We are showered with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.
– Robin Wall Kimmerer
Yesterday I was at Larkspur Landing and coming up to the fountain saw two turtles. They weren’t moving and didn’t look real so I thought they were decoratively placed to allow the mallards to step over to enter their abode. Then, they moved, not much, just a blink and a shot of tongue. Yes, the turtles are real, and judging from the cobweb the mallards aren’t impressed with their house.
I’m learning the news of this houseboat community from a neighbor. She took me through their boat – 2300 square feet – exquisite, and so I see one can create what works for them if so desired. I’m content in my Little Gem.
Meanwhile I’m entranced with the birds. A Great Blue Heron strolled by just now, a leisurely look around.
I open A Year with Hafiz, Daily Contemplations by Daniel Ladinsky to February 12.
THE BODY A TREE
The body a tree, God a wind.
When He moves me like this, like this,
angels bump heads with each other
gathering beneath my cheeks,
holding their wine barrels, catching
the brilliant tear, pearl rain.
Love, a tree. When it moves us like this.
How can our soul’s limbs not touch?
Yesterday I was enjoying taking pictures of egrets when a man showed me a most wonderful Great Blue Heron standing statuesque behind some fronds. Such a gift!
Ducks float around my boat. I’m the center of a carousel, a stillpoint, a pole.
I’m with these words of Pablo Neruda:
Does the earth chirp like a cricket in the symphony of the skies?
Which leads me to wonder what sound stirs the water as the feet of the ducks paddle around.
In Charles Genoud’s book, The Body as Presence, he writes;
Munindra, a 20th-century Indian teacher from Bengal, taught that if a meditator is sitting and he knows that he is sitting, then he is meditating.
Sitting, we know we are sitting. Then, standing, walking, lying down, we know the bars that hold the notes, the tune of our heart, harmonizing the parts.
I’m going between two places, a floating home, and a more permanent home. I’ve been struggling with navigating doing laundry and such at night in the permanent home since that requires going through a kitchen that is being remodeled as it is completely emptied and torn apart. Wires burst and hang sadly forth from open walls. It seems 1950’s wiring is not up to code. Who knew?
I feel like a spelunker when I put on my headlamp to navigate through the kitchen in the dark to the garage and the washer and dryer. Why am I not doing it during the day? Because it’s filled with men who know what they’re doing and I don’t. I stay away on a magical float, a houseboat complete with birds surrounding it in its up and down float.
In Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s book, The Joy of Living, Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, he writes of visiting the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower. He’s amazed at the beauty, creativity, connectivity, and vision that brought these buildings to rise. Then he is shocked to see the view blocked by barbed-wire fencing and patrolled by guards. He learns these are precautions to prevent suicides. What could lead to such despair?
His teachings are on opening the heart to Joy through appreciation and gratitude.
Today my abode is surrounded with ducks and coots. Their niche is high tide. They dive down leaving rippling circles and then pop up again. I’m reminded to go deeply within to renew and feed, and then pop up to air and share. There’s so many birds popping up and diving down, I can’t stop smiling. It’s hysterical. I’m surrounded with joy, as my head and heart bob up and down with their rhythm, and companionship.
I’m in/on a houseboat, a little one, dwarfed perhaps by the big guys, but as the owner says that means I’m right by the water, literally. It’s lapping at the deck. It’s mesmerizing. I wish I could capture the movement, and the changes from low tide last night to high this morning. Such a gift!
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