from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause, raga intro, part 1 of 2 by freda karpf
"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in
time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order…the
continuous thread of revelation." Eudora Welty
Kavanah is what takes a routine act and
makes it sacred. It is the intention that transforms habit into ritual.
Stirring the soup creates meandering matrixes of thoughts. This act, made
deliberate, becomes sacred. A great
woman, a walker in the world, shared these thoughts. She walked along the path
with Mrs. Scattergood from grief to a new life. You never can tell in advance
of your journey all that you will come across. Whether people or different
skies, that is the one true thing about every journey, no matter how much you
prepare, you should expect the unexpected. Thankfully, Mrs. Scattergood met the
graces on her path.
~
Everything, Alan Watts, everything is a
‘differentiation or form in the unified field of the Tao.’ Every flower calling for our attention, the
yellow zucchini flowers calling for breading and frying, the peppery
nasturtiums warming your heart with their deep oranges and yellows, the tiger
lilies, long flowers on long stems, great in salads and calling you into the
sun then leading you toward the pale violet of the hastas in the shade. Everything
is a form in the unified field of Tao, even scarves mulled through the rainbow
colors of left over skeins in the basket, even the small coquina clams you feel
on your bare feet where the water’s a thin layer over the wet sand, even the
crow’s call and the conversations they have up in the treetops. Everything is a part of the Tao, even
mistakes. Even love that wasn’t meant to be. Even the change from a talk to a
conversation with your loved one in their other realm. Even quick impressions of the chipmunk
darting off the porch. Even the threads of your mother’s voice coming from your
lips. Everything is part of the Tao. Especially soup.
~
Memories have push. They have calories to
burn that time might trim down but there’s still heat in many of them. The
stronger ones. The ones that go past the tripping, trollipping sense of thought
and language and burrow into your sinus cavities or wherever it is in your body
that houses memories triggered by smell or sight or the combination of senses
not yet named, like the ability to recall a certain breeze when the air is warm
or the cold memories that winter brings when you are thawing out. The senses
that are so many can be lost to the daily beating they get from the new bark or
neocortex on the frontal lobes; or walloped by the hard line reality of the
clock world and forced to go subterranean in a body filled with juices and
ligaments. Oh, what a cruel fate. And we think salmon have it tough. Not
really. They just swim and rely on the memory of the water passing by their
scales and use the changing temperatures of the waters they pass through like a
rudder to steer them back to the place of bones and bottlenecks where they were
born.
~
Something either causes forgetfulness or
forgetfulness is the cause of something.
The issue is really about how fast time is distorted when someone dies
and how soon you realize that the world of memories is unreliable. The body
knows better what it misses but the mind remembers dates. The days chew up the
remnants that you struggled to keep intact and there is nothing but the empty
spackle of struggle and the fishnet of grief left when you wake up and realize,
‘Holy moly, there was someone there and there is not anymore. Yet I am.’
~
There is beauty all around and in the life
we are given. If we can remember to look
and listen, some of the very first lessons we were given will swim in the
stream with us. The song will never end.
It is a raga of beauty, courage too, some difficulties. Hope is there to
comfort and point the way.
~
We are sometimes asleep to our own voices
and our own needs. It was only later
that Mrs. Scattergood realized that when she told someone her version of the
story about Demeter and Persephone she was also listening to it. She heard, “Find her. Find her,” and didn’t know till she shared
that story that she was also looking for her mother. Stories repeat. Choruses are sung. Desires return. Cycles cycle.
She just never realized that this urge to tell this story, was a way for
her to find her own.
~
Was she cut from the path or did she take
a long turn around the earth looking for Demeter? Her mother said you never
forget how to ride a bike. But Mrs.
Scattergood wondered where to begin. So
many missed opportunities for seeing these connections between her mother and
herself; between missing her and realizing the gifts she received from her.
Summer was the big gift. Of course coming after the life she was given. Summer
and soup. Seeking this connection,
finding her way back to life, coming from the deep below to the great above,
she felt like a seed of a pomegranate soft-pedaling through her own time lapse.
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