since it’s late in the year to look for a mate. 

Perhaps because I was born in October, this time of year feels super-sacred to me, as though I’m still in the womb, adding an extra pound or two, well, unfortunately that part is still true, but there’s such reverence for me on this first day of September.

Yesterday a friend and I planned to go to our local Shakespeare in the Park and we were near.  We saw the actors and stage, but then it was so beautiful in Old Mill Park, we moved down by the stream to talk.  It’s quite something to hear Shakespeare from afar. Perhaps it’s how the stars feel as they listen to our calls. Surely our drama and complaints vibrate the gravitational field both near and far.

I’m more aware of vibration these days, more aware of what I put out into the world as to anger or blame, and what I bring in to myself as to “shoulds”.  I believe there is a place to let all that go, and rejoice, and call like the birds in fall. And now one cheeps and chirps right outside the window.  “Come out and play,” and so I will.

Blessings for us all!

I sit outside with my laptop, aware of the changing light.  The wind blows through the trees, and the fog is on approach.

I know this is a hectic weekend for some, Labor Day weekend, though the intention was, and the purpose is, for renewal and rest.

My long-term book group has been looking for a light, happy book but not too light, obviously, but happiness has an appeal.  This month we chose a book by Miriam Toewes, All My Puny Sorrows.

I thought this weekend would be the perfect time to read it, and it is, and because it deals with living and dying, I often need to pause.

In this pause, I check out the author, renowned and loved in Canada, but my book group wasn’t familiar with her.  If you want to learn about her and her books, click here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/a-beloved-canadian-novelist-reckons-with-her-mennonite-past

There are many wonderful lines from the book, but I am most struck with the pianist’s advice to a student on how to play the piano.  “Learn to play around the notes on the piano.”  

I sit with the broader meaning, the awareness of space, and its expansiveness, and how the space between galaxies is increasing.  

Aligned with the universe, I, too, can expand, can increase the space between, and in, my cells.

A friend recently “diagnosed” me as a Seeker.  I receive that as a compliment even as I release the ties that seek.

Yesterday I was at the Presidio in San Francisco, one of my favorite places.  I share its spaciousness here.

The day is bright with early autumn light, windows are open and the air is fresh. Each cell drinks in the fullness of what it is to be awake.

I’ve been working with Alexander Technique. I pause to notice my habit and focus on thinking up, and when I rise I think forward and up.  When I’m ready to come down to a chair, I allow my knees and hips to bend. There is ease. I rise and fall as easily as the tides.   

Years ago, I took a wilderness survival course with Peter Wolf, his real name. The focus besides gathering wood and making fires was open focus. We walked through the forest alone, noticing movement, something changing, or out of place.

Blindfolded, we walked barefoot, holding onto a rope so as not to get lost, and received what we heard and felt.  How quiet were our feet on the earth, how receptive?

Yes, we predators look straight ahead, but we are also prey, so our peripheral vision sweeps and culls from the sides.  We’re here because we’ve survived within an ever-changing environment. We live in relationship and cultivating this knowing enriches our souls.

This morning I note that the weight of my brother’s passing, the grief, is held in wider hands.  The environment offers support, the birds, the trees, and now, a wisp of fog drops down on the ridge like a hand assuring that yes, my environment is wide in support, is here.

A song from childhood comes to mind.  “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” Today, we might say, in honor of and with respect to Mother Earth, “She’s got the whole world in her hands.”

Now I listen to Mahalia Jackson.  She sings, “You’ve got the whole wide world in your hands.”

I usually do my daily post first thing in the morning but today, our son Chris spent the night so he and his dad could head out early for a Labor Day weekend bonding and exploring trip.

The day began with excitement as they prepared, and Steve requiring more time than Chris, allowed Chris and me to toss tantalizing and extravagant new ideas back and forth.  Then, printing out maps for their trip threw my computer into a stagnant mode, and that required a fiddling fix.  

I usually begin the day slowly, with meditation, and then, the slow, gentle pouring of water heated to 200 degrees through a coffee cone.  Today I was tossed in a percolator, and that required time to come to ground.  

After savoring the delight of connection through phone, text, and email, I went outside to hang clothes on the deck to dry.  The wind blew through.

The word “psithurism” means the sound of wind in the trees and rustling of leaves.  I breathed with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh,

“Breathe in and think, I am solid; breathe out and think, I am free”.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.“

Breathing solid, new, and free, I’m a bell, a bowl , deeply struck, sweetly rung. I’m seaweed on a rock.

I was a good student in school, a good girl, in the days when we sat silent and still at our desks, legs together, hands folded.  We raised our hands to speak, though I seldom did. I thought wisdom came from the head, the head of the classroom, a leader outside myself.  

Yesterday I had my fifth Alexander Technique session.  I should know by now that there is no “right” way to do things but I still want to be a good student, and the brain, my brain, loves control. 

It isn’t that the brain doesn’t have a place in this, as obviously it does, but it’s integrated into the whole being.  Our whole being leads. In Alexander Technique, developed over 120 years ago by F.M. Alexander, it is to “think” up. When I allow the head to be loose and pivot at the height of the ears, and think up to rise, I rise, effortlessly and with pure ease.  I rise and come down, no energy or effort at all.

And then I want to do it right, which is the habit.  I’m learning to “inhibit” the habit, so the organism can respond in the moment as it is, new and alive.

I’ve studied and practiced Sensory Awareness for twenty-six years.  I know there are experiments that allow and invite us to notice, and in noticing, return to the wisdom of the organism, to the natural functioning of a baby and young child, so how is this different?

My practitioner, John Baron, literally guides me up and down, suggests with his hands, and then on the table, goes through my physicality, stretching, pulsing, suggesting. I walk out floating, expanded, free.  I come home to absorb more clearly this re-organizing permission in my being, though John says the intention is to carry this everywhere, in all situations, and I believe and understand while also preferring to give myself time to absorb, receive, integrate.

Of course, in my sensing group we’re working with just this.  We may have a wonderful experience in a workshop or class, but we’re working with how to carry it out into the world, and as I write this, a sense of ease comes in. Just carry it out into the world. There is no “trying” in Alexander, no “should”, no “work”, simply rise, and nourished, and nourishing, replenishing, be.

Working with John, I see how it is effortless until I put pressure on myself to be more fluid, whatever that means, to do it “right” and again, I know clearly, there is no “right”.  A tree grows, responds to water, air, nutrients, space, light.

Like a tree, I “rise”, rooted in energy flowing up through flexible ankles, feet, and knees.

The Alexander Technique has been described as “the use of the self, psycho-physical re-education, kinesthetic re-education, proprioceptive training”. I can tell you that, and still not convey what it is to feel my cells expand out and become the sea, not individual lakes.

In this moment, I’m living in waves. Trees, fog, sky, computer, books, air, waves flow in and through, and this “me” is free, free of history and habit, which allows even more connection with memory and what comes. There is a beckoning and uniting of present and past in honoring this moment that contains All.

Yesterday I posted about a “living wall” outside a grocery store in Sausalito.  I, too, am a living wall, living in and out, permeable and living, moving light.

Perhaps what I’m saying is described by Denise Levertov in her poem “Freedom”.

Freedom

Perhaps we humans

have wanted God most as witness

to acts of choice

made in solitude.  Acts of mercy,

of sacrifice.  Wanted

that great single eye to see us,

steadfast as we flowed by.

Yet there are other acts

not even vanity,

or anxious hope to please, know of —

bone doings, leaps of nerve, heart-

cries of communion: if there is bliss,

it has

been already

and will be; out-

reaching, utterly.

Blind

to itself, flooded

with otherness.

~ Denise Levertov ~

(Poems 1972-1982)

Today simplicity softens as I look out and float on a trail of bunny tail clouds.

I’m reading a biography of Thomas Berry, and pause with his words.

Each of us is as old as the universe and experiences our greater self in the larger story of the universe. So we are as old as the universe and as big as the universe. This is our great self. We survive in our great self. Our particular manifestation is distinct from our universal presence to the total process. We exist eternally in our participation in the universe’s existence.

His words lift a weight off my shoulders as I rest and renew in words of John O’Donohue.

FLUENT

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

I was slow to rise this morning, stayed in bed absorbing the fullness of yesterday, and now this new day, merged. 

Yesterday, I left home early to arrive in Redwood City, sip a latte, walk around, and spend time in the library. I read and people-watched until my son Chris arrived and we enjoyed lunch and walking around the historic part of the town.  

Sitting outside the San Mateo County Museum, we watched young people practice a variety of dance routines.  It was a peaceful mix of people and ages. Then I went to the “Celebration of Life” which was beautiful and heart-filling. 

This morning Steve and I watched our cat Tiger as he watched the morning come to light.  He loves to sit seemingly participating in the change of light. He looks like a Zen master sitting there, absorbed, and maybe he is. He also loves to watch the moon as it moves across the sky and he calls to us to come out and be with him.  Who would want to miss such a display?

When the lights in the house go out, he comes to bed.

I am with the subject of light because a few days ago I saw a photo of a sculpture titled “Addiction”. 

The sculpture sits along the water in Amsterdam and shows three people sitting on a bench absorbed in their cell phones.  You can sit on the bench between them and feel and be in the light from the phones.

Today I read that the sculpture is actually called “Absorbed by Light”. 

The article points out that people used to sit on benches reading newspapers and books, so perhaps this way of isolating among others is not new.

Today I’m with the meanings and ways of being “absorbed by light”.

Here is the article: https://www.truthorfiction.com/addiction-sculpture-in-amsterdam/

This morning, eyes moist with tears, I consider different types of tears.  Today’s tears feel sweet, like dew drops, acknowledgment of connection between earth and sky, and the vulnerability that is Love.  

I spent over seven hours yesterday with a friend along the shoreline at  Point Isabel dog park. In my usual way, I arrived early to sit with a latte and watch dogs bounce and play, ears flopping, tails wagging.  It’s a happy place.

My friend and I walked and talked, sat and ate, walked and talked.

The subject was grief.  She feels I’m not “over” grieving my brother’s death, which leads to false valor perhaps, my words, not hers, though she did mention, a shield.

We talked about my book Airing Out the Fairy Tale.  She knew me then, but didn’t know the thrill I felt when I bicycled in New Mexico, speeding down one hill in the early morning light, shouting and singing out, “I feel good, I knew that I would now, so good, so good,” and though James Brown says it’s because he’s got “you”, I think in that moment, it was a full embrace of who I am.  I was invulnerable in that moment, one with my bike and nature, love and the world. I felt free, and she knew that place, and we both understood.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at times, a word I’m hearing and feeling more and more.  I think now of the words of William Wordsworth.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours.

And yet here we are: Nature, Power, Love.

If you live in the Bay area, Point Isabel is a lovely place to be, walk, and enjoy a bowl of chili.  A dog is not required, though my friend has two who love to snuggle and warm the feet.

Unusual for me these days, I took no pictures.  The view is never still. When I arrived, there was an enclosure of fog that cleared bit by bit, so there was Mount Tam, the bay, and then, the city of San Francisco.  I felt the movement reflected inside, the movement of fog, fear, love, grief.

And now my husband sends me this column by George Will.

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/08/22/george-f-will-nickel-boys/

My neighborhood book group discussed The Nickel Boys on Tuesday night. What can one say?

And yet I feel a need to balance vulnerability and invulnerability as I honor courage, the force of the heart. I trust in making my way.

The fog snuck in during the night.  I went to bed with stars and woke up enclosed.

I saw Tea Obreht speak last night at Book Passage.  Her latest book, Inland, A Novel, was already  highly acclaimed and then Barack Obama announced it’s on his reading list, so she’s pleased, excited, and gratified.   

What most struck me about her talk was her life in Yugoslavia until she was twelve years old, and then her family had to flee. When she says she is Yugoslavian by birth, people say but that country no longer exists.

It exists for her.

I went to the event with a friend who teaches poetry to middle schoolers.  She’s hoping to get a little more bite into their poems this year so is thinking of asking them to write about the landscape of where they live.  It’s beautiful here, and perhaps they could delve like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry into sharing the landscape of their home.  

I’m reminded of the poem “Home” by Warsan Shire.  The poem invites us to be even more grateful for where we are now, and to be open to refugees when they’re forced to come here for refuge and adapt to a landscape which then becomes their home.