Six Related Things

I am not sure what the connection is of my six related things.  But I trust that there is one, because I am thinking about them.

1. There may be no better combination in my world than a vinyasa yoga class followed by red wine.  I went to an event last night at a local donation-based yoga studio, and was bowled over by the re-incarnated studio's beauty.  The rich yellow hues and golden Sanscrit words painted high on the wall have me wanting to bring gold into my life in full force - golden paint, golden bangles, golden earrings, golden love.

2. My dog lies in a sun patch on the bedroom floor.  Ah, Sundays.  I am living the realization (that I have to re-learn all the time) that I get more done when I am relaxed.  I am paraphrasing a Yoga Journal article that once said: People (I) make the mistake of thinking they don't have time for a meditation practice.  But really, meditation saves you time, in the long run.

See also: My friend told me yesterday that she did yoga on the porch of a house in the country where she is caring for the animals this weekend.  The chickens plucked at her mat and toes while she practiced.  I love this image.  Chickens are great!  Love chickens.  Running around like a headless one is, however, not as cool.  What is cool?  Meditation!  Clarity.  Pausing to check in with greater wisdom before diving into projects and to-do lists.  Just a little pause.  It could "save" hours.  It does for me.

This is perhaps what Gay Hendricks means in his book, The Big Leap, when he says we create time.  (This book?  It's a good one.  A quick read.  A little life-saver.  Trust me.)

So, Person + Meditation = Much More Productive Person.  But this is just a bonus!  The more primary equation is: Person + Meditation = Person Aware of Personal Life Purpose.  Therefore, = Much More Productive (& Happy) Person.

3. When I confessed to my chicken-sitting friend, with whom I am working on a project that necessitates a lot of back-and-forth emails all week, that I am afraid of "bothering" people, she said she feels the same.  I wonder if a lot of people feel this way.  Sometimes when my mom calls, she says, "I hate to bother you sweetie.  I know you're very busy."

Sure.  I'm busy.  But we all are.  We all have lives.  (Just thinking of my mom saying this, by the way, makes me feel tenderly.  It's sweet that she is so considerate.  But I miss my mom.  I want her to call, especially when I'm busy.  Because what am I so busy about, if it doesn't have to do with love?)

What happens when we are afraid to bother each other is that we wait until it's a better time to take care of our needs.  What good is that?!  Guess what?  It's always a good time to call someone and tell them that you love them.  It's always a good time to answer the phone and hear that you are loved.  So, without getting too far into the answers, (um, on cue, my husband just came into the room to say he loved me), I have this question to pose to us all: Who are you afraid of bothering?  And this reply: whoever it is, do it!  They want to hear from you.  And you have something to say.  Go on.  Say it. Let's make a habit of bothering other people, and breaking through the fear that what we care about doesn't matter.

4. At the event last night, my friend led the vinyasa class, in the middle of which she said, "How are you living from your heart?  You are doing it every day.  You may not always feel it, but you are."  I like this reminder that we never really lose our intentions - we just sometimes tune them out.  I started thinking how I have let go of some really sweet practices in order to make time and room for some new events in my life (a full-time job - yay!, new projects, morning dog walks).  These new events are beautiful additions, but I realized last night that I need to re-integrate some of my favorite practices into my days again to stay strong for these new additions: to re-fuel, to have something to give.  Hence, more meditation, focused integrity about my food choices, and simple pauses for myself - the self that doesn't want to be uber productive all the time, but wants to stand under the stunning yellow trees looking up, caught in the profound wonder of life.

5. I may have had only 4 things to say.

6. I love you, whoever you are.  You are beautiful.

I am being lazy, and don't want to find a poem for this post.  Maybe you have one that fits perfectly?  If so, please email it!  sutnambonsai@gmail.com.

In sunlight, in grace,
Kara

Sweet & Salty: A Mutt's Hand Guide

A Myth of Devotion
by Louise Glück
When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn't everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive , that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That's what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there'd be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn't imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone's Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

I have always felt sexiest naked, and most creative in pajamas.  Creativity is sexy (damnit).  Maybe even the sexiest.

Sex & life go together like thunder & lightning, but I won't be walking out of the house in the nude anytime soon.  At least, I hope I won't.  On late cold evenings, however, I will sometimes walk the dog in polka dotted flannels. 

In any case, what feels sexy is obviously different for every person.  Equally reassuring is the fact that what someone finds sexy is also different for everyone. And yet, I find myself trying to BE sexy sometimes - some version of it, anyway, that has been dreamt up by my fabulous mind...which sometimes loses track of beauty and openness.  These times of effort-full sexiness pull in no external attention.  What does pull in attention is a sly little smile on my face - a real one, unrehearsed, irresisted. From males and females (and animals and children) alike, the secrets I keep with myself end up being my greatest accessories.  Because emotions project, and joy is visible.  It is also magnetic.  All emotions are. 

Because of this, I like to be very aware of the state of my emotions because that is likely the state I will be magnetizing in my life - in the mirror of friends, strangers, animals, and projects.  But it is awareness that counts - not the emotion.  We can be in a weird place emotionally but still totally radiant as a whole. 

The key to this is acceptance, intention, and presence.  In other words, as Jennifer Loudon says in her book The Comfort Queen's Guide to Life, "Surrender to your inner process instead of trying to label it.  Jung said, 'What is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate.'"

This is all another way of saying: what kind of sexy do you want to feel?  The effortless, the grounded, the resilient, the pure?  Or the affected, the harrying, the no-pain-no-gaining, the unsustaining?  In moments when I am owning and delighting in the flow of my radiance, I have everything I need: delight, self-assurance, playfulness, humor.  My soul is full and beaming.  That's the sexiest - proven, period.  Even when I'm wearing the most wacked-out mish-mash of clothing patterns, differing styles, and plain uninspired non-styles.  Which is maybe why I find nudity such a lovely state.  Because it takes away the illusion that I must wear something or drape myself in a certain way to be attractive.  It is bare-bones honesty: physical, emotional, spiritual.

When I was growing up, my mother coached: Beauty is as beauty does.  Which is true.  (She also urged: Stop walking in front of windows without clothes on!  So I did.) 

I would like to amend her first advice to: Beauty is as beauty IS.  Vapid?  Zennish?  You decide!

To me, the sexiest people are the assured ones.  The grounded.  The open.  And the sexiest moments are the tender ones.  The curious.  The mysterious. The playful.   

And while it is way fun to dress up and be wild, or playful, or short-skirted, skin-baring, and I loooooove it when people do this, I find that, for myself, writing letters to my friends or receiving cool night air on my face makes me feel just as sexy, if not more so, than working on my image of sexiness.  Because what we project all starts inside, in the feelings behind our choices.  In Sanskrit, this is called the bhav: our state of being.  In English, this is called...what?

I write a lot about dogs because...what can I say?  I love 'em.  I love 'em for their comical personalities and fickle decisions, for their elegant animation of the mutt in all of us.  They remind me how adorable a dusty, bad-smelling beast can be.  They remind me that our core essence is capable of commanding the heart of the world.  They remind me of what truly makes me happy: the shaggy, the comical, the spontaneous.  In other words, our million rough edges. 

So, I now dedicate this post to comfort queens and beauty queens, to purists and slow-spinning honey bees.  To crooked teeth, fractures, scars, to the bald spots my friend has had since his twenties, to my one grey hair, stiff and blanched, that I found to my delight when I was 24, to every "ugly" foot ever made in the womb, to the racoons in my neighbor's yard that march across her roof at dusk, to the leaves she rakes from her garbage cans trying to keep even the dirtiest place tidy, to children still living with their parents, to the courageous adults moving out of their parents' shadows, to memory's cracks, to crumpled bow-ties, to our bewildered, hopeful, rampaging loves.

Wildfires. Winds. Confessions we cannot hide. The way my husband's hair wakes, fluffy and thick. 

At.this.very.moment, count the ways to love: perfect perfect perfect perfect.  Tell everyone you meet: We are Home.

With love and sunlight on your path,

Kara

Terms of Use: A Guide to Ownership

A rendering of my inner stupa next to a Trent Miller drawing.  Can you guess which one I did?!

Dear self,

Today has been a hard day.  I don't really get why, but it has!  You seem to be very worried about the future, about where all of this is going.  Which I get.  But it seems to me you are also becoming blinded by panic!  Which is both unattractive and unsettling.

I also noticed that you are depressed, which to me means you aren't settled in yourself - you are jumping out every which way.

You still feel incredibly cheated by some of your life experiences. But I see some things that you cannot change! And so - where is all this anger coming from? You seem to be very angry at yourself.  Which is a little like shooting yourself in the foot.

I wonder if you can go inside now, and forgive yourself for the things you have done that hurt you. Go inside and tell these scared places that you are sorry.  That you hear their pain.  That you feel it.  That you want to do better, and you need their help, instead of their fury.  You get it.  You get that they are pissed.  You are listening.  And yet you don't quite know what to do about it.

Last night, you were jittery jane - jumping all over the place.  When you finally sat, at the end of the night, you felt the presence of God.

Today, in little Frances' room, you heard her tell her mother, I'm right here for you - and you thought how that's what God is saying to you all the time - when you think you are lost. God is saying, I'm right here by you.  You are not alone. 

I have a friend who regularly goes through old journals to see what she was thinking and feeling at earlier points in her life.  I keep my journals but rarely go through them.  But I found this entry from six days ago that already seems profound and wise--as our creations often do when viewed from a distance.  I know six days is not a lot of time, but hey.  Leaps of faith can happen in a second, right?  A lot can happen in six days.

My sister-in-law checked in with me recently after several posts where I wrote about depression.  I don't mean to give the impression that I roll around on the floor moaning all my life.  In fact, I am often bopping around at unnatural speeds.  Okay, unnatural for me.  In any case, I write so much about healing and depression because I want to take the stigma out of being uncertain in life, out of feeling overwhelmed, and especially of feeling vulnerable.  I want to be intimate enough with life and each other to welcome the shadows of our psyches, the shadows of our world, and to get comfortable with those shadows, because they are a part of us, too. 

I guess I'm not much of a Toughen up! kind of gal.  Because the paradox of inner strength is that it does not come from emotional calisthenics, or regimes we impose on ourselves.  It comes when we learn to be so tender with ourselves that we become the mother to our inner child.  When we learn the skills of tenderness, we strengthen our relationship to ourselves so profoundly that we become nearly unshakeable.  And that is the kind of tough I believe in cultivating--tough from the tender inside out.

When I saw rediscovered this six-day-old letter above in my notebook, I thought of my dear friend, whom I spoke to yesterday.  Among such topics as fig-infused cocktails, shopping at Kohls, and a blouse-sweater-belt item I bought that my husband is now referring to as "the contraption," my friend and I talked about the nature of depression--how it is ultimately the result of betraying your inner will.  Like putting a big brick on your belly, pinning yourself in place. Remembering this sometimes helps shift my perspective when I am feeling low.  It helps me ease up on any expectations I might be placing on myself that are causing emotional discomfort. 

What also usually helps is a spontaneous run with my spastic dog. The disaster of us careening down the sidewalk, him halting to stop to pee without warning, me getting my arm jerked out of its socket, makes me laugh.  As he stops every half block, and I tug on his leash without mercy, we are not winning any competitions in speed or grace.  But we are having fun.  And in that delight--disorganized, a purpose in itself--I remember the unerring presence of the perfect in the imperfect.  And that, my friends, soothes my heart like no other balm.

So, maybe try this sometime, a letter to yourself - for those times when your head is out of whack with your heart, and someone wise must simply take the reigns.  Or don't!  Who gives a hoot what you do, as long as it pleases and provides for you.

With that, I say hello (& hello! & hello!) to Autumn, seeing what ways I can slow down, gather supplies, and go inside--the house, myself--to watch the light changing, to draw out the blankets, to get cozy with my family, and just like the trees, unwind.

With love and hope for your inner unveiling,
Kara

Tea, Sun, Chickens

What I Learned From My Mother
by Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds.  I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape-skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn't know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

1. The Chickens
Is it wrong to one day write about the secret wisdom of chickens, and another to tell you how boiling three of their legs and making a pie from their tender meat saved my pickling soul?

All day, nothing could cure my sadness.  Not a delightful morning jog with Dog, not time at my friend's house watching her sew, not toasting bread and spreading on delicious butter, and putting tomatoes and basil on top that I myself grew.  I ask myself now, looking back on this day, Goodness, how did you miss the seed of those moments?

I don't know.  Sometimes it just happens that way.  In fact, I have lately been meditating on the fact that what we do does not matter so much as the attention and intention we bring to it. 

Perhaps that is why what did cure The Sadness, as my husband affectionately calls that beautiful friend-emotion who sometimes visits and hangs around for a while, was making my own pie crust.  Because there was no reason to make a pie crust, other than the fact that I wanted to.  In that purity of decision, and crazed focus, that slight buzz of time rush and determination, I wheedled my way beyond the fog of a near-hovering migraine and into the bone joy of blinders-on, heck with the rest of the world, cooking.

Whew!  I'm sure glad I did it, too. 

Chicken pot pie might always remind me of arriving at my friend house to retrieve a book on a cold Saturday during graduate school, and being offered a giant slab of warm pot pie made by her neighbor, our friend Gina.  The crust on that pie was so thick and delicious, eaten in the cozy dark of Gina's windowless kitchen, that I can almost mistake the memory of it for putting on a beautiful, hand-knit sweater, and pulling up a rocker to sit at a fire.

2. Tuna Noodle Casserole (For When You Are Depressed)






When I got married, my excellent maid of honor (who is famous for being in something like sixteen weddings) presented me with a box full of recipe cards she had collected from many women in my life.  Making food from these recipes is a simple, true delight.  I know that this feeling is nothing new to lots of folks; in fact, I know it is a common wedding custom to share recipes.  To this I say, Yay Tradition!  It pleases me greatly to connect my kitchen to those of my family and friends.  Moreover, I find it an honor to expand my circle of women through food.

So, yes.  Food is healing!  And cyclical and amazing!  And recipes have a life of their own!  I hear them calling from their little boxes while I sleep at night.  Days after I read one, I have a bionic urge to pluck it from its safe little bed and do whatever it tells me, give myself over to its sometimes formidable ingredients. 

This urgency is wisdom, I say.  Like today.  Baking hearty pot pie on a gorgeous sunny day? Totally called for. 

3. The Future (Egads)
I wrote a bit about my kitchen as a guest on a blog I like, which hopefully will appear soon.  The posts and pictures on this site remind me of all the delicious freedom, exploration, and colorful dreams that your twenties can and hopefully do hold. 

Today is my friend's birthday. 


She and I have talked about the nervousness that comes with tipping the scales from your twenties to your thirties.  I have been surprised by the beauty and power I have discovered in the world via my thirties, so imagine my delight when having tea with a friend this week, to hear him state that turning forty is the Absolute Best! 

So there.  No matter what our age, we have this to look forward to: growing toward more wisdom and humor, the tenderness that comes with understanding, the flavors that season our souls on the path, and the good foods we learn to make! 

To your health, to your dreams, and unfolding creations.  And yes, that sounds like a scrapbooking ad.

So, while the tomatoes slumber and old grasshoppers rub their knees, I leave you for a night's rest.
with love,
Kara

You Are the Song Behind the World

Dissolver of Sugar
by Rumi

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,
if this is the time.
Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.
Every morning I wait at dawn.  That's when
it's happened before.  Or do it suddenly
like an execution.  How else can I get ready for death?

You breathe without a body like a spark.
You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.
You keep me away with your arm,
but the keeping away is pulling me in.

                           ~

Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.

Love moves away.
The light changes.

I need more grace
than I thought.

Good morning, furry life.  I felt the need to jump out of bed last night to type up this Ode to Chicken Song (my title) by Alice Walker, from her memoir, The Chicken Chronicles.  The book is a marvel, in that it is so controlled at times as to be cheap (come on, Alice!  Give us more) but at other times is full of such quiet power, I wonder if I will ever forget its anecdotes.  In any case, it is a wonderful diversion from the wishy-wash days surrounding the full moon as my heart sloshes from side to side.

Ms. Walker writes to her chickens in California while she is abroad in Tibet.  The following passage comes after the author's discovery of the most ecstatic sound she has heard in her life: the buzzing prayers of monastery nuns as they gather in one room, chanting disparate prayers.  Walker writes:

...behind the world, always, there is a song...behind every country's 'leadership' and every country's 'citizenry' there is a song.  Behind Tibet, behind the spiritual 'country' the Dalai Lama...and the Tibetan Government in Exile have formed, there is the song of the nuns, which is the song of the feminine.  Without this song there is no movement, no progress.  It is this song that keeps it all going, though we may hear it infrequently or only by accident.  For millennia and to our detriment, it has been deliberately drowned out.  But it is there, nonetheless...

It is the same with you and with the other animals of the planet.  You are the song behind the world human animals inhabit.  Awww...hohohohohoho....This is the vocal song you sing as chickens, but each animal has its song in its very being: we are our songs embodied; it is the song of all of us that keeps our planet balanced.

I have been thinking about forgiveness lately, or, why I am still thinking about something that happened eleven years ago.  Growing up, I was taught that it is important to forgive, because it is a good Christian thing to do.  The whole Christian Thing To Do fixation cracks me up, by the way.  I wish there were a code for living, by which we could always find ourselves safe.  I find the truth to be closer to walking on a tightrope, when every moment is guided by the winds, and our balance, and our feeling out the next step.  Maybe that is cynical, but it seems to me, the older I get, there is no clear answer to life's questions, except as we can answer for ourselves.  And I think religions help us come to those answers.  At least, that is the case for me. 

As I made my way into adulthood, I began to understand the reasons behind these good Christian ways (etc. etc.)  I mean, the edicts were only helpful as I understood how to practice them in my life.  Without that meaning, they were rigid rules.  And there is nothing less enlightening than mechanically following rules for enlightenment.

Some wonderful things have grown to make sense in my life.  Some of these are cooking, friendship, growing tomatoes, and feeding others. When it comes to the area of forgiveness, however, I have some work to do.  A gifted friend once taught me that forgiveness does not mean, to pardon.  It means, to give back.  There are lots of ways to give back - in fact, one of the ways could be very eye-for-an-eye-ish.  But the way I thought of my friend's counsel was this: I will not hold this (insult, accusation, painful information you have handed to me).  Like a baton, I am handing it back to you.  You learn to incorporate it into your life how you must, or dissolve it through your own process of healing and transformation.  But it isn't mine to hold. 

Sounds easy, right?  Ha ha ha ha ha.

I have been giving back one painful moment for eleven stinking years now.  The missing link in my efforts has been prayer, possibly.  At least, that is my new theory.  In prayer lies the final piece of surrender; and it is surrender that ultimately heals a heart, and thus a life.

But what IS surrender?  (Besides the ding-dang hardest part of life?)  To me, it is letting go of my attachment to outcomes.  It is pausing to say, I don't know how this needs to end.  And then moving forward still - despite and with that uncertainty.

It is the willingness to discover something new.

This morning, I drew a gigantic bunny on my sketch pad.  Its ears rise up behind it, as if tuned into some other planet.  And maybe that is what is called for sometimes: opening up the whole scope of hearing, so we hear not just our own mind's complaints, but the wider world around us.  Not so we tune into those complaints, either.  But so we hear what is always being said underneath them: the prayers for peace, songs and chants for peace, the buzzing, braying truth that what lies behind our suffering is an ability to heal all things.

Last week was full of adjustments and readjustments for me.  I had to sand the wheel of my life that had been turning so smoothly before I went on vacation.  It was a little ugly, in truth - this adjustment period. But it was necessary.  And by Sunday, I was lolling about like a turtle in the sun, finally at peace in my body and life.  Because of this, when a friend came to me that night, and needed to go for a walk in the park, I was able to be totally present with him, and free of any personal distractions chattering in my head while he talked about his life. 

This is the power of the feminine - not only the ability to be there for another, but to be there for ourselves when we are having a rough time.  In fact, we have to be there for ourselves, first, in order to be any there for anyone else. 

I once made the mistake of believing that this presence with myself was hard, or complicated, or time-consuming.  Sometimes it is.  Last week, it felt like a full-time job.  But most of the time, with a little routine maintenance, it is a pretty seamless process.  And when you fall out of routine, and find a big hitch in things, there are others to call in for support.  You, me, the chickens, and the nuns.  We're all in it together.   This is the good news.   And I thank you for being part of it.

With love,
Kara

Rain Delay

When I Look At the Old Car
by Marcia F. Brown

When I look at the old car
backed into the cleared-out space in the shed,
I can almost understand
those bewildered men who leave
their softening wives in middle age, up-
and-walk-out after decades
of marriage and family, to take up
with some buffed and waxed young thing
with great lines, horsepower
to burn and a dazzling array
of untested equipment.

When I look at the old car's
headlights, dulled with disuse and staring
at me, as if to say, What did I ever do?
Wasn't I always good to you?
Turned over every morning, rain or snow,
to start your day? Kept you safe
all these years, mile after mile?
And I'm filled with guilt and say with feeling
You're absolutely right. You were the best. There'll never
be another you, as I glance surreptitiously
at my cute new model sitting in the old car's space
in the garage and explain, You just got old. 
You're falling apart. And besides, I say,
I've fallen in love. We're already living together.
And the old car looks like it might be wired
to explode. 

So I walk across the yard
and look at the new car,
and it occurs to me that before too long
the new car will be old, the suspension
will sag and things will fall off.
And like the lout who'll use up
his young fling and want to trade in again,
we'll deny that we've put on some miles ourselves,
dump this one in the shed and go shopping--

until someone lays a firm hand on our arms
and says Enough. You just can't drive any more.

I love this poem.  What an ending!  I considered sending it in a letter to my mom's friend, but thought, what if she got the wrong idea?  What if she thought I called her an old car?  I decided against it.  But her friendship with my mother reminds me of mine with a best friend from college who called out of the blue last night. I was ecstatic to see her name on my caller i.d., and surprised.  "Is everything okay?" I asked.  "Of course," she said.  "I just called to say hi." My gut fear that something was wrong reminded me of what I had discovered earlier in the day: I've been moving too fast. 

It's a cozy rainy morning and my dog has been oversleeping lately.  Because the dog is my alarm clock, I have been oversleeping too.  But rather than feel guilty or even sheepish about it, I am taking this opportunity to catch up on Nothingness, or the cozy Somethingness that is: blankets, the rain outside, sweet stacks of books and lamp light throughout the house.  Though I have been fighting the concept rigorously, I am finally surrendering to a post-vacation rest. 

In the spirit of paying attention, I will post a few pictures of the tiny moments that have been arresting my buzzing mind, bringing me back to the blissful physicality of the present tense. 

Picture 1
My gray-faced dog who paws at me continuously since I arrived home, bringing the much-needed message: Enough with your agenda already!  Let's play.



Picture 2
A front-hall composition, complete with shiny little hatchet my husband (inexplicably) deposited there.



Picture 3
Naked baby pic!  This is my nephew who, through shrill and explosive laughter, relentless requests fruits and vegetables, and a curious addiction (discovered last week) to kale green smoothies, brings me back to the present in nano-seconds, settling into the abundance that is. 



The photos are all a little blurry, but, I admit it!  I kind of like it that way.

May we all make time to count the ways we love today, 
Kara

Family In the Forest

The House on Broughton Street
by Mary Ann Larkin

Always it was a summer afternoon
I see my mother climbing the stairs
to the porch
My grandmother waiting
tiny but formidable
She'd been expecting her
the sisters smiling
brothers watching
My mother in her grey crepe
the white gloves she always wore
Her hair and eyes dark
among these fair, freckled people
My father shyly presenting her—
something of his own—
Shuffling, they made room for her
and she took her place among them
and between them
grew something new
Marie, they came to say,
This is Grant's Marie
She seldom spoke
but rested among them
a harbor she'd found

My father gave her a carnelian ring
surrounded by silver hearts
Before Grandma died
she gave my mother the diamond brooch
from Grandpa
My mother brought with her
fabrics that glistened
a touch of velvet
sometimes a feather
They noticed the light
in the rooms where she sat
And even thirty years later
after the lost jobs and the babies
after the mortgages and the wars
what they remembered most
was the way my mother
set aside her gloves

She was buried on Good Friday
There was a blizzard
After the funeral
the youngest uncle
read "Murder in the Cathedral" aloud

I have the carnelian ring now
the diamond brooch
I wear satin when I can
and I am attracted to old houses
where the light passes
across the porch to the windows, making
of the space between, a grace

I recently had a conversation with my mother where I apologized for moving so far from her.  We laughed about the apology, as if it were a reasonable thing to apologize for, as if I had run out on a family, abandoned someone and refused to pay alimony.  We both know that what Tim and I came out west to do was important to us, and how powerful it is to follow your bliss.  But I still felt the need to apologize, if only to say: I once thought I could change who I was by changing my location, but I see now that I am perfect the way that I am. 

Part of who I am comes from my mother.  My father.  My grandparents.  The glittering constellation of my inherited past. 

And part of who I am is all up to me. 

I am traveling this week, to the place I call home. I feel my life circling back to old business, to reclaim lost loves and tossed-away lives.  I also feel it opening up in whole new ways, as I discover new-to-me joys.  Between the old closing over and the new opening up, I find my full life.

I just read the introduction to a collection of short stories based on places set aside by The Nature Conservancy.  In case you haven’t noticed, place is a topic I obsess over. The introduction - written by Barbara Kingsolver - stood out to me for its articulation of something I have grown to understand about my own writing. 

Kingsolver writes: “…the natural world has always inspired authors.  From the early American novelist James Fenimore Cooper , who celebrated the ‘holy calm of Nature,’ to the contemporary writer Annie Proulx…who has said that ‘everything that happens to characters comes welling out of place’…our nation’s authors have been moved by nature and often incorporated it into their work.  Indeed…not long ago, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor went so far as to remark, ‘Isn’t all writing nature writing?’”

Even though the quote addresses how the natural world influences writers, Henry Taylor’s words were especially relevant to my understanding of why I write at all.  Whether I am writing a poem or a letter to a friend, I write to listen to the babbling brook inside, to take from it what glittering rocks I find and lift them up to the sun.  I find my clearest self when I write, and discover both where I come from, and where I am heading. 

As I copied the above passage, my plane descended to the ground.  To North Carolina.  To my eternal practice: Find ground.  Sink in.  Take what you’ve been given, and water it.  Watch it grow, and give thanks for whatever shape it takes.

Wherever it is you are landing, whatever shape your life is taking, may you bring quiet attention to your loves and self today.  I leave you with sweet hope and blessings for our shared future.

As always and most sincerely,

Kara

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

I baked a Leprechaun Trap Cake for my friend Amelia's totally rad blog and I'm pretty psyched about it.  Read all about baking versus cooking, and sugar versus love, here.

Then add Bon Appetempt to your Reader and have a magical day!

Love,
Kara

P.S. What's that?  A poem you say?  Certainly!  Hang on to your hats.  This one's a WILD one.  (Stay tuned for a recorded reading of this poem by a fellow nerd...any volunteers?)

I am dedicating the inclusion of this poem to J.L. Conrad, who also writes wild poems about farm and circus and other beloved animals.  Check out her astonishing book, A Cartography of Birds, and see for yourself!

P.P.S. I went to my second-only county fair on Saturday night, which is perhaps why farm animals are on the brain. 

I once told Tim that I LOVE the fact that he is from Ohio.  He says that was a first for him.  Getting to the county fair on a date for the first time when you are 33 is just one of the perils of growing up in New England.  Just kidding.  BIG LOVE, Connecticut!  All the states I've lived in are rad.  Okay.  Now for that poem...


Although I Sweeten Myself with Sugar
by Rodica Draghincescu

My hands filled with sugar
(a new being? lucky?)
I met him along the railroad tracks
watching over his ruddy goats
HOW DO YOU DO?  DID YOU SLEEP WELL?
good morning I MEAN CAN'T
YOU SEE IT'S STILL NIGHT
the DAYS have turned to grass
and GRASS isn't good for these animals any longer
I've brought you sugar
the goats bleat whenever they feel like it
their bleating has stopped - in goat language this is called
FREEDOM - I'm about to experience the sensation that I've
DISCOVERED DOCILE SOUNDS IN MY LARYNX
that won't cause me trouble
B A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A H
Dear mr. goatherd I've brought you
sugar
I reach out my hand - I don't know
why it's said THIS WAY when in FACT
the movement is made with the root fastened
between shoulder blade and breast WHICH breast
is BIGGER: it's learned to sing and TO
TALK: NURSING this other condition
scares it depresses it leads it to droop it wishes
IT HAD EYES to scope out temptations UNDERNEATH clothes
although I sweeten myself
with sugar I'M ONE OF THOSE
WHO DON'T DO a lot of good for the REPRESENTATIVE
ORGANS now for INSTANCE grass
grown on THIGHS is poisonous to goats
THAT'S WHY I reach out my hand filled with sugar
DEAR MR. goatherd TASTE it
for YOURSELF
(meanwhile) the indifferent or CAPABLE goats
have stopped the freight train at the railroad museum
where the railroad clerk MR. SCOW was celebrating his WEDDING VOWS
they were sitting DUMFOUNDED wearing IN PERPETUITY
kaleidoscopic CARDBOARD flowers attached with SAFETY
PINS TO THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THEIR HEARTS
WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE WHEE
HEY HEY WHEE COME ON HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
(a SOLDIER escaped from his UNIT
was trying to remedy the error)
LET'S GET A MOVE ON  / farther ahead IT'S THERE /
the wedding OF dead goats
WE GONNA MAKE choice VITTLES
DEAR MR. GOATHERD
the museum's freight train is like a kind of LOVE
you've give up waiting for
(having a TOTALLY different OBJECTIVE
THAN killing goats)
(the goats were too greedy)
B A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A H
(AFTER ALL THEY can live without beings GOATS)
NO ONE will hold their FREEDOM
up to ridicule
good morning mr. goatherd
CAN'T you (EVEN) see IT'S
MORNING I'll take pains
to believe that the NOISES AND THE BLOOD
enveloping us will give FREE REIN to a new relation
between you and me
(my hands filled with sugar
I'll never be
HUNGRY or THIRSTY)
Good morning mr. goatherd
the kid hawking the morning papers has spread
the news everywhere in town
ALREADY WE'RE STARS

(Translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Antuza Genescu)

Mother Divine

Hell
by Jeff Tweedy

When the devil came
he was not red
but chrome
and he said
come with me
you must go
so I went
alone
where there was no fire
no torture
no hate
everything clean and precise
towering polished diamond skyscrapers
glittering ice avenues
translucent blues and silver signs
marking every turn
I was welcomed
with open arms
unmarked
all lines of defeat sanded away
I felt no fear
I received every kind of help
the air was crisp
sunny late winter days
springtime yawning
over the cottony horizon
hell is chrome
I believe in god
hell is chrome

Presently, a roofing crew blasts music through the neighborhood.  They have been working for a week on my neighbor's house.  One member of the crew, a particularly spirited man, sings along to the festive Hispanic music hopping out of the radio.  While hammers make perfect background music for meditation (wink wink), I love this man's uncensored joy. I find myself grinning every time he cries out in song.  A huge pine blocks my view to the house but I imagine this man leaning into the slant of the roof, crooning to each shingle as he slaps his hammer down.  Maybe he doesn't care for his work.  Maybe it is only the music he loves.  It doesn't matter.  He sounds as though he simply cannot help himself and this abandon delights me.

I have been thinking about fertility lately.  Not THAT kind of fertility - although I did watch When Harry Met Sally this weekend and appreciated Sally's line about your biological clock not really starting to tick until you are 35 in whole new ways.  No, I have been thinking about how gentleness is a quality I was not able to give myself earlier in my life, and how projects and days and relationships blossom under its loving influence. 

The summer after I got married (those storied 14 months ago!) I traveled to Santa Fe to visit a friend, and to reconnect with the old place I originally fell in love with on a road trip just after college.  Wandering around the square, I spotted a 12 foot high statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe in front of Santuario de Guadalupe, the oldest church in the United States honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I was drawn to the statue like a downstream current, and I circled and circled her, taking pictures from every angle, soaking in her beauty.  I drank in the golden constellation of her robe and its Statue of Liberty-esque turquoise patina.  I puzzled at the child bursting from her feet.  And I bowed beneath her towering, benevolent, powerful head, her massive shoulders, and folded-prayer hands.  I was devoted immediately, though I had no idea who this woman was, or what her story was.  I didn't care. I was in the presence of something great and loving and gorgeous.  That was enough for me. 

I later learned about Our Lady of Guadalupe's story and symbolism, but feel totally unqualified to explicate it here.  In a book titled A Woman's Journey to God, Joan Borysenko offers this: "She identified herself as 'the Mother of God, who is the God of Truth; the Mother of the Giver of Life; the Mother of the Creator; the Mother of the One who makes the sun and the earth; and the Mother of the One who is near.'" 

I adore this last name: the One who is near.  I find it so intimate and comforting and sweet.

Borysenko continues: "One of the most interesting aspects of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is that she is wearing the cintz, a tassel or maternity bond, around her wrist.  She is a pregnant goddess."

At the time I discovered the statue, I was going through an intense questioning period in my artistic life.  My journey to Santa Fe was, in many ways, a homecoming to my creative roots - to the woman I had been, and had been becoming, before I muted my free-spirited ways in the rough years after college.  Unbeknownst to me, in Santa Fe, I was journeying to get them back. 

As I stood beneath this eternal mother in the clean sun, I felt something I had no idea I had been living without.  I felt pure, utter acceptance: acceptance for who I was, for what I had been born to do, and for whatever pathways made me happy. 

No wonder my devotion was instant!  I had accessed something ancient and healing. 

When my parents visited Santa Fe,  I'm afraid they experienced the heat more than any other aspect.  But what mattered to me was my recognition that a primal energy connects my mother and I.  She is the woman who created me, housed me in her body, nurtured my own body's growth, and, ultimately, is the woman who taught me how to be a woman, living in a body that can create new life. 

My mother was on my mind all over Santa Fe.  I wanted to show her everything I discovered.  I felt incredible gratitude for her, and for all the ways she nurtured me - especially in high school when my brothers had left for college and my relationship with my mother blossomed.  My experience with the statue initiated me, and reconnected me to the universal mother energy, and thus to myself as a woman with creative powers.  This experience, and the art, and the festive embrace of God, were some of the reasons I felt so close to my mother - who was states away on the east coast - while I was in New Mexico. 

This is the energy I have been thinking about lately: the pregnant goddess energy, the woman in her creative powers, ready to give birth to the moon and the sun.  When I am in contact with this energy, which yogis call the Shakti, all my human loves and relationships connect.  They swirl together and mix and play, because I am stepping into the current drawing closer and closer to the mother's heart.  Things make more sense to me when I am in contact with this energy.  At the same time, I become aware more than ever of the mysteries I can never solve, and of the underwater shadows I cannot name.

When I am truly connected, I accept these mysteries and shadows, and even delight in them. Safe in the discovery process, I rediscover faith.

I get it now, what people mean when they say faith is a garden you have to water daily.  I am finding that my garden loves gentleness - sweet attention and listening.  I bet most gardens do, but what do I know? As Jeff Tweedy says in an interview about writing poetry in The Writer's Chronicle, "I believe that the interior landscape is much more honest because I really believe that is the only thing you can truly know...I find that the more you can get to the essence of your interior life, it actually becomes more expansive than any world view you can try and impart."

Sometimes I find efforts at self-care daunting, haunted by failures past and future.  But today, I'll slop  water on the roses, plop the house plants in the sun.  Is it really so hard to nurture and care for the soul?  Aren't there a million good ways to do so?  My hope is that we all find our own ways.  That we give ourselves permission to delight and cry out in song, or to weep and massage the blood out of welters.  Whatever the steps we take home, may we honor and keep them.  May we know where they are, even in the dark.  And may we share what we find with each other.

Wolves

One day I just woke up, the wolves were all there

Wolves in the piano, wolves underneath the stairs…  -- Josh Ritter

Fortunately Not Every Day Is Important,

by Sol Gordon

Alone,
          feeling sorry for
          the plants
          unwatered
          like my love
          in the Fall of
          life

I
         seek the sun
         among withered flowers
         and brief encounters
         where friendship lingers
         not for long.
         I am loved
         not enough to still the
         Exile.  I lit two candles to

Find
         The way.  No one noticed
         What is a way to a
         Jewish holiday?
         Then

God
         responded, somewhat impatiently
         I thought,
        "For Heaven's Sake, Water The
         Plants, And Get On With It."

I’ve been thinking about food, lately—both what we put into our bodies and into our minds.  I’ve been on vacation in Alaska for the past two weeks.  Besides the fact that my dog may never forgive me for leaving him (it’s true, I may overestimate the value of my company), it was a very good trip.  Whales breached.  Sea lions burped and roared.  Bearded men sold and fed me delicious hunks of fish.

I Heart Alaska.  Truly and freely.

Packing my suitcase for the flight home two days ago brought the kind of sadness I feel when departing a loved one.  It didn't surprise me, exactly.  I knew I was leaving the most perfect combination of wilderness and western culture that I have found to date.  Still, the usual things I conjure up to make going home easier--the comfort of my kitchen, the freedom of uninterrupted yoga practice, the note cards and papers waiting in my desk at home--failed to seduce me.  I felt that, were I in a different place in my life, Alaska and I might make one sexy duo.       

Still, I got on the plane.  I entertained the briefest fantasies of returning to Colorado only to pack up everything and go back to Alaska.  But I knew they were only fantasies, and here's why: because I'm tired of moving.  I'm tired of being far away from everyone I love, and getting to the east coast from Colorado is way easier than getting there from Alaska.

All this added up to another realization: I'm tired of chucking my heart onto passing trains and wondering why I'm so tired at the end of the day.

Before the trip, I had imagined being struck by a great epiphany while we traveled.  Instead, I got thunked over the head by a dull club. A red-headed stepchild of sorts emerged from the depths of my being around the end of week one.  She was gap-toothed and freckled, and hung around the front porch of my mind.  When I asked what she needed to tell me, she said, simply, “You ain’t having enough fun.”

Knowing that opportunities for amusement were in abundance (boat tours, coastal roads, log cabins, sourdough pancakes), I dug deeper for what she was trying to tell me.  I struck upon it immediately: though my body was on tour in one of the most gorgeous landscapes of the country, my heart itself was in a cardboard box, stuffed at the bottom of my suitcase. 

Travel stresses me in two ways:

1. When I don’t have adequate space to mediate for several days, my emotions board the nearest roller-coaster and ride every wave of anger, despair, depression, and despondency, and take those I love with them.

2. I often have difficulty with food options on the road.  This makes me anxious and, when I make the wrong choice, very very cranky.

All this comes back to grounding.  When I don't take adequate care to do so, I suffer big time and, unfortunately, so do those around me. 

I often think of a van full of dogs that Tim and I drove to Florida once.  They were piled into crates, and those crates were stacked one on top of another.  We were delivering the dogs to safety, to a no-kill shelter eighteen hours away.  When I want to bare my teeth at my travel companions, I think about those dogs.  Often, I fail in efforts toward patience, and I growl and snarl--if only internally.  But those sweet pups that Tim and I were not able to let out for those eighteen hours--not even for a bathroom break--were silent the entire ride.  It was like they knew where they were headed, and just wanted to get there.  I'm sure they were frightened, or more than anything a bit confused.  But they managed their spirits better than I do on big trips.

What I learned on this trip, in addition to many marine animal facts and what a glacier looks like up close (Superman blue!), is where I am out of balance in my life, and how to go to those places and soothe them.

I also learned that rocks left behind by glacial morraines are sometimes soft to the touch.  I’m not saying I want to rake through my life and leave behind only perfection.  Actually, I do. And that’s the problem.  I know, intellectually, that perfection isn’t my job.  Surrender to the craggy parts of life, and learning to love them as much as the luxuriously soft and impeccably credentialed ones, is.  That sounds like there are a lot of those impeccably credentialed ones.  And maybe there are.  But all I seem to be seeing lately are the big ass crags.

I know that surrender, not perfection, is my job.  But why do I have to re-learn it every darned day of the year?

I once learned that, traditionally, Quaker women leave one mistake in the quilts they craft, because only God is perfect.  What a sweet combination of reverence and playfulness!  And who are these women who can limit mistakes to just one?

I’ve been reading the exquisite Journal of a Solitude, by May Sarton.  Incidentally, this book has been on Tim’s shelves, which are packed to the gills, for years.  I have passed it several times a day, for several years now.  Often, all that I have seen are shelves that are in desperate need of some Feng Shui love.  Now that I have finally pulled out Sarton’s book and waded into its sweet attention, I think: how strange is life that I wanted him to chuck what I need most? 

Here is a gem from the bowlful of gems contained in Journal of a Solitude: 

Found this in an old journal of mine – Humphrey Trevelyan on Goethe: “It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life; he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair.  The burden of the mystery must be with him day and night.  He must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted.  This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tensions is the source of artistic energy.  Many lesser poets have it only in their youth; some even of the greatest lose it in middle life.  Wordsmith lost the courage to despair and with it his poetic power.  But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches maturity.” 

Must art come from tension?  A few months ago I was dreaming of a happy work, a whole book of poems stemming from fruitful love. Now here I am back on the rack.  But perhaps this is a sign of health, not sickness.  Who knows?

And, from a delicious book I picked up in Denali, called Small Wonders: Year-Round Alaska, a little piece of advice on ground work:

…go out and explore the world gathered around you…The closer I look, the more there is to see.

So, here’s to despair!  Or, learning how to work with it.  To seeing the trees inside the forest, to piles and piles of beautiful books, to bear and moose-lovers, to art as food, to meditation as life, and to abundant, life-long practices of mindfulness and humility.

With love,
Kara

Ken Kesey & The Bear

292, Emily Dickinson

If your Nerve, deny you -
Go above your Nerve -
He can lean against the Grave,
If he fear to swerve -

That's a steady posture -
Never any bend
Held of those Brass arms -
Best Giant made -

If your Soul seesaw -
Lift the Flesh door -
The Poltroon wants Oxygen -
Nothing more -

I just got back from a class at a local Buddhist center.  The class was about contemplating emptiness and reminded me of the following Ken Kesey quote, pulled from an essay by M.C. Armstrong in the Summer 2010 issue of The Missouri Review.  It's long, sorry.  Do your best:

"When people ask me about LSD, I always make a point of telling them you can have the shit scared out of you with LSD because it exposes something, something hollow.  Let's say you have been getting on your knees and bowing and worshipping; suddenly, you take LSD, and you look, and there's just a hole, there's nothing there.  The Catholic Church fills this hole with candles and flowers and litanies and opulence...The Muslims fill it with rigidity and guns and a militant ethos.  But all of us know that's not what's supposed to be in that hole.  After I had been at Stanford two years, I was into LSD.  I began to see that the books I thought were the true accounting books--my grades, how I'd done in other schools, how I'd performed at jobs, whether I had paid off my car or not--were not at all the true books.  There were other books that were being kept, real books.  In those real books is the real accounting of your life.  And the mind says, 'Oh, this is titillating.'  So you want to take some more LSD and see what else is there.  And soon I had the experience that everyone who's ever dabbled in psychedelics has.  A big hand grabs you by the back of the neck, and you hear a voice saying, 'So you want to see the books.  Okay, here are the books.'  And it pushes your face right down into all your cruelties and all of your meanness, all the times that you have been insensitive, intolerant, racist, sexist.  It's all there, and you read it.  That's what you're really stuck with.  You can't take your nose up off the books.  You hate them...you hate the fact that someone has been keeping track, just as you feared.  You hate it, but you can't move your arms for eight hours.  Before you take any acid again you start trying to juggle the books.  You start trying to be a little better person.  Then you get the surprise.  The next thing that happens is that you're leaning over looking at the books, and you feel that lack of the hand at the back of your neck.  The thing that was forcing you to look at the books is no longer there.  There's only a big hollow, the great American wild hollow that is scarier than hell, scarier than purgatory or Satan.  It's the fact that there isn't any hell or there isn't any purgatory, there isn't any Satan.  And all you're got it Sartre siting there with his momma--harsh, bleak, worse than guilt.  And if you've got courage, you go ahead and examine that hollow..."

I am a big fan of studying The Enneagram, which is primarily a tool of psychology that offers ways to transcend the patterns we personally create and which make us pretty miserable.  I read a spiritual take on this tool this year that described my personality's (for lack of a better word) fixation as fearing emptiness.  Whoa.  I thought about all the ways I prop up my environment with candles and music and pillows, and pump conversations full of questions...lots of ways that I busy myself during the day so I don't feel the throat-itchy, stomach-trembling knowledge of emptiness. 

In the beginning of the Missouri Review excerpt, Kesey says that all of his work is about wilderness.  In grad school, while I was writing a novel about a family that takes care of loons, I tacked up a picture of a loon and glued on top of it a magazine clipping that said, SAVE SOMETHING WILD.  I tacked it up for courage: the courage to touch the space of unknowingness that is the creative act, to venture into the emptiness of surrender.

When I told the teacher tonight that I am going to Alaska soon, he said, "Be careful!  There are bears out there.  They are empty," he joked, i.e. an illusion of separateness, "But they are still pretty big." 

Ahhh, Buddhists and their jokes! 

Another one: Why couldn't the monk vacuum under the couch. 
Answer: He had no attachments! 

I remember falling in love with this joke a while back.  I've never met anyone who likes it.  At least, they won't admit to liking it.  There are lots of groans when I tell it. 

I don't know what else to say about Ken Kesey and LSD.  Just that the part about the hand pushing his back gets very Bhagavad Gita-y for a minute, like when Arjuna wants to see the face of Krishna, and then is terrified and very "Just Kidding!!" when he is shown it.  So, I love seeing that in the excerpt.  It affirms literature and the mystery of the written word for me: stories as recipe for sacred text.  The circling dance of an author waltzing like a bear in the wilderness.   It makes me wonder: Are we listening enough, we human beings?  What dark night are we willing to leaning into?  What, despite panic, are we open to and exploring?

During the class, while my eyes gazed at the dozen Buddhas on the altar behind the teacher, and my mind wandered all over the place, I thought for a minute about all of the stress I have experienced in conversations with Tim about where we want to live.  Lately I have noticed how Home seems to be something I believe in: a concept of perfection which keeps me from connecting to the supportive, nurturing, totally abundant homes that exist throughout my day--in friendships, poetry, food, and my own sweet house, where we build altars, dance, piece through confusion, and make ourselves giddy with silly jokes.  What, What, What am I waiting for that is not already here?  With this, and the wild eyes and open heart of Ken Kesey, I leave you. With love.

Open for Business

Forget safety
live where you fear to live
destroy your reputation
Be notorious

I have tried prudent planning
long enough.
From now
on, I'll be mad.
                              -Rumi

Last year, I discovered a list I made when I was very little--say 7 or 8 years old--detailing what I should do the next day.  It listed the hour to wake up, the time to get dressed, the window of time to eat breakfast in, and the time to go catch the bus.  I discovered this list in tandem with advice for the Pisces astrology group, of which I am a part, that Pisces should not overplan their days, as this stifles the innate creativity that is their primary guidance system. 

I go back and forth with this idea, because I am devoted to seeing the creative in all people.  As long as you are loving life, and intimately involved with whatever is unfolding around you, I don't see a need to discriminate between creative types and non. However, Pisces are described as highly intuitive types, and I think here is the necessary word difference.  I can say from experience that this sign sees best almost with their eyes closed.  Emotions are the guideposts as we edge our way along, often shyly, in the world. 

Upon discovering the list, I realized how long I have been trying to control my world. I have attempted this through scheduling, planning, rooting around in self-improvement schemes--generally all with limited, or tense, success. 

Along with my friend, with whom I shared an East Village apartment a few years out of college, I enjoy laughing at myself for the morning that I opened my bedroom door and stumbled upon a To-Do list that I had started the night before.  I had gotten as far as Get Dressed and stopped.  That pretty much summed up the state of my mind, then.  I was working as a temp, typing invoices at an office that had no ties to my literary ambitions, and I was sort of losing it. 

I mentioned in a previous post a desire to hide the details of my life because of anxiety about where my life was going.  But I had this brilliant little moment today, inspired by Byron Katie, who says things like, "How do I know I need to see my husband at the moment?  Because he just walked into the room."  This woman's message is of perpetual, radical acceptance. 

As my friend Dhara says, Why do we think reality is wrong just because we don't like it?  I have been thinking a lot about this, and trying it out.  When my dog scratches my leg incessantly and then walks to the door, guess what?  It's time to go outside.  When I see someone I don't particularly care for, heading straight for me on the sidewalk, guess what?  It's time to make peace.  It's time to speak to this person, openly, because they are showing me the reality of my life--that there are no enemies but those I create in my mind, and that there is some fear that I have buried inside, which is triggered in their presence.

So.  The big one: How do I know that I don't need a job right now?  Because I don't have one.  And how do I know that it's time to ask myself big questions about where I want to head in my life?  Because that's what I wake up thinking about. 

But panic doesn't have to be part of the equation.  I'm taking that out now, with a little help from teachers like Katie, and anxiety itself, which shows me when I have taken myself out of the present moment.  Worried about failure, do I feel the table that holds my arms and my computer, do I see the dog that makes me laugh out loud, do I remember the birds hopping around my lawn, who are digging up their own wonderful treasures in the world?  Am I meeting Reality, what is happening all around me, all the time--this beautiful gift that I don't have to do a thing to keep going?   

Isn't it great?  Even my spine stands up without me.  What am I so worried about?  I hereby declare life a worry-free zone.  Because whatever is happening needs to be.  Heart break, anxiety, death, illness...everything that I am afraid of still leads home.  And what is home? This is the question that I ask myself a lot these days, as my family and friends live their lives thousands of miles away.  But it's also the question I've been asking for most of my life.  Here is one answer, for today: Home is the seat of peace in the heart, the place where the mind opens and life sets up its real business.   

I will probably always make lists.  They help me organize my thoughts.  They help me see the unrealistic expectations I place on myself.  They help me, when I toss unfinished ones into the trash can, to let go the jailer in my mind.  But, as I make these lists now, I will ask myself, what am I planning for?  Do I trust myself to get dressed in the mornings, or do I still need to write that one down?

The best writing advice I ever heard was, Don't have a back-up plan.  Why would you plan for failure?  Just write.  And that's what I have the opportunity to do now, in my life.  Get Dressed.  Walk the Dog.  Write.  Why would I scheme up ways to worry about this most perfect present? 

To myself, and the places in us that worry, I say, the sky is not falling, Chicken Little!  Relax, have some fun.  No one needs you to hold up the sky.  Cut it out.  Take yourself out dancing.

At the Window

Landscape
by Mary Oliver

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience?  Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close,  I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive.  And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky - as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

from New and Selected Poems, Volume One

So, where to begin?

It was the middle of graduate school, a three year program for an MFA in creative writing, at the beginning of which, I was like, Great!  3 years to write! and, at the end of which I was like, What the F was I thinking?!  One summer, I had the great fortune of having a month off of both work and school.  My boyfriend at the time--my husband now--spent long days driving for FedEx, collecting sheaths of black grime on his hands and legs and arms from the open door of the truck, and returning home so dehydrated that we coined the term, FedEx Eyes, for the puffy lids that he went to bed with at night.   For my part, I spent long days practicing yoga, opening the windows, listening to lush coastal rains, writing a little, swimming in the ocean, meditating with the dog, and consulting the I-Ching about my future, which I desperately wanted to know about. 

I remember one particularly stormy morning, when the dark rain clouds came early, and woke me, and drew me out of the bedroom.  I lit a candle at the kitchen table and scrawled questions in a notebook.  It was late enough past dawn that Tim was already out in the world.  I called the dog to my side and settled on my meditation cushion (which doubled as a movie-watching pillow, back rest, dinner tray, and yoga prop). 

The day was a big one for me, for an answer came, in the middle of my rainy meditation.  The questions I was asking of the greater world were new to me.  For once, they had no agenda, no real attachment to particular outcomes.  I was not, as I did in my youth, holding a little Yoda doll with a black-bottomed robe that flashed variant answers such as, Certainly It Is So, or Not At This Time, when I tipped it upside down.  I was not asking questions such as, Will I get to stay up late and watch movies and eat cookies tonight?, with greed clearly on my heart.  I was asking about the meaning of life, literally--mine.  Should I marry Tim.  Should I keep writing.  Should I keep on the path I am on. 

And an answer came.  The moment that I heard this insight rise up in the center of my being, I felt my skin open at every pore, as if a bear's hide had fallen away from my shoulders.  I knew I was being led to unveil the truths of my heart, which were tender, vulnerable, and terrified of the light.  At the same time, this instruction felt like the deep weight of suffocation finally leaving me. I was not given specific instructions.  No real answers at all.  But in what I was given, I found both the permission I needed to be myself, and to keep going with trust that all was well. 

I have been listening to Byron Katie's audio presentation, Your Inner Awakening, which at first I hid under a blanket in my car so that passing neighbors could not see the title and have cause to snicker.  I wonder why is it so hard to own my spiritual curiosities.  Like a child hiding under a table, I think that if I do not confess to being there, no one will see me.  When, everyone knows I am under the table.  Everyone else sees it so clearly!   

Katie says that the things we are afraid of revealing about ourselves are laughable when they finally reach the light.  These secrets we carry are simple pieces of fear that have grown inordinantly more powerful because of their place in the dark, and it is our job, our gift to our life, to bring them out where we can see them. 

I am remembering here a giddy scene in Fletch Lives, which is an excellent '80s movie that dates my sensibilities.  In the scene, Chevy Chase play's a newspaper reporter who momentarily hijacks a televangelist's show and tells audience members that God wants them to reveal their deepest secrets.  A man called forward says, Are you sure?  Chevy Chase assures the man, yes, yes.  Confess your afflictions! he says. OK! the man says, pulling down his pants on live television, and confessing to a struggle with hemmoroids. 

This is not the sort of laughable that Byron Katie has in mind, I'm sure, but it is the sort of comical turn that revelation can take.  Uncensored confession is easy to make fun of, as a general pursuit.  But what makes deeply comic laughter possible is when we spot the self-inflicted terror that our secrets have caused us, and root it out, and set it free.   

I made a cd last night, recording some poems I wrote.  I made it for a friend who has always supported my shy processes, always been curious about my creative life, and jubilant for my weird crushes, the surprises of our hearts.  I spent time with a very wise woman today, and rejuvenated my inner witness to the divine, mysterious currents that draw us along our holy paths. 

I have lately noticed that I am emotionally hiding, because I have been looking for answers to more questions about the future.  And I can see now I've been more than a little attached to their outcomes.  But today I feel it - grace around me, telling me to settle my mind and open my heart to the answers within.  The wind brings the silent wings of blackbirds overhead.  The birds swoop and flit and land on the signpost at the end of my street.  They say: We are here.  All is well.  We are here together.   

So rise, little wings of the heart!  Flap and fly on your merry way.

Slogger

OLD SONG
by Robert Creeley

Take off your clothes, love,
And come to me.

Soon will the sun be breaking
Over yon sea.

And all of our hairs be white, love,
For aught we do

And all our nights be one, love,
For all we knew.

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience."  --Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Tonight, I am hungry for bed, hungry for diversion, hungry for something new.  I am feeling a low-grade boredom with my own mind, which means it is time for me to switch something up: either how I am treating my body or my mind or both.  I overslept this morning, which means the secretary (my dog) is getting canned.  All of this is to say, Tomorrow is another day!

I am reading a book called Swimming to Antarctica, which is written by the long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox, who broke the world record crossing the English Chanel when she was fifteen.  She has these big teams of people who help her before and during the swim, and this woman's focus and motivation is just astounding.  I keep coming back to her utter humility in the face of her strength and speed, two things that she develops in training, certainly, but also seem to be particular to her natural-born body.  The other thing that strikes me is her reliance on her family members, friends, and the swimming professionals in her community and around the world, who all contribute to the development of her goals and plans.  The amount of aid that goes into one swim is incredible. I am moved, imagining the grace and humility it takes to accept that help in order to accomplish her truly wild dreams. 

I've been thinking a lot about the balance between receptivity and action lately. I don't have a whole lot more to say about that, except that I suppose finding that balance is a lifetime's pursuit.  Maybe I should say, a lifetime's art.

I watched an interview with a yoga teacher who says that she starts out asking herself when she wakes in the morning, What do you need to bring this day into balance?  She really talks to herself (and also calls herself, Baby girl.  Last part is optional, I would think).

For a long time, I have been wanting to quote from a beautiful Louise Erdrich novel called (are you ready?) The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.  My father, who is famous in our family for the time he asked if anyone wanted to go see Roberthood at the movie theater, has passed along to me a few traits: his muscular legs, a troubling certainty about always being right, and a tendency to innocently butcher the names of things.  Oh, alright, he also passed along some dashing wit and fanciful genes, but stop it.  You are too kind!  

When I first started reading Erdrich's novel, last fall, it took several weeks for me to get the name correct.  But it is worth it.  Remember it.  Read it.  I dare you.

What I love about the book (no spoilers here) is its reverence for the experience of human life on the earth.  The book combines intimate portraits of life on the spiritual path with an exuberant love song to life in the flesh.  I just realized that this phrase gives me particular delight.  As do the sex scenes in TLROTMALNH. 

So, a little bit, from a section called The Sermon to the Snakes.  (See?  There is a church built into the side of a mountain.  And the floor slithers with snakes.  It's gorgeous in the novel, trust me.  Not at all Indiana Jonesey (though my brother will lament this).) 

"I am like you," said Father Damien to the snakes, "curious and small." He dropped his arms.  "Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun's slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved."

The passage is much longer but I cannot find the exact chapter I wanted to laud. Too many months have passed.  So, I will go now, leave the snakes of the past and dive back into Cox's book, to swim with more dolphins in the water alongside her.  Adieu, blessed beings!  May the new moon guide our way home.