In these three weeks, the tree branches have been transformed, no longer sticks with tiny pale green buds. Even the pecan trees which are last to leaf out have started to green. When I point my bo upward, it’s no longer easy to find sky through the dense foliage.

Today I aimed for the smallest openings through the leaves, the little points of light.

Through the narrowest paths, we find the sharpest focus.

Sitting on the wrought iron bench, focused on a small green hedge, I breathe. The cars whiz by, reflecting setting sun.

I travel many empty spaces.

As I resurface, a vehicle tears past, siren blaring. Sound rocks the air. I smile, at peace, and go in to fix supper.

For one week the yard is aflame with color, and then it's over for another year.
Azalea blossoms have fallen from the shrubs. Like shreds of pink crepe paper after a riotous party, dark petals are strewn on the ground, or dangle from the branches.

Some plants, though, like yellow bells, bloom and bloom. I've seen none here, but know it well. Esperanza.

I did sword work this morning.

There’s a figure 8 movement we learned in one class. It feels good to practise because there is a lovely flow. The shifting weight of the sword works with the movement of the hips. You experience a hypnotic rhythm.

From a weapons perspective, you can keep yourself balanced and in motion with minimal exertion. You can adjust your position to address surprise attacks from any direction with an economy of movement and maximal effect. You maintain a connection with your energy.

I don’t know if anyone else would think this is accurate. I have little experience in this area. I was wielding a thick and heavy piece of wood in slow motion, with curving oak branches for opponents. But that was my perception.

Just as when I drove into Louisiana early in the month, today there were dead turtles at the asphalt edges along Interstate 10. They’re such a sad sight, the shells like broken bowls.

The turtle has survived thousands of years without much change in design because the design has been so successful against most predators. However, the evolution of the automobile trumps the ancient turtle. Turtle never wins against a speeding vehicle.

We were heading to visit the cemetary in Estherwood. Not even half a mile from Bayou Plaquemines, it’s a very peaceful place, surrounded by woods, field and an empty street.

The sun was very yellow. The air heavy and heated. An egret winged over. An orange dragonfly, a small butterfly. A pileated woodpecker loudly clucked as it scaled a large snag.

We wandered among the graves seeking the names of relatives. One grave that attracted me, though, was that of Della Dupont Myers, no kin. She lived from March 13, 1919 to sometime late in the 1990s. Unlike most of the stones with crosses or praying hands, hers was etched with roses. Under her name, it read : “Mom.” And, on top of the concrete slab weighting her grave were two heavy turtle statues, a large and a small, at irregular angles.

To my surprise, the turtles weren’t attached. I moved the smaller one to follow the larger at a more pleasing diagonal, their necks cocked at similar angles now, as though they were both curious to examine any visitors to Della’s grave.

I felt a connection to Della. She didn’t seem very dead at all. I wrote down her name in my little notebook before I started the car engine to leave.

As we drove out of town, a turtle was crossing the main road, near the center stripe. Its head was arched high, its legs making good time, unless you compared it to the cars and trucks.

There hadn’t been much traffic before, but now cars were approaching from both directions. Here was a chance, after all of those broken shells along the freeway, to forestall, perhaps prevent, one similar fate.

A truck from behind seemed impatient that I pulled over. Most cars back in central Texas would just pause until you’d carried off a turtle. Some drivers would get out of the car and beat you to the rescue, or ask to see the turtle. Not this fellow. I feared he’d crush the turtle out of spite or haste, but he just straddled it between the wheels, and roared away. The turtle spun, but did not get hurt.

It was a red-eared slider and not a snapper (which scares me). This turtle was prettier than those we rescued over the years along Fitzhugh and in Dripping Springs. Its shell was a dark dark green. It looked shining and healthy. The head was very friendly-looking and handsome; it retracted into the shell when I bent down. I carried the turtle to the side of the road it was originally facing, and placed it going downward toward not too distant water.

I suspect Della was pleased.

The horse trough is an old heavy concrete thing. Maybe 3X1.5 ft, 1 ft deep. Filled with water. Growing murky stuff inside, small brown oak leaves clustered across about a third of the surface. And gold fish. Maybe 2.5 inches long. They’ve been there several years. Since I’ve been here off and on these 2 weeks, I’ve seen 1-3 of them at a time. Never at the surface, but in slow suspended movement deep within.

My father told me there was a white one. I thought maybe he meant an orange one with a white spot, that it was one of the ones I’d seen.

Yesterday, I tossed a couple of azalea petals, deep pink, on the surface and walked off a bit. When I returned, fish were at the surface of the trough. Three, then a fourth one-- I didn’t know!

Then, a fifth fish appeared. The white fish. It was shining, with pale orange spots. Very lovely and shy.

And with the white fish came one more orange one—six altogether. I had no idea there were that many. They seemed to play, chasing each other about, no nipping or biting. Mesmerizing in their movement.

They’d come to the surface, their mouths open to air, then dart under leaves. They seemed like happy fish.

If I moved, to see the squirrel on the garage roof behind me, or because of an itch, the fish would dart down beneath the protective cover of the leaves. They’d quickly return, all the way to the surface.

The white fish and one of the orange fish were always the last to reappear.

I guess if you have the white genes, in the goldfish world, it’s harder to be camouflaged, to be invisible. A raccoon or heron would eat you first. Therefore, the white fish who survived to reproduce were ones who are very cautious, secretive. They passed that down. They’ve learn to watch the other fish to see when it’s safe to emerge.

I don’t know why I write about them. I enjoyed watching them, the leaves, the wavering reflection of the oak limbs on the water’s surface, the bright orange and white fish creating visual music just under and at the surface of the old trough, and the two pink petals among the brown oak leaves. Unexpected beauty.

The brain carries deep memories of the body’s movement. I used to play basketball in my dreams, experience the release and joy of running up and down the court while my body was lying dormant in the night.

When people lose their vision, they come to rely more on their other senses. Hearing, smell, sensations of the skin can become more acute.

Perhaps a gift of physical limitations is that we have the opportunity to learn about our other senses. We also have the opportunity to pay attention to inner energy, our souls--that the power of the spirit may be independent of the body, may be limitless.

This morning, I practiced shintaido in the grey foggy field. I practiced the ‘gentle’ version--’gentle’ being a bit deceptive. What you learn to do is to let go of physical control and effort. You practice softening.

There are more action-oriented, very expressive classes. The sword work, the bo, the karate. In those classes, there would be surprising experiences. And the effort could be both challenging and intensely gratifying.

I guess this class was a receptive class. You first learned in effect to listen with your whole body. You didn’t move your arms, chest, abdomen--you let go of control. As though you were a seedling responding to sun, your body opened. As though the wind or ocean waves were pushing and pulling your legs. By the time your movement became active, it often didn’t feel intentional at all. The body moved effortlessly. More like an egoless conduit of energy. You became bigger, brighter than your body.

Awareness of classmates was enhanced. Often, as in other classes, movement synchronized, or became complementary with each other.

Of course my only classmates this morning were the birds. Still, this process I learned and practice continues to offer me both softened awareness and strength. I suspect that even as we age and lose physical capacity, this process will be possible, and will offer the intense awareness of aliveness and connection. I’m appreciative.

Sorry-
I'm stuck today.
Nothing willing to be posted...

Deep in the grass with the wild violets and strawberries, there are yellow five-petaled flowers. Because I have no name for this flower, I don’t notice it as readily. I don’t usually talk or write about it. In fact, I’m not sure it is five-petaled.

Just because we have no name for something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Bayou Teche runs not far alongside us for most of our drive from Lafayette to Morgan City. We’re on what is the old Highway 90, the Old Spanish Trail. We drive through Broussard. New Iberia. Jeanerette. Franklin. Baldwin.

These towns remind me of how Lafayette was when I was a girl. The lovely somnolent pace. Tremendous oaks. Straight 2-lane roads bordered by fields and scattered houses. White clouds blooming against blue blue sky. You can see far across the fields.

Azaleas are in full bloom—great bursts of coral, white, pale pink, the traditional hot pink. They transform even the most modest of houses into grandeur. We pass middle schools and high schools in each town--places from which kids might ride bikes, or pull out in their first cars without much risk of damage. School stadiums surrounded by nothing but field. Signs proclaiming Home of the Fighting Hornets. One tall brick Catholic church in each town. I suspect their doors are not locked.

Stores sell First Communion dresses, Confirmation gifts. Place after place boasts live or boiled crawfish, seafood. Architecture is so distinctively local--the white houses whose verandas have ceiling fans and the low brick houses that hug the earth. The tall red brick stacks of sugar mills, mostly in disuse now. And the metal industrial buildings of businesses selling petroleum related services and equipment. Somehow, it all works together.

Three men of many years share a bench under the cover of an old gas station roof. A pale Labrador at their feet. On an old side porch, a slender woman with short grey hair wears a red dress, drinks Coke from a traditional glass bottle in her graceful hand. The brown quiet water of Bayou Teche, so flat and broad, makes its way to the gulf. The bayou was a source of food and transportation for all those pre-industrial years.

Sometimes, you have to go away to see where you come from. The roots of what stillness resides in me are intertwined with the curves of the quiet bayou and the roots of the oaks that grace this part of the planet.

I’m getting the hang of practicing Shintaido alone. The material I learned during the four months in San Francisco seems to have shaken down into 3 practices: bo, sword, and Shintaido. I hear my dad’s buzzer at 7, I lay in bed thinking I’ll just take off this morning, catch a little more sleep. Then I remember the early classes in SF area, how I somehow pried myself out of bed during a much colder and darker season. So now I somehow pry myself out into the yard here. The dojo is certainly beautiful-the great oak, the distant mist rising in the morning sun over the pasture to the east, the camellias, azaleas, and Carolina Jasmine in bloom.

Sometimes rush hour cars are stopped along the road--so there’s the occasional audience. What must they think? ‘Mom! Why’s that lady jumping like a frog?’

I’ve been patient with myself for not remembering the exact order of things, but the more I do, the more it seems to hang together. I miss the flow, the being pointed by someone else in a direction and made to go. Alone I have to overcome my own inertia. Yesterday, my body resisted eiko dai--it would just go a step or two. But it was sword day, and I finally figured out a small cue that gets my feet in good position during a thrust (focus on the foot as the leading edge instead of the sword) so that was good. Today, general Shintaido day, all was fine. Well--jumbled. But quite beautiful.

I tried something new, something that was in my mind during yoga relaxation long before shintaido, but that works better with shintaido. I did it with hands today, but want to try it with sword, and with a partner.

It’s a kind of gyroscopic spinning--painting horizon--with fractional moments where nothing touches the ground! Aiming for the body to be in the air, parallel to earth, spinning. I love it! It feels great! I didn’t know I could do it! It isn’t that hard!

Well. My form must be amusing--but it has potential!

I don’t keep that same inner current of energy I experienced in San Francisco from the vigorous chain of classes--but I feel good.

This morning, a great blue heron wended above during o of tenshingoso...

A dream of pears
In a garden of Eden
Could the one half-eaten
Be Adam’s?

And in the foliage
The child’s grey jacket
A hoodie, size 8
Who left it behind?

The slender pink book
Falls from numb fingers
Can knowledge
Blind the eyes?

The forefoot
A blade edge
The foot leads
Will the rest follow?

I don’t understand.
Understanding
Unecessary
Just take another step forward…

They don’t know how amazing they are--five people at the same little company for most of their adult lives. The youngest in his 30s has been there ten years--the oldest in his seventies has been around past memory--he was operating a fork lift this morning. The three women--one has gone from secretary at age 19 about 40 years ago to owner. They show up day after day--see the same faces, the same industrial building, essentially the same work with commercial hardware and door frames. They congregate during quiet moments in the one central space with a window. They know each other’s nephews and daughters and sons who have shown up for summer work over the years. They’ve survived slow times when there had to be layoffs, only to return when times improved. Their work relationship has outlasted spouses. Has seen each other through deaths, major illnesses and heartbreak. The women look crisp and take care of their appearance--on what might be the 3768th day at this office. I’ve never been witness to any true bickering or meanness; although they’re plenty human, and it must happen at times, it’s not their customary way of interacting.

I admire and wonder at their endurance and what feeds them, what maintains the deep connection. In some places it might be inertia--but in this office, I’m thinking it’s a form of love.

Yesterday in the cool sun, I rode my bike around and around the storage units. Then, I parked it in the little rented closet, B-25, and locked it up with the rest of my stuff we had just unloaded. It was a beautiful late afternoon. My friend/former husband and I drove away together, light-hearted to have completed our hard transition in such a cooperative way. Light-hearted to be free to move forward.

Chaos flowed into a moment of profound appreciation for each other.

'In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

'First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover...'

from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams

This chaos
it's all too much

(he froze it, he chopped it
it sends up a green shoot
a neighbor jiggles her foot
the thermometer reads
102 degrees
who killed the electric car?
sweet escape in the minivan
I sweep the floor
as though it were mine
the stocked larder
a good sign
the bent teaspoon
has moved a mountain
abundant water falls)

we try to reduce
the glowing embers
of former future lives
to umm
to now
to utter simplicity

water
seeks the depth of
ocean and cycles upward
again into cloud

chaos
moves us
to seek transcendence

I can't write.
I write with a calm hand.

Oh, yes, chaos is good.

I awoke in the dark
but at least today I knew exactly where I was.
The waning moon,
a pearly crescent foretelling sun,
shimmered with raindrops
against the indigo sky.
The chickadee started
its flutey call.
The air was so fresh-charged.
Nothing has changed, I thought.
By nightfall, of course,
many things had changed.
Ice melts. I am water falling,
no longer dormant
the antithesis of static
Rainwater floods
in confused abundance
Water knows where it is
when it is no longer there
water flows where it will
contained (by dikes dams and levies
the banks of streams)
or not


03-14-07

My grandfather understood English but only spoke Spanish. I understood Spanish but only spoke English. We walked together and never spoke a word. It was my first experience with a comfortable silence.

by Winter Prosapio
'Walking With Grandfather'
Texas Co-op Power
March 2007

we stood
no talk
at the back door of the barn
felt the breeze from the east
clouds rolling above
that’s
when I feel love

I’m glad to be here with my parents. You think you know everything they can teach you, and then they surprise you with something new.

I don’t know who the Magician is, but rabbits are bounding out of hats. Windows appearing where there were none.

This morning I took my bo outside. The sun filtered through fog and the great oak tree, the pecan trees. Violets and tiny strawberries deep in the grass. Cars flying by to the west of me, the pasture to the east, woods and tangled brush to the north, the house to the south. There are new pale green leaves on the saplings. The spring air misty and fragrant. I started my solo practice. Trotting around the yard: ichi, ni, san, shi...

offered to all of the Pac-Shin teachers.

You wake up in the bed of your adolescence and can’t help but wonder.

Day 7
March 8
Kerrville, Texas to Lafayette, Louisiana

The drive was more challenging with two major delays. The first east of Houston near the San Jacinto Monument exit. Traffic stopped, perhaps because of an accident, hard to tell. I went north to 90--and drove to Beaumont from there. Then, once across the Louisiana border, there was construction. I opened my windows and enjoyed the cool air floating across fields and crawfish/rice paddies and the pines that line parts of the road. Miles of cars waiting, sometimes creeping in line. In front of me was a long white limousine. I’d see an arm wearing a white dress shirt emerge from the window, the hand holding the short remains of a cigar. I could smell just enough that it was intriguing rather than annoying. To my right, an 18-wheeler with a bright green cab sometimes would inch forward, and I’d close that window to limit the noise. The sky was blue blue with a few white puffies.

With one bathroom stop and one stop for gas, it took eight hours.

I woke up with such energy. Even though there have been no keiko, no classes for me this week. The energy is hard to describe--as though everything were in sharp focus and inviting. So ready to continue moving! At the same time, the cats, the early daylight in the house, the peeled orange, the faces of my friends, their rugged hillside all had a lit, in-this-still-moment reality.

I avoided at least 2 road hazards because of a dream that a newspaper flew into the window as I drove in a city. In the dream, there were emergency lights ahead. Since I remember few dreams any more, I paid attention. A yellow newspaper sleeve kited over my car in San Antonio as I was boxed between two vehicles carrying heavy road equipment, all going 70 MPH. I immediately came to attention, and there it came. A sofa in the road!

It was a good day to be paying attention.

The only real frustrations this week came with civilization/higher density population at the beginning and end.

It’s been a glorious trip.

Day 6
March 7
Rest Stop in Kerrville Texas

Friends have warmly welcomed me to their new ten acres of hill country: cacti and fox dens and flycatchers and limestone marked by yellow lichen circles--

In a Kerrville owner-run bookstore, I saw a Kandinsky poster, primarily in yellow, for a 1977 exhibit. I walked over to look at it, and beneath the poster was an old library-style table with a used and worn book on display: Japanese Prints from the Early Masters to the Modern, by James A. Michener. I picked up the book, and it fell open, showing Hiroshige’s Wild Geese in Flight. I looked at it for a long time. On the same pages, I later noticed Plovers in Flight and Moon through Leaves.

I thumbed back and it opened to Hokusai’s The Poet Li Po Admiring a Waterfall. Across from it was Traveler in the Snow.

Day 5
March 6
Moriarty, New Mexico to Kerrville, Texas

I missed the exit off I-40 on to 285, started to go with the mistake, just calculate a new route. Alternatives, though, looked challenging and unappealing. So I turned around, backtracked.

Most of the ten and a half hours on the road were spent driving through flat, arid, unpeopled land. Attractive in its simplicity, but not as entertaining as the grand vistas of the previous days.

I saw a sign outside Encino, New Mexico that read : Gusty Winds May Exist.

I invented breathing games with telephone poles. Flying downhill on the interstate after dark, I practiced one-handed tenshingoso, the other hand on the steering wheel. I tried eiko dai following an 18-wheeler.

Hey, I got to my destination. I’m in Texas hill country in my friends’ new house.

Day 4
Monday, March 5
Williams, Arizona to Moriarty, New Mexico

I made it to the Grand Canyon by 9 AM. The approach up 64 mostly straight north—facing a single mountain like an island above a flat sea. You can sense the impending canyon before you ever see it, like a lip to the edge of the world.

vast emptiness
carved by water
defined by rock, by light
measured by ravens and wind

I don’t know—it was so huge that my brain made no sense of it. It was there, I would look at it, but I couldn’t process the enormity. Cold and windy at the edge of what? Something not measureable through visual cues. The eyes want to focus on scrub blackened by fire along the trail, or the little juncos that hop out of the brush. Anything but that great gaping deepness.

The highlight of the day was the scenic route from Grand Canyon to Flagstaff--Highway 180. Just a two-lane road through stands of evergreens and leafless aspen with their smooth white bark. A smattering of clean white snow.

Something about the simplicity of the mountain, the trees, the quiet little road against cold clouded sky.

The low point was taking a detour off I-40 to see the meteor crater only to find it controlled by private owners. Looks like a penitentiary with brick buildings and tall fences. There's nothing but a few black cows on the rocky land for miles around! Pay for tickets. Noisy ads through a loudspeaker near a ticket booth manned by a lethargic woman in the middle of nowhere Arizona. Could not even get a glimpse of the two-mile wide crater. When I parked at a rest stop, I stood on great red rocks with the meteor crater still not visible but not far to the south, a train moving its way east to west, and the beautiful Humphrey’s peak against azure sky marking Flagstaff in the distance.

How beautiful the west is.

Yesterday, there was so much to see, but I was strangely unmoved. I recognized beauty, but felt little except for the trains. Today, as I drove in the silence behind Humphrey’s Peak, I was terribly moved, my heart opened and everything came to life.

Day 3
Sunday March 4
Oakhurst, California to Williams, Arizona


The motel clerk, a woman with lank hair and puffy sad arms said there was dial-up internet--but I just get a busy signal. Last night, I got a strong wireless signal, but no website connections.

I have a space heater in here. Not just the internet out of order.

Ah, well. Clear cool weather—ten hour drive through amazing scenery: snowy forested mountains, to rolling grassy hills pocked by large rocks (as though a giant child had played marbles on the lawn), to agricultural flatlands with flowering fruit trees and citrus trees, to volcanic mountains, Mojave desert scrubland, some looking like it had recently experienced fire, crumbly shale-type mountains, tabletop mesas, more forested hills. Not sure in that order, but non-stop vistas.

Ate lunch at Marisco’s in Barstow, California --a restaurant populated by more than 20 stuffed beasts--deer, bear, coyote, turkey, pheasant.

The caldo was a feast in a bowl--pieces of chicken on the bone, rice, carrots, potato, a bit of bright yellow corn on the cob, green cilantro. Fresh made tortillas. It was beautiful.

No telling what will capture our attention when traveling. With all of that scenery, what I liked best about the day were the trains. What is so fascinating about those mile-long chains of colorful container cars, slowly moving out in the distance on the desert, or in and out of rolling hills? I don’t know. There is surreal romance to them.

As I turned off the freeway into Williams early this evening, the bright full moon through gauzy cloud was rising from behind a dark quiet hill. It was beautiful.

Day 2
Saturday March 3
Turlock, California to Oakhurst, California with the day spent at Yosemite

Red ladybug on white snow, golden green mistletoe fallen on the trail,
the smell of bay leaves and pine-
No breeze, and nothing is still-
Thundering crashes of avalanches testify to the power of sun
The thrust of the falls out into space and falling falling

I traveled to California’s heart
alone, and never felt alone

Few would recommend leaving San Francisco on a Friday at rush hour, but that’s how it worked out. So the pace was slow. The moon rose over the hills near Stockton, round and white above white-bladed wind turbines on the dark curving landscape.

Automotive eiko dai: put your foot on the gas, and head for horizon...

we learn the beauty
of patience-
of watching life unfold-
that we’re not handed
a mystery solved-
a rose already in full bloom-

It didn’t help that I arrived immediately wanting answers to why I was here, my Civic crammed with clothes and books and dishes and guitar and stuffed animals and yellow LIVESTRONG bands and mardi gras beads. A small sack of wine corks, little blue ceramic tiles and cardboard birds cut off of tissue boxes. Just the essentials, you know.

I must have seemed like some nutcase from the distant country known as Texas. Which in all fairness, perhaps I was.

Sensitive, fragile, afraid, a little overwrought, some difficulty translating thought into speech…

I showed up for Shintaido like a man overboard might approach swimming lessons: I need to know everything, RIGHT NOW!