Impermanence

It's a good thing our puppy Ruby is so cute. . . and, of course, a great deal of science backs up what those who have observed know to be common sense about why little ones of just about any species warm our hearts so. In this photo, she's sitting on my meditation cushion, a place she runs and hops up on when the door to my little room is opened----a door that will remain closed to her (unless she has our supervision) for the immediate future. At six months, Ruby looks full grown now, but her behavior is still very puppyish.

After making it through the intense-chewing phase common to teething (leading us to let our guard down a bit prematurely), Ruby has pressed some buttons of mine that have sorely tested me and reminded me of propensities I've had from childhood. For example, I hang on to possessions (not big or necessarily expensive things, but little, meaningful things, like some acorn tops I still have that I collected on a woods-jaunt in high school, when I was sure I was sharing tea with fairies), stuff that has my scent on it and that a little puppy who loves me might want to . . . consume, tear to smithereens, in a (misguided) puppy-effort to get closer to me (or whatever).

And so, after returning from a quick trip to the grocery, we walked in to see the remains of the Ashes and Snow DVD torn to shreds, the DVD sitting in the middle of it all, apparently unharmed (I will test this when I'm up to it). Though this DVD isn't a long-held treasure, I did consider it "precious," as Art. Seeing this destruction caused me to let go a torrent of loud cursing that I fear could have disturbed our neighbors, and then I sat down and boo-hooed, but I realized immediately that I wasn't crying about the DVD cover (it was a beautiful, book-like cover for this lovely film) but for my mother, who's so miserable now, and I'm far away, and even if I were closer, I cannot save her from her misery.

A vision of me as a four- or five-year-old child, having a difficult time with my messy neighbor-friend, returned. I was very particular, even then, with how I ordered my possessions, setting them up just so, feeling that my dolls were alive (that it mattered that the blanket didn't cover their noses), and I'd sometimes ask my neighbor to leave because she was like a tornado spinning through my carefully kept toys, and I didn't like it.

This grasping after order and permanence, after beautiful things that eventually fade or break or become lost or destroyed can cause such needless suffering. . . not to mention my attempts to set up my LIFE as an orderly, beautiful thing: as my mother tried to set up her life. (I think of K.A. Porter's story, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.")

So, when I left "my room's" door ajar yesterday and walked in later to see that Ruby had strewn parts of my little altar here and there, I didn't rant as before; I hardly felt a thing except remorse for my not having closed the door. I simply picked up the mess, grateful that she hadn't totally destroyed some of my things. What more could be done.

None of it is important in the end. Just stuff. I will sit with this.

As it turns out, EVERYTHING seems to be blooming at once, both literally and figuratively. During such times it can be a challenge to hold the line* (another song lyric that is like a mantra for me) as the accompanying image of placing my hand in a rushing river pulls my feelings along.

I take a deep breath and return to now, look up, and feel the vastness of blue.

*San Jacinto by Peter Gabriel

Thick cloud - steam rising - hissing stone on sweat lodge fire
Around me - buffalo robe - sage in bundle - rub on skin
Outside - cold air - stand, wait for rising sun
Red paint - eagle feathers - coyote calling - it has begun
Something moving in - I taste it in my mouth and in my heart
It feels like dying - slow - letting go of life

Medicine man lead me up through town - Indian ground - so far down
Cut up land - each house - a pool - kids wearing water wings - drink in cool
Follow dry river bed - watch Scout and Guides make pow-wow signs
Past Geronimo's disco - Sit 'n' Bull steakhouse - white men dream
A rattle in the old man's sack - look at mountain top - keep climbing up
Way above us the desert snow - white wind blow

I hold the line - the line of strength that pulls me through the fear
San Jacinto - I hold the line
San Jacinto - the poison bite and darkness take my sight - I hold the line
And the tears roll down my swollen cheek - think I'm losing it - getting weaker
I hold the line - I hold the line
San Jacinto - yellow eagle flies down from the sun - from the sun

We will walk - on the land
We will breathe - of the air
We will drink - from the stream
We will live - hold the line

Spinning

Musing on what makes me so interested in what consciousness is has taken me back to childhood images of spinning, spinning (as my dress fans out in a lovely circle), and dropping to the grass or on a floor, feeling the world fall away beneath me; or, placing a red or blue or yellow record on my child's record player, then working at setting the needle down just so after first rubbing my index finger against it to remove any fluff of dust, and sensing a tiny tingle of an electrical shock, again and again; or, noticing the sense of deja vu for the first time----some time in my single-digit years----(though it was years afterward before I knew what to call it), wondering how it could be "true" since I'd never been to that certain place before.

Those were times before my stories to "explain the meaning" of the events had evolved. 

At this phase in my life, I am attempting to look at those stories (and the others that crop up) and to acknowledge their existence without either clinging excessively or pushing them away with aversion: simply looking and nodding, and then attempting to feel, to come back to, the present moment in all its PRESENT-NESS. 

How difficult is that?

Very.

Even trying to describe it sounds ludicrous, or perhaps pitiful.

I realize (again) how much I've come to dislike myself, to do anything to avoid BEING with myself (the list is long: excessive reading that lately becomes merely jumping from place-to-place online in an effort to quench my often-tireless curiosity, watching queues of documentaries and movies, making Stuff, planning travels, clinging to the coattails of my husband's interests), and that being able to be alone in silence (as I seem to be able to do quite readily) has very little to do with one's ability to love oneself, but, as trite as it may sound, is essential yet somehow elusive----at least with any "permanence"----to me. (Convoluted, huh.)

Must I let go of this concept of permanence also?

The question becomes the answer.

Meaningful Shapes

Around four years ago I walked a labyrinth for the first time. In a state of indecision, I remember, I stood at the entrance and felt my heart open, calling (for what? I didn't know). Walking slowly on the little path delineated by different-sized rocks----one way in, one way out----I felt the focus that comes from letting go, trusting that what needs to become clear, will. It was at that point I heard a high-pitched singing, and I was sure that the other woman who was also walking had begun to sing, so I looked up, a little startled, to confirm this. Instead, I noticed she was tight-lipped and silent. And then I felt it close by: a bee had returned to my ear to sing again, and it filled me with such surprised wonder, such joy, that retelling it falls flat (though remembering it is lovely). It was not a buzzing----not at all----but definitely a feminine singing, and it felt meaningful.

Since then, bees, honey, hexagons (not to mention labyrinths) have taken on added significance, and I'm enjoying seeing how they show up in my life. In somewhat recent reading, the "Melissa" in Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing stands out, along with a similar character in James Howard Kunstler's The Witch of Hebron.

The geodesic dome played an important role in my teenage imaginings. Another re-membering (from deep in my body) is an image from childhood of my maternal grandfather returning from the woods with bee stings that he seemed oblivious to (my papaw, as I called him, was quiet, large and bear-like) and a bowl full of honeycomb and oozing honey with dead bees dotting the mix. My brother chewed a piece of comb (and I thought him brave), but I would only sample the sweet, sticky warmth with a poking forefinger that I licked clean time and again until the offering was removed.

Captured from FB, which did not note the artist.

Thank you, Woman with Wings, for this idea. 

These little knitted hexagons will be sewn together one day (if I live long enough) to create a puffy throw. I'm adding a bit of lavender to each one, too.

Bathroom floor tile (that could use a good scrubbing)

Back Home

I brought this mental image home with me to sketch after a ten-day silent mediation retreat, which may sound lovely and dreamy, at least that's how I imagined it would be, but the days began at 4:00 a.m. and ended at 9:30 p.m., with at least eight hours of meditation sandwiched between, and no reading or writing or yoga or even much walking allowed: lots of facing one's own body's realities, not to mention the mind's.

More than being pulled toward the attractions and cravings of life, I recognized and felt my propensity toward an addiction to aversion instead: steeling myself, armoring myself, protecting myself from all the perceived hurts and miseries of the world, so regularly and unconsciously that the well had become quite dark and deep----a sure recipe for depression, my lifelong nemesis.

This can make for a pretty dense and heavy load, and within the universe of my body, I felt that armor's heaviness in full force across my upper back with an intensity that brought me to tears several times and blinded me to other parts of my body. But on the seventh day (yes, I saw that connection, too), I felt a literal shift, almost a clicking into place, and the load was so lightened that I was astounded by its relative ease. Whereas before I could not see beyond the pain in my shoulders, feeling almost that nothing else existed, finally I could see that my body consists of more than that.

Hope. Light. Gratitude.

Musing

An old inkwell serves as a vase for this little collection of flowers blooming in our yard, a sample that leaves the whole to your imagination. I've noticed that I still see parts and imagine quite elaborate wholes, ones that often (in comparison) cause my own life to feel "less than," even paltry, that cause me to ask myself whether I shouldn't be moving on, leaving, breaking apart, making space for Other.

Urges that originate from noticing (again and again) that at the end of this year I will step into my 60s (and seeing a face like my mother's looking back at me from the mirror) cause me to ask, "If not now, WHEN?" But I mostly feel flooded by possibility without having the discrimination to know what is most important to act upon, and so, I wait. And in the waiting, I try to attend to the Small details (rather than my propensity to want to dive into the Large ones) that actually make up a Life.

In a similar way, these bits of lives shared via blogs are also merely samples, glimpses----not the entirety, of course----of what our lives are like, though some accounts seem so full that one wonders how there's time to do the actual living! Because of these feelings of mine, I limit my online contacts, whether through reading blogs or checking FaceBook (which I've written about before as having intensely mixed feelings for). It's how I feel that my own experiences come from within----and are not merely reactions to the external, what I see and read.

Not only that, but my explorations in how to live have led me to places that I'm not all that keen on sharing publicly because----as illustrated in the cartoon of the yogi----some experiences cannot be so easily captured in words and if one tries, the consequences may be heavier than desired (and I recognize the fear of revealing my most currently "true" self in that statement, as if there IS a "true self" or even a "self," which I also see as an illusion). That each of us is continually unfolding seems to be most true (though some do seem to be headed in a tighter, more closed direction). I picture the turning of a kaleidoscope: the pieces appear broken apart as they move before they slide into place in stillness.

And so I have not punched through to any blinding and permanently purifying light yet, but I continue seeking. . . and if I were to poke through, I doubt that I should say, realizing that each of us has a unique path to follow, though we all are headed in the same direction.

Why do some of us agonize so when others appear content to simply BE? Change is constant, though on this page, in these glimpses, we may believe we see permanence, order, the whole. Here is where I can see the value of letting go of "belief."

Rain in Redwoods

A large, fleshy fern fell from the canopy above, where it grows with its orderly orange dots of spores.

This looks pre-arranged, doesn't it, rather like a jeweler who lays out a beautiful necklace for us to admire across his outstretched hand. 

Blue in one corner of the sky, catching in those tall trees, and forcing me to crane my neck back, back to drink it in.

Forest fog and antler-velvet branch stubs thicken the soup, just around the bend.

Marking the Full-Moon-Time

How the moon tugs at our bodies. Sometimes I feel the need to call my daughter to warn her, "It's a full moon!" She understands, and I imagine her holding the reins a little tighter to walk through the time more steadily.

Resistance Is Futile

As any parent who answers a telephone only to find her formerly quiet two-year-old child suddenly screaming beneath her feet knows, dogs can react similarly to their family's desire for quiet, especially if a puppy is in the mix. And so, as my husband and I settled in to our ritual meditation time this morning, we found our practice challenged by our dogs, who did everything in their power to engage us, including licking our hands, attacking each other, whining, and then loudly licking themselves before----as our time for practice ended (naturally)----falling peacefully asleep.

This provided a perfect time to practice non-reaction to that which cannot be controlled. (And, sure, I might've put our puppy, the real instigator of the ruckus, in her crate and had peace and quiet, but what's the challenge in that?) In my heavily-underlined copy of Tolle's The Power of Now, the idea that we so typically attempt to resist what we don't like (he uses the example of a car alarm sounding off on the street and one's immediate resistance to the noise, as if our physical resistance could change its reality somehow) sunk in more deeply this morning as an illustration of my own resistance to so many things over the years, things I wished to be different from what they were rather than enjoying what IS----even after making desired changes. And rather than chastising myself for this behavior, I will instead let go of it, and feel the tension dissipate. Nice. But it will take practice, of course.

Meanwhile, in the background, the gentle hum of our dehydrator isn't at all disruptive as some crackers are being made from a recipe of Cafe' Gratitude, a raw foods restaurant in San Francisco a friend of mine and I ate at once. We are attempting to eliminate as many processed foods from our diet as possible and realized our dependence on crackers might be more healthfully substituted with these; they were't as daunting to make as one might think!

Falling

We humans love to make meaning, to stitch our own unique moments into the whole fabric and then stand back to see what patterns may emerge.

We may not like the patterns we see. . . as in my having taken three painful falls from what feels like a great height (isn't it odd how we can feel so tall when we fall) down to hard surfaces----a frozen parking lot, our wood floors, our slick wood deck----all occurring over the past six weeks, spaced just far enough apart to give me time to recover before the next fall.

Were there messages in these falls for me? After the first one, as I walked carefully and gingerly in a snowy, icy parking lot on December 31st, the last day we had health insurance, that was the first thing I thought as I hit the ground hard: So this is how it happens. IT. . . . How one's life can be transformed from one thing one moment to another the next. I wouldn't allow my fears to flesh themselves out any further than IT, but my compassion grew for others who suffer such things.

Fortunately, I didn't break my neck (as my mother did in a fall almost six years ago) or anything else.

The second fall was an absolute surprise that occurred during a transition from one room in our house to the next, with our two dogs running frenziedly by me, and in the confusion I noticed my face bouncing on the floor and wondered whether I'd end up with two black front teeth.

Not yet.

And the final (I hope) most recent one happened as I very carefully (I thought) put one foot out onto our deck in the early morning hours to let our dogs out (it'd been raining) and in that brief moment, somehow the other foot stepped out to help gain some needed traction but----surprise!----the deck wasn't wet at all; it was frozen, and I heard my head bounce against the wood but most of all felt how much my derriere hurt.

And yet I still walk. It feels miraculous. I am immensely grateful that nothing serious has transpired from these three falls, but they were reminders of how, in spite of everything----our mindfulness, our care, planning----the unexpected happens, not only to others, but to me.

Others seem want these falls to have meaning, too. Someone said I'm likely in need of "grounding" and recommended my wearing hematite or onyx (and because I love rocks, for fun, I made myself a little medicine pouch of these rocks to keep close), checking with a doctor about my recent depression (with the obvious reminder that perhaps I should take medicine), and, of course, wondering what this string of "bad luck" is "about."

Right now, it's about gratitude. . . and letting go of my need for any greater meaning.

Focusing on the coming spring, I picked a sunshiny daffodil and made
a kitchen kitty from an old felted sweater. . . 

and enjoyed fresh fruit (to which I somehow had space to add a dollop of plain yogurt
and some of my homemade granola) for breakfast!

Object of Contemplation

Themes tend to run through days, patterns that become evident in their various incarnations. Sometimes it begins by wondering. . . questioning. What is sacred to me?

I have pushed against the boundaries of the sacred while secretly hoping they'd hold.

Where does the everyday meet the sacred?

In the roughly-fashioned Brigid's cross made from rushes I harvested yesterday from the Tolowa Dunes and in my spotty online research about St. Brigid, this question summarizes the significance of her namesake's icon---that Brigid's faith was so strong that even a wispily-woven cross (fashioned from the reeds that 5th-century Irish typically had strewn across their floors) held a kind of power.

Full Moon

Intention, a journal sketch, and a question posed was as far as I got in commemorating January's full moon, but seeds were sown, and thus I am glad to have made the effort, because all these things open doors in the psyche, doors through which I feel healing breezes blow. 

And for me, throughout my life, the greatest challenge is "showing up," being at a place and in a time with others that I can be counted on to be, because my tendency is to be focused on my internal climate, to run and hide, to be at the end of the rope, my skirt-tails and legs flying. 

I do enjoy a challenge, though.

Distractions

No black and white definition ever works, it seems; there is always the spectrum. How often I desire to find an anchor in words, to define the moment I experience so that I can re-experience its clarity or sift through my experience to find it.

I have been noticing how I live my days lately and wondering what aspects might be called "distractions." A close definition to what I've been thinking is one from Wikipedia, which states that "distraction is chiefly an inability to identify, attend to or attain what is valuable, even when we are hard-working or content."

From what do I perceive myself being distracted? I keep going back to a concept I seem particularly attached to----and that is that we each have some sort of destiny or purpose(s) to discover or path to walk, and that until we do so, we will feel agitated to move away from doing certain things and toward others. This apparent belief of mine is also rooted in my own tendency to perceive my life through my feelings rather than through any logical lens.

I also recognize that when I begin to feel distracted by too much knitting, for example, which I have been doing a great deal of this rainy, cold winter while watching too many episodes of Battlestar Galactica or Merlin via Netflix (we don't have TV service), it's because I feel unbalanced----too much living in the fantasyland of my mind and not enough time in nature, for example.

Feeling unbalanced also apparently leads me to question the value of my activities and to label them as distractions from some other (presumably) greater purpose. 

This is nothing new for me. As a teenager, I was sure that I was going to have occasion to rescue someone from an airplane crash, and since that never happened, I have retained that feeling, which revisits me each time I fly (and I'm aware of its somewhat humorous element). Other (sometimes rather preposterous-sounding) ideas have added to this one over the years, some of which have actually unfolded into reality. 

I seem never to tire of examining consciousness.

Latest knitting project: Wingspan, which local knitters are creating various versions of

Ruby, whom we love to distraction

On the way to meditation Saturday morning, a rainbow

The Year's Wheel

For some time now, I've realized how beneficial it is to become more attuned with the natural, seasonal fluctuations of energies rather than attempting to ignore them----as seemed necessary when I held a full-time job and juggled responsibilities that kept me more ego and mind-focused. 

To commemorate this turning, I created a wheel to remind me that it is in movement (not what sometimes feels like "safer" stasis) that we can allow ourselves to begin to bloom (sorry, I haven't tired of that analogy yet).

And so, inspired initially by seeing the little fabric kitchen calendars cut apart (I've linked to her more recent use of these), I quilted frames for them, did a bit of rusty embroidery stitching, and sewed everything to a piece of fabric that my great aunt wove on her large loom, years ago (and perhaps permanently creased from being folded up in my mother's things), also including flowers crocheted by a dear friend, and some lovely bee ribbon (the yellow background is actually honeycombed), with two bells to register any movement. A labyrinth ribbon (somewhat off-kilter, like me) lies in the center of the circle (also imperfect, like me) as another reminder of our journey.

From the groundswell, I am placing one foot before the other, curious about what will be revealed in the space that appears.

Who expects such lovely blossoms in January?