Sunday, April 5, 2020

Titmice in the can. Morning doves in the box - safe home


Stay safe, take care, and we'll get through this time of coronavirus.  

Titmice in the can. Morning doves in the box.  Sounds like a secret code but it’s a confirmation of the sweetness that simple sights, sounds and objects bring when you are surrounded by a cold spring and safe at home
A qigong proverb says that ‘When the mind is distracted the qi scatters.”  When your mind is centered at home, and you are safe, you can gather your energy around you and feel the opposite of scattered. Many of us have had a variety of whirling experiences that quietly resolve themselves the way once turbulent water flows down an untroubled tributary. The whole cycle might have been essential to bring you to this place.
I know it is a terrific form of amnesia, which should have its own special name, that has me fall in love again and again with where I live.  Yesterday, the sky was low, snow felt near. As I walked down along the river it felt as if I were feeling this sense of loving the area for the first time. That is the sweetness of amnesia. The river of forgetfulness that Odysseus crossed caused troubles. This one causes us to be aware of sweet moments. I know that the complexity of life often has us scrambling and we can’t see to see.  When we forget to be present it’s a lot like squirrels storing acorns all over the place. The squirrels don’t remember where they are. Instinct tells them to save them. Their fine sense of smell works to find them. When sweet amnesia let’s another memory wash ashore it is from our store of good things that we either deliberately or forgetfully accumulate. 
On the long stretch home, I thought of my friend that walks the beach every morning.  On a daily basis I spend more of my time with the wetlands. It is where I live. In the winter I can see groups of buffleheads with their crisp black and white colors, or hear the starlings’ whistles, or see the swans that look like the boats we used to ride in Asbury Park when we were kids. They’re all there along the river. I didn’t have to remember them. But I did remember how lucky I feel to live here. John Burroughs wrote, “To find new things, take the path you took yesterday.” I did take the same path home and I remembered.
In the morning, I looked out and saw that a blanket of snow had covered everything. We had cleared a path for the birds so that the ground feeders could get some seed. It’s not a code, just to remind you how all of this began. The titmice are in the can of seed hanging from the shepherd’s crook and the morning doves are in the box lid we put on top of the snow and filled with seed. The squirrels can’t remember where their acorns are so they also make runs at the box. Their sweet sense of smell will wake with the warming spring.