Shaken and Released

I got sick this week, and it put me face-to-face with that darned companion, mortality. 

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on Monday with terrible chills and a headache.  Up for an hour, back to sleep, back up a few hours later to throw up and then collapse onto a quilt on the living room floor, where I spent the rest of the day.  (I was so focused on just existing that it didn't occur to me to return to the bed.)  My husband quickly realized that I was not about to make breakfast for our children, so he called out from work and left the kids with their nana during the times he came home to check on me. 

It turned out I had a bacterial infection.  I had a fever, chills all day, a constant headache, every joint ached and part of my body throbbed with pain from the infection.  I was so weak that it was a terrific strain to even sit up, and I ate the soup he fixed me with my chin barely off the floor, just high enough so the spoon could clear the rim of the bowl.  I had gone from the version of myself where I'm 35, lively, always doing things and interacting with people all day, always planning on the future, to a new, unfamiliar version of myself in which I'm maybe 82, quite sickly, quite alone, not caring much about anything in the world other than water and a little food because I simply didn't have the energy to care.  Being sick showed me what illness can do to a person's vitality.  It's not just about the pain; it's about the energy left over after you've dealt with the pain, with the illness.  There has to be some liveliness left if we want to take enjoyment in the world, and if there's none left, there's not much of us left.  Then we're just a mind operating a body coping with illness, or at least that's all that was left of me. 

At one point, I got myself with great effort into the kitchen for a glass of water and a straw to drink it out of.  I remember my hands fumbling through the cabinet, and cursing the way I had to bend my aching wrist to get at them behind the olive oil, where I've never realized it's any effort to get at them.  I suddenly saw, instead of me, an elder in a worn nightgown, living alone in this state.  Alone and just making it through her days, day after day, so sapped by illness that she had no energy left to take interest in any of the beauty of the world, or children, or birds, or the sky.  Just staying alive, that's all.  Just carrying on, with no spark, nothing treasured except maybe a comfortable place to sit and a warm meal.  No striving except towards physical comfort from some source.  I don't remember feeling sorry for myself as I saw that I was like this woman I envisioned, I simply saw it.  There was no energy to be sad.  I just saw. 

During their visit to see me that first day, my little girl smiled over her shoulder at me as she practiced standing up while holding on to a chair.  My boy told me in his usual jubilant manner about what he had done at Nana's house and then showed off his wonderful Halloween costume for me, all smiles, before going trick-or-treating with his father.  For my part, I did my best to turn my head and aching eyes all the way over to where they were, which was a true challenge, as unreal as it sounds to me now.  I loved them and wanted the best for them as much as I always do, but it was a detached kind of love.  Lying there, sick as I was, it was a relief when my husband took them away so I didn't have to expend energy paying attention to them and trying to return their smiles.  All of this was exhausting.  I could love them from afar.  (I recognize that this post reflects a two-day illness; I have no idea how I would have felt after a week of only short daily visits from them.  I like to think that my heart would have broken.)

I've been sick before, but always - always - from illnesses my body could reliably recover from on its own: colds, flu, chicken pox, etc.  The one that got me this week held on with force into the second day, which is the point at which patients are advised to go on antibiotics, if they aren't already.  It's not that I would have died without the medicine, but if I had been fighting that case of that illness without access to any medicine, it could have gotten very ugly, requiring surgical drainage, removal of abscess, etc.  Not things my body can do on its own.

And that was the disturbing part.  That was the part that shook me from my snug little nook up in the land of Someday I Might Be Old and Maybe Need A Little Medicine...Maybe, down to the swamp where We Are All Vulnerable All of the Time And If It Doesn't Show, We're Just Lucky.  

On being "crazy"

So I've done it. I've finally flipped the switch to "To Hell With It" and begun praying in public. We live on a busy road and I'm sure that many people have now seen me holding my hands up to the sky as I offer energy up, kissing the earth as I give thanks, or just sitting in the car with my hands up and my eyes closed as I center myself and get present before I drive with my children.

My next door neighbor appears to have noticed. She moved in last year and is not often at home, so our interactions have been few, but have all been pleasant, and my husband and I both have been quite pleased with her as a neighbor. Lately, though, she clearly regards me warily, and I can feel her keeping a certain distance when we talk across our driveways nowadays.

The reason I spent the first thirty-something years of my life hiding my prayers is for this very reason: I didn't want people to think I was crazy. Now my neighbor, whom I like and whose friendship I would have liked, doesn't want to have much to do with me and looks at me as though I'm a crazy person. And indeed, in her eyes I AM a crazy person, plain and simple. She can tell by the way I act. I'm clearly "not normal."

Our latest awkward interaction was this afternoon, and this evening, needing encouragement to stay true to myself in the face of judgement, I sang my girl to sleep to the tune of "Lord of the Dance" in the Christmas Revels, only with new words to help me remember to keep on this path:

"Stand true, whoever you may be
For we each carry part of the truth, you see.
Hold my hand, stay strong, and walk with me.
Hold my hand, walk tall, as true as true can be."

I have lots of versions flowing through my head, but that's the jist of it.

Any ideas? Other verses? The idea is to create an anthem to being who we are fully, the world be damned! Now is the time.

Pictures!

Ducklings at a little under 3 weeks old.

Their first swim hole! The "pond" left over from an above-ground pool.


Some of our year-old flock behind the coop.






Swimming in their current "pond." We are having some folks from a local eco-friendly pond building place visit us soon to advise us about building a pond in our yard.

On their way up the steps to bed tonight...

...and up....

...and up...


...and in to bed.

Ducklings

Our five little Indian Runner ducks are four weeks old now, and absolutely adorable (pictures will come at some point, I promise). They are still spending nights in a pen in our indoor porch, until we get the duck house built (hopefully this weekend), but their days are spent outside.

They have us trained so that in the morning we open their pen door, they peep, quack, and waddle through the porch onto the deck and then one by one flip-flop their way down the stairs to the grass and waddle in an urgent shuffle together to their kiddie pool. They spend their days splashing in the kiddie pool, eating grass and bugs, exploring the yard, and getting acquainted with the chickens. Around 8 PM, from the evening hush there arises a tremendous peeping and quacking from the backyard as the ducks decide en masse that it's time to go to bed, at which point they shuffle back across the yard up to the stairs, and hop and flop their way up the steps (it's remarkable to see ducklings doing this). We open the porch door, and they peep/quack/waddle their way through our porch back into their pen. If we merely open the porch door and then take the liberty of going back in the house to finish whatever we were doing while they go into their pen by themselves, they emit a very special, nasal, high-pitched, URGENT peep, which means that YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STAY WITH US UNTIL WE MAKE IT ALL THE WAY INTO OUR PEN, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!!! Once they're in their pen and the door's closed, we're at liberty to do whatever we please.

Life is good.

Astray

Been astray. Rearing kids. Raising a new batch of chicks to replace the hens we lost over the past year, plus five ducklings just for fun. Getting all my spring seedlings into the garden and weeded, keeping an eye on this year's resident birds in our birdhouses. Spending time with my husband and keeping our relationship alive and happy. Cooking, cleaning. Life.

I turned 35 this spring. Turning this particular age has been a doozy. Twenty-seven was a big one for me, too: leaving my early 20's and approaching 30 without a partner, without a career, without having traveled as much as I'd always thought I would have by that age. But where 27 was mostly about taking stock of what I'd accomplished so far in this life, 35 has got me taking a good look at exactly how far into this life I've already come. I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as "a young person," and now, 35 staring me straight in the face, I'm realizing that that's just not true anymore. I'm not a young person. I'm as old as the folks I used to babysit for when I was "a young person."

It's calling for a shift in my concept of myself, and at the same time is forcing me to reconcile with my mortality. I'm no longer in the start of this life, I may be halfway through it already!

Day Fourteen: Writing Break

Sat out tonight with the lass. Giving myself a writing break for the evening.

Day Thirteen: Sick

No sit tonight. Doing taxes + sick with a bad cold + raining out = me going to bed instead.

Day Twelve: Awakening

Out with the babe again at dusk today. Today she listened and looked intently around, then nursed and slept in her sling, which left me free to focus my attention on my senses. I sat in the yard again today, since I can't ascend the tree with her, but tonight I easily maintained my focus on the happenings around me rather than on the happenings inside my head.

Many cars, and many robins singing a couple different types of songs. Made me eager to learn bird language some day. Their short, quick squeak of a call - is that their alarm call? They would do that one from tree to tree, seemingly saying it back and forth to one another, but another bird kept singing a lovely fluid song in the midst of all of them, and didn't seem alarmed by the robins.

I am finding that the stillness I experienced last night was fairly easy to tap into when I began my sit tonight. I remember that right about in the middle of the challenge was when this happened last year, as well. It feels as though I've awoken my senses thoroughly enough to be able to call on them more rapidly, helping me move into a "sensing" state and out of my "doing" state. I've also found tonight that I've "remembered myself" (to use Gurdjieff's phrase), or remembered to check in with where my attention was, quite frequently even after coming into the house, so my awareness is starting to reawaken in the other areas of my life now, too - not just during my sits.

Day Eleven: Entering the Forest

Sat by myself in the tree this afternoon for twenty minutes.

Moved vaguely through the sense meditation and then began sitting without putting any conscious effort into any type of awareness. I found that my thoughts kept taking over my awareness, marching on and on. I hit a point where I felt like my whole gift of a sit was going to be for naught because I couldn't even name one sensory or spiritual experience I'd had. Despite my brief sense meditation, it seemed as if I'd spent almost the whole sit lost in thought.

So I went through the sense meditation again, just as quickly as before, but far more deliberately, forcing myself to really explore the reaches of each sense: what I could hear in front of me, to my right/left/above/below, etc. When I'd finished, I worked at combining them, and as I did so, I experienced the same sort of kaleidescopic vision that I remember having last summer (wrote about it here in my blog). In this type of vision, all of the pine needles and branches, when viewed with my peripheral vision, seem to fuse and create hundreds of sheets of movement, akin to the way looking through water can play with our visual perception of things.

I found my body become very, very still without my having to work at it, and when neighbors appeared in thier yard, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to tun my head a millimeter at a time. The idea of jerking my head around to see what was happening seemed foreign. It felt that I had become part of the forest, just another tree resting against my white pine, such stillness did I find within myself.

Day Ten: Work is more interesting than trees

I didn't sit yesterday.

My little babe came out with me for my sit today, wrapped on my chest, so I took my 20 minutes in the yard rather than in the tree. Heard the hens clucking and scratching, cars going by, an airplane, robins, doves coming in to the white pines to roost, the spring peepers (who started up just last night), and my baby singing her outdoor song, "mmm--mmmmmmmm--mmmmmm--mm--mmmmmmmmmmm--mmmmmmm--mmm." I could feel her weight on my chest, the weight of my feet on the earth. The breeze had a bite to it, and I could feel it blowing my hair gently across my face. She was a bit unhappy about something, so I bounced her gently during the whole sit (stand), and walked to a new spot every few minutes to keep her occupied with gazing at new things.

Being in the yard as opposed to up in the tree, I watched my thoughts play over first this garden project and then that, and it was all I could do to tap in now and then to what was actually going on around me in that instant. When I physically turned my body so I was facing the trees rather than my thought-playground of the yard, the woods seemed utterly boring to me; there was nothing happening there. Behind me were rows of vegetables to lay out in my mind, raspberries to thin, corn and squash beds to find space for, a coop to paint, all kinds of exciting things to imagine and plan and figure out. But the woods? They were just trees blowing in the wind. They couldn't capture my attention at all next to all the "stuff to do" in the yard. Working is way more interesting than trees!

Day Eight: Empty Hands

I stepped out during a small gathering at my house to sit for five minutes in the tree. I've been struggling with some of the dynamics in the gathering. A guest of ours was quite a shining superstar, akin to a sibling of mine with the same life-of-the-party qualities. I tend to shrink around people with these qualities, feeling entirely eclipsed, useless, worthless. For the moment that I was able to tune out of my head and in to my senses in the tree, I could feel that which was silent, that which was eternal, loving, accepting, which was a great balm for the emotions I'd been experiencing in the house.

I checked in with my "spider web" image that is always an immense help when I feel myself ungrounded. (I described it thus in my blog last year: "I imagined a perfect, flat spiderweb in the air connecting me to...the trees and plants and everyone else around. We all were its anchor points, so we all needed to hold it in place properly. When I am in a frightened state (or, more often, a self-centered, mindless state), I am pulling and yanking on the part of the web I am supposed to be supporting, throwing it all out of balance.") For the first time in my use of this tool, I found that I had metaphorically let go of my part of the spiderweb. My instinct for self-preservation had driven me to let go of my responsibilities to the world. It highlighted for me that I feel I have nothing to offer when I am around folks with a certain type of personality, and that this response of mine not only hurts me but also causes me to shut down, leaving me with my hands empty for the world.

(My little boy just awoke and called me in to the bedroom, and there I was exactly perfect for him, for what he wanted and needed.)

I leaned against the tree, looking at the silver moon through its branches, and it came to me that when a tree nears the end of its life, its death comes slowly, somewhat predictably (in the absence of humans and wind storms, etc). We humans may well worry over losing each other suddenly, without any time to bid farewell, but communities of trees must feel and know a neighbor's coming death for months, years beforehand. (I will post my Day 7 notes within the next few days.)

Day Six: Chew-chew-bzzzt!

Sat on porch tonight, to be close at hand for our sick little ones in the house. A bird I heard last night trilled around the sky again tonight with the occasional 'chew-chew-chew-chew!' Like the frog 'bzzzt'ing next door, it's someone I've known by name in the past and have since lost track of.

The stars marking Orion's left shoulder and foot burned through the blue dusk-glow in the sky, along with four others. The evergreens stood dark and still against the horizon, and tonight I could feel that there was something ancient in the act of watching them at this time of day. It felt like this exact scene, this exact etching of trees on the skyline, had been beheld for eons.

Day Five: Smitty

sat at dusk, the first frog of spring 'bzzzting' in the swamp nearby. perhaps as we replant and reclaim our permanent yard puddle as the wetland it used to be, the frogs will come calling in our yard, too.

been in a curious funk for a few days. leaning against the tree in solitude tonight comforted me deeply, and helped me to face that i am grieving an acquaintance, smitty, who passed on last week. i hadn't expected to mourn him so profoundly; we had known each other for many years, yes, but only for minutes at a time. sitting in the arms of the great tree - like a massive horse, a dinosaur, surely a sentient, caring being - I became a child, wanting only to be held, warmed on its chest, to sit quietly in this night in the world, which is lacking smitty. i felt sadness for our species, who can live entire lives without sitting in a tree and learning what they give us.

the cars cheered me tonight with their yellow and red lights. even the roar of them was like a boisterous, jolly soul, nothing to complain about.

Day Four: Only a Moment, in the Mud

No chance to sit tonight, with a cranky baby and too rainy to bring her out with me. During my walk to the coop to close the hens up for the night, I stole around the back to escape the light from the house and to pause for a moment. Heard the gentle drip-dripping of the rain in the forest, a plane's roar at a distance, and felt the wet, cool air on my face. The ground was uneven and crunchy underfoot this morning with the frost heaves, and tonight it is squishy mud!

Day Three: Prioritizing with the Birds

A driving wind today brought in fresh, crisp air. Birdsong abounded. Probably only four or five different species sang, but to my untrained ear it sounded like twenty, as each individual seemed to be singing a unique song.

Upon reaching the base of the tree, noticed a mat of broad, whitish maple leaves from last fall. Wondered how long it will be before I will be capable of identifying a type of tree by eyeing the previous year's fallen leaves. (I decided this year to hold off on starting Kamana 2 until my children are a little older, so I can commit more seriously to it when I do start.) I also noted a sign from my heavy-footed descent last night; my foot had slid in the mud lying under the pine needles, leaving an obvious boot track at the base of my "secret" spot during my poorly executed retreat from the tree. Rushing does not privacy ensure, that's my lesson for yesterday.

Once settled in the tree this evening, I noted that my interest lay primarily in what I could hear and feel, rather than in what I could see. It seems to me that my sit in the dark last night helped to lessen my need to see everything around me. Hearing the birds, my hens in the yard, my environs was enough.

During my nightly meditation on what my senses are picking up, I became aware of my gut. It's come to my attention during two of my three sits so far, and each time it has struck me as being so unneccesary. I am quite fond of my body, as I view it as a great gift in which I get to live this life, and do not tend to fret a little extra flab here or there. But during the brief time that I'm sitting outside each day, the lines between the things that I need and the things that I don't need seem much more straightforward. I discover a deep drive to bring myself into balance with how nature intends my body to live. I stay up too late on a regular basis, and since my daughter's birth four months ago, I have taken to turning to sweet foods when my energy flags during the day in a desperate effort to keep up with my two young children. Hence my gut. My time outside seems to be helping the pieces of my life fall into place. Getting enough sleep feels far more important to me now than just as a means of having energy during the day. I find a deeper calling to make those decisions that will allow my life to work properly, and to identify and let go of those things that drag me down.

Day Two: The Securing of Privacy

Sat in the dark tonight, melting snow dripping quietly from trees around me. Snow remains in most places, obscuring so much of the character of the land. Many stars out, though only Orion and Canis Major visible through the branches of my pine, descending behind me.

Dry, dead twigs of the pine touched my hair as I silently looked around, making faint whisperings as my hair ran over them.

A neighbor walked outside with his dog two houses over as I prepared to return to the house. I determined to climb down from branch to branch only when cars passed, lest he become aware of my presence in the woods. I ended up making quite a racket as I rushed my steps to make good use of each car's roar, surely alerting every creature around to my presence but the person and his dog, who were closer to the road. As I passed over the grass and the snow toward my house, my snowpants continued the noise, and I considered wearing quieter clothing in the future.

Day One: Clumps of Slush

I'm starting my third annual sit spot challenge today. It appears to be turning into an annual rite of spring for me, to which I look forward and for which I'm grateful. My sit spot is on a branch in a grand white pine in my backyard. As I walked out to my sit spot, I was keenly aware that my time outside today, and each day of the sit, is at the mercy of another. We have a new little lass of four months, who might decide at any moment that it's time for me to come in. I was glad for whatever amount of time I would get outside today. Heavy, wet snow fell on our region today, reclaiming the vast areas of bare earth we've been gifted for the past week. Passing over my tracks from earlier today, I spotted green grass in the tracks where the wet snow had clung to my boot and been carried off, exposing the ground beneath. The wet pine needles clung to each other and hung down heavily, like strands of wet hair. I climbed into the tree, ascended the few feet to my sitting branch, wiped off the slush resting on it, and sat down in my snow pants. The first thing that presented itself to me was the slender branch of the young maple whose leafing out progress I had the slow pleasure of watching last year. At present, it holds bare branches up to the sky. Clumps of slush and icy snow plummeted down around me intermittently from the higher branches as the wind blew. One clump landed on the branch just above my face, spraying me suddenly with cool drops across my forehead and eyes. I startled at it, but it was not unpleasant, only surprising, and helped me to understand why my little daughter doesn't always cry at the things that make her jump. The sound of dripping filled the intervals between the crashing of the snow, as did the songs of chickadee, robin, and one I didn't know. The heavy taste of pizza lay on my tongue. My nose began to drip. I felt the heaviness of my legs hanging down, and the slight tingling in my fingertips from the cold. As I walked back to the house, I noted that my tracks from earlier today had been filled in almost entirely from the north side (where the wind originated) with snow, leaving funny tracks, about ½ inch wide and 10 inches long.

Ice

Bath tonight, my movement in the water forcing rings of water outward on the surface, showing me the tsunami in Japan, over and over again. How to comprehend it? Such a tiny bit of the earth swallowed up momentarily, but what universes were consumed in that moment.

Out to the porch for what has become a rare night visit out. Moon hazy above the melting snow, my bare feet crunched the ice of today's leftover rain.

Fire

I am rocking gently in our beloved yardsale rocking chair, a new babe, my daughter, sleeping quietly on my chest.

A dear relative appeared on our doorstep on my son's birthday recently with a woodstove for us, and told us a mason would be by the next day to install it in our fireplace. A most welcome gift, from a deeply generous family member. Since it's arrival, my husband has done most of the firekeeping, as I keep our lass (who spends much of her time on my chest) at a distance from the flames.

This morning, my husband went out very early with our boy, leaving the embers from last night's fire lying under their bed of ashes, rather than stoking and refueling them as he normally does. The babe roused many times during the night, so she and I slept in late, and by the time I checked the woodstove, it did not hold the gorgeous orange bed of glowing embers I'm accustomed to seeing when it's running low (as in the photo above); it was quiet, cool, and entirely gray, no embers peeking up from the ashes. I searched for any living embers toward the back of the stove, knowing they had the greatest chance of surviving the night there, being furthest from the vent on the door and thus least likely to have been fanned and used up during the night. I discovered a few tiny sparks that only lived a minute after being uncovered, and then found several very small embers that gave me hope.

My success at starting fire by friction for the first time this past year has left me with a deep desire to know how to handle fire. How to invite it to appear where it was not, as we do in fire by friction; how to nurture it to awaken from embers using only materials growing in the natural world (without paper). I wish to know fire, and I wish to know it respectfully. I am teaching my son, and will teach my daughter, to thank the fire for coming when it ignites, to thank always the trees who feed the fire and allow it to heat our home. I want to learn to coax it from quiet embers or invite it to emerge from wood on wood, because using these methods allows it to have some say in whether or not it comes. This sort of gentle treatment does not force it to appear, as do the lighters and matches which I have always used until now. The more I have to pay attention and work for fire to come, the more deeply I know and respect it, and the more I appreciate and honor its arrival.

So today, I spent much time and patience with what embers were remaining, trying to bring flame from them. I tried first birch bark, then cattail down to feed them, and blew on the tinder bundle (of sorts) for much longer than I'd expected necessary to rekindle the flames. During this process, these failed attempts and final success, the above reflections emerged and took shape.


A note on my blog: With two children now, I have far less time alone, which has always been my most fertile time for reflecting on my life and my experiences, as well as the easiest time to write, edit, and share my thoughts. However, I want to continue recording and sharing my life through my blog, as I find the time. So in order to do so, I am going to begin sharing writings that I have not edited and pared down as much as I would prefer. The result will be a clunkier, wordier, but more active blog.

Thank you for reading my words, and may you share your experiences in the way that is right (and feasible) for you.