31 December 2006

Gyroscope was the analogy the Shintaido teacher used for the distribution of energy within. Minimal motion of the external body, the energy shift occuring inside.

The next week, he had us running around and around the gym, raising, then lowering our wood swords as we ran. At first we were all in synch, moving at the same time in the same way, in single file. Then people passed me, I passed others, some slowed to a stumbling walk. More laps the teacher wanted, and we kept moving.

I had moved fairly fast and felt good stamina, but was largely unaware of who was where doing what, focused as I was on running and holding the heavy sword. I heard noises people made, and sometimes followed a voice sound. I'd slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up. Then, I felt a complete drain of energy, could hardly hold the sword up, came nearly to a stop. I walked slowly. Now, the others walked as though the exercise were coming to an end, but a wind came through me, and I was running again, full tilt.

When we were done, it came to me that as a group within the solid walls of the gym, we had become a gyroscope, the energy transferring among us as we moved in circles. Individuals within a gym. Gyroscopes within a gyroscope.

I wonder now if the different shintaido classes in the city have similar energy fluctuations among them, and if we watched the classes in the many cities around the world if there would not be similar pulsing variations on an even larger scale.

Just playing with the thought. I really don't have a good grasp of the physics of a gyroscope, but I am physically aware of energy conservation, expression, and depletion when we do this.

The experience also suggests we are not individuals each doing our own thing--in a shintaido dojo, or on a soccer field, or in this world. We are more permeable and interrelated than that. Expression or depletion of energy in one of us is just a shift within the gyroscope. No matter how much we may be loners, we are interconnected with the same juice, the same light, the same life, the same God, the same spirit within us all.

30 December 2006

the sun and the moon
are out this afternoon
the sun generates
the moon reflects

the sun brilliant and uncontained
shines shines shines
the moon gentle and beautiful
the gibbous shape of a leaf

the sun so much energy
so much new to say
the moon the quiet mirror
nods yes yes

still, the moon can't reflect sun's light
without revealing
its own true self
its pocked face

its scarred surface
a mesmerizing vista
the moon's unique identity exposed
in the act of reflecting sun

29 December 2006

a short phone call
brings four cups
to one table
with a wobble
in a coffee house

a shaky pen
addresses a Christmas card envelope
with a curse
and an expletive
in frail
still elegant
hand

small movements
generate
luminous moments

26 December 2006

One must be detached.
One must be connected.

Ho!

25 December 2006

'What was in those ships all three
on Christmas day, on Christmas day?
What was in those ships all three
on Christmas day in the morning?'

22 December 2006

the wind shifts
cool air carries
the bite of pine and earth
and maybe just maybe
comes an inner shift
regrets released into the wind
light burns bright within

two grown voices
in the warm room next door
laughing and howling
over a board game
so familiar
so good to be near
this brothers' love
to feel this happy peace
My travels, my taking time out to learn to listen to my gut may be
laziness, un-American, a bunch of weirdness or worse. Spending my savings doing what? And many friends and family see me in a less kindly light than they once did. But something keeps me on this path.

I have known a man who was executed for a crime he did not commit,
executed by people working hard to ignore what they knew was true. He was an interesting, scarred man with a heart and kind, pained eyes and a very hard life even before his mistaken arrest. The people who contributed to his execution were ordinary people with kids at home and televisions and some were generous through their churches and did kind acts and worked hard.

I wasn't used to listening to my own gut. I became confused about what I knew as truth and about what the system was insisting wrongly was truth.

I too have caused harm in my blindness to my own injuries and needs and truths.

It does not hurt to go to the ocean and gaze to the horizon, to be still. It does not hurt to wait a few minutes in bed each morning, and get in touch with the information your body has collected and
assembled. It does not hurt to take time off from your work to listen, to learn, to breathe.

What if becoming self-aware is the most unselfish, generous journey you can choose?

Something keeps me on this path. If I am a slow student, I will just be slow.

19 December 2006

It was 7:20 AM--and there was no parking spot to move my car away from the 8-10 Tuesday street cleaners.

So I scraped the layer of ice from the windshield and windows and drove to the ocean.

I guess I have not been before during a big full tide. There was little room to walk--some of the waves even reaching the dunes.

It was like being within a huge breathing beast. Even on the concrete platform at the Vicente area of the beach, the body felt as though the huge waves were taking it away.

I had been asked to please spit in the ocean, and so I did that--very easy to do with ocean all around! I laughed. If you want a fast sense of your place in the universe, just spit into the ocean.

The waves so big and frothy. Gulls and pelicans skimming them--so close to that churning power and yet so free of it.

I learned 2 things as I stood there:

The ocean offers horizon. When you need to see far--not think but just see--the ocean is a very good plce to go.

The second involves the only surfer there, a middle-aged man. I see him stretch, attach the board cord to his ankle, pull the headpiece of the wet suit over his head. He can’t contain himself: as he walks into the surf, he takes a little hop, then another one. Happiness. He wades outward.

I never see him surf. In fact, at some point as I watch snowy plovers, he disappears. I'm concerned, and wait quite a while, searching the waves. I imagine unhappy scenarios. I finally stop thinking with my head and listen to my gut which is signaling no emergency, only life. I turn away to leave.

From behind a dune, the fellow emerges, his dark hair pasted to his temples. Relieved, I approach him since I know nothing about surfing. Are waves this big dangerous? Are they good surfing waves? He says he never got to surf because the turbulence kept him from even reaching the waves. He says there's a reason there are no other surfers out there.

Still. He looks happy.

And the feedback helps me to measure and hone the accuracy of my gut.

18 December 2006

unexpected package
wrapped in shining paper,
feather taped on top.
Inside, fragrant fans
of fir, pine needles, cedar,
tumbled with
a curl of grey lichen
and two stray strands
of pale ribbon
an open forest in my lap
from an open heart
bigger than the box
left on the city doorstep

17 December 2006

The last 9 days have flooded me with complex gifts.

In my early thirties, I took guitar lessons for a year. I had horrible performance anxiety. My fingers flailed and turned cold whenever I was asked to demonstrate anything at all. I loved my teacher, and could not reward him with any show that I was learning anything.

I quit when we had a second baby--overwhelmed by the beauty and demands of an infant and a toddler. But over the years when the kids were young,in my own time and in my own way, I paid attention to what I’d been taught. I practiced alone. The training I received kept giving to me for many years after the teacher was no longer around.

I haven’t begun to absorb or know how to use the gifts I’ve received these 9 days, or from this whole strange quest. But I have no doubt what I am receiving will feed me, and through me perhaps others, for the rest of my life.

15 December 2006

A Yahoo! news brief this morning reported a huge solar flare may have affected the gyroscopes in the international space station, briefly disrupting stability. Apparently, there are 4 washing-machine-sized gyroscopes on board that help maintain the station’s attitude without much fuel usage. (Because of the gyroscopes, the space station doesn’t have to keep using fuel-costly thrusters to adjust orientation. I guess once a gyroscope is primed, its use of energy is minimal.) Two functioning gyroscopes are sufficient to maintain stability on the station—three of the four are in use at this time. It would be interesting to see one of the gyroscopes--the picture that came up with in my 16-second research just shows the cavity where the gyroscope belongs. Better yet to see one in person.

Meanwhile, the flare--and its solar wind--may have caused not only the brief destabilization, but some auroras that impressed the crew. It would be something to see the light show too.

14 December 2006

a point
(a sticky long table
down under
in Pullman
Friday 1974)
where the relief of conjunction occurs
over pitchers of beer
and baskets of fried things
is perhaps where
four lines begin.
They separate
travel to various points on the axes
(decades of time,
miles of space
through Fort Bragg and San Francisco,
Dublin and Austin,
Walnut Creek and Alamo
and strange places in between
-I mean! four women to four mothers of six sons-)
to converge once again
to one point
(a pristine altar
in Walnut Creek
Saturday 2006)
the sacrament of communion
over tiers
of sandwiches and sweets,
cups of tea
scented with
orange blossom
honeydew
what gift
what durable, fluid shape
(a lumpy football?)
this geometry of friendship
he points: ‘Look!’

…a spiral
of tiny gold leaves
-Japanese
maple-
cling to the
wet
hood
of a red red car
beads
of water
holding light…

a day has passed
I sing this gold and red song

13 December 2006

Gifts from the Internet

Speaking of breaking light into all its colors, try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xjJXT0C0X4

(Thank you, FunTwo!)

And speaking of South Korea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBjia1Hm0nY&mode=related&search=
distilling experience
into words

is a risk:
something is gained
something is diminished

who really wants a description
of a rainbow last Saturday?

shhh-
we can play-

we’ll juggle light
broken into all its colors

12 December 2006

We wake up, pop out of bed, already on go! for the events of the day.

We forget to experience appreciation for the night. Appreciation for the rest we receive, for the work our bodies do while our consciousness is on hold. We don’t think to hold on to our dreams.

Dreams combine images, sounds, smells, memories into a potent condensed language. Or, as many scientists attest, they are bits and pieces of garbage from the brain’s cleanup each night.

Trash or gems—your preference—dreams are informative.

(Yes. One’s actual garbage is informative. The author Stephen King wrote he learned about his alcoholism when he did a double take of the recycling bin one day, filled with the bottles he had emptied in one week.)

I worked with dreams for many years. Not to interpret them for people, but to serve as a guide into the process of self-discovery. Only the dreamer really knows the meaning of a dream.

The process I used was something like unscrambling word jumbles in the newspaper. We examined the parts of the dream, the feelings in the dream, looked for puns and associations, and waited for the moment of aha!—when the pieces fell together in a new, accessible arrangement. So that’s what it means!

It’s a good approach. It opens doors, permits insight.

But it takes effort, time and practice. Sometimes the issues that arise have been in a closet. Dream work can be an abrupt, alarming way for them to surface. The first meeting of a dream group can be very intense because of how quickly the work gets to the hidden core material, surprising not only the participants, but even the
experienced group leader.

What if that approach were softened?

What if by laying in bed for ten minutes before rising one might drink in the benefit of what the brain does in the night. Just acknowledging the dream, holding it, appreciating its parts without worry about meaning. If there is no dream holding for a few minutes the first sensations of the day. Honoring the gift of the early-morning softened consciousness.

We slow down, grow more in touch with ourselves. We have our flying bears and crying sharks, giant flowers and broken trees, gold teeth, torn currency, untended fires and locked houses alongside of us, doing their work in their own way. With their help, we see what we are not seeing. The self may take a hint without needing to be confronted by an articulated meaning, and we can move forward.

It is rich stuff, stories and dreams.

11 December 2006

open windows
draw in the sky

08 December 2006

So. I'm taking all of these shintaido classes from different teachers. Very different teachers with very different approaches. Some of the classes almost back to back--say one in the evening and one early the next morning. That has felt like a disadvantage--my body hurts. My mind is still tangled with the physical and mental data from the previous class.

I'm now finding there are also advantages to chaining them together. Last week, four classes in a row had me confronting my reticence to offer blows. By the fourth--something powerful and beautiful emerging--no injury, only human connection.

Then this week, the Tuesday night class is in a small closed space. The teacher suggests a one-sided motion that has you rocking back and forth like a wave, taking you forward. (I have had after-effects from this before, almost as though once started within you, the movement does not stop.)

This time, the next morning out in Glen Park, we do our walking/running with the 6-foot stick (bo)--and at some point--boom! I have run from behind my partners to far in front of them--without effort or self. One moment I am behind them, the next far ahead.

It felt connected to the practice the night before, back and forth, back and forth, like cocking a spring-loaded instrument. The next day, the trigger is pulled, and boom!

An odd parallel with this energy burst is a Rufus Wainright song a housemate wanted me to hear and load onto my computer. The Greek song. I can't understand most of the lyrics, but the melody has been pushing through my mind each morning when I awaken, carrying me forward. It has the same kind of spring-loading--then an almost operatic release.

My last connection is back to the golf ball. One human cosmonaut takes a club, pulls it back high and swings, passes the energy of his body through the stick to the ball. The ball sails and sails and sails through space.

Perhaps I too am propelled forward.

07 December 2006

Of course she would bite. Kasatka the 'killer whale' is a big beautiful creature whose natural home is the sea. She has the capacity to swim-not even swim but shoot through the water for miles at a time without tiring.

She is designed for speed, for long long distances, and kept in a pool. Large perhaps but only by human standards.

People make money off of her beauty and talent. She is taught to perform tricks-on the company's schedule, precisely at the moments her trainer signals her.

She loves her trainer-he feeds her fish, tells her jokes, touches her, lets her know in his way she's special. She has learned his way of communicating. But somewhere deep inside, even if perhaps she has never lived in the sea, her body knows she can go far. Her body knows of food that is alive and singing. Her body knows there are languages she has never learned-that she could keen a message that could be heard and understood by other whales miles away. Her body has knowledge within of mountains and reefs and canyons under the sea, of the moon and the sun seen through a deep aqueous sky.

The pool is surrounded by concrete, by air, by her trainer's medium of life that she cannot breathe. There is no escape that she could survive.

Today seems like just another day, like all these other days. He tells her: Do this!

She bites him-bites down on his foot and drags him deep below. Her mouth in effect her hands, her only tool. She holds him under water in her medium where HE cannot breathe-just long enough to make a point. Does he get it?

In case he does not, in case he thinks this is just an irritable impulse-she does it a second time. She could drown him, but does not. She pins him at the bottom of the pool for a long minute, and releases.

Of course his foot would hurt.

But does he get it? She is alive. She is 30 years old. How much longer in this pool?

Does he see? Perhaps not while in pain, but he will certainly think about this for days to come.

She is not Kasatka, the killer whale owned by SeaWorld.

She is an orca.

06 December 2006

COME!
I WILL PAINT CALLIGRAPHY
ACROSS THE LENGTH OF YOUR BODY
HORSES GALLOPING...GALLOPING...
ACROSS THE FIELDS OF YOUR BODY

05 December 2006

I'd never seen as many hawks as when I first arrived in San Francisco this October--and then they seemed to disappear.

Now I know the story of their annual migration:

http://www.ggro.org/why.html
i got there
no one was at the door-it was locked.

a few white xmas lights on within
the full moon out
i was afraid it wasn't going to happen

then he appeared
walking toward me
from the darkness across the street
like the apparition of a gift
lit from within

04 December 2006

'I can see it as a little dot moving away from us.'
Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, after hitting a golf ball off the International Space Station

From Newsweek
December 4, 2006

01 December 2006

The red sun drops
below a slate gray sea
three brush-stroke clouds
bright calligraphy
above the ruby horizon
like firewhite geese
in flight

I am salt air and
naked sky
foam on wet sand
and reflection of godwits
in shallow surf
standing on a single leg
…As the sun was setting rose and gold over the pacific yesterday, I heard a father loudly and relentlessly berating his silent 11-year-old son. What had the boy done? He hadn’t listened to his dad about finding the best surfing waves.

I did not know how to stop the father. I did not know how to protect the son.

The boy went back into the surf as commanded by the dad. His shoulders rode low as though broken by the tirade. Waves toppled him.
The earth moves away from the sun,
its daily ritual of farewell
and light shifts.
I am slowly taken
from self
absorbed into that great space:
shore sea and sky
Sometimes the empty days are very full. Nothing scheduled, no housemates around. Yesterday, I became very restless, frustrated with myself. I made myself take the bo outside to practice and to meditate. I was focused on the basic pendular movement of moshikiye, of the difference in its motion when each hand pushes as opposed to when each hand pulls. One end scraped concrete and stripped a patch of wood off the bo

This was a shock and a pain I could not quite grasp. The fresh-torn wood was fragrant as though of trees growing in a distant woods.

My frustration with my self grew, and I felt the kind of psychic pain I haven’t felt in some weeks. I let myself tantrum for a while, then took myself into the chill late afternoon to the ocean.

That gradually brought peace until I became disheartened by an incident described in the next post. But before I left the ocean, I turned around and took one last glance. The geese calligraphy was still glowing in the sky. I felt moved to do the
‘ah!’ part of tenshingoso, and did this in a rather rusty way. Then I did the whole series, moving softly, starting with Ah!--forgetting only the initial Um.

And with this wordless body-prayer, suffering emptied from me, leaving only lightness of being.

So. Anyway. I wrote a draft of the poem last night, and awoke at 4:30 AM thinking of the boy and wrote the prose. What follows are some of the pieces of writing from my empty day.
This week, it was time to use my bo to offer blows--first to the teacher, then to the assistant. As though to crack them over the head. This process is done in a slow, safe way--one partner strikes from overhead, the other stops the strike with the bo.

I froze, resistance throughout my body. The teacher was mildly impatient and so I made a very slow offensive contact against her defensive posture, and then another. I could see that acting without hesitation made the whole process safer, so I tried to get a more assertive rhythm with the assistant.

The teacher is taller than me, the assistant shorter. I still see the assistant’s face beneath the cross of our bos. I have no grasp of this yet.

I watched a yahoo! amateur video clip yesterday of a man doing a very impressive kata in a martial arts competition. There was no visible opponent, just the man cutting air with his hands and the edges of his feet. Perhaps ten blows within a second!

I thought about him, the pouring of himself into this one minute, the beauty of his concentration, precision and fire.

He was shattering his own devils, breaking through an invisible web.

During a class last Saturday, the other students did a partner exercise that involved accepting a running blow--not deflecting it--but turning into it--and traveling with the blow--helping the opponent travel where he needed to go with this aggression without causing harm.