When I drive to Pt. Reyes I go up over the mountain, down to Stinson, along the Bolinas Lagoon, and this time of year past hills of gold to Pt. Reyes Station, and then out to Inverness.  The bookstore in Pt. Reyes is pure delight.  I brought three books and a Kindle but just in case, three more enter my life:  Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, In Praise of Walking, and The Unwinding and Other Dreamings.  I branched between four books last night even as I was entranced with and embraced in the landscape, the land of the Coast Miwok, the land where the native people welcomed Drake, not knowing what was to come.

Now, early morning, still dark, I warm by a fire and contemplate what we’re seeing from the James Webb telescope.  Perhaps it’s like when people realized the earth went around the sun.  We’re drawn back into time, time as one with now.  Surely this will expand our vision to this communal living we share.

If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine—galaxies galore within a grain …

—NASA Webb Telescope’s Twitter account

I feel stretched by the photos of our universe, remember as a child standing outside feeling the universes within me, and the universes of which I’m part.

I’m up early to water in the fog, the moon, now partial though more than half, shining through.  The days are shorter now and all branches, including us, to reach and utilize the summer light.  I eat plum offerings from the trees.

Edith Wharton wrote: Set wide the window.  Let me drink the day.

I open all my cells to receive, filter, drink, and feast on and with this beautiful new day.

This is an American holiday, and perhaps appreciated more this year when the independence so fought for is threatened.  We know life is movement and change but I think most of us see it as movement forward not backward.   I see the date, the fourth, as going forth.  

Amidst all that’s happening, I return to the questions the philosopher Spinoza suggested we ask ourselves each night.

What inspired me today?

Where did I experience peace, balance, comfort, or satisfaction?

What made me happy today, what, not who?

May we all travel forth on the Fourth.

Yesterday my neighbor invited some neighbors over for afternoon tea which actually was wine, sparkling water, and goodies, most perfect for “tea”.  We were outside in the garden that her husband, even at the age of 86, maintains beautifully.  

Today I had my dental cleaning and my dental hygienist was in the office alone with country western music playing.  I remembered when I was in radiation and would lie down on the table and listen to the music of the day.  One day it was “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” by Kenny Chesney.  I relaxed so far into the table, they had to stop treatment and readjust me.  

Life is good for me these days.  

Terry Tempest Williams:

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

We are on approach to the Solstice, the longest day of the year.  I find it astonishing how early it is light, how late.  Last night I was enveloped by the fullness of the Supermoon.  This morning an owl was still offering a who-who-who even though day was coming to  light.

I’m reading a book on how the brain harvests and processes grief.  We can know the person has passed away, and still our “brain-map” feels them here.  We are divided in one way, and expanded in another.

I’m with these words of Louise Erdrich from The Painted Drum.  We are here to feel.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.  

In the night I was awakened by the brightness of the moon.  It was so bright I could see the fog beginning its slow creep over the ridge.  The fog horn blew.

I woke this morning feeling the cool breeze and lay there like a flower opening its petals grateful for the touch.

I was enchanted with and comforted and reassured by Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.  Now, from Maria Popova,  I learn of Susan Cain’s latest book Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.  

A friend today asks how I speak and write joyfully and easily about death.  I don’t fear it.  I feel it as part of the whole, the living and dying happening all the time, enriching our moments, our lives. 

The fog is light today, a soft blanket.  I sink into knowing and appreciating the birds that are birthing and the flowers that are opening, knowing I, too, fall away and change. I’m touched with tenderness as I circle, reflecting like the phases of the moon.  

We’re having a heat wave so last night I went outside for two reasons, one to cool off and two to listen to music from a high school graduation party down below us.  The music was fantastic, a live band, vibrant with the rise and fall, the depth and expansiveness of full, generous voices.  The music crossed genres, and soulfully felt like a night in New Orleans.  The last song at ten was The Saints Go Marching In.

When I heard the music beginning at seven, I brought a blanket and pillow out and lay on the deck looking up at wispy clouds and blue sky that became the rising of the moon and the first star. As day turned into night, I turned inside and out, massaged on life so easily and blissfully shared.  

I woke up this morning shimmering like a tuning fork, grateful for each breath, the in and out, lungs so beautiful in their handling of and care for air.  Our little bird friend is still resting on her nest, and yesterday I was at a friend’s house where a mourning dove nests like our little wren.  Meanwhile flowers are everywhere.

Though I watched the committee hearing last night, I’m still stunned as I read the morning reports and Heather Cox Richardson.  Does democracy always walk such a slight and sharp edge?  I’m grateful for those who’ve come forth, especially Officer Caroline Edwards.  I can’t imagine what she went through that day and all these days after.  We see courage in action and I sit today, almost immobile with gratitude for all she represents.