31 May 2006

a free-spirited mystical Catholic painter
she had long bony fingers
a drawling way of speech
she liked tomato-on-white-bread sandwiches
and chablis
she carried a little dog
had no interest in children
her cubist Mary
did not cuddle Christ.
Though my aunt since I was born
she didn’t notice me
until that soft summer
she sat at her canvas
working blue and magenta and dark dark yellow
and I hung behind her chair
long after the poppies had withered.
She was near 60
and I 22.

I felt wonder at her work:
the spirited silver trees
the mambo dancers
the yellow swamps

Then, last May, she died.
They buried her properly enough
in a coffin under concrete next to her husband
in the slumbering gulf town where they’d lived.
But in August the storm of storms
uprooted her alone
swept her seamless casket into the gulf.

Artistically assertive,
sophisticated
dangerously witty,
she was still a physically cautious woman.
She would feel disturbed by
such unorthodox travel,
much preferring a Lincoln on dry land.
I don’t know what to make of this.
No meaning comes
from this fragment of Katrina’s colossal story,
just sorrow.
The same unsettled awe
I felt for my aunt’s work
I now feel for her
still sailing the warm gulf waters,
now no longer the artist,
but the unwitting art.

29 May 2006

Hundreds of people walk by them and don’t see them.

The yellow-crowned night herons--big birds two feet long perched in trees along the creek--eye-level, not even ten feet away from the people walking, jogging, and biking along the hike-bike trail. The herons have quite fancy plumage on their heads. I stand agog to see them so very close, some with their heads tucked under their wings, catching their daytime z’s. Then I watch the people, perhaps intent on weight loss and heart health and what’s for supper and the project at work. Do they not see these grand birds? Or are the birds of little interest? I don’t see any eyes even drifting their way.

I guess the herons count on that anonymity. Assures their safety as they rest.

And though some days I see the night herons, who knows what it is that I do not see? What are my blind spots?

Then, there is what is so plentiful, we do not pay heed. Water we drink. Mom. Electricity. Shoes. Spouse. The intake of breath. Light.

27 May 2006

I saw two lizards today. Some 20 miles apart. Not your little green garden variety lizards. These were perhaps 10 inches long with broad, heavy bodies marked gray like oak bark. Mini-dino type lizards. I watched the second one hustle up a tree at phenomenal speed for a creature that size. In 26 years in this part of the world, I remember seeing only one ever before, one a cat had captured.

So. Two in one day.

Like seeing the two painted buntings together a couple weeks back. Feels like a gift.

It’s a hot day but pretty, with white floursack clouds on blue broadcloth sky.

26 May 2006

After the dinners and awards in the last couple of weeks, the actual ceremony was anti-climactic. A crowd in a hot coliseum. Some gold and maroon balloons. Some chanting toddlers. Graduates ready to move on move on move on and party. Parents ready to go home and collapse.

Perhaps there is only so much good-bye we can stand.

We are all, each one in this family, each in our parallel endings of roles, jobs, semesters, high schools, ready for what’s next.

The transition so much happier than the anticipation.

24 May 2006

It was a place of transition from the very beginning. Even so, the end of the project is not easy. People with whom you’ve spent intense hours, intense weeks, now retreat in anticipation of separation. Familiar faces now contained. My team was grafted to another team today, an anti-climax to our passionate partnership.

So many comedies and dramas, acted in 9 weeks on the small stage of the workspace, drawing to a close. The stage crew coming Friday to remove the props, the computers, the tables and chairs.

I met at least one person, some 20 years past a drama similar to my own, with roots not far from my own place of birth. He gave me hope. And others seemed to find some clues in me regarding negotiating their own existence. People who have congregated in this space, day after day, now departing, heading for Philadelphia, Grenoble, San Marcos or Kerrville.

I knew it was temporary. Isn’t everything? But the good-bye is no easier. Tomorrow, the curtain drops. We all leave the theater.

23 May 2006

All I did was lunge for the basketball in the grass behind the goalpost--
------------------------------------------------------------------------

from: Chiggers

by Lee Townsend and Mike Potter, Extension Entomologists

University of Kentucky College of Agriculture
------------------------------------------------------------------------

...The larval chigger is an active creature that moves to the tip of grasses and fallen leaves to wait for and grab onto a passing meal. Rodents are a common host but chiggers can attack a variety of other animals and humans. Chiggers move to a feeding spot (ears of rodents, around the eyes of birds, or where clothing is tight on humans) and attach themselves tightly to the skin. After secreting digestive enzymes, they suck up liquefied host tissues. They neither suck blood nor burrow into the skin. The rash and intense itching associated with chiggers is an allergic reaction to the mite's salivary secretions...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the abundant spring rains and big yellow Mexican Poppies still in bloom, we must accept the lovely chigger, invisible to the naked eye but oh so insistent on being noticed.

Let's be fair. We all must eat to survive. Chigger larvae included. I too am part of the food chain--

22 May 2006

We shield our hearts from love
just as we shield our eyes from light.
I have no insight
whether that is wise
or necessary,
only that I have observed it to be so.
I cannot even distinguish
light from love.
No I have no answers at all
only questions.

But what good is a journey
where we know the answers
before we start?

21 May 2006

The dead lilies at the door were the last straw. Dead cut flowers in a long green box with my name on it and a cheerful glossy paper enclosure describing the variety and how best to care for your beautiful flowers.

The universe poked a finger to my shoulder to see if I might topple; the flowers discovered right after a disturbing phone event seemed a dark gift. I was stunned and sad.

Then, I rebelled. I am not going to follow the script damn it. No matter if it has my name on it. Live on the sunny side of the street.

And just like that, the world shifted.

I put in my contacts, nearly dry from disuse, and ran in the lavender heat of dusk—the first run since early April. Rusty, but man I’m designed to run. I shot some baskets—the first 4 sank right into the net. Polished my résumé for the next contract project but gave serious thought to an improbable colorful scheme that could help others and keep me engaged and financially afloat.

Out of the box that had sat in 95-degree heat for at least 2 days, I pulled 3 limp stems. They hadn’t curled up dry and brown like the others. I trimmed them, placed them in water with ice cubes.

The lilies have lifted their heads, fragrant and open, offering stamen and pistil, miraculously revived.

20 May 2006

The old lion
is threatened by the cub.

The cub
no longer young enough to be called a cub
acts as one.
He comes into the circle
with his sweet baby face
and his childish excuses
his fresh dense ruffled mane.
He basks in the sun of
matronly lionesses
happy to have a cub again in their midst--
even one not their own--
to pamper.

No one notices the lion in his den.
No one looks his way
or attends to his low-pitched growl.

The next day
the cub does not show
at his usual leisurely hour.
The lion smirks
tell-tale blood coagulated in his whiskers.

The lionesses shut down
pretend again he is not there
pretend not to see
except now they know he is there.
They feel--really--did it have to come to this?
Did their innocent pleasure in the youth have to cost so much?
Were they the cause of such disproportionate consequence?

This satisfies the lion
in a very cold way
having given up on
lionesses and love
a very long time ago.
He grins at the old dames.
There is blood on his teeth.
He doesn’t understand why they turn their eyes away.

16 May 2006

I woke up before dawn
a waning moon
creating a dance of light and shadow
across the deck and plants
night birds are singing with day birds
it is quite beautiful
this hour of transition.

14 May 2006

The light left the space over a week ago.

The large, unfurnished work area lost what gave it life. As summer approaches, the earth tilts so that the sun rides higher and higher in the sky. The windows that once funneled light into the room at noon now only frame light. The patterned carpet holds no color, no rectangles of rays. The light no longer transforms posts and corners into magic and curious passages. The beauty is gone.

A few days later, some attic warning system was triggered by a power outage during a thunderstorm. Ever since: beep! beep! beep! the alarm calls out, day after day, a beep without a cause. (oh man I couldn’t resist:) The forlorn little beep IS rather annoying, though.

This space was always transitional, I know, only a week or two to go but still.

Ok. So. Yoga there is different. The windows just windows now.

I still leave with greater peace than I bring with me but it is not the same.

Which offers a question:

What is the relationship between physical light and spiritual Light?
Strange party.

The black hood was slipped over my head. A swift kiss, and good-bye.

Everyone but the children wore the hoods and robe. How interesting, to get to know people without seeing them. I adjusted the gauze rectangular eye holes to better see.

Then I realized, though they were standing in clusters, as though in conversation, no one was talking either. There was silence.

You could not see anyone's hair or features or facial expressions. Gender, age, or color of skin. Could not hear their voices or what they might have to say. Some idea of stature, but that’s it. All that remained was touch.

But I saw no touch.

So. What is left?

13 May 2006

First you take a step, then you take another.

That’s how you go for a walk. Especially on days you don’t feel like it, but you’re not feeling that great moping not taking a walk either.

Don’t worry about where, how far or for how long. Just one step out the door, and listen to where your feet want to go. Stay awake to what’s around you. Watch for cars.

Tonight there was to be no walk. I had worked late and felt leaden. Then I thought, well, you can check the mail box. No mail, but once the feet were moving, they didn’t want to turn around. There was much to experience: a night hawk and a great-crested flycatcher in the grocery parking lot. A heavily pregnant doe. The yellow light from within a garage--like a cave--with an old man sitting in a folding chair, surrounded by deer, dried corn scattered at his feet on the concrete. Stained glass lit from within of a blue-gowned Rebecca at the well. A very large bat soaring and dipping. A mimosa in fragrant pink bloom.

When I first moved here, I got lost several times, failing to learn which streets connect to which. I finally remembered--look to the sky. Walking out I chase the sunset in the west. To return, keep the sunset to my back. If it’s the right time of month, aim for a rising moon home. I have not been lost since.

One step and another. The moon round and heavy hung before me the length of the street: a sun-mirror, almost too much light to behold.

07 May 2006

Sun Salutations are a part of my yoga practice. Sun salutations at the beginning, meditation at the end, every time. This is what happens during sun salutations.

I plant my feet together, let my hands drop to my sides. This never feels right at first, and I shift my hips a little, shift my weight sort of restlessly. I bring my hands into prayer pose at heart level. I gaze out of the window to the round green shrub in the distance that is my focal point, and I gaze away to the trees, the parking lot, the person walking across my vision, and back to the shrub. My body wants to be distracted, and it takes a few seconds, perhaps like a diver before a dive, to pull everything together, limbs, balance, focus. I don’t worry too much about my mind, active or empty, disturbed or at ease, because I know the physical process of the salutation will eventually rein my brain in any way.

I breathe in as my hands come down and then circle up, join together again over my head and then up like a steeple, and I am gazing upward. I stretch my hands upward as far as I can because after sitting in front of a computer all morning, this feels very very good. I often hear little pop! pop! pops! this first time as my spine gratefully decompresses. I stretch a little higher, knowing my body resisted a tad at first and sure enough, another cm or two.

Now I square my hands above my shoulders while the arms are still stretched up and breathe out, drop forward. The first time, my fingers barely brush the floor where later my palms will sit flat. With my hands near my toes, I breathe in straighten my spine again, pulling my head up. This is a small movement that is almost always awkward for me. Oh, well. Everyone has their little hitches in the system.

I plant my hands on the floor breathe in and walk my feet behind me until I am in the upward part of a push-up. (Later, I will be able to jump my feet back, by focusing on my core.) Breathe out slowly lowering the push up to the floor, my elbows close to my sides. I like this because it was so hard for me to do for so long, and the feeling of slow control feels good. As my extended body touches the mat I breathe in, flowing into upward dog, hands not moving, just the body weight shifting forward, feet flattening soles up, and the head coming up and back, curving the spine in an upward arc. The first time my short-waisted body barely touches the floor, but eventually during the subsequent salutations the pelvis will plant where it belongs and I’ll have more arch and flexibility of the spine.

I breathe out into down-ward facing dog, hands still planted in the same position, but now butt in the air as high as it goes and head dangling down. Five breaths, sometimes short and fierce, sometimes slow and focused, sometimes all messed up all over the place, and I enjoy it all, happy to be breathing. It is harder to relax my neck, but the weight of my head eventually straightens that out.

Fifth breath, I breathe in, look up and walk my feet to my still planted hands (later jumping). I breathe out, let my knees collapse into a slight bend and lay my hands flat on their backs on the mat in front of my feet and enjoy gazing at the inside of my glowing palms against the greeness of the mat. I breathe in and like a bird with long wings swoop my arms upward in a circle to the steeple shape, and hold that stretched up, and focus, gazing at the folded hands against the backdrop of ceiling tiles. Once I am focused, I breathe out and the hands, still in prayer pose, lightly float down to the heart area.

As the hands float down there is sometimes the optical and spiritual sense of light being pulled from sky to earth by the arms and folded hands.

I repeat againand again and again. Each sun salutation is different, some casual and loose-limbed, some tightly choreographed. Some I take little pauses in the middle to focus on one position. Sometimes I breathe and move lightly, sometimes with vigor and weight. Sometimes one repetition flows into the other with no sense of beginning nor end.

This repetition of the sun salutation is the core part of this workday practice, feels like wine or sea air which is sort of funny. I did not enjoy them in class, they felt like work. There seems to be something about the natural light in this space that makes it feel like an act of beauty, or perhaps the pleasureable contrast between cramped post-morning back and stretched out spine, or perhaps that my body instead of the class controls the pace of each one.

I let myself know when I do the last two, which sometimes brings a focused clarity to the process. I am appreciative of my body for being able to do them, and grateful to my spirit. I then flow into other yoga exercises before meditation, but it feels as though sun salutation is integral. Because of how sun salutations have cleared my mind, I fall into seated meditation with little effort, just the same shifting of the limbs and spine until they are focused. Because sun salutations have brought light before I even sit down.

06 May 2006

This day is like living in the sea. The rains abated after last night, but the skies retained their unstable appearance. Pale gray silk clouds against steel blue. Shapes like dark whales drifting through pastel waters. Cars on the highway schools of tiny fishes, veering along in pulsing synchrony.

And now, still a couple hours before sunset, the sky is black-blue, lit by bright lace of lightning, background drone of water again cascading from the roof. Like living under a waterfall. My bare feet feel the thunder vibrating the floor.

Such theater to remind us--hey--your TV, your car, your vodka, games and CDs are such artificial stuff.

Hear the real world.

(But now I'm thinking hey you listened to a song called Is There Life after Breakfast? as you drove among your so-called fishes. You have the radio on--right now!--along with the rain and thunder.

You are typing on a battery-powered keyboard. Who are you to say what is artificial, what is real? It is all as real as anything you experience as real.

"There's more than one answer to these questions pointing in a crooked line..." That is what I just heard. From my electricity powered plastic and steel radio/CD player.

Cheers!)
symphony of sound
tic, tic
tic
tictictic
drops of rain before the explosion of storm

how many sounds
of thunder can you hear?
the leisurely bowling ball,
rolling along some lane of the heavens

the grumble
of a disgruntled cat

the Crack! of a nearby explosion
taking out a tree
a transformer
or burning a hole
in somebody’s roof

the echoing beauty
of the tympani
in some Great Hall
constructed of cloud

perhaps in our orchestra
in our band halls
we merely imitate
what we cannot remember
thunder the applause
at the joining of matter and soul
the sound on our planet at
the birth of life

04 May 2006

Take about 200 short-term employees. Humans of varying ages, health, gender, size, temperament, color, background, sexual orientation, interests, tastes in clothing. Some hiding out in this transitory job, some there to socialize, regain self-esteem, some very in need of the pay. Shut down their machines. Leave the employees in the large open workspace for five or so hours, not knowing if or when they’ll work again. What do you get?

One very strange day.

I handed out LifeSavers, one Wint-O-Green here, a handful of red, orange and purple there. Learned about volcanoes in Costa Rica. The right earring for a square-jawed face. Military weapons made by toymaker Mattel. Poetry night at Café Caffeine. Making sand castles on one’s porch. Where to find crawfish étoufee in Austin. People were uncomfortable. People woke up. People had theories about assymetry of body parts and HR experiments. Oh, it was one entertaining and unnerving day. Time redefined. One row of people stared at their computer screens, black or the ubiquitous Windows blue.

As though wishing for the machines to, Please! come back to life. Anything better than this eerie earning money doing nothing.

Believe me. I was not immune to that feeling.

03 May 2006

With some predators, to bend down, honoring their egotistical hierarchy is enough. With others, you’ll just be an easier meal.

Ignore some predators, they eventually go away. Others become angry and finally devour you.

Some may nibble on you as though their attention and thievery were in your best interests, or a form of love, until nothing remains of you.

Climb a tree, and they may bark at you until they tire, and you are in shock.

Standing truthful befuddles some, they are intrigued but also disdainful, and will do their best to convert you. Give up a part of yourself, and they return convinced you owe them the whole of you. Feed them, and they punish you for the inadequacy of the food you provide, even as they insist on more.

I didn’t believe in predators once upon a time, perhaps I still don’t. I see the unsullied infant, the light in everybody, that somehow got damaged or broken. But while that may be true, self-defense is a healthy adjunct to being empathic. But what kind of self-defense? If you refuse to be prey, does a predator change? Is their an intimacy between the roles?

I don’t have answers, to be frank. I am studying predators.

02 May 2006

We sat downtown on a patio surrounded by prickly pear in yellow bloom. The lowering sun broke through the clouds and lit her white blonde hair, and I saw just how much this meeting held.

It took a lot to get there. Dorm buddy from college years, just here for the day. And I had obligations from one end of the city to the other. But I wanted--very much wanted--to see her.

Earlier in the day, I tangoed with switched computers, broken copiers, having to train others as my own work load increased. I did yoga alone. Meditation broken again and again by thoughts of what else was to come that afternoon.

I made myself stay. Past the thoughts of future, back to now until all was distilled to one thought: Be light.

I kept it in mind in the afternoon, but was not aware of its possibility until I saw her sitting across from me, being so familiar, being light. Holding me in her heart for an hour.

01 May 2006

The moon was hanging from the star El Nath.

A pendant: a tiny diamond, and a marvelous opal.

The crescent of the opal reflecting the sun, the dark reflecting the light from earth, which is also sun’s light tinted blue. Reflection of reflection.

Last night, I carried binoculars and could see the left horn of the moon broken into beads of light, black white black white, and the right side had wispy whiskers. The border of the crescent showing the topography, the craters on the moon’s surface.

All this to the rhythms of a frog--a species with a whirrrr voice--and so many chuck-wills-widows, singing for mates. In a couple of weeks they’ll be silent, busy with nesting and more careful not to give away their locations.

Last night though, they wanted to be heard.

In the time of my walk, the moon had moved east relative to the star, breaking the pendant. Nothing stays still. I suppose though the moon will be visiting El Nath again in about a month.

Much as I like the city, it is good to be home.