Wisdom emerges extracted from riding the waves

     Sometimes, without looking, you find a birds’ nest.  Wisdom has us collect things. We don’t know why. If it is a natural thing it is a way for us to connect with the world that is not manipulated.  Are we guided by the animal still faintly alive in us? Claire collects birds’ nests.  Mrs. Scattergood might wish for the secrecy of the egg.  Up in the trees close to the sky, the world of becoming.  The eggs direct from the fecund fertile darkness of yin. Encased in the yin night.  It would almost be insane not to want to collect birds’ nests.

    

 Wisdom is like water; seeks its own level beyond the consciousness we know, beyond the scope of language. Most is always unspoken and some comes in a language we don’t know. “My mother’s first language was Yiddish and mine,” Mrs. Scattergood followed, “was the ocean.”  Even as Mrs. Scattergood was living her life in Newark she was waiting for the time she could go down the shore. 

Years later, missing her mother, she would write the River Lena, for if her mother was not named after the river, surely the river, was a metaphor for the connection she felt to her – flowing when she was alive, and though frozen in the winter since her death, a road she could travel on to be with her.   

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf

If you've been down and can't remember the path up

If you have been down you may not remember the path back to up. In traditional stories involving journeys, spirals that spin the heroes down and  paths without markers to help you find your way back, there are some serious slides down to the down of all downs.  Remember, "I must go down to the sea again."?  Well, you might not. But Sea Fever, John Masefield's poem, is about the pull of the ocean and whatever else was behind that calling to go down to the sea again.  Many journeys we go on don't seem to have a pull as if from a positive passion directing our attention.  Well, the traditional rights of passages that heroes go on seem to have misdirection as their aim in changing the hero's psyche. The hero thinks she's going one way and fate pulls her into another direction. When we're tired from all the traveling or expecting too much from the here and now or otherwise not paying attention, that is when the gods or history steps into your life and shifts things up on you; turns smooth roads into slippery ones and leads you to a path you don't know. You may feel that you got plopped smack in the middle of nowhere.  You may know it as feeling down or sad or grief.  Grief should be a well-known territory but even in this day and age it is largely an uncharted territory. 

If grief leaves you on the beach without the resources to find your way back up, follow any thread you can find.  What we know now about grief is at least this much - it has threads; it has filaments; it has tentacles that reach toward the light.  Strange really.  You might expect the opposite. But like a root vegetable starved for water, grief will grow fibers and hairs and roots to search out for the life it will find in water.  It wants you to survive.  Where there seems like there is no there, there, there is a thread of something that is thin but definitive. 

I'm struck by the amnesia that grief seems to cause many.  The journey back is one of remembrance.  Storing old memories in new locations. Finding ways to be from your store of knowledge and working them into the now of it.  If it ends up being a journey that brings you back to fullness, and you get what you were missing or a bouquet of falling in love with the world again, that too is good. There is a lot of good out there and sometimes you have to go down to the sea to find it. Sometimes you have to ride the waves.  I hope this and every journey you are on leaves you fuller or connected to what and who you love more than the last. Coming home to yourself is a good thing. Welcome back. 

riding the waves: a tale about being home in the world Kindle Edition

by freda karpf (Author)

I'm trying to figure out the way to get this book into hard copy also.  But in the meantime it's up there and on Kindle. And whatever the collective consciousness is at this point in our history, maybe it's working its way there as well?  The amount of information available to us, even the personal stories we can now access through all media platforms, is amazing. Surely, this is in some ways a dream and in other ways, who knows. We don't know about the impact of all the information. I'm finding that there are many who love this and sweep up their time and information the way I have dreamed of scooping armfuls of pirate's treasure. The idea of such wealth is fun to think of and certainly Googling every little thing that comes up and getting the answer immediately is immensely satisfying.  I'm on the cross roads of this world and the world that was left in analog. I love the convenience of information; the idea of even having many files open at one time while writing, is enchanting. For the longest time now it's felt like writing with a support team. But the one thing I know for sure is that it is the reader that sees wholeness; and in seeking that reader we have so many avenues open to us. But will our paths cross?  Only with the help of friends, networking, sharing and moving.  What are our quiet times of reflection now in the midst of all of these waterfalls of information and stories?  Maybe the sharing that we do is part of the new culture that's a level above and different from before. I think that stories move us still but that our rate of consumption is greatly enhanced by the devices we read on, the stories we intercept, the brief and the even quicker means of capturing what this world is all about.  Going outside to play, well, still the best way to know what the outside is like. And all of it, feeds the inside.  From all around the small world I inhabit there are so many constellations of focused attention, sometimes just the teeniest bit of focus, faceting the world of consciousness. 

May peace be with all of us.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D3VL9AC?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

got journey?

If you're ready for a journey I'd' like to invite you to riding the waves.  There's good reason the subtitle is a tale about being home in the world or at least I thought there were a number of good reasons. mostly thought the thoughts and words, deeds and seeds of riding came through time and travel down a road i know is family to many. the road leading to the kitchen, the road leading to your inner self, the road leading to the road. everything becomes something else and then it becomes what it is in riding.  the real truth, the inside job that was the work of peeling back the layers and layering the feelings so that i could invite language to bring the story of mrs. scattergood, of baubo, of rachel carson's children to the foreground while the myths of nature gods and the gods of fresh dill and spices ran through the weeds collecting the stories they wanted to tell by amplifying, merging and dreaming the seeds into the multiple realities ........that is what riding is about.  Say what?  Ah, well when you take myths you have loved all your life and trust yourself with their story, you write about yourself through their flavors and summon up their deeper meanings and powers.  And if you're kind to yourself and trust your inner voice you move through the doubts and take the wave anyway.  You just ride it. But you might also bring along Basho and Jack Kerouac and your best self, whether lived or dreamed of in any of your realities, even your spiritual journey lands; and you move to the rhythm of words that speak the sounds and capture the feelings you want to convey. Sure, it's a canvas and you have a palette.  Sure, it is not the same as toking on someone else's time out of time because you're brought into the mix.  It is meant to travel on the outside, on the inside and on the road to home.  I'd be honored if you checked it out.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D3VL9AC?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

coming soon, the march moon

     The March moon is also known as the Full Crow Moon. Like all moons it has many other names but if you’re going to go full circle, and you will, you will need to bring in the circle of crow women. In all worlds circles become meaningful and compress the many into the one; thought forms into symbols that breathe and dance to inner rhythms and rivers of feeling. There is nothing more difficult than meaning without a home to root it. Circles provide roots and turning; and joining and movement. You will find, if you join the dance that the dance was going on for a long time before; not just minutes or even hours; but days and centuries. A very long dance brings the lives of those living and past into the same form. Recognizing the symbols, that’s the key to unlocking form’s content and moving into the eternal stream.

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.