things best known in the bone

These are things best known in the bone, not always ready to articulate but a structural part of one’s knowing. Knowing this one can move forward or continue.  The intersections touch our lives and some bring us to a direct relationship with nature. It is not complicated. It is right there.  Baubo was engaged in the right place at the right time.  This included being a part of Mrs. Scattergood’s return to her kitchen. All that are present are meant to be.  No matter how small the room.   

......................................................................................

     People that share their stopping points and the green lights of ideas and metaphors that have helped them move on, move us on to being more of who we are.  In this way every journey’s lessons are shared with those on many different roads. There is plenty good in steeping; and it also feels good to move again. 

Thanksgiving Day at the river

For over a year now it’s been my practice, if you will, to go by a wetlands area right by my house. I go nearly every day. I began going there because I felt a need for solace and this place drew me.  I had often gone there but not as a daily practice. If I don’t go or if my schedule doesn’t allow time, I still manage to see it, send my love and say hello and goodbye; often as I pass over the small bridge that overlooks my part of the river. 

This place has become my spiritual home, my refuge. I love it because of the birds, the small river that is sometimes just mudflats or rivulets of water braiding and moving over the pale sand; because of the way the sky looks over the trees, the reeds and the river and reflected in the river too. I love the wind or the stillness there. I love it when the trees are fully clothed in leaves or slowly shedding them as all the colors of the fall dance in the autumn lights and the colors reflected in the river draw from the season’s palette. I love the sounds of the woodland birds all around; the rattling of the kingfisher as it circles around the river and disappears back into the trees.

My special place is the back part of the river. There is a pair of eagles that live there. I first saw one of them over eight years ago, before anyone knew we had an eagle in the area. They have been raising their young every season since. I mostly see them on the river side; many people see them on the street side across the river from me because they go to see the eagle’s nest and the young. They have to sit in a parking lot which now has a designated eagle viewing area to see the eagles and their nest. My view, when the eagles are around, gives me the chance to see them drink the river or to come soaring round the bend in the river toward their home area. I see them take breaks from raising their young and doing other things as well but I’ll leave some stories for another time. 

Just the other day I saw a deer come onto the mudflats to drink. I never saw a deer there before but someone I met at the river said there was a deer path from the street side that led all the way down to the river across from my lookout area.

The park I go to, my lookout area, is small but gives me a beautiful view all around. The beauty of it comes through is so many ways but clearly going there nearly every day brings a special relationship with it. It provides the chance for chance things to occur, like seeing the deer. Which, by the way, not used to seeing deer there, I first tried to figure out what kind of bird it was. When it rearranged itself from drinking the river to standing up, I saw it unfold into a small buck with antlers. Both of us were transformed.

It might be a stretch to call going to the river, or the wetlands, a practice. It has become a regular part of my life. It keeps me feeling connected and loved. I go there to journey too. Being there is a way to be at home with my deepest self. One day my notes from the river might be a book, right now they’re a way to be present to what I have experienced which becomes a springboard for other thoughts. I feel like I belong. I don’t go there just to see the birds but sometimes curiosity about the osprey in the spring and summer and the eagles too, get the best of me and I go hoping to see what they’ve been up to. The leaves coming on the trees, I now know, mean I won’t be seeing the eagles so much. But I do see them a lot this time of year. The osprey has, like clockwork, returned on St. Patty’s Day. I go to welcome them. And in the fall, round about mid-October, I wish them a safe journey because they head to South America.  

The place I go is such a small park that few in the area know it. It has a name, the same name as the street that leads to the small parking lot; but I renamed it for the redwing blackbirds that live in the reeds as you pull into the lot. I call it Okalee Lookout because “oka-lee” is the redwing’s song. Naming it was sort of a revelation. It showed me how much I felt a sense of connection here and how the name could be anything so long as I know where I meant and didn’t feel possessive about it. Even though it’s my wetlands and my river, I know I belong to it just as much as it belongs to me.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

§  Went by the river just now, around 11:30 A.M. with Lynn to say hello to the eagles and a quick thank you.  Well, both were in the tree over and just off to the right of the osprey platform downriver. I guess, never thought of this, their view there encompasses the whole of the river and their home area. Maybe they’re keeping an eye out for the pesky osprey that pinned their kid down in late summer.  I told them about that incident. In fact, told them twice because I saw it twice. Adolescent eagles soon grow to be the fierce mama and papa we have living with us but osprey are daring creatures themselves and probably tired of eagles trying to steal from them. 

§  It is always special to go there when it’s a day like this, a special time set aside for celebration. Our T day dinner is small this year but I’m feeling good and grateful.

§  The sky is overcast and its cold, I think mid-thirties. The leaves on the last hold out in front of our house have carpeted our front yard and it seems like we didn’t knock ourselves out raking. It’s another gift for today. The blanket of leaves looks like it should and keeps that harsh cold and stone emptiness of winter away for another day.  The river was high and the sky was beautiful in it. When the eagle drinks the river it’s drinking the sky’s reflection. When I go there, I don’t seem to be tasting the river but I am quenching my thirst and finding the comfort and connection I have come to love and need.  I am truly grateful.

§  And I forgot to add that for the first time, I believe, I saw a marsh hawk there, a harrier. Lynn saw it also and even says she thought she saw two. Now that would be something since I don’t believe that they travel together. But this is my journey bird and so it was especially beautiful to see it clear as I did, on this day.

Yin from the backyard

Every day I walk around the property I'm moved by something I see or experience. I want to share it with my partner. But something happens between the time I get from the outside to the inside that just pushes whatever it was right out of my head.  Now I'm usually walking around the front or back yard because I have Molly with me. She's on a leash that allows her to run.  It took a week of using the new leash before she figured out she could run away from me, at least for a short distance, but now that she knows she goes and frolics and cuts corners all the time.  This brings fresh views of the property that I might not normally have in my ambling, knees sore and aching making my way around here.  Usually there's a delight in store for me because of her running or short of that, a feeling of being replenished just from being outside with her.

We're growing moss here. The slow growth of moss keeps me at the weeds because they're faster and I'm rooting for the moss to keep on keeping on. It's soft to walk on and feels as if you're sinking into the earth. I don't think Molly notices this or even cares for the moss but when she whips me past the garage and the gap in the fence I'm onto moss land and it's really sweet.  I know I'm low maintenance and I know most people hear about or read about or even live simply - Molly and I get right down to that on these walks. I get the sweet green enveloping me and chasing away work and my to do lists and Molly gets to roll in the dirt patches.  That's her thing. Frankly, I can't figure that one out because I thought cats liked to be clean.

Last week we had more morning glories growing in the front and on the back trellis than we had all summer. The woman at the local produce stand told me that growing just stops in the high heat.  We had enough of that this summer to ruin a lot of crops and put a halt to a lot of growing. Now, even though we're into October the petunias in the back have returned in two beds. Trust me when I tell you these were emergency beds made on the run when I ran out of space on the front porch and the window boxes put a halt to any more plants.  Quicks settlements of petunias were made wherever I saw a depression in the soil near the back trellis. The trellis cuts our yard in half but pretty much at an angle that gives us a yin/yang division.  The garage, painted milk chocolate, captures beautiful shadows cast by the trellis and trees. The trellis nearly reaches the garage on one side and on the other it is shy of the oak tree in front of the compost bins. That's the set up. Molly has learned that I can't fly under the trellis the way she can and obliges my inability by careening around the garage corner when she wants to get on the other side of the yin/yang.

I was wondering which side of the back yard is yin and which is yang. But it seems like that might change from the beginning of the day toward the end. Right now the far side of the trellis hardly has any dappled light and the close side by the screen house does. I'm in the screen house right now which makes me sitting on the yang side. Molly is here with me and wants to get out. She's yearning for the yin because everything that's calling to her is on the other side of the yard. That's where the squirrels are right now, rumbling about, scrambling and digging at the ground burying acorns.  From where I'm at I can see the petunia that's white with a little purple between the petals. All summer these flowers were purple whirly whigs with just a little white between the petals. It's fall now and everything is changing.  Molly's coat is thickening.  I hope I can remember how this wind feels right now. It's so beautiful. The wooden wind chimes agree. The jays are calling from one yard to the next; I think there's actually three yards involved. It feels a little like summer just now. Summer away from the beach or just home after swimming in the ocean. Molly is settling into a nap even though it's late afternoon.  What a good idea.

Compadre, don't compare

If you don’t know where you belong but have a sense of belonging, as I do, then is that enough of a place? I’m sometimes lost and looking for a community while all around it seems that there are people I know with families and children and grandchildren or if not that then places they visit with friends and stay a while. Then there’s me. Working. Sometimes saying I’m a working fool. But what I mean depends upon the day and how many stories I hear from all these people that are in different orbits than me. 

I sometimes feel as if I am spinning around my small life and everyone else is having a larger life. Relaxing more, communing more. All the things I long for and don’t seem to have in abundance. I could feel as if I did a bad job of making a life but the truth is different. Well, that’s the thing about truth, it is always different. It’s always different and it is what it is. 

I might feel as if everyone owns gravity and I’m just free floating. I have a friend that sees me this way. I think she does. Here I am free as can be and there she is saddled with her life and not feeling free. Now, I find that funny in a bittersweet kind of way because I see her as having a very full life; filled with people, children, relatives and friends too. Community involvement. Accomplishments in all important areas. She’s a great parent. I see her as belonging. And sometimes I see myself as someone that bounces against the earth’s atmosphere trying to get in. But then again, there are days I feel so much a part of everyone and everything, that my heart is full and joy wells up inside of me. I hardly know what to do with this sense of fullness. 

Why there are days that I feel so empty and alone; so out of it; and questioning why this and why that, I don’t know. How do some of the people I know manage to find so many spaces in their lives for great community activities and belonging? I have always been aware of the word ‘longing’ in belonging. A lot more than I’d wish. But then I have also felt belonging and I can hear in my friends that have all these places to go to and family and community the same things I feel on those days I feel alone. It is a strange thing and a wonder to me. 

Right now everything is good. I went through several layers of regret and envy and come to this moment where I feel perfect. I feel held by the world. I am even smiling at how often I get caught up in feeling that it’s a bit grandiose to say I feel held by the world but if I said I feel as though I belong to the earth that would also sound quite grand. And what I really mean is that I feel so lucky to have this feeling and to be safe here in the screen house hanging with Molly and writing this and knowing that as much as these friends of mine aren’t a deep and integrated part of my life as I used to wish for when I wished for community, they are that too. They are a part of my wider community.  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote about karass and granfalloon. Sometimes the same people can be both in your karass, your intimate soul community and they might sometimes also fit into your granfalloon or the group that you belong to.

On the days or in the hours I might feel alone I’ll find myself wondering if it’s because of choices I made; choices about how to relate to people and family. Or if I was not given instructions on how to create and hold the structure of family. More often than not I have found myself trying to reenter the earth’s atmosphere after realizing that the search for my karass was really closer to my home than I realized.  Whether it was a happy accident or not, I had a home. A solid community too.  Not as large as many I know but real. The truth, ever true but always evolving, is that deep connections, soul friends or family relationships are always evolving. 

If you were the person in charge of keeping the planets and stars in relationship to each other; dealing with forces like solar winds, gravity, magnetic pulls and stellar winds, can you imagine the magnificent talents it would take to keep everything in orbit and keeping a safe but relational distance? 

What we bring from our adventures with people and places, from the changing landscapes of our relationships and the unfamiliar places in our heart that, when we are brought to them, and remember that we were there once before, is a sense of connection. Some people I’m fortunate enough to know, and they are in my karass, bring me a real and live sense of what it’s like to feel belonging. To have your self and your sense of life deepened and heightened by these encounters is joy. It’s love. It’s a sweetness that touches you in all the spaces that felt empty. Today was quite a journey. It’s quite possible every day is a journey and I’m just not aware of the itinerary. But today was something special for me because I came home in several ways. When the world unfolds itself so that you can see all the layers and be a part of so many different places; and belong to all of them and recognize that they are always there but not all the time, that is treasure. That’s the pirate treasure I wanted as a kid. I still don’t have the map leading me there. But some of the elements that I know how to gather or become a part of help point me in the right direction. At least every now and then. 

More about resilience is available at the wild blue on Kindle at   http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i.

The mythical journey of the modern Odysseus is found at Conversations with Nic available at http://amzn.to/14jUNUs.

In order to hold on you have to let go

I wanted to let go and just let the wind take me.  In fact, I knew that nothing would change if I didn’t feel released at the core of my being.  If there was something I was holding onto, some belief or outmoded idea, now was the time to release it and to open myself to change like a sail is ready for the wind.  So I invited the universe to destroy me.  Naturally, I sought the advice of a shaman.  I didn’t want to leave too many things to chance.

     I thought this would be a way through the inertia, if that’s what it was, that was stopping me.  Call it whatever you want, know what I mean, but get it out of the way. 

     One of my biggest fears when I left Nic was, “Would I know myself?”  Well, I decided to take care of this fear in ship shape fashion and made a full commitment to leaving the certain shore for the uncertain waters.  How else could I have gone?   It’s not that I was used to such adventures but I couldn’t imagine another way out of the tangled tango I was dancing in.

     There were many thoughts I had about why I might extend this invitation.  For one, I knew that alchemists looked at destruction as a preliminary step to reorganization.  I was willing to try anything that would help me become a stronger person.  Part of the deal was that you were destroyed by what you most feared.  By facing my worst fears I thought I could then certainly live without Nic - and not simply as a person making due but as someone that has overcome.  It’s almost heroic when I think about it.  And another aspect is that since all shamanic work has the important feature of deliberate choice, this journey was like an initiation into my new selfhood.  You’re also given the gift of knowing your end.  I was shredded.   That was only the beginning of the “transition.”  The rest became a series of evolutions and watery meanderings that makes Darwin’s theory of evolution seem like the biological equivalent of lethargy.

More about the journey and Conversations with Nic available at http://amzn.to/14jUNUs