Sparkling Lotus Ink

10. be the change

The other day I realized I still had an ongoing reason to travel near the river/oaks twice a month.  Once a new year begins part of my ongoing routine involves picking up our winter bread shares from a local baker.  I thought I picked it up (from the designated local health food/general store) on Tuesdays but apparently I was wrong.  I'll be maintaining the same mid-week schedule until late Spring.  Today I was pleasantly surprised to admire a new mural just outside the store.  After learning I was there a day too soon I proceeded to the river.

Upon arrival I found a man quasi-napping in his car just to the right of the trees.  So I pulled in closer to the road hoping he'd be gone by the time I was heading back to my car. [he was not.] Headed along fenced pavement across the bridge in order to document the western river view.  This morning there was more of an icy rim at the bank edges but the river itself was moving with a lot more momentum and vigor than I've seen in several weeks.

If you look closely you'll see that a foot or more of previously iced snowfall is now below the waterline.    The wind was mild yet brisk in its velocity.  Traffic was very scarce.  I took my time crossing the road and walking down the boat launch on the other side of the bridge.

Ducks scattered from both water and banks at my approach.  The water moving east was really moving.   I saw evidence of a tussle between a female mallard and something that pulled a lot of feathers.  The scene lacked any hint of carnage.  I picked up a joined trio of feathers and released them into the air while wishing the duck safe passage.  Thought about what it would mean to my weekday structure and its points of focus if I were to officially make Wednesday a follow-the-water day.  It could mean so many things beyond just visiting various spots in order to document them.   The creek our little stream feeds into can be visited on foot provided there's not too much plowing build up and ice usurping the main road's shoulder.  I could, with time, become adept at a larger walking loop that most likely has unknown-to-me water ways and small ponds. 

In the days since my last River post I have moved from a sense of emotional cataclysm to one of certainty and redoubled focus on what it means for me to achieve and maintain good inner and outer balance.   I know any sort of healing from ruptured trust is inherently a form of grieving.  And this is never a linear trajectory.  I don't intend to write about that moment of my life in this space again but I know the reverb factor will inform what I do or don't write in any given post.

As I'm sitting here typing on my laptop I can only see the lower portion of the river flowing east in the image above.  It's so obviously moving.  Although water can be parsed down to molecules it's really far more continuous in its nature.  Finite only when actively manipulated and deliberately contained somehow.  I look at all the water around me and think about areas of this country/planet where people have their daily water piped-in for a staggering number of miles.   And whoever has the political clout/capital to put on the line has the lion's share of water.  Have seen, heard and read about it time after time.  Something so basic contained and withheld by so much greed.

Back in early '02 I thought about water manipulated into traveling great distance to fulfill a basic human need quite a lot.  My family was traveling through northern Italy.  During certain days of our two week road trip there we would often cross paths with vast panoramas dominated by monolithic sections of ancient Roman aqueducts.  I wondered how somebody had known where to start figuring out such a system in the first place - and how many people it had taken to prop-up and devote their lives to the person who had the idea and then to whomever carried it to enough fruition to be worth all the idea/engineering time.

Maybe this sort of far from magical feat has played a part in why we as a species are so sure we're the most intelligent life form on the planet.    Maybe?

.8 following a starry wish

Above is a slightly altered picture from yesterday's lowering sun phase approximately a half hour before sunset.  Stand still with me for a few minutes here at the Enfield lookout point, won't you?  We're overlooking a vast body of water called the Quabbin Reservoir.  This is a primary source of Boston drinking water.  The link I selected tells of towns Lost by way of deliberately sinking them.  Everything you see above, beautiful as it is, exists as a false landscape that was manufactured so that a roiling metropolis' human population 70 miles away could sustain their need for drinkable/safe water as the decades rolled by.

[as just one example the hilly peninsulas chaining one after the other as far as the eye sees are actually submerged mountain peaks.]

That said The Quabbin is an undeniably beautiful place to visit and wander around at length.  I lightened the pictures for this post because so many I know to be reading here constitute a Tree Crowd.  And there are most certainly seemingly endless crowds of trees telling the story of what has Become here at the reservoir park.  Also of note:  the peninsula on the left side of the top image is off limits to humans.  This is a place where the eagles come to nest and raise their young.   Birders with enormous scope lenses dominate the parking and first-row viewing spaces once these raptors have been spotted heading north. 

Yesterday in the later afternoon J. and I drove out to the Pioneer Valley for a seasonal ritual of great meaning to us.  Along the way I figured I'd take some pictures of the Boston area's primary water supply because even though it's not moving water it's certainly very significant water indeed.  It's also sacred ground for local fishermen and home to innumerable groves of vibrant birches and a pleasantly spooky long-abandoned apple orchard.  Since 9-11 anywhere remotely close to the water has been on lockdown or actively monitored by state employees in boats constantly on the prowl. 

I have vivid memories of what it was like here in the direct aftermath of an occasion when MA figured prominently in Security Failure news of huge magnitude.  That's because - macro to micro - in the same unprecedented window of experience I spent a great deal of time here.  This is the place - and it was the time - where/when I first began to actively merge the sciencey part of my nature interests with the vibrational certainties I'd yet to collate very effectively.   It's how I found personal stability and meaning during a time when so many people I knew kept asking me how they could/should find it.

below see the Eagle Zone in its entirety.

~*~*~*~*~

As twilight fell we drove through a great many of our history's familiar haunts.  Amherst has strong meaning beginning with the sixth month mark of our initial merging together.  And - two months in between not-being and being-All - I was staying in nearby Hadley when I realized ALL OF A SUDDEN that I was deeply in love with J. and drove all over the rural highways looking for a pay phone on which to call and privately tell him Back There in the shared hometown I had recently left for good and all.)

Yesterday was once the future.  And within it - all these years later - we arrived at a stop sign directly across the road from a house and property we've kept track of in an automatically loving way for the last few arcs of our story.  In its yard is a Beech tree I've bonded with a couple of extra-memorable times.  And in point of fact I have waaay too many pictures earmarked to include in a post about The Silent Communicator sometime in the new year.  Yesterday a large truck blocked any decent view of it. So I looked at the house and how it's changed since I had opportunities to examine certain portions of it in a close-up fashion.

When we got home I looked up the listing because our price guessing had been all over the map. In the end we amalgamated everything and estimated something pretty close to the asking price.  So there's a pointless skill to hone, eh?  price is right scenarios for things that have no bearing on one's own life.  And reading the realtor's layout description gave me serious vertigo.  Just to see the place described as a normalized home-life setting as, no doubt, originally intended.  I wondered if the yard still contained a sizeable Chicken compound.

[this place is known to us because our son lived there during his college years with 9 other people.  Every semi-private alcove of space that could be used as a bedroom was deemed to be such in order to keep the individual sliding scale rent rates as low as possible.  Fourteen years ago the three of us spent Christmas day together in the otherwise empty house there.  But evidence of extensive and frenetic habitation was all around us on that switched-plans day.  One of T's roomates had their dog sitter bail at the very last moment and he agreed to stay there for the animal's wellbeing.  Shortly before eleven on Christmas Eve our family plans pivoted for what proved to be a memorable holiday tale we enjoy re-telling to this day - heavy emphasis on the dog and the way she and J. took to each other like Long Losts.]
~*~*~*~*~*~

This morning I woke up wondering who might have the means and vision to buy this place and either make it the home and studio it once was or revert to using it as an income base for the very classic MA rite of young adulthood life lived among kindred peers in an old farmhouse loaded in equal measure with charm and windy drafts.  Every time I imagined people with the means for either I further imagined these people had a child. And the child ran straight to the Beech tree when the family first toured the [extensive] gardens.  And the way the child hugged the tree and leaned back to stare up at it made their parents smile at each other.  Yes.  This is their Place.  Screw one of their older siblings foolproof moneymaking plan of letting yet another generation of students run rampage. They'd figure it out to the bare bone - rent out the studio to a low key grad student and set about having a life they meant to live as deliberately as possible. 

I wondered if it could (still) be possible:  if a specific magnificent tree and a child not yet entirely shuttered by Devices could be destined for mutual companionship for a very long time to come.  Still.  Still.  Could that still happen?  Don't know if I'm able to actively believe it could and will but I'm certainly inclined to wish for such a lovely wish to be made real.

I am probably one of the least happy-ending dependent/Hallmark channel sort of people I know.  But far more importantly I want that magnificent tree to remain in place and authentically valued by a human companion.  And for that alliance to mean, on many levels of the deepest kind, absolutely everything to somebody quite young who has so much to figure out and survive largely because their human predecessors quite deliberately chose to drop the ball time after time.

  Last week when I visited the river I took many pictures.  In between two images of ice-encrusted river bank the above image appeared.  I thought of posting it as an Other contribution to the re-connection but also thought doing so lacked a viable context.  Then I thought: wait until it's time to make a wish publically.  Huh?  but now that quiet inner suggestion makes a little bit of sense.

a contrast in days

Yesterday around two in the afternoon from my studio window.  It snowed for a couple of hours with just enough precipitation to dust everything newly white and sparkly.  Above is the closest I can get to a true portrait of the four-trunked maple I consider to be our home's Place/Keeper as well as the property's southern guardian.  On the first day after we'd spent a night here, I went out on the porch with a few important garden talismans I wanted to introduce to this Place.  One of these was a large whelk shell I'd found in my mother's garden a few days after she died.  I took it home and placed it in my own garden the following spring.  And then placed it in another and then we came here.  I placed the shell very carefully on a large heavy rock that's just below the tree atop a low stone wall that's buried under the snow in the image above.

A family of nuthatches was living in a prominent hole of the middle trunk at the time.  As soon as I walked back to the porch and sat down a few of them emerged in order to talk at length and with considerable emotion - curiosity, uncertainty, excitement to be confronted with something new BUT WHY  - all the things humans do when something unexpected shows up on their doorstep.  I took the shell away when I realized that.  Two years ago it finally found a significant purpose when my son moved back home with a 50 gallon fish tank and four freshwater friends in addition to the splendiforous Mama Cat.  One bottom dwelling fish desperately needed a private place to Be and so I washed and offered the shell.  Felt that helped to balance the scales from having unintentionally freaked-out the nuthatches with the same object. 

and then - here's this morning

first snowfall

Thought it would be fun to share some of my documentation photos of the season's first snowfall.   Especially the above being so similar to the hazy green view of the same thing at the opposite point in the year.  Yesterday's predicted precipitation time frame was cut in half and so I declared the storm a dud at 8 inches.  But then a second snow band started adding to the mix around 4 in the afternoon.  And that one's been active until 20 minutes ago.  So it's quiet and white and timeless outside.  Winter's clearing her throat - letting us know she's about to take center stage.

If you look closely you'll see the uphill road dips and then rises to a stronger slant of incline.  This is a steep hill to walk and consequently it's an excellent cardio workout.  But not when the whole thing gets layered with impacted snow, ice, snow, ice, ice. 

Last night right before I went to bed I watched the wind blowing snow from the top deck railing.  Was amazed the difference the slight elevation made because nothing was blowing off the fence gate or sheltered-by-fence picnic table.  When I got downstairs around seven this morning I learned J. was told by his boss that he might as well work from home again today.  That gave me a back-up for my snowfall estimate.  We agreed on 14 inches.

Since it was so early in the day and there are some miles to go with neglected chores and incomplete organizational upgrades here in the house, I didn't linger a lot while taking these pics. My venture outside wasn't to commune at length so much as it was to silently address the snow (you are back.  I am grateful.  Please blanket the ground safely and securely as much as you can in your natural season)  take these pictures and put seed out for the birds.  A mixed flock surrounded me as I walked away and they all descended to the rocks.  The chickadees flying close enough to hear their wing flutters rhythmic and strong in my ears; the titmice circling noisily overhead along with jays while silent wary cardinals watched it all from the shelter of pine boughs within the adjacent volunteer windrow.

Until this point in the yearly cycle I generally let myself sit in this chair for a little while to watch them feed and interact with each other.  Now I regret not pushing myself that one last extra quarter mile to carry them into the dog run over the weekend.  But there's always the January thaw...and I did get the two little garden strips by the porch's walkway mulched while the first flakes of the first snow band fell.

Standing Still With Water.4

In this week's Riverview report:  I developed an active connection to the young oak closest to the river despite a pool of mental distraction along the way.  Was, before getting behind the wheel, smiling from a place of ease.  But once I started driving it seemed I was automatically moving myself straight into a no-win corner of trying to figure out everything we could possibly need if, during the predicted storms of the coming days, the electricity goes down for an indeterminate length of time.  Or fallen trees block the road and then also everything stops in place even further due to long-term black ice and/or fallen live wires.  Or if black ice becomes so treacherous a state emergency is declared for a few days' running.  Suppose fallen trees and/or live wires block entry or exit from the driveway and it takes a scary long time before that's fixed due to so many other live wires blocking so many other driveways.  Which has actually happened here, as have all these other things. Most of them (except the live wires blocking the driveway) more than just once or a scant few times.  Just as a regular part of winter.  A regular part of life's rhythmn.

What do we Need?  Nothing. Sure?  Positive.  No such thing as positive if we can't Get Out for awhile.  Let's take it from the top.  What do we Need? 

It was a relief worthy of some other deeper-level name to understand what I in particular needed was to shut this level of brain stuff all the way down and simply breathe deeply once my car was parked and I was There.  

[as I write this Here in the future of Then - it's 6 in the evening and pitch-dark except when lightning flares light single portions of the sky.  The thunder is loud but not directly overhead.  Hail's hitting hard against the studio windows.  We don't need or even merely want anything that isn't already here or utterly unavailable to us.  That makes the storm feel invigorating.  I'm free to revel in the Thunder Beings breaking up every energetic thing that's too stuck or otherwise past its expiration date.  To picture so many of my beloved plants safely nestled in their mulch cocoons.  To smile.  Just because it's been a good day and promises to be an equally good evening.] 

Hello.  Find Yourself Here Now.

There/then:  I was being addressed by the young sentry tree.  Felt that distinctive zap of communicative connection without question or doubt.  Having visited this place for five relatively consecutive Wednesday mornings I have a sense that All involved have helped choreograph a basic routine that is becoming muscle-memory natural to me.  Being here is a form of walking yoga as well as whatever it was that occurred on an unexpectedly vertical plane between the two oaks.  On this occasion my entire body is THERE - all the way IN that place the second my shoes hit the ground.  I let the oaken channel guide my steps.  And noticed I was both a lot more careful and considerably more sure-footed as a result.  First stop:  the mulleins growing inconveniently but, being mulleins, they are continuing to thrive nonetheless.

And then a slight backtrack to the Oak Pair for this week's portrait before heading more directly, and a lot closer, to the young sentry Oak.  I would have moved even nearer; close enough for touch but that would've been quite a mistake for somebody on a schedule who lacked boots and/or a change of shoes, slacks and socks.  I did get close enough to grasp the land looks stable enough from afar but it's seriously marshy up close.

I am a greeter not a sentry.  There are the sentries. 

I felt myself directed to look Beyond.  Towards far-off bare hardwood trees congregated here and there on each diminishing curve of the westward river. 

I see. Thank you very much for showing me. 

It felt right to go back to silent communication after just becoming not-so-uncomfortable with vocalizing my communicative contributions.  I breathed deeply into this familiar co-creative comfort zone and without doubt I sensed oaken roots breathing even deeper into this spot of theirs.  Their world.  Knowing of Oaks holding space everywhere and many other things but this is THEIR place. 

Thank you for letting me know you can hear and feel me caring about you.  For showing me who your tribe is. 

I cried a little in a very pure moment of overwhelming gratitude.  The tears were thick and copious but they dried almost instantly once I felt myself opening psychically.   My crown, palm and sole,secondary heart chakras opened with a gentle lack of fuss or ceremony; they simply opened like a blooming rose brought into a warm room - in complimentary unison and then there I was:  suddenly capable of feeling myself pulled deeper into an under-ground vibe and the pulsing divine presence of universal Root Medicine.    It was so vivid I could almost feel the snap and tingle of the tiny ice crystals forming just under the surface of the ground.  I caught my breath.  This was really happening.  Sometimes, in the past, this kind of occurrence causes a reflexive tightening up and shutting down.  What if this is NOT real and I'm merely batshit crazy?  That recurring fear, all by itself, has the power to hold me steady in Lack Of Progress and/or Getting Nothing where authentic celebration of sentience is concerned.  But not today.  I breathed deeply.  Felt the landscape breathing as a single entity.  I was part of it.  Everything breathed together and I felt, as oaken roots might feel, the rise of slowly moving water energy.  YES. We were all together and it was very googoogajoob groovy indeed. Today there would be no fear or panic or second guessing reality beyond predictable human confines or any other reflex that sets far too many ultimately irrelevant terms to also be a state of true Be-ingness.  Sometimes that happens, still.  But not today.

Thank you for letting me in.   Into this Place.

I felt as if I was mentally chanting.  That, once I was home and the coming storms stopped I could move with privacy among the oaks scattered at the edges of our field's wild windrow.  And there I would find the right vocal tones of the silent chant. I smiled to picture myself stomping around our place all winter chanting out loud.

Thank you for letting me in.

And then as a clear and direct reply The Greeter sang a very swift-paced and incredibly beautiful song.  Hard to explain via words but I felt this song vibrationally - as sound travels through wood.   This is something I know of from the decades full of sensing the way any wood in our home is enlivened and brought back to its living essence whenever J. plays bass for an un-distracted and extended period of time - particularly The Big Boy; his acoustic upright.  This is something I love to experience but now i was having the opposite experience of a tree's vibrational sound expressions passing through me and reverberating the way J.'s bass playing passes through the wood throughout our home.  Everything becoming one long evenly vibrating ribbon of sound translated far beyond the sense of hearing that ribbon undulate and unspool further and further.  Who knows where and when the language of wood stops vibrating?  Maybe it never does.

I also felt The Greeter's song as the river might receive it:  as if it was an all encompassing gentle breeze of universal language.  I felt the song encompass everything I had told the pair of oaks when I first arrived but now in this re-telling my introduction to pair and place was focused primarily on the tree in my backyard as kid.  Which was known to be from a different species.  In somewhat abrupt conclusion The Greeter sang about squirrels - even more quickly and just as beautifully.   It might have been a micro-second.  Or even something I dreamed during the night and then through some sort of confirmation bias I attributed it to the tree as it Was.  But no.   IT was as I felt it to be.

 By now my brain was chattering very feebly and sporadically -purely out of reflex - concerning the proper necessary foot gear for getting closer to the water and The Greeter.  And then. I stood all the way still, finally, all of a sudden.   It was as if I'd never done anything else, stood there looking at a part of the river's view of land on its far side that I deliberately choose not to photograph or otherwise share with word imagery.  Beyond this:  stiff peaked whitewashed 18th century farmhouses dot the higher rises nestled among an evergreen wall of dark green.  And the visible roils of granite ledge pushed far above ground. 

Some of these farms are known at a personal level.  One in particular is beloved for multiple reasons.  I watched mist rise from the ground as parallel smoke rose from the houses' tall brick chimneys.  And saw a gull pass overhead with something long and limp in its beak.  I saw in a perfectly still and well-rooted manner with slowly dawning awareness:  The Greeter was showing me how it lives.  What it senses of the landscape.  What it has come to know as part of itself and part of Beyond. Whoa. I stood still as an oak tree feeling what it was like to be just one young well-placed life form embracing everything about its existence with full sensory capabilities. I breathed in the purely loving energy of this sharing and exhaled heart-spawned gratitude.  Did a counted breath mini-meditation that left my heart and lungs fully open and my brain at least partially grounded in a focus of keeping myself out of spaceshot harms way before crossing the road to approach the river itself.

I kept my senses elevated.  Noticing my joints no longer object to the slanted walk downward.   Appreciating the many layers of ever so slightly different reddish-browns in the dried stalks of still-sturdy vegetation all around.  At the time it seemed likely we'd escape the doom and gloomy weather prediction for at least a few hours.  Maybe for an entire 24 hours until everyone could safely get to where-ever they were going for tomorrow's Day of Eating. But the image above proved to be the brightest the day ever got.  Not yet knowing that I stood before the sun and its reflection.  HELLO.  I closed my eyes and stood more like a water reed than a young oak tree.  For you to take.  Spirit of Place, I thought at first.  Telling me in some Yoda-like way to drink the moment all the way in one cell at a time.  For. You. To know. Come closer.

I was drawn directly forward.  After I snapped the above image I walked all the way down the slanting cement boat launch.  Assuming I now understood.  Because I suddenly saw the "inlet" I've been admiring for years is actually a tributary feed coming into the opposite side of the river.    FOR.  YOU.  And as I felt myself nudged downward ever closer to the water's surface I finally got it.   I was being given a gift.  Once that clicked the rest was easy.  Water energy moved through me - lazy slowing down seasonally dark and ever-potent water guided me to select a shell fragment and a small round stone.

The water was much warmer than I expected.  Not warm by strict definition but not yet shock-cold like I assumed it would be.  It was merely cold like the tap water in my studio faucet roundabout mid-February.  And as the river's energy and literal watery self moved into every crack or crevice of my palms  they felt a lot more healed than they look.  I compassionately noticed the folly of skipping my normal hand-care routine since the previous morning.  Understood without judgement that I'd imagined myself too busy or distracted or interested in something else or entirely too tired to stop long enough to do it.  I examined my gifts, especially the luminosity of the shell fragment.  And the river mentioned something very sacred that has become a cornerstone of my personal taproot's energy.  The gifts having been offered with intention for inclusion and it was such an obvious (and perfect) suggestion that I stood absolutely still staring into my own rough-hewn palm.  I don't know how long it was of standing so still before I could hear the water's steady movement.  Not approaching, passing or retreating traffic.  Not voices amplified here and there - raised in most cases specifically to make use of the water's sound amplification powers.  No chattering seasonal thoughts.  Just standing still and fully present in the place and my body right there at the river's edge.

ouch

Hello.  I'd like to introduce you to one of my most important tree friends here in the walking-around world of my life since the late '90's.  This is a Shagbark Hickory that may or may not still exist within the energetically percolating surroundings of a nearby nature sanctuary that's definitely still "with us".  I'd planned to take a jaunt over there at some point during the weekend to see if the tree still stood.  My sense is that it does. 

The plan was to go there on something of a re-con in and out mission due to hunting season.  After not being there for ten years the instinct is to wander around at length looking and examining privately while also documenting all areas that I used to document when this was my Wild place to go.  Take an offering of a very specific nature for the tree, hug it if it still stands.  Take some pictures if that felt right.

The idea's been germinating since partway through my reading of The Overstory but by last mid-week it felt imperative that I take myself there ASAP.  Not sure why.  But it's certainly true that this specific tree  remains a shining beacon to me in meditation, dreams and by way of the infinitude of pictures I took of it during all seasons over the course of 6 or 7 years' time.  But then something or other that I did on Friday made my lumbar spinal region quite unhappy.  It coulda been anything, really, because I was 'way more into getting things done bing bam boom than I was mindful of how, exactly, I was [evidently mis]-using my body along the way.

In consequence I'm currently having a lot of sciatic nerve pain from its root allllllll the way along its course, top to tip.  This is not a new thing for me - it's just a thing I generally stay mindful enough to avoid aggravating to the degree that I have to stop my life to get things properly soothed and healed.  I haven't answered any emails since this re-injury made itself known.  Will get back to everyone as soon as it's no longer foolish to sit up and type in this manner for more than the time it's taken me to get this written and posted.

LOVE.

This was the third or fourth time I hugged the Shagbark Hickory.  The scarred-over wound portrait at the top of this post contained holes where I left many gifts and healing talismans as offerings to the tree's medicine spirit.  Did this for more than a year before telling the tree I was moving in for the embrace.  Will tell that story at some point after my spine's in a better state of balance.

Place/Keeping .1

Walden Pond.  Living Deliberately.  Long revelatory conversations with significant friends talking passionately together while perambulating the pond; deeply immersed in the details of whatever we were deliberately making of our shared and individuals lives.  Tourists speaking animatedly in a number of languages.  People walking quite deliberately by themselves; often with a book in hand and a special passage within it marked by a careful finger. Looking around.  Looking Within.

Walden Pond. 

In the image above the right hand side of the background features a long tiered wooden structure where people sit, talk, and ease themselves into the water for a bit of swimming.  My son learned to swim in that spot as a young boy.  We were inner city dwellers at the time and summertime weather could get stifling despite the harbor breeze.  Looking back at my small but mighty family's shared root system, I often reflect on the innumerable times we'd pile in the car and arrive at the pond just in time for the magical early evening glow's debut.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

My interest in/appreciation of Thoreau began in childhood.  My grandmother used to read me Walden Pond any time I got upset and couldn't find a way to calm down again.  That's what it used to be called, especially for children: calming down.  But now I see what I needed to do was nothing short of totally re-rebooting my emotional barometer.  I'd be spinning out emotionally in a very unquiet way and she'd firmly open to the bookmarked page and begin reading in a loud unquestioning tone from where-ever we left off the last time this happened.  She wouldn't stop until I'd long since stopped out-bursting emotionally and was actually listening.  Had been listening for quite a number of minutes.  Because she was reading me something other than the bible.  That alone gave this book and whoever wrote it very special status, indeed. 

Whenever we reached the end of Walden Pond we'd begin again on the heels of fresh Upset.  This went on straight up until she went in the hospital and, eventually, died there from stage 4 lymphoma cancer.  I was seventeen and it was the literal eve of Nixon's resignation.  My mother came home said well it's over, and asked me to give her the name of somebody she could call to be with me while she devoted herself to calling relatives and friends.  I blurted out the name of a 21 year old guy I knew through church and community theater.  Once, about a month earlier, I'd gotten tipsy on beer in his back yard and boldly sat on his lap unannounced and uninvited.  She called him, not knowing what else to do.  And he in turn had notknownwhatelse showed up with a six pack and willingness to drive us both around town barely speaking until we settled-in at his newly married buddy's house.

It embarrassed me tremendously to be in a married couple's house when the people involved were just 3 and 4 years older than me and we all knew all sorts of weird and mortifying things about each others parents due to being from the same church group.  I didn't know where to look or what to say but fortunately I was largely ignored. There was a single bookshelf with mostly high school 70's english class  novels sitting on it.  Walden Pond was there.  I stared at it for a long time, wondering if I should be worried that I had no desire or ability to cry and couldn't really remember my grandmother as she'd been when she read to me.  It took her a long time - well over a year - to waste away to death without once knowing why it was happening.  Her doctor and my mother believed if she knew she'd stop wanting to live.

[no comment.  Which of course means I actually have several in mind I'm all too prepared to share but this is neither the time nor the setting.]

It really bothered me that she didn't know why she was sick and unable to ever be well enough to return home.  If she couldn't get home, to her bible and various representations of her faith, would she be able to move on to where-ever?

On the first evening of her passing I abruptly stopped worrying about whatever might or might not happen when I got back home and whether or not Pearl would be able to make her way towards St. Peter and her deceased siblings without her bible.  Because the newly married couple had weed in addition to seemingly endless beer. Had I not reached out to accept the joint I would have become the focus of the entire evening.  I didn't want that.  They were leaving me alone because they thought I was numb with grief and it was fine with me to not-realize they were absolutely correct in that assessment. 

Nobody wanted to talk about The Whole Nixon Thing.  They talked instead about camping at the Delaware Water Gap.  I'd smoked before but not effectively.  My grandmother was dead.  That left my mother in charge.  The only other time I've felt that specific combination of terror and dread with such intensity was later in the evening on election night 2016.  At that time I thought not so much of Thoreau but of Emily Dickinson.  I'm nobody who are you.  We'd all be nobodies soon.  That was so clear to me I'd been clinically depressed since the previous summer.  I might have remained in that condition if  closed head brain trauma hadn't shifted the narrative in so many unexpected ways just a few days later.

Back in the Nixon era thread of this post I effectively got high for the first time on the night of the day when my grandmother died.  That's how one of the assembled Old Friends in that living room put it.  I was effectively stoned which in my case meant sitting stock-still and silent.  Looking around with enormous eyes.  Our hosts had a land tortoise.  Sometimes it was on one floor of the house and other times it was lumbering in an excruciatingly slow way in a quiet corner of the other.  I once saw it climbing up the stairs.  On that night the weed was stronger than usual and an enormous need to speak instead of Just Sitting There suddenly overcame me.  I stood up with dramatic pointing of fingers on both hands and shrilly announced the reptile's laborious movements.  

The tortoise - about whom I never once asked a single question although I was even more painfully curious in those days than I was shy - was, ultimately, pretty much the most interesting and tenderhearted aspect of that elongated moment from my past.  I was intensely curious about the creature and wanted badly to get to know it better but I never indicated any such thing in the months I dated That Guy and therefore spent more weekend evenings than not sitting in that specific living room.  Smoking just enough weed not to be noticed and then potentially questioned by the group; abstinence of any kind at any point in the proceedings was viewed as subversive rather than sensible.  Or inhaling with clear intent to keep going until the last seed popped whenever my mother happened to be Acting Up. 

Nearly everyone who gathered there in that plaid-upholstered '74 living room of Young Lives/Anytown USA had at least one parent who Acted Up on the regular.  All I had to say upon arrival was that tonight it was once again happening at my house.  I learned how to relay the information breezily and without the slightest inner feeling.  Managing a smile at times, almost, and oftentimes while UNawkwardly accepting the proffered joint that hovered closest to me once Acting Up was mentioned .  Then I was free to get back to watching the tortoise because everyone involved accepted that's what I did once I smoked.  My grandmother remained dead.  She'd been the one who raised and cared for/about me.  She was gone with a finality that for me befitted the way she'd lived.  So I kept that in mind in place of grief expressions that 'wouldn't bring her back.'  It seemed likely she'd be proud of me, if she was able to know about it, for holding that kind of line as she'd worked diligently to teach it to me.

Be sensible.  Have a bank account into which you unfailingly put a solid half of everything you earn. No use in crying over spilled milk.  One way or another pretty much everything in life boiled down to spilled milk and I'd see that for myself once I was Old Enough.  Respect the president of the country no matter what he does.  Never LOOK at a hippie let alone become one.  BE. SENSIBLE.  Always be clear about  what you love and don't let anyone take it away from you, ever.

Everyone I knew fully realized she'd been my lifeline.  Everyone, including That Guy and his friends who all understood I was even more transient from their point of view than I felt myself to be, kept eyeing me nervously waiting for me to lose it in some spectacular wreckage of a Way. 

Maybe I never did - then, or any time since, because my grandmother was no longer available to read Walden Pond to me until I pulled myself back together.

I went to the woods.

The above image was taken from an outlook that's either two or one third(s) of the way around depending on whether you proceed clockwise or counterclockwise at the pond's beach-based entry point. I used to walk the perimeter paths a lot during the year when my son was learning to swim in the company of his father and, oftentimes, a family friend with a loud hearty laugh.  T. would laugh as loudly as he could in imitation of the sound.  I'd hear them both as I walked no matter how far away they were; their joy amplified to ambient status thanks to water's sound conduit properties

In my own case I initially 'went to the woods' because it was there in a way the civilized world was not and could never be.  And because I thought dominant culture was based on absolute insanity borne of shortsightedness. (Plus the way our culture arranged itself with our complicit acceptance if not approval into contortions so toxic or soul-numbingly petty and trivial in comparison to what society could be).  I didn't see how I could possibly live well or even at all with the hurt and apprehension that conventional living evoked in me.  I started reading Thoreau for myself as a young adult for much the same reasons.   More than once I've found my sense of personal equilibrium and resolve through the words I do indeed at times read aloud to myself.  I sit bolt upright when I do it, holding the book and my uncompromising tone of voice just like my grandmother would.  But I never really thought about that until just now.

Above is my favorite outlook point at the pond's perimeter.  The first picture in this post features the view Thoreau might have seen when he ventured out of his cabin and took in the new day's air.  Once, back when the second bush-president had declared the official opening of the second gulf war, my moments of peak despair were interrupted by news of an impending release of Faith in a Seed.   Just thinking about that (and a fresh out-loud re-reading of On Civil Disobedience) kept me going until J. gave me the book as a Christmas present.  I read it with such tender love and gratitude that each sentence took root in my soul.  And grew outwards embodied within my own faith in seeds of many kinds.

*****

Ever since children and babies started living in cages at the pleasure of our federal government - like that's a perfectly okay thing for an even partially civilized nation to do - I have been thinking about the stability and grounding I know I'd get from reading Faith again.  All the same I have been totally unwilling to give a book that means a great deal to me a connotation of this particular magnitude.   Maybe it's time for me to learn how to change my mind about these kind of things.  It's now.  It's happened and continues to be happening.   And yet.  When has faith in seeds ever been more relevant and meaningful?

healing light(s) .1

Wasn't sure what image to choose for this one but finally settled on this fragment from a long ago Business & Communication altar in a place I no longer live. I chose it because the topic of this post first made itself known in my bubbling consciousness during that linear time frame.  Gazing at the image it's not that hard to send myself back to Then during this same time of year in 2002.  I'd been distributing homemade flower essence preparations for just a few years.  Hardly a week went by when I didn't spend meditation time actively seeking a sense of connection to others who were pro-active and committed in our patterns of inter-species communication.  People absolutely called - beyond a shade of doubt - CALLED to prepare and distribute flower essences.  Not (ever) as a business.  But just because.  What else would one do if so called?

In the larger human world of daily context I was still learning what it meant to live in xurbia rather than a thriving metropolis.  I cultivated social ties with other Gaia lovers (and more specialized plant geeks) in a local radius that, over time, proved nothing short of transformational.  I also treasured a circle of more far-flung friends with similar interests.  What gave me a sense of being set apart from those connections was a lack of knowing anyone else who was making their own essences.  That specific form of circumstantial loneliness guided me to seek psychic contact with whoever these unknown people might be.  I formed the habit of moon gazing  while asking if anyone else was Out There doing and thinking and learning the same kinds of things.

yes 

Sometimes I would have the sense I'd managed to connect somehow and in response the connection was reinforced with that single word.  It didn't take long to begin wondering about matters that no longer seem strange to me - not even when I hear myself saying them aloud to somebody else.  I wondered if these affirmations were an actual reception and transmission process in the classic psychic sense OR if they might spring from the collected energy within whatever groves we claimed as part of our particular sacred space(s) - whatever rocks we might have collected and carefully configured - whatever dreams we might share, person-to-person, without even properly remembering a single one of them.  Surely our most potently sacred and personally true self releases particles of itself in such ways.  Within those places where we danced unself-consciously and at times without clothes.  Within the places where we saw - just for a split second of linear time - another sort of Being caught offguard by our presence.  Moving swiftly through something seamless and fluid that separates their time in shared spaces from ours.

yes.    yes.  yes.

One long summer evening back then I sprawled on my bed staring lovingly into the wide flung bough of a silver maple that became deeply meaningful to the point of feeling like a member of the family during the 14 years we lived there.  I was looking at the tree and then all of a sudden I was looking at a kind of holographic map of the country, seen only in shadow form but yet quite clearly that's what I saw.  I don't mean in the hallucinatory sense, I just mean my inner visual screen superimposed itself in a way that was far more compelling.  Because I was seeing beautiful leaf green, electric blue and buttery yellow lights twinkling and gleaming here and there all over the country.  I saw rose and turquoise and a deep jade-like green so exquisite that I wept in gratitude the first time I realized I might be able to replicate it with just the right mixing of watercolor pigments.

we are here.

It was such a perfect summer evening that magical abilities such as these seemed as natural and ongoing as the presence of whatever favorite cooling beverage you sip as you gaze long and deep into the sky.  I had no trouble believing there was cumulative value in what we do at the earth loving and healing level that moves far beyond whatever our specific reasons are for following our inner and outer guidance systems.  I understood this sort of thing was moving and transforming just as it always has on this continent.  Throughout the planet, come to that: the universal power of Word transferred to other forms of universally understood language.  Fragrant smoke from a sacred fire wafting beyond time and space.  The earth's heartbeat mirrored in a drum's steady rhythm.  When-and where-ever we set our messages of love and commitment to each other in place through the way we dance along with the flickering elements of sacred flames or add pop and sizzle to a heart drumbeat's foundation with rattles of all kinds and spontaneous wild-timbred vocalizations. 

we are here.  we are doing what we've learned it's important to do. 

[This post serves as a prologue to something long and more layered concerning how and when I received confirmation of another person having an empowered and empowering moment quite similar to my own vis a vis a sudden beauteous awareness of other human souls projecting themselves as colored lights - here, there and everywhere.]

~frost has arrived~

This is a picture from yesterday morning.  An hour earlier I woke to see light tracings of frost on the two bedroom windows we've left un-winterized until this first November weekend.   It's something of a tradition for us to stick our heads in the sand in this particular way; to pretend at any moment we might have a day so warm and intoxicating we'll be glad we left the screens down in order to savor those last precious moments of seasonal experience.  But this morning I woke from a dream about making glittery winter solstice ornaments.  Not to mention knowing it's time to pull down those storm windows and also stop kidding myself that a t-shirt and thin cotton work pants are going to be sufficient for getting to the level of gardening clean-up that's still on my summer-soaked plate.

And so I went out to see how Our Mother may have helped me.  I discovered she's not yet brought on the black killing frost.  But every organic sensation within me can feel it moving ever-closer.  There's a sharp blasting burr of clarity seeded into the typical chilly new england morning's air quality.  It's something I deeply treasure about living here - along with the murmuring pre-slumber feeling tones swirling through all the garden spaces.  And in truth that much was obvious to me just the way the birds were congregating on the feeding rocks and scavenging as a collectively fused group among the stones.  I'd watched them briefly when I first got out of bed before re-focusing to morning yoga practice. 

After that my focus sharpened exclusively on assembling warm enough clothes to feel comfortable rather than slightly shell shocked.  Because I knew I had to be outside ASAP.  Not just to scatter bird seed but because I was strongly drawn to be in the day.  Since last Thursday we've had wind so powerful entire trees fell to block both the roads adjacent to our place.  For a number of hours on Friday the road closest to the picture above was further closed so workers could remove a number of branches that had fallen to balance on the electrical lines.  Primary limbs crashed to the ground a couple of times somewhere on the property.   When it happened the cat and I looked at each other with a steady direct gaze.  And I said what I say in these moments - have always said to whatever collection of cats and people have been startled-alive by that particular sound rather close at hand:  We're in no danger.  This particular cat has eyes so emotive it's almost disconcerting.  They always seem to add the word.  Yet. 

~*~

The garden in this post's single image is called The Evolving Sanctuary.  The picture lends an up to the minute view of a small and particular section of the property's original (and I bet it was show-stopping. so much wish I had a map or even just the scaper's sketch/species notes!) landscaping tour de force: an undulating band that stretches from the stone walls to the hemlocks that separate the frog pond from the field's gateway passage.  On my watch - well.  That's about a thousand different stories for as many different days.  For today I'll say that on my watch I myself have been watched with tireless rigor.  By innumerable tribes of birds and insects and small rodenty mammals and a steady handful that are not so small, such as bears and deer.  By domestic cats and my neighbor's lonely goat and a different neighbor's equally different goat (who has, at least, an eldering cow - who watches or not at irregular intervals - for a herd) and raccoons and foxes and coyotes for sure.  Things undetectable to a naked human eye have most definitely watched and I sometimes wonder how.  I don't sense they have eyes so much as multi-sensory... sensors. 

Most of all I've been watched by neighbors as they walk their dogs or their children or just themselves up and down the hill where we all live.  And while driving by in cars.  One neighbor slows his vehicle to an unashamed crawl even if we're right there looking at him while he does it.  We always smile and wave.  If we're in the house and see him doing it we'll sometimes stand and watch until he's rolled his car out of sight range. Why we ask each other.  Then we generally laugh.  But I do at times wonder why without laughing because this is how my head works: If it's so fascinating to watch human life successfully co-exist with birds weaving in and out out of largely ungroomed foundation plantings or leaves quite reliably decaying back into the soil on a yearly basis why not just do a bit of this in your own yard where you can see and actually participate in an up close and personal way?

~*~

  What you see in the above image's foreground is a tiny area in which I've concentrated more than half my hands-on gardening energy and off-season planning over the past two growing cycle.  It's a place I once wrote about in comments at Grace's concerning a glowing and supernaturally perfect frog I encountered back in the later spring.  During the warmer weather this space was filled with butterflies and a hummingbird family of five from sunrise to sunset.  All year round this specific spot also houses a colony of mixed sparrow species.  Their ranks have been steadily growing since our third year in this place  The flock doesn't yet visit the rocks because they'd prefer to graze the other readily available options up until the last possible second.  Knowing this I planted several amaranths that flourished.  From seed to careful pinching and grooming, through more diligent watering than usual and singing to the flower heads as they grew and turned to seed, my efforts were intended for the benefit of these tiny sweet singing birds..  And despite their increased number they're still feasting exclusively from their self-selected sanctuary space.  Although they're down to the final leaning stalks in the foreground of this image as far as Amaranth is concerned.

While I took this picture the sparrows fluttered about in the dense thicket of fenced ornamental vines that are part of the original landscaping. You can't see it here because there's a wall of goldenrod stalks 5 to 7 layers deep blocking the view. By then the jays and titmice had already flocked to the rocks.  All those leaves in my pictures from a few weeks ago are just where they fell; slowly drying and breaking into pieces. 

The low-slanting much slower path of the rising sun during our cold eternity portion of the year is something I authentically enjoy embracing.  It's the first consciously willing shift I tend to make each year - since childhood I've relished the special portal that opens when garden spaces fall closer to sleep.  In the here and now I enjoy the way my morning inspection tours are sliding into a later autumn groove that's a very different type of sensory experience.  Although my attitude and emotional response to the die-back have become softer and more appreciative as I age, it's still essentially a goodbye tour in search of small intimate details that can only set noticing-root after several yearly cycles together.

In the time since we moved here the land and I haven't just been getting used to each other.  We've also been getting used to steadily obvious evidence of climate/earth change.  Last year at this time the area "suddenly" started experiencing weather that was formerly typical for the region.  Earlier today I wrote about that in my journal - how the local weather patterns ever since have been equally unusual in place of normalized fear madness and flying saucers.  Seriously.  Our now-considered normal weather patterns have been bonkers.

Through that lens it was a bit eerie to inhabit a landscape as indelibly familiar as the neighborhood of childhood. This sensation stayed true until we got close to summer's end and everything suddenly became its old self jacked-up to the eleventh power.  And also coming at us in all sorts of scrambled out of order weather-like sequence.  At this point I'm losing track of exactly how many weeks we've been having Nor-easters every few days without much calm in between.  Dramatically intensified wind action on the daily has left an imprint of tempest on all the gardens.  And yet yesterday's demeanor was calm enough to capture the sense of authentic sanctuary that's so gloriously evident in the above image.

The landscape herself is changing more dramatically now as the ground grows a bit colder each night.  Her gait and demeanor shifts with the hourly spiraling of available light.  All the warmth and turbo-charged energy necessary to sustain summer's elaborate panoply of abundance is heading far south.  Whenever I think of it that way - not as summer leaving so much as simply continuing the necessary fulfillment of her seasonal purpose in another place - I feel my heart expand with joy instead of shrinking right along with the inexorable retreat of green. This shift has been revolutionary especially in relation to my ingrained  thinking and emotional patterns of the season.  Originally, before I was shut out of Typepad for most of a day and evening, I thought I would simply post the title and image.  And allow that unadorned pairing to tell its own story to individual eyes and hearts.  But then (retro merc always tends to work this way for me when it comes to slowly enlightening my presumed communicative intentions) there was the gift of enforced time in which to slow my roll all the way down vis a vis sharing only the image. 

Off and on throughout my day I paused to consider what the picture said to my eyes and heart instead of showing me things I've already seen/felt of the land, automatically, throughout these precious years of coming to know it a little.  This allows me to deepen my connections to awareness itself, not just what I do with it; to consistently ask more from and for myself  than what's already "a given" and thus easiest to articulate through the power of word as well as the power of image.  All those hours of sporadic contemplation pushed me to evoke a couple more details concerning what it's like to live here; to walk around in this place where I really hadn't the slightest clue what it meant to arrive and announce myself, with great confidence, as a willing and able participant in -- I knew not what, really.

Still don't.  Probably never will no matter how clearly I may perceive windows of time and experience along the way as an endless magic corridor of clarifying revelations.  Eldering has brought me in deep to the presumed autumn of my own life.   At a personal level I'm finding this to be the most (em)powerful season so far.   Yet this is also the very first literal autumn season in time when I've perceived the year's ebb and flow through such a radically shifted prism.  As a creative I always find it very exciting to be at least a little scared and ever so slightly out of balance.  Up to a certain point I find I'm able to thrive within not knowing quite where I stand beyond sensing potent ambiguity - about my intentional direction shift and blank space in the mind and heart rather than going forward in time with a strongly established notion of knowing exactly what I'm trying to convey.  

The very best moments of my life's trajectory have occurred when I consciously put down one of humanity's favorite go-to prisms - the one labeled How It's Always Been.  For us as a group or for myself at a largely internalized and strictly personal level.  And focusing on that specific aspect of telling Story so it remains true to itself rather than wrapping itself in whatever personal aesthetics feel most flattering or comfortable.  For me it feels increasingly important to include that not-knowing arc of experience within our stories of Shift in this time of routine quantum leaps.  My sense is that, in allowing ourselves to write and read such inclusions, we collectively weave into place a personalized grace note to the story of Timelessness.  In that specific frame I offer you the pairing of these words with a particular image evoking a visual eloquence only Gaia can bring.