31 August 2006

She dresses
in colors bright--
have I ever seen the same thing twice?
green or pink or orange or fuschia
snug to the body
something that sparkles around her neck
little shoes with litttle function
but to coordinate with the color of her nails

I was dubious:
where were the sober tones and suits
of the professional?
Who was she presenting her colors to?
What did this mean?
harrumpph

But things are bleak
there’s plenty of news in gray and brown and black
I no longer ponder
the shoulds and supposed tos
but bask in her sunburst
her merry laugh
the gift
of her self-attention
sunshine now reflected in
my orange sweater
a yellow blouse
the first pair of red shoes...

30 August 2006

Girls with curly hair are more likely to be nonconformists. Rebels even. That’s what my friend says, and her theory’s worth considering.

From early childhood, curly-headed girls struggle to restrain their hair, to make their hair conform to whatever fashion dictates. They carefully pat it, tug at it, smooth it, moisten it—and SPROING! It does whatever the hell it wants.

The mom yells as you go out the door: Comb your hair!

What does she think you’ve been doing the last 20 minutes?

A good girl has neatly trimmed bangs and her hair hangs obediently to the shoulders. But you never look like that. No matter the temperament you were born with, how neat, sweet and compulsive you might be at heart, you look messy. A wild girl. Frowzy even.

When you get yelled at and teased for something you can’t control, it undermines trust in the fairness of the system. You try harder and harder to get your hair to behave and finally give up. At an early age, you’ve already experienced futility. You take up smoking, drinking and rambunctious thinking. You flirt outrageously with boys. You give up control over your life.

My friend and I think that the curly-head phenomenon affects guys less because they always have the option to just keep their hair very short. To fuhgedaboutit. But girls even with short hair are still supposed to look like Dorothy Hammill or Uma Thurman or Kate Moss. Long hair—Jennifer Aniston. Im-possible!

Now, there are sisters with African heritage who will think they have hair issues—but please—they are somewhat sheltered from this phenom. They are more likely to have understanding moms with similarly energetic hair. They are more likely to have lovely hair traditions to celebrate. Put a pale-skinned curly-headed sister in corn rows and she looks like a wistful wannabe. Like an American dude who talks up a British accent to impress the ladies. Such a sham.

I just watched the lowering sun light up my red leather shoes and the red interior of my guitar case. As I played, my gaze wandered to the mirror and I saw a woman, her recently shorn hair like an unpruned shrub or that of an adolescent lion. I sighed and thought of my friend.

‘^&*% it!’ a girl thinks as she stares in the glass. ‘^&*% everything!’ And soon she’s telling presidents, popes and patriots where they can get off.

29 August 2006

It takes guts to choose a happy path.
We cling to our blinders and don’t even see
happy paths make more sense.
We are trained to be hard.
Discipline! Clock in.
Please remain seated for the rest of your life.

How quickly we forget
the teachers who have appeared
how quickly we forget
the bright light illuminating the crazy path
the light that showed how to see, where to go,
once on the road, flags waving:
Yes! Yes! This is the way!

Countless barriers
big and small crowd our minds
we think--well.
The happy path must be for somebody else.
Too late to chase dreams.
Too late.
How ready we are to sit in the dark
fenced in by black and white
holding on to our hurts.

We forget how we have been shoved forward!
Invited.
The light so bright and clear
We’ve never been so mysteriously pulled along.

One obstacle after the other falls out of the way.
Every friend, every sign seems to say: yes! keep going!
Don’t ask may I, tell how many you want and what color!

28 August 2006

Out of synch, she squeaked more than an octave above the rest of our voices, like a bird chirping against the low background rhythm of waves. The 9th grader transformed our familiar routine into something new and cheerful. Her voice so fresh.

There’s music for the heart in the imperfect; sweetness in a moon three days past full, no longer round; crunchy happiness in the batch of fudge sauce that was left on the burner too long.

27 August 2006

Tonight with a friend I watched a DVD: The Parrots of Telegraph Hill. You come away seeing that even within a flock of birds as with humans, there are individuals with different traits, ways of relating, preferences.

Toward the end of the movie, the main narrator speaks of coming to understand as he experiences the death of one of the birds that the force of life within him and within the parrot are the same. He speaks of a waterfall at Yosemite. The river comes to a cliff and in falling over the edge bursts into many droplets. They remain droplets until they reach again the water below, flow again as one river.

He said life is that river, our lives the individual droplets. You don’t lose anything in leaving the droplet shape at the bottom of the falls. You regain the river.

There is a similar reference in Rumi’s The Seed Market that is posted somewhere in this blog.

I never have been completely fond of my name, but tonight it seems a good one. It means Beautiful Waterfall. Life is indeed that. The fall to be experienced with wonder and not fear.

26 August 2006

...You have a lease, and you’ve set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You’ve got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask. Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn. You patch it with food,
and other restless ego-satisfactions. Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You’ll see two glints in the dirt.


Rumi
from 'The Pickaxe'
translated by Coleman Barks

25 August 2006

Nearly one year after,
we traveled some distance
to picnic on the slab.
The hot sun beat down,
everything bright white with light.
We shaded our eyes
to find our portion of foundation
to avoid broken glass
to clumsily collect small blue tiles
that once lined our bathroom floor
tiles bleached clean by
sun and salt and time
to see the uneven wreck of the pier
in the distant shallow sound.

My sister brought
grapes, plums, sandwiches
and water,
husband and daughter.
I brought our father
and we acknowledged
the impermanence
the insignificance
of structure
as we celebrated
the moment
the endurance of spirit.

24 August 2006

Black vinyl chairs with chrome base and arms. Mirrors. A schefflera in the waiting area. The front of the shop one great window. Little bottles of nail varnish, peach and metallic taupe, red and hot pink. Patrons and stylists chatting comfortably while scissors snip and goo is lathed on strands of hair separated by foil squares. The nostrils contract at the scent.

It could be any modern beauty salon.

But from a dryer chair and its heavy hinged bonnet, one looks out across the parking lot and 2-lane road.

A field of sugar cane, bright green, rustles in the sun.

15 August 2006

My finger slipped and I ended up on the wrong web page. The photo is in black and white. He is standing along a highway in the sunshine, wearing wire-rim glasses and ill-fitting black boots. His hand clutches a fistful of bills extended toward the cars.

A sign on his chest reads:
I LOVE TO HELP
I NEED TO GIVE
PLEASE TAKE SOME MONEY

The date posted is August 14, the same day I wrote of people asking for money along the highway.

The photo is comical and benevolent, spiritual and thought-shifting. It made me smile.

http://www.freewillastrology.com/home.shtml

And now, farewell for a bit. Car packed to the rafters. We’re heading for Memphis via Arkadelphia. Who knows what adventure lies ahead--
perfect morning
wren’s conversational twitter
peppers the quiet
air clean and sweet
clouds
beckon from the east
the tangerine fire of dawn
all light, no heat
more peace from within leavetakings
than from their anticipation

14 August 2006

I handed dollars to two homeless people today.

The first was hardened. Her cardboard sign said she was a single parent. Her skin was darkened by the sun. Her face was flat. Her eyes angry. Her hair was black. She carried a transparent parasol. She had a bottle of water. A small new backpack. Maybe she was not homeless. It was 98 degrees and sunny with no shade. She must have had a good reason for standing out there begging.

The second was a very thin man, his face long with vertical lines, like a Christ by el Greco.

His sign said he was a veteran. His skin was so darkened by the sun, you could hardly see the colorful tattoos on his forearm. He was detached from the present. Far away. His suffering so transparent I cried without thought as I drove away.
The big hand had not yet touched the 12, and the people indoors were not going to open a minute early. The small crowd, maybe nine people, some anxious, some making pleasantries, were pressed together waiting at the doors. Not for a sale at a store. Not to arrive on time for work. Not to buy tickets to a concert, or get into a club, or get fast food in an airport.

They were waiting for the library to open its doors.

13 August 2006

Light itself is a koan:
particle and wave.

12 August 2006

The sensation of a warm, rough tongue. The mother wolf stares, eyes luminescent. She pushes and prods with her tongue until her tiny pup finds sleep for the night.

11 August 2006

The nighthawk threads through the sky
like a needle through cloth
we only see half his flight
master tailor
seamless weaver
of above and below

09 August 2006

Quite a chase in the southern sky tonight:
a bright full moon chasing Sagitarius; Sagitarius chasing the Scorpion; Scorpio chasing Saturn.

Ten years ago on a summer afternoon, three little boys and I signed our names on a white sheet of paper and mailed it to the Cassini-Huygens project. They received over 600,000 signatures from around the world. Each signature was scanned and transferred to a DVD that was stored on the Cassini craft before it rocketed into the solar system.

A small part of us and that summer day is orbiting Saturn tonight.

==
Ooops. Of course it is Jupiter, not Saturn, in the night sky this week. Brain blip. I must have valued alliteration and reminiscing over accuracy--

08 August 2006

We need each other. Only people with a very deep affiliation with the military way of life would know concrete details to take toward undoing a system whose main answer to problems is war. Other people might have strengths in diplomacy and communication. In the wearing of others’ shoes. Other people might supply the imagination for the big picture, the confidence and belief it is possible.

We need each other for the reinventing.

No one can plan it all because we cannot know in advance all of the obstacles and challenges of the journey. We can prepare our approach, however. To create civility will take flexibility of mind, resilience and awareness. It will take a sense of timing. It will take great strength. And, we must create civility among ourselves, in our lives, to create peace in the world.

There will be dangerous setbacks. We will need to stick together. Again, the military people to come up with the necessary specifics and details, others to ask questions, look at pros and cons, and others to keep hold of the big possible, the big picture, to encourage past the voices within us all that call us naive to dream of peace.

We must not write each other off.

This morning as I ran, there in my mind was President Bush in a white gi, reverently practicing Taimyo.

07 August 2006

I have been thinking about Taimyo, the meditation for peace.

I have been thinking about about Pearl Harbor, about Hiroshima.

I have been thinking about the Vietnam war, about Iraq, about 9-11-2001.

I have been thinking about Shakespeare’s Henry V.

I have been thinking about soldiers, the brother/sisterhood of soldiers, the confusion and pain and anger of soldiers.

I have been thinking about The War Between the States.

I have been thinking about the methodical slaughter of Jewish communities during the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust. The ethnic slaughters in Africa and Eastern Europe.

I have been thinking about the destruction of the ancient Palestinian olive trees. The Buddhas in Afghanistan.

I have been thinking about bleeding children, burned children, children without limbs.

I think about what its like to drop bombs, to never see up close what the land looks like before you bomb it, nor after. To never see what or whom you have destroyed. To cause so much suffering and destruction with less feedback than you might get from a video game.

I’ve been thinking about the term ‘collateral damage.’

I’ve been thinking about the simple clarity of the statement: Thou shalt not kill.

This isn’t a perfect essay. I don’t have answers--but it’s essential to believe there are answers. That it is possible for humans to behave a different way. Without that belief, all of our thinking and behavior go toward supporting destructive reactions to conflict.

In our nation alone we spend billions of dollars on weapons. Robots and planes and missiles and mines and poisons. Ways to break an enemy. How much do we spend on the resolution of conflict without war? The prevention of conflict?

The study of civility.

We don’t have to start knowing all the answers.

The first step is to imagine as an individual: peace is possible. The second is to decide it is preferable. The other steps will follow.
We can't help being thirsty,
moving toward
the voice of water.
Milk-drinkers draw close
to the mother.
Muslims, Christians,
Jews, Buddhists, Hindus,
shamans, everyone hears
the intelligent sound
and moves, with thirst, to meet it.

Clean your ears.
Don't listen for something
you've heard before.
Invisible camel bells,
slight footfalls in sand.

Almost in sight!
The first word they call out
will be the last word
of our last poem.

Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

06 August 2006

‘Impossible,’ you are told.

Don’t stop there.

Impossible reflects more upon the speaker’s lack of imagination than upon your ability to do what you want to do.

Impossible? So what.

Take another step. Go for it.

‘Impossible’ is just the beginning of the conversation.

05 August 2006

January 2: I am carrying a book around in a tote bag. The book is wrapped in brown paper. A group of very amiable people are playing a game as I wander toward and away. They are guessing: What book is in Linda’s bag?

Finally, I look down and see there’s a tear in the paper. The book's title is revealed: THE POSSIBLE

The people are pleased with me. That's their guide book, the book that defines their group.

04 August 2006

Her name is Chodron. She is a Buddhist nun who was on PBS, interviewed by Bill Moyers.

The word she used that has stuck is:
soften

03 August 2006

the red tailed hawk
pale-feathered phase
shot up
dived and swung out
above the highway
a living boomerang
in crazy flight
wheeling for joy
she might catch a rat
she might not
God, her parents, her friends
won’t know
they won’t keep score
she’s not keeping score
she won’t feel failure tomorrow
she won’t be afraid
she’ll be hungrier for the hunt
there are other rats to catch
other skies to pierce
every day a new day
for the pale crazy hawk

02 August 2006

Life is so rich.

I’m just doing laundry. Hanging out with youngest who ran 102 plus temp all night, but is resting comfortably now on the couch.

It’s a stinker of a day, 98 degrees and rising but there are clouds floating in the sky, a cherry-red house finch on the feeder, the dry hot breeze. It’s a be-mom day and, since there haven’t been many of those to enjoy of late with the two sturdy lads who are new-minted men, I am content.

Nothing like being a mom to keep you in the moment, pouring the juice, folding the sheets, hands the lovely scent of powdered cleanser. Someone quietly thankful for your presence.

Parenthood, like life, is rich; its transience makes it even richer.

01 August 2006

The landscape of your life gets shuffled and reshuffled. You are scared, but then in awe. So many people and events wending back in and out. Like being pushed over and over by the wind. All the leaves land each time in a different place, and in different positions with respect to each other.

You think that it’s all about you—that everyone is watching but then you see how much more marvelous life is with all of the players, the spiral dance of leaves in the wind, the kaleidoscopic beauty. The many colors, the utter wonder of the play of light through leaves.

You think you must have a place in it all. You worry about which direction to go.

Maybe a leaf doesn't have much control over direction. What happens if you let go of being a leaf?