Today in my Zoom call quartet, one person mentioned an anecdote from Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully. He’s in a consignment shop with his daughter when he realizes many of the items for sale wear tags “As Is”. He thinks how great it would be if each of us wore a tag saying “As Is”, and believed it.
We decided our little group should sport t-shirts pronouncing, “As Is”.
As I peruse The Five Invitations once again, I come across two death poems from Japan where the tradition is to write a poem on the last day of your life or soon before.
Here is the death poem of Dogen Zenji who died in 1253.
Four and fifty years
I’ve hung the sky with stars
Now I leap through –
What shattering!
Here, with a different tone, is the death poem of Moriya Sen’an, who died in 1838.
Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak.
And with that, I consider how we meet the moment as it comes, honoring gathering and scattering as One.
Losing a piece, this rock wears a new face, continuing a tradition “as is”
The light continues to astonish me. I’m waking at 4:15 to watch the moon play peek-a-boo through the fog as the fog moves in and out, thickens and thins. Then the sun tickles everything pink as it ripens the day and twinkles right through this being I perceive of as “me”.
It must be my age, my rising in years and ripening, but these days, this “me” seems to be living in geologic time. I’m thrilled that the land mass of the earth was all one and then it separated into seven continents.It feels like my moods, coming together and apart, allowing unity and expansion, and within that, intention to give space but not divide, judge, or compare.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that the first cells emerged, though it was 4 billion years. That’s a great many candles to put on a cake.
I wonder if I remember 3.9 million years ago when photosynthesis emerged. And then 2 billion years ago when multicellular organisms came together to energize on oxygen. I think of all the cakes I’d bake if I’d been there, but of course, in an evolutionary sense, I was. My components formed inside the stars. I come from expansion and contraction. It is my base.
Meanwhile, my politically positive daughter-in-law is pregnant with a little boy and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new energy and buoyant voice on the planet. He’ll be wearing this soon as he makes the rounds in his stroller to Get Out the Vote!!
It’s Saturday. I rose at 5, and looked for the moon, but she was tucked in fog.
I sat on the couch with Tiger and Bella, a blanket over my lap, and closing my eyes felt them moist and expanding, cells like wands.
I fell asleep to wake from a vivid dream. A window was open and that made sense since in the dream it was the room where my brother passed away. I picked up wet sheets and pillowcases, and rocks fell out, and feeling what we leave behind, I burst into tears, and sobbed and sobbed. I thought I can’t stop no matter what, and then I woke up disoriented, wondering if the dream was telling me I haven’t cried enough tears, haven’t mourned enough.
I sit here now, the fog quiet and still. Early this morning, wind chimes sounded like church bells. I felt how when someone I love dies, this world seems like a matte painting, as though I’m missing something, which of course I am, but somehow today, there is fluidity and fullness in the layers, waves in the embodiment I seem to think I am.
A bison who lived in the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park died yesterday. 8-year old Brunhida had kidney disease.
I am with loss and change as I sink in and out of this beautiful poem by W.S. Merwin on gratitude and honoring thanks.
ThanksBY W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
Gratitude scents and colors the air outside The Legion of Honor
This morning I settle into the words of Marion Milner, author in 1934 of A Life of One’s Own. She writes:
I’m really only interested in finding more and more ways of saying what I feel about the extraordinariness of the world and of being alive in it.
I want that too and yet today there is a warmth in my heart, that fire between flame and embers that simply wants to be with light in the trees and awareness that oxygen was once poison and then two billion years ago, we creatures who need it came in to balance the overabundance of oxygen with our intake, utilization, and release of carbon dioxide. How amazing is that!
I’m also with George Eliot’s words from her amazing book Middlemarch:
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
Today, even as I cultivate all sides of silence, curving all sides into a circle, then dissolving in and out, I allow my ears to reach out into the universe with intention to receive.
I’m crazy for the moon. I love watching its phases, and receiving its reflected light. Last night I was outside absorbing and appreciating its rise, and now early this morning I watch it set.
I’m reminded of Hafiz’s poem as translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
With That Moon Language
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to
them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full
moon in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language, what every other
eye in this world is dying to hear?
Yesterday I was fascinated to learn about Wind Phones. Catherine Browder in New Letters, A Magazine of Writing and Art writes about Mr. Sasaki, who in honor of his favorite cousin who died, set up a telephone booth with an old rotary phone because he needed to “talk” to his cousin about his grief.
After the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster in Otsuchi, where he lives, he opened the booth to anyone who wanted to talk to their loved ones. He calls it “the phone of the wind” because the words reaching out for comfort aren’t carried over a phone line so they must be carried by the wind.
The author of the story decides to create her own “phone of the wind”. A carpenter friend makes the booth. Knowing Mr. Sasaki’s phone booth has a path with a wooden bench nearby, placement is discussed and honored so those who need to talk in private, can come.
In May of 2011, three months after Japan’s disaster, a devastating tornado blew through southwest Missouri picking up her husband’s truck. He was killed.
She goes to the booth to talk to those she loves, sees these conversations, as “the only way I know how to shape a prayer”. She’s not the only one; people come.
I have space in my yard for a booth, but maybe a bench will do. I don’t need a phone and a booth. I can use the sun and the moon, their movement and offering of light. I can watch butterflies and birds, knowing one day I, too, will learn to fly and navigate the windwith inner light opened without boundaries of space and time.
Meanwhile, still early here, an owl hoots, who, who, who, vibrations on the wind.
If you are called, you can watch a documentary on “the phone of the wind” Rising moon last night
Setting moon this morning Owl beckons the coming of fall
Yesterday I watched a podcast of Mary Evelyn Tucker with Michael Lerner at Commonweal. That led me to her book Journey of the Universe.
I learn that the Large Magellanic Cloud, LMC, was once a spiral galaxy like our Milky Way, but then something destroyed it, and torn apart, it could no longer create stars.
It drifted about until it was drawn into a gravitational relationship with our Milky Way.
“The gravitational tidal force issuing from the Milky Way penetrated into the system of stars that formed LMC, and the structure of this smaller galaxy began to change. A regeneration of LMC was occurring in the presence of the Milky Way. And then an awakening occurred. A burst of star-making activity appeared in one of the dormant regions of LMC. For billions of years, LMC had drifted about, barren and dying. Now, suddenly, its potentiality was ignited through this interaction and new stars were evoked into being in all their brilliance.”
What does that say for each of us when we come into contact with the spark and gravitational field of certain others, particularly those with spirals?
I refresh on spirals learning that “in geometry, a spiral is a plane curve generated by a point moving around a fixed point while constantly receding from or approaching it”.
It’s a helix, and “in anatomy, a helix is the curved fold forming most of the rim of the external ear”.
I curve in understanding my gravitational field receives vibrations from yours, and together we curve, turning words into stars, and waves into land, as we toss generating easily, gleefully, and playfully back and forth.
Enjoy the dance, and savor touch, connection, change, and exchange.
This morning I again rose early to watch for meteors. I saw one, a faint one, and it was enough. I came in to sit with Bella and meditate, and as usual, thoughts muscled in, but I was gentle with them, receptive, and I opened to the image of a starfish and how it feeds by pushing its stomach out.
In contemplating why this image came right now, today, I realize I’m trying to reveal more of myself, to probe a little more, and discover why I’m here and how I ingest.
By the way, the starfish is now labeled a sea star because it’s not a fish. It’s related to sea urchins and sand dollars.
The sky is coming to light with a soft-pink invitation to wake.
Last night I took blankets and a pillow out on the deck to watch for meteors. The moon was rising and it wasn’t yet dark but I was prepared to be part of the changing scene. I fell asleep.
This morning I rose early and went outside to lean back in a chair. Both kitties joined me. I saw nine meteors, each one unique. Two were major lengthy lights that evoked a loud “wow”. Only kitties, owl, and a foraging creature down below heard my shout.
I sit here now aware of ripening light.
On another note, I read in Writer’s Almanac that sharpshooter Annie Oakley, born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860 in Woodland, Ohio, could, from 90 feet away, hit the thin side of a playing card that someone tossed in the air and then hit it six more times before it fell to the floor.
She could shoot the wick off a burning candle or the ashes off the tip of her husband’s cigarette.
Now that’s impressive.
I’m reading David Brooks book, The Road to Character. The first person he celebrates is Francis Perkins, the person now considered “the woman behind the New Deal”.
The second is Ida Stover Eisenhower, the mother of Dwight D. Eisenhower. I remember as a child seeing Dwight go by in a parade in Des Moines, Iowa. I must have been seven as he was re-elected in 1956. There were shouts of “I like Ike”. My parents were for Adlai Stevenson but I recall no vitriol on either side though Stevenson labeled an “egghead”, even though he wasn’t, didn’t help his cause. Even then, intellectualism was suspect in this country.
What’s amazing is how the Republican party has changed. Eisenhower, a moderate conservative, continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1958 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders that integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He created the Interstate Highway System, and promoted science education with the National Defense Education Act.
In his farewell speech, he said:
As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Though he’d been a general before becoming president, he warned about the power and influence of the military-industrial complex.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
David Brooks is looking at what builds character, trying to understand how when World War II ended, this country celebrated with humility, and how now, the word “great” is bantered about with no attachment to meaning or substance..
I look up the meaning of the homonym of the word “great”. A grate is “a frame of metal bars for holding fuel when burning, as in a fireplace, furnace, or stove”. It’s “a framework of parallel or crossed bars, used as a partition, guard, or cover”.
What falls now between the slats and rises in the morning light?
In Alexander Technique work, the suggestion is to “Think forward and up to rise”. I’m with that now, thinking forward and up to rise. With that, there is no strain, and I open like trees to sky.
It’s clear today, blue sky a silent lake with only the occasional silver shine of an airplane skimming into SFO to land.
I’m with two quotes this morning, two ways of unfolding the origami swan of being.
One is a Navajo proverb. Be still and the earth will speak to you.
Responding,I listen to trees, birds, flowers, squirrels, worms, earth.
Butterflies wing silently; bees buzz and dip.
I circle on the words of Zen Master Suzuki Roshi.
What we call I is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
I’m on a merry-go-round, the earth, of course, and I’m a child swinging on a gate, a door, and I’m honoring what circulates inside my skin as well as out. This place, a heart.
Yesterday I sit with and under trees in afternoon light Tiger requests a lap
We each find our way to breathe as one – in and out – shared
Last night I was out watering at twilight. The moon was shining in the sky and the light was magical. Birds chirped thanks for the water and I was infused with gratitude.
Later, I went outside to look for meteors but the fog had drawn a shade over the moon and I knew no flashes would be seen by me that night.
This morning I was out early watering another part of the yard, I heard the foghorns, but here, all is clear, in this moment, anyway. The fog moves in and out, a playful and serious delightof peek-a-boo wrapped and unwrapped in the sky.
Enjoying being outside, I was reminded of when we spent two weeks in Hong Kong in the fall of 2007. It was before Beijing worked to clean up the air for the Olympics in 2008 and the air was stifling, hot, heavy, and red-orange. No matter what, I have to be outside, so I would stroll along the harbor, but one day I met a man in the elevator in the hotel where we were staying. He said he never went outside. The hotel was connected to a shopping mall. He lived in the hotel, and worked from where he lived. Shopping, movies, entertainment could all be reached without going outside. I understand we are adaptable beings but I wonder if I could adapt to that.
On the other hand, I’m re-reading Frank Okstaseski’s wonderful book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. It’s true that our world will most likely narrow with age. The book is about embracing impermanence, the living and dying happening all the time.
I’m struck by an image he shares. He used to live in a hundred-year old farmhouse. The window panes looked solid but then he realized the glass was thicker at the bottom of the frame than at the top. Even glass is fluid.
In case you’re interested, the five invitations are:
-Don’t Wait
-Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing
-Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
-Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things
-Cultivate Don’t Know Mind
With that, I’m working with the Alexander Technique, reminding myself to pause and consciously come forward with my head and rise when I come up, and use my ankles, knee, and hip joints when I come down. I’m working with fluidity, honoring resilience in my being as delicate and precious as glass.
I’m honoring the forty muscles in my tongue. It’s a composite muscle, like a composite flower, and I honor the complexity and flexibility I am.
I watch my cats now, watch and feel them breathe, all the way through. I’m learning to release the jaw and throat, to release the head upward rather than down, which doesn’t mean lifting from above but allowing the head to rise, honoring the fullness of the neck which reaches up to the skull at the occiput.
The neck is longer than we may realize, and it’s strength and resilience allows our head to bobble. Practice bobbling, and move with the flexibility of a snake into the wonder of a new moment, a new day.
This moment will never come again.
Embrace, and be embraced, in rise and fall.
The tides, birds, and seals rise and fall
The moon in the early evening light, moving toward Full
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