And so we know
phases of Love
trace a path
like the moon,
not always full and glowing
but a red-hued gibbous
or silver arc-
the moon can hide
in sun’s bright light
or in earth’s umbra-
in constant motion
it glides through phases
with perfect timing-
a slow-spinning dancer
dressed in light and shadow-
that wanes to a spangled thread
and disappears-
we trust Love is there in the dark

I’m eating a bowl of cereal. I wonder where the blueberries and grapes ripened, whose hands picked them. I wonder about the texture and moisture and scent of the earth. I wonder about where the stalks of oat and wheat blew in what wind under what sun. I'm eating sun transformed into food.

It's been a long, long day for everyone in our household. But even challenging days have their moments.

There is one Mississippi Kite remaining. Its company is a pleasure. A couple mornings back, it cried out again and again, as though hoping one of its companions would show up. I thought it would catch up with the others in the colony; they're migrating I presume. But the loner was here again today. It may be injured. It swoops out toward me, then flaps and can’t seem to gain height. The kites tend to float so high; this one is forlorn, and waits among the pinetops with blue jays and mockingbirds...

It’s a photo with a glacial mountain, white clouds against blue sky, a few deep purple flowers, and a cairn in the shadow of another peak.

Cairns are human-constructed stacks of stones that may mark a trail, or a grave, or the apex of a mountain. In some places, hikers are expected to carry a stone with them to add to the cairns, a sort of ongoing repair system since the elements tend to break down the structures. I know because I read up on them today after finding the photo on www.hotpixel.ch

I also read about Meister Eckhart (1260-1328). I don’t think I’d ever heard of him before. A German minister/philosopher who was tried as a heretic. Apparently, he quietly survived the trial. A couple of quotes:

"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there."

"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence. "

The old doctor retires. The new doctors’ offices say, one by one, ‘Sorry. We’re not accepting new Medicare patients at this time.’

I ask, ‘What if we pay for the visits?’

‘That’s against the law. We have to pay a four thousand dollar fine for each Medicare patient who pays us.’

‘There’s breaking the law, then there’s the issue of the ethics of turning away elderly in need of care.’

Silence.

The Council on Aging says, ‘We don’t handle that sort of stuff.’

Meanwhile, your parent is suffering, and there’s no evaluation, no diagnosis, no prognosis, no doctor.

Meanwhile, there’s the feeding, hygiene, meds, laundry, meals, bath. The taking a little extra time to pat moisturizer on her face. Little time to keep chasing after doctors.

The only doctor listed under Geriatrics, his office says, ‘Sorry. We’re not accepting new Medicare patients at this time.’

!!!

The new discrimination…

San Francisco
27 July 2007

its two-note call
pierces the air
again and again
i jump out of bed
and race to the porch
there it perches
overseer
atop the pine snag
one last Mississipi kite
its fierce form
a dark silhouette
against the morning sun
its plaintive cry
slashes
the weighted air
and again
insists
on being heard
and again
shriek-marks
my heart

27 July 2007
San Francisco

Her back
so narrow, so curved,
so knotted beneath your fingers
that must gently search for where it hurts;
her words cannot explain.
You hope to
comfort,
to return
some share of the Touch
her hands have given
a thousand and a thousand patients
across her lifetime…

I try to write
what stands out in light
3-D in a 2-D world
a hologram
within a dream
sometimes there's too much
the same star
a part of six constellations
or a constellation
with too many stars
I try
to write
to scoop the stars
into my sieve
only to find
an empty net
and pages of
escaping fishes

To seek happiness is not a selfish act, but a generous act.

You feel better, and your joy touches those around you, softens trauma, transforms the mundane. It spreads like light at dawn.

Who knows. To be happy may be the way to change the world.

Happy people don't start wars.

The sun rises later and later.
I aim forward.
In a green grass sea
of a million and nine
only one blade
reflects sun’s light-
a water droplet
on fire.
I follow.
Now, one leaf
along the fence line
dangles and beckons;
grass blades catch light
two here, three there.
I’m on my way…

'The sight of the birds in the wild amazed early travelers: "My gun remained idle in my hand as I was too astonished to shoot," admitted naturalist Rene Lesson, who visited New Guinea in 1824 and brought back the first eyewitness account. "It was like a meteor whose body, cutting through the air, leaves a long trail of light." Their names bespeak the wonder they inspired: superb bird, magnificent bird, splendid bird, emperor bird.'



on birds of paradise
'Feathers of Seduction'
Jennifer S. Holland
National Geographic
July 2007

Today, a nurse who owns a medical supply store let us have a wheelchair for my mother for a few hours. He didn’t want me to sign papers releasing him from liability. He didn’t want ID or credit card. He didn’t want my name. He didn’t want money. He showed me how to open it, to lock the wheels. The wheelchair was brand new, black metal and nylon, with plastic wrap still covering the brake levers. He loaded it into the back of the van and watched us-strangers-drive away.

We wouldn’t think to ask for this kind of gesture; it was a bit of grace. To stumble into unmeditated love brings everything, even anxiety, to a pause.

About to fold it, put it away, I look at the map. I look at the long, long yellow line, highlighting the route.

Wow! I did that. That’s a pretty big deal.

And it’s no big deal.

When you’re in the car day to day, it’s just putting the foot to the pedal—or the cruise control on—and stopping for gas when the tank runs low. Truckers do it all the time. Back and forth across the continent.

No. No big deal at all.

But now a week later I look at the big yellow circle across so many states, it's a big deal. I see my little civic hugging those roads, it's a big deal. I feel a delight, riches, an amazement. A post-travel joy...

Just over 4400 miles clocked in one month. Starting and ending in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Perhaps the most distant point from 'go' was San Rafael, California, north of San Francisco. Maybe even Marin Academy gym, where the Shintaido evals and exams were held. Ha! How cool! :)

It's all beautiful.

I like these. I stole them from Rob Brezsny.

(1) "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things." - Edgar Degas.
(2) "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." – Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.
(3) "All of us are crazy good in one way or another." - Yiddish saying.
(4) "You are either losing your mind -- or gaining your soul." - Julia Cameron.

When we had gerbils, we’d talk about hooking up their exercise wheel to generate electricity. They spun so fast, their feet a blur, they ran with intensity! We had to acknowledge that with the enormous costs of feeding Jet and Pepper and cleaning their cage, it might not be the most economical nor feasible source of energy.

On a short leg east on I-10 from Kerrville to San Antonio, I drove through the juniper hills and passed trucks heading west pulling long trailers. Each trailer bore a single blade of a wind turbine for generating electricity from the wind. I’ve seen such cargo before, but am still in awe. Each individual blade is at least six times the length of the truck cab pulling it. That’s very big! Each blade is engineering art, a work of elegance, a long, simple curved white feather to catch the wind.

A couple days earlier, heading off 84 toward Texas towns that begin with B (Bronte and Blackwell are the two that come to mind), where there had been only ridges and hills and valleys before, there are now gentle windmill giants dotting the hills with great flashing arms. As though they bloomed under the sun.

These are very good. Clean energy and mesmerizing in motion.

Almost as jolly as water wheels would be. Why not hook up the gerbil wheels—on a larger scale—to the tides? Big, big turbines. Not an original idea, but wouldn’t it be cool, the world’s power needs fed by the slosh motion of the oceans pulled back and forth by the moon?

When driving through Denver about a week ago, saw the dense coil of rust-colored soup pooled over the city, burning the eyes, diminishing the Rockies.

What if the car I drove, and all cars, were electric cars, like those lovely, quiet, odorless vehicles designed by GM that were test driven and loved by their owners? (Then reclaimed and destroyed by GM for unestablished reasons? See the movie: ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’)

Car owners fueling their cars by plugging them into a garage socket at night, connecting them to the energy of the oceans’ pulse. (That being the thought that makes oil companies very itchy…)

Our world lit up, our car wheels and spaceships fueled by the rocking of the seas…

No emissions, no sky soup.

Sometimes you feel inadequate to the cause. You listen to conversations about drones that fire missiles without humans at the controls. About submarines that aim at targets 50 miles away. You’re out of your league. There’s so much you don’t know about these things that continue to be developed and deployed. You mention perhaps humans should have an ethic that you do not kill anyone you can’t see, that bombing land or maiming people shouldn’t be as easy as manipulating the controls of a Nintendo game from a living room. It's not just about the superior capabilitiy of the weapon, but whether it's right to use such a weapon and never see the consequences of your action.

There’s a pause, and the conversation politely shifts. You’re written off once more as hopelessly naïve. This is war.

It's not a comfortable situation, but it's healthy. And maybe you're not written off completely.

I was reading a National Geographic article on swarm theory. How flocks of starlings, swarms of bees, schools of fish, colonies of ants operate. The direction they take, the home they choose is often dependent on the signals or communication of one bee or ant, and which one influences more of the crowd.

Bees, given five popular options, are pretty good at collectively deciding which site will make an optimal hive based on the ‘buzz’ among them.

The direction of a flock of starlings can pivot around one individual who happens to encounter the hawk first, or see a source of water first.

A single human may warn a community before a tornado strikes. A single human can dishonestly inflame a lynching mob.

No single bee knows for certain the hive location it has found is the best choice. They just each report their data, presumably truthfully.

Maybe just being you, your clear and honest self, is enough.

In some situations, where you happen to be in the right place at the right time, it could be pivotal.

What was most enormous about this trip was love.

Even with all of the barriers I've welded in place.

Across the country, wherever I landed: sons, very dear friends, teachers and their families, co-students, the wife of my former husband, people on buses and behind counters, people far away who popped up now and again via internet, a wise and funny aunt.

It is possible, even in the more difficult situations or in places you might least expect, to find love. To see it radiating from faces like the sun.

You might miss it if too preoccupied with the clutter in your mind and life, the preconceptions and old histories and new ideas.

I studied many faces.

The sun's light is rising through the curtains. Time to get moving.

Tonight, don't forget, the Perseid shower!

I spent much of today writing.

Transcribed narcissistic jottings from the backs of envelopes and paper bags written one-handed at 70 miles per hour cross-country on an ice chest in the passenger seat.

Two weekends ago, I became an advanced student of Shintaido. Which basically means you abruptly learn in a truly loving way how little you know. Not only how little you know about Shintaido, but how little you know about yourself. Hard to be uppity with a mouth full of sand. Still. My body seems to understand more than my brain does. We examinees were told we did very good, and I’ll trust the examiners.

It’s been hard to write and drive at the same time, so when this first quiet day arrived, there’s been an explosion of documentation keyboarded among mounds of untouched dirty clothes. 11 PM has rolled around, and I still have nothing for nativearthling. The pieces I finished I fear are much less significant than I make them out to be. Then there are unfinished essays about wind-powered generators and their giant white blades rolling down the highway (came out perhaps too school-marmish and didactic, deserves more pop), about powerful synchronicities (likely impressive only to the writer), about the Four Explorable Mysteries of Shintaido (or are there 5? Or 3? What makes me an expert?), about accidental detours through cemeteries (I can do what these folks have done! The art of being plucky about the inevitable…), about how really, I’m still among the living: the unfulfilled intention to write instead of about death, about sex (no recent enough research), and finally, about creative ways to blame hypnotic trances for every mistake and meanness you’ve committed this year (that really could be the reason, you know!).

Meanwhile, I’ve lost my reader. Every decent writer has a reader, that bottomless interest in every word you write, sparkling or flat, typed or scrawled.

Still. It seems I’ve managed one more blog entry…

We found a stack of copies of Desiderata at the dentist's office the other day...


Desiderata
by Max Ehrmann c. 1920

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Squirrels will hang for an hour, draped along a branch like a limp dishcloth. Cats are notorious for their naps. Turtles bask in the sun, one behind the other on a half-submerged log. The busy ant will pause in hold in underground tunnels, doing absolutely nothing. Even God is reported to have taken a day off. Humans need no reason. Rest is good.

Rest.

On the way to visit a friend in Cheyenne, I saw a pasture of camels. I passed a field of sunflowers, all nodding their heads east.

After supper last night back in Fort Collins, I went for a walk. Perhaps I'd end up in town. As soon as I stepped into the parking lot and looked around, though, I knew I wanted to head toward the mountains. I walked to the street called Horsetooth and aimed west. The mountain ahead, so oddly shaped, it looked like-oh! a horsetooth-ha! Constant traffic eased as the street continued into a quieter neighborhood. Where I thought the street dead ended, it actually connected to a trail in a nature preserve.

The winding path through a prairie nestled in foothills, the air so fresh, the sweet language of birds I did not recognize, the exited sun still turning clouds pink, puddles reflecting sky, the dry rattle of tall trees, such a gentle sound, the comfort of the rustle of prairie grasses. Wildflower shrubs covered with great white daisy-like blooms. Three nighthawks veering about me. One whinny from an unseen horse. Such largeness.

And standing on the trail, gazing out over the grasses at the foot of the Rockies, I knew what I want.

There is a Shintaido meditation workshop focused on oceans taking place this weekend at beautiful Whidbey Island in Washington State. Part of the attention is on plastic wastes and their destructiveness to ocean health and the well-being of people, ocean creatures and plants.

In honor of the intent of the meditation, these last few days, I’ve tried to stop acquiring new plastic materials. Here are the results so far.

OJ: The first challenge was getting orange juice for breakfast for the drive out of Elko, Nevada. I walked to a grocery two blocks from the motel. Lots of juice in plastic bottles. No small glass bottles. Finally, I bought a big waxed carton of juice. Not very convenient—I couldn’t drink out of the carton without contaminating the whole contents, so I needed a cup, and the carton was a tight fit in the ice chest (which BTW is plastic). There was much more juice than I wanted—and it was much more expensive-but, the juice was good. I felt pleased. Until on the road I opened the carton and realized the spigot and cap are made of plastic.

House/personal goods: I’m helping my guys with purchases before fall semester starts. I grew lax, we bought a plastic bathroom garbage can. New underwear had little plastic loops to hold price tags. To save twenty dollars, I signed up for a store credit card. It will be plastic.

Produce/groceries: I forgot, and bought strawberries in a plastic carton. Remembered, and so we are not eating fresh cookies or cake because they were all packaged in plastic. Did not buy my favorite grape tomatoes in their little plastic domes. Sliced bread comes in plastic bags. Period. I bought bread without thinking about that until just now. I do reuse bread bags for many things, but still. I paid money for plastic.

Meal: glass of water today arrived with a plastic straw already inserted. Leftovers were boxed in Styrofoam. I’m no longer up-to-date on the composition of today’s Styrofoam.

Bags: I had to wrestle check-out people to stop their automatic tossing of purchases into plastic bags.

I asked for paper at the grocery last night since my canvas bags are not available. I sat the paper sacks on the back seat of the car. This was before I knew that rain had gotten in through a crack in the window. The bottoms grew wet. When it was time to unload, the bags gave way; cans of beans and soup tumbled to the pavement in the dark. (Pavement, cans and I were being sprayed by automatic lawn sprinklers-after a three-hour rainstorm! Another topic for another day.) My son fetched his plastic laundry hamper to carry the loose cans into the apartment.

Losing the plastic habit is much more complicated than I expected.

I know. This doesn’t sound as though I’m writing about oceans. I’d rather write about the behavior of jellyfish and octopi. About sharks and coral and hermit crabs. But I’m writing about our behavior which is woven with the health of the oceans.

I could ignore the problem as one on which I have little impact. I could freakishly obsess about the plastic spigots of paper cartons. Or, I can be aware, and see where it goes from there.

The simple path is to buy the juice in its original container: the orange.

08-02-07
8:11 PM
Haven’t been in a thunderstorm like this before. One great blast after another, each one setting off a car alarm. Beep beep beep until the owner turns it off and the lightning turns it on again.

08-03-07
3:08 PM
The storm last night here in Fort Collins was enormous. Lightning strikes with nearly no pause in between. Flying sheets of rain. The roof where my son worked was leaking. His car had to be moved when water in the parking lot rose eight inches high. The roof where his roommate worked was struck by lightning. He says a coworker’s hair stood on end. That he felt as though someone shoved him in the chest. That he has never heard anything so loud.

My bo was in the car—I thought it a safer place than in an apartment that has just been moved into with all of the half-open boxes and debris. But it turns out I’d left the back window of the car open a crack. The seat was soaked, as was the bo cover. I had to work it off, stretch it out to dry. I was unhappy about that, but looking now at the naked bo standing in the corner of the room, I can’t but think it’s happier here than all bundled up in tapestry and trappings. It’s summer after all.

It’s a most beautiful day today, as beautiful as a glass of local ale, dry clean air, and two guys happy the semester is over can make it. But we can see a great wall of cloud to the north, the promise of more storm to come.