A local personality crossed my path today.

Exploring Burnet Road, I ended up behind Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon. There in a tree-shaded pen in the corner of the parking lot was a handsome healthy-looking red-feathered hen.

I’d heard of this gal. She determines the winner of the tavern’s Sunday betting game. Once a week, she is placed in a special enclosure whose floor is divided and numbered. Patrons buy in on squares and everyone hangs around waiting for the hen to select the number of the week. How does that work? Let’s just say it’s a chickenshit game in more ways than one.

She's a lot friendlier a bird than you might expect given the pressures of the job.

Even though I have never fed this dog, y’never know! He wags his tail, and searches my face and follows every move I make as I stand on the street up hill from his house. He pushes his body as close to mine as he can without knocking me down, sits on my foot as I stand there. The sunset is spectacular, the whole sky the suns’s canvas with great swaths of color and light. A huge, shimmering event. It is hard to tear the eyes away. The dog does not seem to perceive the sunset. He is entirely focused on my face, reading my mood, my interest in him. Apparently happy that for whatever reason I stopped in front of his house.

It is easy to know why the dog--a black lab--behaves in this way. Since prehistory, humans have appreciated dogs, and the ones that are most friendly and sensitive to our needs have been more likely to be fed, to live longer and breed. Those traits for being man’s very best friend have been refined and passed on for thousands of years. Programmed in his genes. And it is easy to understand his disinterest in a big sky event--do sunsets provide clues about food, water and shelter? About a good sexual romp? No. Sunsets just don’t push any canine pleasure buttons.

The dog stares at my face as though I were a goddess and thumps his tail. I may not feed him, but others who attend to him will, and he loves us all.

It’s not why dogs don’t watch the sun set. The question is why humans do. What’s behind our interest in the sky, the moon, the clouds? Why are we wired to be aroused by beauty, symetry, color, light?

There’s a broad street before the house, little traffic in the day, almost none at night. No streetlights, no sidewalk, just limestone ditches, yuccas and dry oak. For many years, one dream has been on a mild full-moon night around midnight to call the neighbors for a party.

There would be café tables dotting the street, everyone dressed in white--white nightgowns, white shirts--glowing in the dark. The conversation light, the breeze lifting the white fabric of the gowns, the moon so bright the asphalt a milky white against the blue-black sky. Everyone happy to be surprised, to be there on the hill on the street in the middle of the night.

The 3 violins always seemed farfetched--but maybe a small boombox with a minuet playing. A teapot on every table, glasses of ale. Laughter, the clink of glass, a very light breeze and oh the dancing.

The human head and spirit get dizzied by the spaciousness of truth: the connections and the threads and the knots that confound us. The weavings of the cloth.

That’s when it’s good to chop an onion, sweep a porch, scrub a tub, check the oil. Clarity arrives through the most humble of occupations.

On the other hand, what if it is wise—even necessary—to do nothing sometimes?
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It’s easier to change than to be powerless.
It’s easier to let in light.
It’s easier to open the windows to your heart and feel
than to work so very hard not to feel.
The weight of doing nothing
and maintaining excuses for doing nothing
is much too much to bear.
Be kind to yourself.
It’s easier to change than to be powerless.
It’s easier to make one small wave, and then another.

(Splash!)

juice from a berry
hanging in the sun
onto the tongue
is light

the scent of the heated vine
that feeds the tomato
the faint touch of a toddler’s hand
on the nape of your neck
or the breeze that rises off the gulf
at dusk on a summer day

can we inhabit the single note of a chime
ride the chatter of a grackle in flight
hang ten in the voice of a friend?

what if eyes
are not needed
to see light?

oh God
doG ho--doG ho--doG ho

the mind laughs
the words stop
the puppy sits
and serenity flares within

the memory stick was empty
the photos of light--
of objects turned into lanterns
and flowers into fire--
mysteriously gone

I proceeded anyway
and where there was light
now pictures of a great spider
creating an 8 foot web
a coiled king snake
against the asphalt
dying sunflowers
with heads too heavy
to hold upright

A soft scowling at dusk. Juvenile eastern screech owl perched on a four-foot-high reflector, like a curious sign, hissing warnings.

Mercury shining bright. Mars paired with Saturn, so close a couple days back, already parting company. Jupiter a beacon. Scorpio standing on end. A couple nights back, to the right of Mars and Saturn, an iridium flare blazed like a match head for a few seconds, then gone.

Old crescent moon rising before dawn, only a day or two from the sun and rebirth.

The weather has been unstable, expectant, in waiting. Thunder and a few drops then sun then thunder again. The hummingbirds and nesting barn swallows seem less certain of their purpose. Today is the longest day, the solstice, everything stretched to the max, on hold, pregnant.

Near 40th and Medical Parkway, on the second story of a building not-so-new is a small studio. A method for teaching classical guitar--Childbloom--is offered there. It’s not giving too much away to reveal the very first lesson. How to hold the guitar, and how to walk the forefinger and the middle finger against the first string. The child learns a song--one note, one open string—the very first day: “I like peanut butter. I like peanut butter.”

Fire lights the child’s face. The student is on his or her way. A routine is established. Along with the rest of life, the soccer, the Nintendo, reading Wayside School, there is a guitar lesson on Tuesday afternoon and an irregular pattern of practice. The kid gradually learns a complex skill.

When adults take on something new, the teacher starts in the middle. Assumes you’ve been around awhile, that you can skip steps. The student expects to be Yo Yo Ma. To learn to speak Korean in just six weeks. To apply paint like van Gogh. To make a quilt without a teacher. Most feel like failures well before the end of a year.

Grown-ups could stand to give themselves more time, say, four or seven years, and take pleasure in the learning.

And grown-ups need small steps with immediate successes just like children do. “I like peanut butter. I like peanut butter.”

It starts with rhythm--drums or sticks perhaps our earliest instrument.

As one part of the mind is held--contained--by the beat, some other part is liberated. From the security of the percussion, from the security of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb, our voices and instruments and bodies soar in interweavings that grow more and more beautiful and complex, a mandala of sound and dance. A spacious unchaotic chaos.

That music take humans to discovery and to movement. That music helps humans survive the moment. The beat transfixes monkey mind, releases awareness.

A young elephant was scratching his right hind leg against a stop sign near Medical Parkway and 40th. I feared he might bite or bolt, but instead the elephant wrapped his trunk lightly around my arm as I walked him across the street.

How come listening to the blues shakes the blues?

Maybe misery doesn’t like rhythm. Maybe the formulaic repetition is a southern mantra that cleanses the mind and spirit. Maybe the songs remind us that being blue isn’t a personal disorder, but a piece of the human condition. Everybody’s been there.

So come on in, sugar. Join the crowd.

(‘Twine Time’ on KUT Saturday nights 7-9 is a feast, Paul Ray a gift.)

The musical secret of Cicadas is in their chamber on its breast. There are special membranes which are actuated by a strong muscle. This muscle is reduced with huge speed - twenty thousand times per one second. As a result, membranes issue a sharp sound. The sound then passes through complex system of resonators and amplifiers producing stunning sounds that can be heard for miles.


from cicadayear.com

The parked sedan was covered with silk flowers and vines. The rear bore the familiar fish emblem with Jesus and a cross in it. And the Darwin fish with feet. And a fat Buddha fish.

There was a frog. A sea turtle. Something devilish with horns. A Kerry sticker. A child’s fishing pole jutting from the windshield.

In the center of the roof, a volcanic cone of glued rocks with red-paint lava.

And inside on the dash, a beach of sandpaper and stone.

An hour later, the car was gone. A traveling sculpture, or a dream on wheels.

The World Cup goes on. Thousands of people from hostile, friendly and indifferent cultures participate: organizing, hosting, playing, refereeing, announcing, watching, kissing, fighting, hugging, photographing, cursing, sharing. Living fully without killing anybody.

Radical.

FIFA is the path.

what if insomnia is not a problem, but an invitation to enjoy the night?

The moon is at its yearly lowest arc in the sky--just as the sun approaches its highest arc with the summer solstice. (Northern Hemisphere)

Sunlight no longer floods through the windows except at the beginning and end of day. The full moon’s light flows through all night.

The moon so orange so many times in one week; perhaps there is volcanic ash in the atmosphere affecting its color.

my sister turned 40 today
have you any idea
how young 40 is?
light is unfurling
a flower
may you dance in it--

write and let go
write and let go
that has been my rhythm for this blog

I continue to write but have become more and more shy about letting go

it is best to let go

outside flows in
inside flows out

breathe in
breathe out

hang ten

Two pieces of middle school art hang in the house, one from each son created three years apart. Each has a crescent moon in the upper right. A mountain. A bird.

The first: silver etched on black--a crane on one leg, and the moon hung between the mountains and the viewer. He worried at his mistake. No mistake, I said, to have the moon within our reach. This picture would not be as interesting were the moon in its expected place.

The second drawing in colored pencils and markers: a bright hummingbird to the left nearly as large as the giant moon to the right. A boy lying on the hill, a small brown tree, a waterfall. This artist too worries at his mistake: the tree squashed into the little space he’d left at the top of the hill. But the scene is so calm, the tree must be as it is.

These are wild guys who drew Ninja Turtles and bombs from planes, knights and volcanoes. These bird and mountain pictures were not the usual thing. I look at their art and see the outer expression of an inner serenity I trust remains within each boy-now-man, to hold steadfast through the mystery, ‘mistake’ and challenge of life. Such art touches on the universal stillness within us all.

Wooden swords have surfaced again and again this week and so hello to wooden swords. I have two, one slender with a handle of burnished gold paint, the other fat and multi-edged with glass gems of varying color and brokenness. Both are splintered and dented by years of neighborhood and Ren Fest battle.

Now I use the swords for shoulder stretches, teasing cats, and loosening stuck hinges. My sword dance is very different from the militaristic exercises around the world.

The swords are not really mine but I have custody of them while their true owners are away. My boys are leaving, one tomorrow, the other in August. I need my swords, and they need their mother to treasure them and keep them safe. Or perhaps keep them battle-ready.

We think of swords as weapons, that the wooden ones are merely play replicas of the real metal ones. What if instead play swords predate the metal ones? Children’s stick battles must have been fought millenia before the forging of metal. Besides, are the steel blades with blood gutters really an improvement? Stick swords cause far less heartbreak and gore. Stick swords bring joy.

Well. En garde my dears. I won’t slice or dice you with one of these, but I may dazzle, bruise, or hypnotize you.

And from Rob Brezsny:
In ancient Rome, gladiator contests were as popular as today's football games. The warriors back then were not hired heroes as they are now, however. They were slaves or convicts who were forced to fight. Even if they won, they were usually required to return and risk their lives another day. Now and then a grizzled veteran of countless struggles-to-the-death was awarded with the ultimate prize: a wooden sword, symbolizing the end of his role as a gladiator and the beginning of his life as a free man. I'm telling you this because I believe you have earned your own personal equivalent of the wooden sword.

…In sandplay it immediately becomes clear that the human being can come closer to wholeness. It becomes possible to break through the narrowing perspective of our bogged-down conception and fears and to find in play a new relationship to our own depth. Immersed in play, the person succeeds in making an inner picture visible. Thus a link is established between internal and external.

The sandbox corresponds in its extents to the field of vision. In this area the fantasy which strives towards boundlessness is formed and shaped. We can say that fantasy becomes fruitful only where it is obliged to restrict itself within definite forms. The result is the polarity freedom/restriction. Freedom, on the one hand, consists in the fact that few boundaries are set to the client's shaping activity. The client has the possibility of selecting from the variety of figures and to construct a portrayal of the world that is closest to him or her. Restriction, on the one hand, resides in the fact that, out of many figures, a choice must be made. In this way clients succeed in portraying the problematic that is unconscious to them. Now we observe that a process is set in motion in which the unconscious, hidden totality assumes the leadership. When persons begin playing, they submit to the law of the very thing that leads them to that reconciliation of opposites which indeed is the decisive characteristic of the playing. Play is the mediator of the invisible and visible…


Dora M. Kalff
Introduction to Sandplay Therapy
Journal of Sandplay Therapy, Volume 1, Number 1, 1991.


Dora Kalff, Jungian therapist, developed sandplay therapy in Switzerland in the 1950s and '60s based on her studies at the C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich, in Tibetan Buddhism, and with Margaret Lowenfeld, in England.

from “No Shrinking Violet”
by Cherie Winner
Washington State Magazine
Summer 2006

Plants don’t ‘eat,’ of course, but they do take in energy, in the form of light. They use that energy to convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates. Although plants can’t move to a sunnier or shadier spot like a sunbather going for optimal tan, plant physiologist David Kramer says some of them make smaller movements to control their exposure to light. They turn their leaves to intercept more or less light. They even rearrange their internal parts to enhance or diminish their energy intake....
Kramer says plants have another, even more subtle, way to control how much light energy they feed into the photosynthetic pathway. In weak light, they are incredibly efficient. Their light-gathering apparatus...send about 80 percent of the photons striking them into growth and maintenance activities.
In bright light, though, they pull the shades. Instead of funneling the light energy into the photosynthetic reactions, the antennae send up to 90 percent of it back out into the environment as heat...or risk being bleached and burned by the intense energy concentrated in their chloroplasts.
‘Basically, the plants are dealing with explosives,’ he says. ‘They need to drive all these reactions--but if they take in too much, they’re going to pay the consequences.’

Jupiter, Saturn, Mars. A first quarter moon on a string of stars and planets tonight. Even just past dusk, there was enough moonlight to cast shadow.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to have two moons? Not just for the dance of their positions in the sky, close and apart, but the combinations of phases. Crescent and gibbous and full. We’d probably have a treasury of mythology based on the sequence of their shapes and distance from each other. And then there would be the interaction of their light: reflection from the sun, the earth, each other.

A true dark night would be much more of a rarity--two new moons at once. Cause for celebration of shadow.

Two moons to mirror sunlight. A reflector telescope has two mirrors, one to gather light, one to focus that light. It takes both mirrors to see clearly, to see light beyond the sun, beyond the solar system.

the body remembers the anniversaries the mind does not--
so if today was awkward
and if the words have caught in the chest
made no sense no sense no sense
be kind so kind to yourself
you have survived so much
in the song with no words
there is love

I am happy.

Certain foods really make me happy. Mussels. Mushrooms. (Perhaps all foods that begin with Mu? Ha!)

Tonight, I fixed mirleton (what they call chayote here). I had it many times in Louisiana but never cooked one myself. I didn’t even know--is the skin of this chubby pale green pear-shaped squash edible like with yellow squash or does it need to be peeled like with white summer squash? To be safe, I peeled most of it but left the skin in the crannies so that I could test it and see.

Wow wow wow. I cooked the mirleton in cubes with onion which, through no fault of mine, very nicely caramelized. A little Chachere’s seasoning from home, and brown rice (which only ended up distracting from the marvelous mirleton), and a glass of cheap but lovely Smoking Loon merlot. Oh--how can such a funny looking squash taste so good?

Even raw it had a crisp entrancing fragrance. Like jicama but infinitely better.

Yes. It does need to be peeled. I had to discard the experimental bits of skin—as digestible as plastic.

Now someday, I’ll make it like at home. Mirleton stuffed with crawfish dressing. MMmmmm.

I honor the artist
his broken not broken pieces
I honor the outing of each
crazy not crazy painting
each picture frame
window to soul
stories
of his not his
nor mine but ours
through his hand
his paint-laden knife
I see gold and blue
and disks of white light
the painter the healer
the young framer the night
cobbled street the sky
and café gold and bright
the alchemy of life
wet paint and canvas
the sickle-shaped shards
cut through dark into
light so fierce
it survives reproduction
from canvas to paper
and burns like truth
from the wall