hopes and dreams

     We have to talk about our hopes and dreams with our friends and listen to bird songs as they were meant to be heard – a part of everything, including our hopes and dreams. 

They are not backdrop or incidental. They are a part of everything.  

 Borges is right, “All writing is dreaming.”   

All dreaming is becoming part of the song.

Thanksgiving Day at the river

For over a year now it’s been my practice, if you will, to go by a wetlands area right by my house. I go nearly every day. I began going there because I felt a need for solace and this place drew me.  I had often gone there but not as a daily practice. If I don’t go or if my schedule doesn’t allow time, I still manage to see it, send my love and say hello and goodbye; often as I pass over the small bridge that overlooks my part of the river. 

This place has become my spiritual home, my refuge. I love it because of the birds, the small river that is sometimes just mudflats or rivulets of water braiding and moving over the pale sand; because of the way the sky looks over the trees, the reeds and the river and reflected in the river too. I love the wind or the stillness there. I love it when the trees are fully clothed in leaves or slowly shedding them as all the colors of the fall dance in the autumn lights and the colors reflected in the river draw from the season’s palette. I love the sounds of the woodland birds all around; the rattling of the kingfisher as it circles around the river and disappears back into the trees.

My special place is the back part of the river. There is a pair of eagles that live there. I first saw one of them over eight years ago, before anyone knew we had an eagle in the area. They have been raising their young every season since. I mostly see them on the river side; many people see them on the street side across the river from me because they go to see the eagle’s nest and the young. They have to sit in a parking lot which now has a designated eagle viewing area to see the eagles and their nest. My view, when the eagles are around, gives me the chance to see them drink the river or to come soaring round the bend in the river toward their home area. I see them take breaks from raising their young and doing other things as well but I’ll leave some stories for another time. 

Just the other day I saw a deer come onto the mudflats to drink. I never saw a deer there before but someone I met at the river said there was a deer path from the street side that led all the way down to the river across from my lookout area.

The park I go to, my lookout area, is small but gives me a beautiful view all around. The beauty of it comes through is so many ways but clearly going there nearly every day brings a special relationship with it. It provides the chance for chance things to occur, like seeing the deer. Which, by the way, not used to seeing deer there, I first tried to figure out what kind of bird it was. When it rearranged itself from drinking the river to standing up, I saw it unfold into a small buck with antlers. Both of us were transformed.

It might be a stretch to call going to the river, or the wetlands, a practice. It has become a regular part of my life. It keeps me feeling connected and loved. I go there to journey too. Being there is a way to be at home with my deepest self. One day my notes from the river might be a book, right now they’re a way to be present to what I have experienced which becomes a springboard for other thoughts. I feel like I belong. I don’t go there just to see the birds but sometimes curiosity about the osprey in the spring and summer and the eagles too, get the best of me and I go hoping to see what they’ve been up to. The leaves coming on the trees, I now know, mean I won’t be seeing the eagles so much. But I do see them a lot this time of year. The osprey has, like clockwork, returned on St. Patty’s Day. I go to welcome them. And in the fall, round about mid-October, I wish them a safe journey because they head to South America.  

The place I go is such a small park that few in the area know it. It has a name, the same name as the street that leads to the small parking lot; but I renamed it for the redwing blackbirds that live in the reeds as you pull into the lot. I call it Okalee Lookout because “oka-lee” is the redwing’s song. Naming it was sort of a revelation. It showed me how much I felt a sense of connection here and how the name could be anything so long as I know where I meant and didn’t feel possessive about it. Even though it’s my wetlands and my river, I know I belong to it just as much as it belongs to me.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

§  Went by the river just now, around 11:30 A.M. with Lynn to say hello to the eagles and a quick thank you.  Well, both were in the tree over and just off to the right of the osprey platform downriver. I guess, never thought of this, their view there encompasses the whole of the river and their home area. Maybe they’re keeping an eye out for the pesky osprey that pinned their kid down in late summer.  I told them about that incident. In fact, told them twice because I saw it twice. Adolescent eagles soon grow to be the fierce mama and papa we have living with us but osprey are daring creatures themselves and probably tired of eagles trying to steal from them. 

§  It is always special to go there when it’s a day like this, a special time set aside for celebration. Our T day dinner is small this year but I’m feeling good and grateful.

§  The sky is overcast and its cold, I think mid-thirties. The leaves on the last hold out in front of our house have carpeted our front yard and it seems like we didn’t knock ourselves out raking. It’s another gift for today. The blanket of leaves looks like it should and keeps that harsh cold and stone emptiness of winter away for another day.  The river was high and the sky was beautiful in it. When the eagle drinks the river it’s drinking the sky’s reflection. When I go there, I don’t seem to be tasting the river but I am quenching my thirst and finding the comfort and connection I have come to love and need.  I am truly grateful.

§  And I forgot to add that for the first time, I believe, I saw a marsh hawk there, a harrier. Lynn saw it also and even says she thought she saw two. Now that would be something since I don’t believe that they travel together. But this is my journey bird and so it was especially beautiful to see it clear as I did, on this day.

Coming home

     I have heard that what we are seeking is also seeking us. In the world of the ancients, there were synchronicities and certainties.  Every road has a journey and every journey has a road. Yet at times neither our road nor our journeys are known.  James Hillman wrote that “During deep mourning, Baubo appears.”  Baubo might not know this herself.  It can be grief not caused by loss that will bring her but grief caused by wanting to serve a better purpose and not knowing the way. Grief from unused potential. Or grief and concern about our natural areas and not knowing what words change the minds of those that can make a difference in saving them.  How do you put value on beauty or natural habitats that require the integrity of their ecosystems to thrive?  Is this the same question that artists have had to answer about their value? Downtown areas have taken up the cause of artists because it increases the value of their downtowns; and brings people out for the evening and supports local businesses.  How do we make our natural areas, both large and small, into our downtowns? 

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    The sedge lands captured Baubo’s heart song.  Their small archipelago acted like a seine, and the little fish, dismissed as bait, were her porters to the shore. 

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    The need to explain her place in space and time was not new for Baubo. The understanding that came along for her, the way spring flowers move toward their summer glory was a gift.  The idea of the Appalachian Trail blossomed in her understanding. The AT.  The world has known many trails, trade routes and pilgrimages.  She knew that this trail started out as an idea that was embraced by many before it became a reality. Those that wanted to help create and be a part of one of the world’s longest, continuous footpath volunteered. Thousands of people created the AT. Whether you travel Georgia to Maine or go from the north to the south. Whether you hike a small part of the trail or are a thru-hiker, you are on a path that crosses fourteen states and holds throughout a sense of pilgrimage and communion. Baubo was taken by the generosity of the people that worked the trail so that others could use it. Whether thru- hikers or day hikers, most, will likely never know the names of the volunteers.  But everyone that’s been on the trail recognizes this relationship between the seen and the unseen.  Many feel a sense of kinship with all that is part of the AT and all those that pass through it.  Volunteers feel a sense of connection to the whole trail even if they’re just clearing a small section near their home.

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     Some things take time.  You bring time and understanding with you wherever you arrive. The Sedge Islands are not a part of the AT but the spiritual lineage is there, the volunteers are there – Jim McClain recognizing the osprey needed a hand up, is there. 

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     If Baubo has been in your life you are one of the ones that built a trail; that carried on the work that Aldo Leopold and others started; that Grandmother Rachel started, the work of keeping the birds in flight, the trails in sky and sand open to supporting their lives. 

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     Baubo saw the line that lead from her work in the world, her small piece of the trail. to the AT, to Rachel and then to Rachel’s birds. We are all a part of this line, in our work, in our hopes, even in sharing the recognition of the trail and how it relates to where you stand in the world. Or fly, for that matter.  

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     Just as we know a place by living there, or know where the road will turn without a marker, we are familiar with the land around us, with the views we have. The essence of our place is within us. We don’t have to do anything special to access this information.  There is no border of knowing and not knowing. We know our homes.  How can you put a border on love and spirit? 

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     These are things best known in the bone, not always ready to articulate but a structural part of one’s knowing.  If you were unable to move forward, maybe this can help you. The intersections touch our lives and some bring us to a direct relationship with nature. It is not complicated. It is right there.  Baubo was engaged in the right place at the right time.  All that are present are meant to be.     

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     People that share their stopping points and the green lights of ideas and metaphors that have helped them move on, move us on to being more of who we are.  In this way every journey’s lessons are shared with those on many different roads.   

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     The AT may cover more than fourteen states or even fourteen states of mind.  It allowed Baubo to recognize that where she was called to was where she belonged. Our work is expressed through our being; even through the living we have done; even while not knowing any particular purpose. When Baubo moved, like the water moves, in and around the Sedge Islands, she felt connected to the trail, and felt like she was coming home again.

Comma or comatose

Sometimes it seems that run on sentences aren't really so different than the life we're living.  I should take ownership of this and say 'the life I'm living.'  If it doesn't seem like going to work is like going through a revolving door, than you must be retired. After a while everything becomes a blur. I know from experience that this will not always be the case but it seems to be the case now. 

The reason this is connected to run on sentences is really obvious to me.  I think a comma represents a pause in thought; a segment of thought, a place where you stop and check out what came before you got to this place in thought and where you might want to think about what's coming up in the sentence.  Or, if you're writing on oxygen it could be where you take a breath. If you take a breath than the person reading your writing will also get a chance to breathe. Unless of course we're talking about a majority of people that don't sub-vocalize and these people probably are anaerobic readers. If I have that spelling right. 

These kinds of people, and they probably are the vast majority of readers in this country, can read, and breathing, other than the necessity of it for being alive, has nothing to do with their reading. I and others like me, on the other hand, read and breathe in synchronization. I cannot read without taking a breath and commas, are that breath for me.

Therefore, I believe, but I'm not certain, that people such as myself, might well want to use more commas so that we can breathe and read and not go comatose.  “She died from reading.” for instance, would be a curious but sad commentary on how she ended her life.

the summer feeling like always

It is not the water that moves but the energy through it.  Every wave is an illusion of movement; as if the water is moving from one area to another. The Indian Ocean eventually coming to the Jersey shore and every wetland on the coast holding something of the Mediterranean and the Aegean within. The Pacific, one Jupiter-sized ocean, carrying every river and Lake Baikal from Russia, even water off the deep sturgeon and all of it rolling into every otter’s paws like a cabbage of energy, that is really, layers and layers of energy and detritus of many oceans and currents, rolling into their paws or filtered through the feathery gills of baby clams.  Every leaf a wrack line and watermark from the Yangtze, the Yellow or the Seine rivers.  Why not bring Paris into it? After all, those kicks of the Follies surely moved the air and birds’ preening feathers loose caught this wind and moved onto the Seine and into the ocean and through the currents, rolling, rolling to the Jersey shore. Why not?  Or the Danube, blue dancing on the edges of the red cabbage. Well, where else would that blue come from except the Danube?  Dancing on the red cabbage like the white moths touched by yellow but owned by the air and moving through space, time and energy to your garden.  Wave and crest, colonies of Monarchs, moving through time’s patterns since their own generation did not make the crossing but left it to cascades of sparrows to wing through the air, stir up the cosmos and move the whole pilgrimage along the curve of energy, the ladle of abbondanza, the plenty crowding out of the great Horn and all of it, ending in the colors of the evening, the deeper blues before the dark, the warmer reds, the sweet colors of skin with summer on their nets and the lunar curve of children’s calves and thighs walking through the sand; small sprays of grains whisking past their toes, as one or maybe more look back for the dolphins, always ready to come to the surface when you’re not looking; always there the day before when you should have been.  The summer feeling like always.

the osprey will leave in October

the parents will return in March

the cycle is part of my heart's rhythm

i have come to this place

while the dance was dancing

August

We slip between modes of comfort and discomfort.  The time between is growth.   

We grow in random and chaotic stages for the rest of our lives once our knees stop hurting from the Green Giant push of youth and marrow.  

 The random stages of growth carry into the finer less material phases of a person’s existence.  They extend into the mental and elemental.  

 They slide up your spine like the Kundalini and tickle your neocortex to remember a finer state of grace where the physical realities seem dense and burdened, where the sweet sensations of the souls’ mercurial unfolding breach the gap between the formal Russian Ballet and Twyla Tharp.