I love the fog but today, after my dentist’s appointment, I needed summer warmth and smells so I drove to the top of Mt. Tam.
Above the Fog
Misted
I walked Tennessee Valley early this morning in an environment wet with mist. I walked with these words from Neil deGrasse Tyson.
We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.
Immersed, I was surrounded with birds singing, flying, scurrying, feasting. I noticed the changing smells and the array of greens. I thought of algae changing the color of the reflecting pool in Washington D.C. to green. Plants rule, and yes, “the universe is in us”, and it’s for us to notice and live aware.
Peace
To counteract the news of Trump and the horrors, lies and financial cost of him and his administration, I come to Anne Frank who died at the age of 15 after being sent to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen.
Anne Frank: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually turning into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”
Exchange
Last night I was drawn to re-read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Perhaps it was a response to our White House being taken over by thugs.
Today on NextDoor I read that a mountain lion was caught on camera bringing down an adult deer by Eastwood Park, the park I walk to regularly. It was 7 PM so it was still light though the fog was embracing the ridge and valley in mist and gray.
The comments on the photo were on the grace of living here, of observing and living so clearly with transformation in nature and energy exchange.
Change: Enchantment
Yesterday it was hot and clear here, but then, I felt the wind shift from east to west, and knew the fog was moving in on its journey to cool and embrace. The branches of the trees played in the breeze, and in an hour or so, I saw wisps on the ridge. In the next hour, all was completely gray, and in the night our motion detector kept lighting up with the sway of the trees. This morning when I rose, I was surprised to see fog only on the ridge, and then, 20 minutes later, it was gone. Impermanence.
I sway now gently, back and forth, forward and back, circling like bamboo, the symbol of enlightenment in Japanese gardens, or like kelp in the sea. Swaying, feeling, moved by breath. Memories filter through like the dance of fog, like mist, sprinkled with fairy dust.
And now I look again at 7:54. And so it goes, in and out, like breath.
Looking Down
Walking around my neighborhood I crossed the bridge to Eastwood Park, and took a photo of the creek. When I looked at the photo, I saw a perfect reflection of the sky. I was brought to consider even more deeply my steps, and where I place my feet. The ground and I reflect.
Folding and Unfolding
Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom. She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.
She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out. I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air. My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.
Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid. When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.
As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again ..
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Heaven
Leaving early to walk Tennessee Valley to the beach, I saw a deer at the top of our driveway, and then, three more along the path to the beach. Quail were hidden but sounding: qua querko, and so many birds were singing, I felt I was in a jungle. What a gift of a morning!
Bathing
I’ve written about Forest Bathing before, the benefits of receiving from our plant friends, but yesterday I walked to Tennessee Valley beach with a friend, and another friend spoke of Beach Bathing. What can we learn from the sea, rocks, and sand?
Today I did Hisorty, an app where you can play with and reconnect with the timeline of history. My son thinks it’s too easy, and it can be, but I like seeing how events align.
From Hisorty: Code of Ur-Nammu: In 2050 B.C. the Sumerian king of Ur issued the earliest surviving written law code, predating Hammurabi by three centuries and laying the foundation for legal systems in Mesopotamia.
And here we are now, being re-introduced to how essential it is to follow the laws of ethics and morality.
Focus
A friend likes my posts from the past. He brings me back to this one from December, 5th 2021. I re-visit these quotes.
Martin Buber: ALL REAL LIVING IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIP.
Marion Milner in her book A LIFE OF ONE’S OWN:
But now concentration, instead of being a matter of time tables and rules, was a magician’s wand. By a simple self-chosen act of keeping my thoughts on one thing at a time instead of dozens, I had found a new window opening out across a new country of wide-open horizons and unexplored delights.
When astronauts go into space, they see the earth as a whole. They see oneness, not division. Let’s focus on the oneness we share, this lifeboat, planet earth.
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