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.

Backyard yin

Every day I walk around the property I'm moved by something I see or experience. I want to share it with my partner. But something happens between the time I get from the outside to the inside that just pushes whatever it was right out of my head.  Now I'm usually walking around the front or back yard because I have Molly with me. She's on a leash that allows her to run.  It took a week of using the new leash before she figured out she could run away from me, at least for a short distance, but now that she knows she goes and frolics and cuts corners all the time.  This brings fresh views of the property that I might not normally have in my ambling, knees sore and aching making my way around here.  Usually there's a delight in store for me because of her running or short of that, a feeling of being replenished just from being outside with her.

We're growing moss here. The slow growth of moss keeps me at the weeds because they're faster and I'm rooting for the moss to keep on keeping on. It's soft to walk on and feels as if you're sinking into the earth. I don't think Molly notices this or even cares for the moss but when she whips me past the garage and the gap in the fence I'm onto moss land and it's really sweet.  I know I'm low maintenance and I know most people hear about or read about or even live simply - Molly and I get right down to that on these walks. I get the sweet green enveloping me and chasing away work and my to do lists and Molly gets to roll in the dirt patches.  That's her thing. Frankly, I can't figure that one out because I thought cats liked to be clean.

Last week we had more morning glories growing in the front and on the back trellis than we had all summer. The woman at the local produce stand told me that growing just stops in the high heat.  We had enough of that this summer to ruin a lot of crops and put a halt to a lot of growing. Now, even though we're into October the petunias in the back have returned in two beds. Trust me when I tell you these were emergency beds made on the run when I ran out of space on the front porch and the window boxes put a halt to any more plants.  Quicks settlements of petunias were made wherever I saw a depression in the soil near the back trellis. The trellis cuts our yard in half but pretty much at an angle that gives us a yin/yang division.  The garage, painted milk chocolate, captures beautiful shadows cast by the trellis and trees. The trellis nearly reaches the garage on one side and on the other it is shy of the oak tree in front of the compost bins. That's the set up. Molly has learned that I can't fly under the trellis the way she can and obliges my inability by careening around the garage corner when she wants to get on the other side of the yin/yang.

I was wondering which side of the back yard is yin and which is yang. But it seems like that might change from the beginning of the day toward the end. Right now the far side of the trellis hardly has any dappled light and the close side by the screen house does. I'm in the screen house right now which makes me sitting on the yang side. Molly is here with me and wants to get out. She's yearning for the yin because everything that's calling to her is on the other side of the yard. That's where the squirrels are right now, rumbling about, scrambling and digging at the ground burying acorns.  From where I'm at I can see the petunia that's white with a little purple between the petals. All summer these flowers were purple whirly whigs with just a little white between the petals. It's fall now and everything is changing.  Molly's coat is thickening.  I hope I can remember how this wind feels right now. It's so beautiful. The wooden wind chimes agree. The jays are calling from one yard to the next; I think there's actually three yards involved. It feels a little like summer just now. Summer away from the beach or just home after swimming in the ocean. Molly is settling into a nap even though it's late afternoon.  What a good idea.

the heart map home

If you don’t know where you belong but have a sense of belonging, as I do, then is that enough of a place? I’m sometimes lost and looking for a community while all around it seems that there are people I know with families and children and grandchildren or if not that then places they visit with friends and stay a while. Then there’s me. Working. Sometimes saying I’m a working fool. But what I mean depends upon the day and how many stories I hear from all these people that are in different orbits than me. 

I sometimes feel as if I am spinning around my small life and everyone else is having a larger life. Relaxing more, communing more. All the things I long for and don’t seem to have in abundance. I could feel as if I did a bad job of making a life but the truth is different. Well, that’s the thing about truth, it is always different. It’s always different and it is what it is. 

I might feel as if everyone owns gravity and I’m just free floating. I have a friend that sees me this way. I think she does. Here I am free as can be and there she is saddled with her life and not feeling free. Now, I find that funny in a bittersweet kind of way because I see her as having a very full life; filled with people, children, relatives and friends too. Community involvement. Accomplishments in all important areas. She’s a great parent. I see her as belonging. And sometimes I see myself as someone that bounces against the earth’s atmosphere trying to get in. But then again, there are days I feel so much a part of everyone and everything, that my heart is full and joy wells up inside of me. I hardly know what to do with this sense of fullness. 

Why there are days that I feel so empty and alone; so out of it; and questioning why this and why that, I don’t know. How do some of the people I know manage to find so many spaces in their lives for great community activities and belonging? I have always been aware of the word ‘longing’ in belonging. A lot more than I’d wish. But then I have also felt belonging and I can hear in my friends that have all these places to go to and family and community the same things I feel on those days I feel alone. It is a strange thing and a wonder to me. 

Right now everything is good. I went through several layers of regret and envy and come to this moment where I feel perfect. I feel held by the world. I am even smiling at how often I get caught up in feeling that it’s a bit grandiose to say I feel held by the world but if I said I feel as though I belong to the earth that would also sound quite grand. And what I really mean is that I feel so lucky to have this feeling and to be safe here in the screen house hanging with Molly and writing this and knowing that as much as these friends of mine aren’t a deep and integrated part of my life as I used to wish for when I wished for community, they are that too. They are a part of my wider community.  Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote about karass and granfalloon. Sometimes the same people can be both in your karass, your intimate soul community and they might sometimes also fit into your granfalloon or the group that you belong to.

On the days or in the hours I might feel alone I’ll find myself wondering if it’s because of choices I made; choices about how to relate to people and family. Or if I was not given instructions on how to create and hold the structure of family. More often than not I have found myself trying to reenter the earth’s atmosphere after realizing that the search for my karass was really closer to my home than I realized.  Whether it was a happy accident or not, I had a home. A solid community too.  Not as large as many I know but real. The truth, ever true but always evolving, is that deep connections, soul friends or family relationships are always evolving. 

If you were the person in charge of keeping the planets and stars in relationship to each other; dealing with forces like solar winds, gravity, magnetic pulls and stellar winds, can you imagine the magnificent talents it would take to keep everything in orbit and keeping a safe but relational distance? 

What we bring from our adventures with people and places, from the changing landscapes of our relationships and the unfamiliar places in our heart that, when we are brought to them, and remember that we were there once before, is a sense of connection. Some people I’m fortunate enough to know, and they are in my karass, bring me a real and live sense of what it’s like to feel belonging. To have your self and your sense of life deepened and heightened by these encounters is joy. It’s love. It’s a sweetness that touches you in all the spaces that felt empty. Today was quite a journey. It’s quite possible every day is a journey and I’m just not aware of the itinerary. But today was something special for me because I came home in several ways. When the world unfolds itself so that you can see all the layers and be a part of so many different places; and belong to all of them and recognize that they are always there but not all the time, that is treasure. That’s the pirate treasure I wanted as a kid. I still don’t have the map leading me there. But some of the elements that I know how to gather or become a part of help point me in the right direction. At least every now and then. 

More about resilience is available at the wild blue on Kindle at   http://amzn.to/13RKQ2i.

The mythical journey of the modern Odysseus is found at Conversations with Nic available at http://amzn.to/14jUNUs.