aint' it the truth though

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand
Make the mighty ocean,
And the pleasant land.
Thus the little minute,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity. 

–Julia A. Fletcher (1823–1908

plant a seed, teach the people

 never saw this quote.............with all the world in some kind of jeopardy, my mind first goes toward the global warming and then snaps back to the political..........the idea of planting trees, which was the key revolution for Kenya and the peace that people like Wangari Matthai brought to her country through a green, planting trees, civil action - seems mild and maybe not enough. But somewhere along the line of my life i remember reading a great poem that ended each new thought with 'that's enough' - or maybe I made that one up in my head. the idea was simple. that with each thoughtful, communal action, know that it was enough. it was what you could do then and there.  or maybe it was about blessings? that each good thing was enough to fulfill your life?  maybe that was it.  what is enough in terms of our personal wish to help with so many places, people and programs needing that support?  I don't know. But i never saw this quote and i really like the hope that's implied in our ability to create positive change - immediate and long term

plant a seed, teach the people

 never saw this quote.............with all the world in some kind of jeopardy, my mind first goes toward the global warming and then snaps back to the political..........the idea of planting trees, which was the key revolution for Kenya and the peace that people like Wangari Matthai brought to her country through a green, planting trees, civil action - seems mild and maybe not enough. But somewhere along the line of my life i remember reading a great poem that ended each new thought with 'that's enough' - or maybe I made that one up in my head. the idea was simple. that with each thoughtful, communal action, know that it was enough. it was what you could do then and there.  or maybe it was about blessings? that each good thing was enough to fulfill your life?  maybe that was it.  what is enough in terms of our personal wish to help with so many places, people and programs needing that support?  I don't know. But i never saw this quote and i really like the hope that's implied in our ability to create positive change - immediate and long term

after Stalking Wolf, Apache Elder, from I'm a moose

Grandmother, eagle woman and sister of the crow women

Who dance in circles that keep the eternal connection open and powerful - 

You have been a strong and constant presence in my life

 and I seek you when I go to my spirit home.

 I trust you and have deep respect for your presence.

 I feel the deep connections you have to the great spirits, the elements of living beings 

bodies of water, to the plants and trees, the movement of all with the wind and through

 their own unwinding energies.

Deep mother, grandmother, I’m grateful for your presence in my life.

Teach me to surrender the energies that do me no good to the column of wind and fire that 

turns with the crow woman’s dancing and keeps the eternal connections between the worlds.

Show me how to be tenacious and use the energies I have to move like the rivers, to bend

wth their flow, to follow the trails and winding movement of streams, under the sun and 

moon toward the place where you sit and hold us in an embrace of love and wings.

everything is a weave

If you would imagine the visual and physical weaving and changing and shifting and fractaling of everything that is memory, life as it is, time, living, the mundane, the sun or wind, the sounds of birds; or even Molly's chortle - all are a part of our interior worlds. All are a facet that we can pull from that brain or heart or combination thereof that is warmed by the channels of our blood and comes to our ability to talk it or share it somehow through the fusion of electrical energy and our shaping it through the wheel of our beings. Geesh. It's just a flat out miracle really.  All of everthing in the interior of our brains and souls and spirits, that is what I saw as Mrs. Scattergood's world and wanted to share through the narrator's voice in riding the waves. The relationship we have with the world around us includes nature. It includes the air, the wind, the earth we touch. But we forget that we touch earth. Instead, many people walk around and pay no mind to the earth beneath them.  Of course, even those who do make the connection and have the awareness of the earth, of nature, and the elements, aren't always connected to that awareness.  It's probably not possible to always have that awareness riding alongside the walking and traveling you must do; or the interactions you have throughout your day.  My wish though is that somewhere in everyone's day, at least one moment was connected to earth, to nature, to feeling the wind or any element that is the life of the planet. If we're not connected it's hard to care. The more connected, the more care.  I am riding this believe.  That's my wave today.

Titmice in the can

Titmice in the can

originally posted at the Daily Neurotic on January 30, 2011

Titmice in the can. Morning doves in the box.  It all sounds like a secret code based upon birds and indicating a place where the action is taking place.  It is about place more than action. What is happening is a kind of falling in love with home and the sweetness that simple sights, sounds and the objects that bring pleasure can bring to you when you are surrounded by winter and safe at home

A qigong proverb says that ‘When the mind is distracted the qi scatters.”  But when your mind is centered at home, and you are safe, you can bring all that good energy, which is loving and supportive, around you and feel the opposite of scattered. You can feel loved and centered even though you might be alone and in the midst of a whirl of thoughts or a project. Many of us have had a variety of whirling experiences. Some of these, no matter what it might appear like on the outside, take place on the inside where you are in the sweet spot; the center of the whirling and swirling and life is moving with you the way water flows down an untroubled tributary. All seems essential to what is taking place.

In other words, it might seem like a contradiction of sorts because you feel so calm and centered inside but on the outside it is your home and whatever you might be doing or enjoying that is full of energy.  Energy isn’t always movement. I guess.  I do not know this with any certainty.  I am a typical human in that I’m here for such a short time and the world has been here so much longer. Measured against geological time, which is sometimes a good way to look at yourself, I am a toddler and have so little certainty. Although today is a day without questions.  

What I have come to love, again, I know it is like that terrific form of amnesia, which should have it’s own special name, I come to fall in love again and again with where I live. I always mention or often write in the phrase “if you’re safe” because the world let’s us know how fortunate we are, if we are, to be safe.  That is not a disclaimer but an understanding that the sweet place I can and do find myself in today is truly a gift and I wish all in turmoil resources that they need and peace to surround and protect them. 

The sweet amnesia, if there were a name for it, is when I remember again what I felt moved by and loved yesterday. The sky was low, snow was just nearly in the air but not so that I could say the air was foggy but the truth was that snow was there but invisible. As I went down along the river I realized how in love I was with where I lived. Again. That is the sweetness of amnesia. The river of forgetfulness that Odysseus crossed caused troubles. This one causes us to remember our sweet moments.  The complexity of life often disturbs our senses and we can’t see to see.  When we forget it’s a lot like 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.  I love the ocean more than anything but on a daily basis I actually spend more of my time with the wetlands. It is where I live. In the winter I can see groups of the black and white bobbing birds, or the birds that whistle, the swans that look like the boats we used to ride in Asbury Park when we were kids. They’re all there along the way home. I didn’t have to remember them. But I did remember how lucky I feel to live here. It is so beautiful. To top it all off, a gentle snow began to fall. This wasn’t going to cause more aches or groans so you could go through it and appreciate how it came through the air onto the river and road, coated the surfaces all the way along and touched the different groups of shorebirds. We come home so many ways to ourselves.  Ain’t it sumphin?  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, still a lot of snow from the blizzard covering everything. We had cleared a path for the birds so that the ground feeders and the others 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 spring.

Hiroshige’s dream

Hiroshige's dream

Foxes waiting under a moonlit tree to become human

have only parcels of land and the domed shadows of trees.

Do you know this as despair?

We all learned that the West was the frontier.

As the sprawl goes, the waters go and as the waters go

so goes the rest.


My mother never knew shamans.

Her friends played cards and Mah Jong

while I talked enough about Jacque Cousteau

they thought he was my friend.

I wish I knew him and the prairie dogs,

and the thunder herds of buffalo.

Will the young know enough to turn things around?

Which ever way it spins, we’ll be passing it down.


If all goes right, the foxes’ paws will sink into the soil

until the dampness wakes them from the woodblock dream;

when they will move out of the shadows into their night.

I wouldn’t wait to be human.

Knowing without knowing, they still have their freedom


freda

[This poem is based upon a wood block print by the  great"poet of rain" Hiroshige - 1797-1858]