The petals of a bud unfurl on their own time.

I woke up worried about many things. Now, it is late afternoon, I am relaxed, five hundred dollars poorer than I expected to be, but everything slowed to a beautiful glowing crawl. Reality in the shape of fine print on a lease has inserted itself and said, wait a minute! Wait a month or two.

The flower walk we did last Monday comes to mind. The very slow stepping forward, hands extended. The petals of the bud unfurl on their own time.

Two amiable strangers, here only to meet me. The honesty of their faces. We are three people in a triangle. You see each face, but none staring at you. Sort of like baseball players on the same team, out on the field, home team dressed in white. A Tuesday night, we practice Shintaido in the grass under a San Francisco sky. The sun lowering from cloud to cloud. Tall trees with falling white-chested squirrels.

the whirl of white on green

I yearn to talk with someone. I yearn to not be so on the fringe. Perhaps I yearn to belong. Perhaps I already belong.

Three people creating openness with movement and sound and breath.

There is no time. When we part we do not part. There is no sadness. A drifting to my faithful friend in her car, and yet I am still here with the two strangers who love enough to show up. I still see white motion on green grass, white clouds on white fire-sun. We stretch into light.

It's good to travel to new places.

To be this whirl of white on green.

Here’s to travel. To riding new highways. Sleep in new beds under white feather spreads. Here’s to new people who touch your heart, and seeing old friends who already reside there. Here’s to fake conifers disguising cell phone towers. Here’s to new food--to cucumber tartines and café au lait in soup bowls. Here’s to the peaceful ocean. To stretching new muscles. To running in sand. To flower walks. Alien Mary on canvas and green alien in a flying burger. Sun pouring in unfamiliar windows. Beds of dahlias. Memorials to the dead. Clouds high in unfamiliar skies. Pale feet bare against green green grass. Red wine and hilarity on the back patio. Conversant scotty dogs.

And of course, here’s to that thimblefull of diet peach snapple.

A long time ago in a shop in Spokane, there was a wood barrel full of photos. Old photos taken perhaps from albums of people who had died. I bought a handful--no year, no ID. Every once in a while, they resurface and I gaze at the now familiar faces of these nameless friends in black and white. Two children watching a hen and her fluffy chicks. A man with a baby on his shoulder, wearing his dad’s huge driving cap. A girl in her Sunday dress, seriously contemplating the comics page. A woman with dishevalled pinned-up hair and rimless glasses, looking from behind a manual typewriter. The woman is dwarfed by a stack of papers in the foreground.

I have especially loved what looks to be two sisters before a brick wall, their skirts not quite revealing dark-stockinged ankles. Hair unpinned by a breeze. One hugging the other from behind. Both with spontaneous attitude and so very happy.

San Francisco calls
and time to head out
do Shintaido and Taimyo--
‘moving meditation.’
Pacific San Francisco
where friendship has no expiration date
‘where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars’
where diet peach snapple is the nectar
of good-humored gods

at the gateway
of a long and lovely pier
not that many years ago
an owl flew
to the pines onshore
as we approached.
we entered the pier
a path on water
and walked
farther and farther from land.
the sounds from the road grew dull
the lights distant
the weathered wood giving
beneath each step

a wind had picked up the surf
a drunken slapping of water
the background breath
of the night
past dusk but not dark
we stood at a railing
and slowly came to see
the dark smooth shapes of
porpoises feeding among the waves

you hear of people
communing with dolphins
and all that
but this wasn’t that way
they paid no heed to our presence
our voices just coexisting
with their silent
rising and falling for food

it grew dark
and the water itself took light;
each time a dolphin surfaced
the dolphin shimmered
washed in green light.

the pier stretched on
we walked toward the dark
toward the empty sound
away from shore
and saw beneath us
where the pilings touched sea floor
tiny sparkings
fairy lights
and knew no name
for what creatures they may have been

at some point
there came upon us
a separation
we walked apart
and then
this fierce belonging
this i was not i nor was he he
we were of salt and water
the pungent origin
of mystery
and nothing was extricable
each from other

such blending softens
to the separate shapes we are born to
man woman sand water
the owl marks our
desultory exit back to shore

that night is gone
the pier is gone
the relationship is shifted
still, we are all one
woven to original night
and all that has life
one sound to one gulf to one sea

I didn’t know what I was watering.

Whatever had grown in this terra cotta pot had long ago died. But after a rain, a little broad-leafed plant poked up from the soil still inside the pot. So next time it dried out, I poured some water on it.

The plant grew. The leaves were not lovely—rather rough-textured and unsymmetrical--and there was no sign of flowers. But I watered it from spring to summer, through all of this heat. A little because of tender-heartedness. But mostly because of curiosity. And then, when nothing bloomed week after week, I watered it out of habit.

Yesterday as I rinsed dishes in my house that as of today will no longer be my house, I looked from the window, and there below under the pyracantha, emerging from among the mystery leaves, was a pale flower.

I walked outside and looked closely. The flower was composed of a cluster of tiny white blooms with yellow centers--a pretty lantana.

It’s not that I recommend leaping before you look, but that’s what I’ve done for a year now, swinging blind from vine to vine.

A new one appears every time.

But never before my hand lets go of the last one--

Gah!

Maybe next time I let go, instead of feeling bleak and utterly terrified, I’ll get it. That in that moment when I can’t see any vine ahead--

Hey! I’m flying!

First was an instrumental: Mist-Covered Mountain. Then a song called Foggy Dew. I think the KOOP DJ was a little wistful. It’s 102 degrees out with only 2 white micro-clouds in sight. A dry bright brutal day.

Mist waters a mountain I would think. Makes it possible for the columbines and pasque flowers to thrive. Berries for the birds and bears. Mist would offer something to the thin high-altitude air.

Mist and Mystery with the same roots. Though the mountain is cloaked, we know it is there. Perhaps more powerful for being invisible.

How empty life would be without its mysteries.

Friday was a bleak day.
Saturday was not.
It isn’t aloneness,
the difference.
It is 3 newsprint pictures of life:
a hurdler, a keeper,
two dozen sea turtles.
It is blue sky marbled with white,
fairyland houses with doors of etched glass
that translate a lowering sun
into new language.
It is the voice of one son, and another,
the voice of their father.
Cardinals and house finches feeding young,
a lesser goldfinch
circling my head
again and again
Hey! Look at me!
or perhaps Hey! Go Away!
flashing his gold breast
from under his black cape
in the light of the sunset.
Feathered grasses
of lavender and mauve
so soft, so very soft.

A midnight call
woke me up
then a tortoiseshell scorpion
who insisted, really, wake up
and see the risen eastern moon
and do yawning yoga
in moonlight
cast thru trees and
transparent leaves
of plants open wide
arched upward
to receive light

marbles are smooth
they have a satisfying weight
are cool to the touch
unless warmed by a hot sweaty palm

there are clay marbles,
glass marbles
steel marbles
marbles of stone

I like the ones of glass
their varied color and design and imperfections
the way they catch light

I feel richer
with a pocketful of marbles
than a fistful of 20s

I like being grown up
really I do
and I like marbles

His shirt was off, clutched in one hand. His skin glistened with sweat. He was smiling. The man was running up a sidewalk yesterday in the heat against the traffic, running crazy with joy.

We start as kids experiencing our bodies with abandon. We learn control to gain skill: in painting, in music, in sports, in academics. We learn to contain feelings. Sometimes we control too much, we contain--no longer trust--the central instinct that gives us grace, that feeds our talent. Some coaches, parents, teachers, encourage that instinct. Some try to control it as though it were theirs and stifle it. Running becomes work. The soccer player, the flautist, the sculptor no longer trusts the self.

Once skills are gained, perhaps the real feat is learning to run again, crazy with joy.

The Shinto monks of Iso, Japan, have a curious custom. Every 20 years since the year 772, they've dismantled their central shrine and rebuilt it from scratch. In so doing, they pass down the knowledge of their sacred construction techniques from generation to generation. It's also an effective way for the monks to participate eagerly in the transitoriness of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. They practice the art of death and rebirth not just in meditation but through a practical long-term ritual.

Rob Brezsny

I wonder if they use the same materials over and over. The new shrine different, and essentially the same.

There’s the tree on Burney. At some point long ago, a storm or a car must have given it a catastrophic blow. It’s on its side, rooted to the ground at the fallen trunk’s points of contact--a fully-leafed canopy growing skyward at the end. Kids must love that tree.

There is the trunk of the chainsaw-severed sycamore, covered with bright green shoots. The rotted out trunk at the canyon sports vines and lichens. The hollowed dream tree trunk, a flowing fountain of clear water reflecting sun.

Life is insistent; it follows even the severest cuts.

One year ago, he was nearly hairless, pink and weighed about four ounces, less than most bagels. On his first birthday, giant panda Tai Shan is an active, 56-pound cub and the star attraction of the national zoo. Tai Shan, whose name means peaceful mountain, still nurses and eats bamboo, but for his birthday zoo staffers prepared for the cub a giant fruitsicle—a frozen mélange of apples, yams, carrots and fruit juices.

Austin American-Statesman July 10, 2006

The lake, the snow-topped mountains of many dreams and many childhood drawings return to me in the night. I know they are there, so near, so huge and beautiful, the air so clean, but barriers and vandalism and broken bridges and distracted companions slow my progress. Still, I walk on, even though the mountains cannot be seen. I know they are there.

I know when I awaken, it is a spiritual quest. In the dark at a crossroads, a 4-way stop, it is hard to take the next step, to know the right direction.

I lay back down. The plans, the interviews, the emails, the phone calls, the flight research of this week--all the hanging decisions--overwhelm me, buzzing in my mind. They disappear. Without intent, I am only breath.

The mountains and the lake and the sun are there, light of many colors, radiating from my chest.

I am the mountains and the lake, the sun, and they are me.

In a most essential way, the truth of every Holy Grail.

Perhaps it’s the tree off the balcony. A dream. A chain of technological glitches. Three mosquito bites, three feathers, three human beings who help you to stop, to listen.

Teachers have appeared for me these last few years. Not just any old teachers. Teachers who ask the questions that shift how I see. Teachers who don’t rescue me, but who let themselves be available, and who are very very gentle. Each with the same essential message from their different paths.

At one time I would have said I’m lucky. Certainly they show up in mysterious ways and places as though just for me! But such guidance is available to us all. It’s here and we are drawn to it. We just have to permit ourselves—the hard part!—to seek, and then—the hard part!—to listen.

I’m thankful for teachers who don’t hide their gifts.

Then, there is that exchange, that as the teacher fans the flame in the student, the student energizes the teacher. The mystery in that no matter how small or naive, the student is necessary to the teacher. Without a student, there is no teacher.

God speaks in an infinity of languages. We are cared for in an infinity of ways.

the trees so very personal
late tonight
the leaves
shimmerwhisper
in the breeze
reach and press close
to the balcony
just to touch me

…if you have too much of an agenda, in some sense you don’t see anything. You end up just running around fulfilling your agenda, and you are never even present. And that’s why we have created the Falling Practice, to help people realize that when you do yoga it’s important to trust your intuition instead of always having an agenda, a set sequence, in which you’re going to paint by the numbers…This allows you to use curiosity and exploration as the foundation for your movement and action. Falling from the present moment into the next moment. Falling from the observation of what is into the unknown.

Rodney Yee
yoga: the poetry of the body

Look at Thomas Jefferson who so eloquently and passionately worded the Declaration of Independence, acknowledging the rights of each individual man. Yet he owned slaves, and almost certainly fathered children with a slave, a woman who had no choice about whether she would be in his household or not, where she might go, if she might marry. He knew in a most intimate way the degradation of people in bondage. Such a divide between his beautiful ideals and his behavior. How many people might have benefited from one man growing more aware!

Today we let our financial appetite and transportation habits overrule our ethics in the use and control of oil. We play blind to the pollutants of air and water, the disabling dependance on lands that do not belong to us to feed our habit, our reluctance to rein in that appetite and pollution through change and ingenuity, the unconscious politics guided by those who benefit most from oil profit, the escalation of our own and others’ bloodshed. We, like Jefferson, play blind. How much work it is to pretend our habits are ethical. How much division within our family.

We did finally, through the great carnage of the War Between the States, manage to confront our dissonance between slavery and the ideals of our country. We grew as a country as a result of that very hard lesson. Perhaps we might soon manage, this time without escalation of bloodshed, to confront our dissonance in our relationship with oil. Our ideals are good ones, even if we humanly struggle to live up to them.

That clarity of vision starts with the individual and makes ripples that travel who knows where.

Was the war avoidable? What if the colonists had continued to negotiate? They might not have gotten far with King George, but could they have waited a few years for another monarch and had their interests better represented?

Would we have been like Canada, maintaining an awkward dependency on Great Britain while gradually weaning ourselves to independence without bloodshed?

Were Canada and the Colonies like two offspring entering adolescence, the one to the south the rebellious child that severs ties in a dramatic dangerous way, the one to the north more oblivious to the sometimes unjust rule of the parents?

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

In Congress, July 4, 1776


The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

‘Red against yellow
kill a fellow;
red against black
all right Jack’

This one was striped red against yellow.

The king snake on Sundown Ridge the other week coiled and hissed and didn’t move, a small mound of impotent fury. In contrast, the coral snake last night was bright, long and swift. It whipped across the road and through the long grass.

We have Africanized bees. Fire ants. Territorial dogs. Wasps, mosquitoes, chiggers, cacti, scorpions and spiders. Poison ivy. Occasional rabid bat, skunk or armadillo—though I’ve yet to hear of an armadillo attacking anything but grubs. A few risks remain to being a native earthling around here, most of them exceedingly rare or not life threatening. Walking at dusk, I’m cautious but not afraid of the dark, nor cars nor people. Even had a tarantula walk across the top of my sandaled foot. But rattlers, water moccasins, copperheads, coral snakes will change location as the heat eases on a summer evening. The possibility of stepping on a venomous snake is real. It’s unnerving.

The coral snake was so beautiful—its brilliance and energy, radiating color in the dim light. But again, unnerving.

Packed shoulder to shoulder in their nest, like sports spectators in a balcony, 5 baby barn swallows hollering: Feed me! Feed me!

This third batch is fortunate with a community of parents--several adult birds--reliably available, very attentive to their needs and very protective. These babies are fluffy, cheeky in the way only a well-nurtured baby can get.

The middle batch this year was not so lucky, with novice ‘teen’ parents. Like last year’s second crew, no survivors.

What is amazing is how lightweight a bird in the hand is. Even an adult barn swallow, almost 7 inches long and 15 inch wingspan, weighs only 2/3 of an ounce. Less than a letter!

So the food the babies are inhaling is not turning into weight so much as enthusiasm. Not mass but energy that enables flight--

If Mondrian had painted a car instead of canvas, it might have come out like this. I am looking at a picture of my first car, a 1975 and a half Toyota Corolla. I had her for maybe 23 years. She started off silver, then white. Then one summer in a fit of passion, I painted her. White, yellow, red and blue rectangles outlined in black. Turned out to be quite a task taking several weeks. A lot of masking tape and newspaper flapping under the trees.

The Mondrian was sold some years back for a few hundred dollars to a guy who on that very day was planning on driving her to Roswell, New Mexico. The UFO capital of the United States was perhaps a fitting destination for my crazy passion on wheels.

On Burnet Road, there is a cube-shaped brick building that has been painted like the Mondrians I imitated. Bright white, yellow, red and blue. One day, I’m going to walk in with my car photo and say hello.