harvested another twenty minutes of sitting tonight.
greeted again by the busy chickens on my way to the tree, their paths following mine toward the tree and then turning to the sandbox as i ascended.
gentle wind on my face as i sat. something in its quality made it feel just like the ocean breezes i grew up with, but the scent was bland, lacking the distinction of saltiness.
worked on my vision tonight, my focus dancing between the expanse of my peripheral vision to the left, right, top, and bottom of my visual field and my running list of things that need doing.
i was surprised at how easily i was able to reclaim my focus and direct it again toward my vision. as i gradually combined my awareness of all the edges of my visual field so that i was focusing attention on all of them at once, not focusing on any one point as we tend to do in daily life, the scene before me changed. first it appeared as a kaleidoscope, divisions of triangles and trapezoids in the pine branches and needles and sky. then it appeared to me as a collage that slowly became three-dimensional, each small movement of my breathing revealing the depth of the vision, the images beyond the images. every space formed by crossing branches - ten thousand bits of sky held between tiny pine branches and twigs - formed a piece of the artwork.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Drought
sat tonight, first time in a long drought of solitude.
husband spoke today of his need to have some time alone at some point today, which reminded me of my own right to claim time to myself when his presence makes it feasible.
walked out toward the tree after putting the boy down for the night, and was greeted with not just the usual one or two friendlies, but our whole dear flock of chickens running to me. hadn't been out in the yard today; were they wanting for entertainment other than each others' company? no one was missing, so i don't believe it was for protection. i knelt by them and fed the bold ones clover, then walked on.
i greeted the tree and ascended to my sitting branch, avoiding the short strips of blue/purple sap that decorated the trunks. i sat, thinking about the companionable chickens, noting the growth of the little maple and of our garden since my last sit. after a few minutes of sitting in thought, a large black and white bird, a little smaller than a crow, glided past me, just below the branch i was sitting on, presumably unaware of my presence in its flight path. i heard its body cutting through the still air, but too quick and too peripheral to my vision to get a clear sighting. it brought to mind the flicker who careened into the tree when i was first starting the 30-day challenge this spring; a big treat right at the start of my sitting. it motivated me to continue on, but i expected a treat every few days and was disappointed when it turned out to be a one-time deal. glad to have the memory of that lesson, reminding me to temper my excitement and keep an even keel in my expectations of sits.
the baby moved, a soft little jerk of a feeling in my abdomen.
started to tune in to all the sounds i could hear, then my mind drifted around: perhaps i can give myself 20 minutes a night on the porch to practice fire by friction, after the boy goes down every night. a month's commitment to this should get me somewhere with this practice i've longed to pick up for years. but i'll need to finally find myself a good set of tools, which is always what slows me down...
remembered that i'd been tuning in to my hearing, and closed my eyes again. a cricket to the south, as well as a bird chirping away at some distance and another singing intermittently close by. the neighbors' mower, and cars on the road. a constant insect buzz, one i hear in tall grasses in the summer and used to assume were crickets until finally realizing it doesn't actually start and stop like crickets, leaving me at a loss after three decades of sharing the summer with these insects close by.
the baby moved again.
opened my eyes. wondered what time it was, how soon i could stop trying to be alert and just go inside. felt a fleeting frustration about my resistance to attempting to stay awake, then remembered writing about this frustration during the challenge. how after two or three weeks of effort this spring, i suddenly moved into a state of much more active awareness.
it is achievable.
husband spoke today of his need to have some time alone at some point today, which reminded me of my own right to claim time to myself when his presence makes it feasible.
walked out toward the tree after putting the boy down for the night, and was greeted with not just the usual one or two friendlies, but our whole dear flock of chickens running to me. hadn't been out in the yard today; were they wanting for entertainment other than each others' company? no one was missing, so i don't believe it was for protection. i knelt by them and fed the bold ones clover, then walked on.
i greeted the tree and ascended to my sitting branch, avoiding the short strips of blue/purple sap that decorated the trunks. i sat, thinking about the companionable chickens, noting the growth of the little maple and of our garden since my last sit. after a few minutes of sitting in thought, a large black and white bird, a little smaller than a crow, glided past me, just below the branch i was sitting on, presumably unaware of my presence in its flight path. i heard its body cutting through the still air, but too quick and too peripheral to my vision to get a clear sighting. it brought to mind the flicker who careened into the tree when i was first starting the 30-day challenge this spring; a big treat right at the start of my sitting. it motivated me to continue on, but i expected a treat every few days and was disappointed when it turned out to be a one-time deal. glad to have the memory of that lesson, reminding me to temper my excitement and keep an even keel in my expectations of sits.
the baby moved, a soft little jerk of a feeling in my abdomen.
started to tune in to all the sounds i could hear, then my mind drifted around: perhaps i can give myself 20 minutes a night on the porch to practice fire by friction, after the boy goes down every night. a month's commitment to this should get me somewhere with this practice i've longed to pick up for years. but i'll need to finally find myself a good set of tools, which is always what slows me down...
remembered that i'd been tuning in to my hearing, and closed my eyes again. a cricket to the south, as well as a bird chirping away at some distance and another singing intermittently close by. the neighbors' mower, and cars on the road. a constant insect buzz, one i hear in tall grasses in the summer and used to assume were crickets until finally realizing it doesn't actually start and stop like crickets, leaving me at a loss after three decades of sharing the summer with these insects close by.
the baby moved again.
opened my eyes. wondered what time it was, how soon i could stop trying to be alert and just go inside. felt a fleeting frustration about my resistance to attempting to stay awake, then remembered writing about this frustration during the challenge. how after two or three weeks of effort this spring, i suddenly moved into a state of much more active awareness.
it is achievable.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Ragged
Watching a news clip of my old friend's arraignment this week, it shows him finally looking as ragged as it seems one would be at this point. When he was first captured and shown being escorted into the police car, he looked exactly, to the T, as he had when we all used to spend time together years ago, which was shocking to me. Seeing the difference between the two videos of him makes me wonder if he had been in some sort of shock-induced denial of what he had done, and if his present raggedness reflects the truth settling into him.
I am finding that the presence of his acts and his family's experience continues to recede in my daily thoughts, and that the easiest way for me to make sense out of it all is to imagine that he had some sort of a psychological break, because those acts were so counter to everything I knew about him beforehand.
On another note, our chickens, now two months old, have been enjoying free run of our yard (and our garden, when they find their way into it) for a couple of weeks now. It is a deep, pure pleasure to watch them scratching and pecking their way through the grass and compost pile.
I am finding that the presence of his acts and his family's experience continues to recede in my daily thoughts, and that the easiest way for me to make sense out of it all is to imagine that he had some sort of a psychological break, because those acts were so counter to everything I knew about him beforehand.
On another note, our chickens, now two months old, have been enjoying free run of our yard (and our garden, when they find their way into it) for a couple of weeks now. It is a deep, pure pleasure to watch them scratching and pecking their way through the grass and compost pile.
Friday, June 18, 2010
"Unspeakable"
I found out this week that an old friend of mine had just done some terrible things to his family, bad enough to shake everyone who heard of it. He was not a dear friend, but a good one, and had been a part of my small circle of friends for a good couple of years while I’d lived in that city.
For the next couple of days, whenever my mind was unoccupied, all of my thoughts circled around him and what he did to his family. I imagined the scenes, grappled with the truth of it, with the unreal nature of it, the horror of it. I prayed for his family, for the ones left behind, for their friends and communities. And for him, for the hell he must be in, at least some part of him. I’ve not slept much lately, lying in bed looking at my little boy, contemplating the child growing within me. His acts made them seem so utterly vulnerable, so transitory. Yes, we are alive and happy now, but so were his children, and then within the span of a day they were gone, dead. How to expect my own little ones to survive in this world if two other little ones can be ended by those who love them? Every child I saw, even in storybooks, seemed to me to be so transitory, ethereal. How can we hold them close when they could leave us in an instant?
When the news finally came that he had been caught by the police, something suddenly let go inside of me. I marched past my family, unable to explain myself, and went straight outside. Once in the sun, my feet on the grass, the trees standing surely ahead of my in their places, waves of comfort washed over me. It was like diving into water, the crisp difference between being within walls and being out in the natural world. I walked to our apple, listened to the voice within me, lay down on the earth, on the soft moss there, flattened my body so that much of me was touching the earth. I could feel my horror, my sorrow, my confusion being absorbed by the earth. I could feel the permission, the invitation, to melt and let it all come rushing out, all of the tears I’d been too shocked to cry, the sobs now wracking my body. After a time, I obeyed again the voice within me, this time to look upward towards the tree. I rolled onto my back, looked up to the glowing green leaves, and a little cloud beyond them caught my eye. It was a remarkably small little wisp of a cloud, in the company of several others like it, and they all glided slowly, silently by in the sky, in the vast blue sky. A little flotilla of clouds, drawing my eyes and my thoughts up and away from all the things on the earth, all the emotions and understandings on the earth, up to the wispy, momentary vision of a little band of clouds, a perfect moment in the universe.
"It was a day in that blue month, September
Silent beneath the plum trees’ slender shade…"
This moment of seeing the tiny clouds floating so effortlessly and perfectly across our blue sky, in and out of view beyond the leaves of our dear old apple, lifted away in an instant the intensity of my feelings, as suddenly as, and more astonishingly than, when I first had stepped outside and felt myself succumb to it all.
Now spending some time away from home with my partner and his family this weekend. This morning I cared little about visiting, interacting with anyone, and during a rare brunch that my husband and I were able to share alone as the family watched our boy, I found myself in and out of presence with him, listening to him talk and feeling tears fill my eyes when I wasn’t even consciously thinking about it all. Realized in the car on the way back from town that I’m in mourning, that this is grieving. I hadn’t met his family, didn’t know them, only had felt happy when I’d learned that he’d married a woman he loved and a couple years later when I heard that they had kids. But I’m mourning them now, mourning the dear little children whose love for their father had been betrayed, his wife whose life had been so unfairly ended by someone who shouldn’t have had the power to do such a thing, her mother, too, who had opened her home up to their family. I’m grieving my memories of his friendship, of our nights out listening to music and all dancing together to local bands, our gang’s adventures in the city, silliness on the subway, all the walks we’d taken in nature with our friends. All the goodness that had surrounded him, that is now utterly overshadowed by a darkness, by his “unspeakable” acts, as the police describe them.
I’m finding that as today has worn on, my mind and heart have finally begun to return their focus to the goodness that exists in the world. Instead of seeing children and thinking of them as essentially vulnerable, I’m able to hold the perspective that most children live out relatively safe lives, that his family is by far an exception. Tonight I made our bed after putting my boy down for the night on it. As I fanned the sheet out over the bed, it covered most of his body for an instant, until I put it in place. For a moment I was reminded of the image of dead bodies being similarly covered by a white sheet, but quickly I found that the serenity of the moment, my boy’s safety, my utter love for him and his sure knowledge of it, far outsung any ugly thoughts that lingered.
It is refreshing, and feels strangely new, to see so clearly how my mind has been able to refocus on those things that are healthy and healing in life. When I visit my thoughts about the events of the week, I can see clearly that I’ve placed them in a box and closed the lid for a bit. But I also can see that this is providing me with a chance to recharge, to enjoy this time with our family, to rejoice with my boy and my nephews as they all frolic together, instead of living in my thoughts and imaginings of awful things. Surely I will delve back into it all, surely I have a lot more to explore and accept about it all, but I gladly accept this moment now, in which the beauty and goodness of the world are in sharpest focus.
For the next couple of days, whenever my mind was unoccupied, all of my thoughts circled around him and what he did to his family. I imagined the scenes, grappled with the truth of it, with the unreal nature of it, the horror of it. I prayed for his family, for the ones left behind, for their friends and communities. And for him, for the hell he must be in, at least some part of him. I’ve not slept much lately, lying in bed looking at my little boy, contemplating the child growing within me. His acts made them seem so utterly vulnerable, so transitory. Yes, we are alive and happy now, but so were his children, and then within the span of a day they were gone, dead. How to expect my own little ones to survive in this world if two other little ones can be ended by those who love them? Every child I saw, even in storybooks, seemed to me to be so transitory, ethereal. How can we hold them close when they could leave us in an instant?
When the news finally came that he had been caught by the police, something suddenly let go inside of me. I marched past my family, unable to explain myself, and went straight outside. Once in the sun, my feet on the grass, the trees standing surely ahead of my in their places, waves of comfort washed over me. It was like diving into water, the crisp difference between being within walls and being out in the natural world. I walked to our apple, listened to the voice within me, lay down on the earth, on the soft moss there, flattened my body so that much of me was touching the earth. I could feel my horror, my sorrow, my confusion being absorbed by the earth. I could feel the permission, the invitation, to melt and let it all come rushing out, all of the tears I’d been too shocked to cry, the sobs now wracking my body. After a time, I obeyed again the voice within me, this time to look upward towards the tree. I rolled onto my back, looked up to the glowing green leaves, and a little cloud beyond them caught my eye. It was a remarkably small little wisp of a cloud, in the company of several others like it, and they all glided slowly, silently by in the sky, in the vast blue sky. A little flotilla of clouds, drawing my eyes and my thoughts up and away from all the things on the earth, all the emotions and understandings on the earth, up to the wispy, momentary vision of a little band of clouds, a perfect moment in the universe.
"It was a day in that blue month, September
Silent beneath the plum trees’ slender shade…"
This moment of seeing the tiny clouds floating so effortlessly and perfectly across our blue sky, in and out of view beyond the leaves of our dear old apple, lifted away in an instant the intensity of my feelings, as suddenly as, and more astonishingly than, when I first had stepped outside and felt myself succumb to it all.
Now spending some time away from home with my partner and his family this weekend. This morning I cared little about visiting, interacting with anyone, and during a rare brunch that my husband and I were able to share alone as the family watched our boy, I found myself in and out of presence with him, listening to him talk and feeling tears fill my eyes when I wasn’t even consciously thinking about it all. Realized in the car on the way back from town that I’m in mourning, that this is grieving. I hadn’t met his family, didn’t know them, only had felt happy when I’d learned that he’d married a woman he loved and a couple years later when I heard that they had kids. But I’m mourning them now, mourning the dear little children whose love for their father had been betrayed, his wife whose life had been so unfairly ended by someone who shouldn’t have had the power to do such a thing, her mother, too, who had opened her home up to their family. I’m grieving my memories of his friendship, of our nights out listening to music and all dancing together to local bands, our gang’s adventures in the city, silliness on the subway, all the walks we’d taken in nature with our friends. All the goodness that had surrounded him, that is now utterly overshadowed by a darkness, by his “unspeakable” acts, as the police describe them.
I’m finding that as today has worn on, my mind and heart have finally begun to return their focus to the goodness that exists in the world. Instead of seeing children and thinking of them as essentially vulnerable, I’m able to hold the perspective that most children live out relatively safe lives, that his family is by far an exception. Tonight I made our bed after putting my boy down for the night on it. As I fanned the sheet out over the bed, it covered most of his body for an instant, until I put it in place. For a moment I was reminded of the image of dead bodies being similarly covered by a white sheet, but quickly I found that the serenity of the moment, my boy’s safety, my utter love for him and his sure knowledge of it, far outsung any ugly thoughts that lingered.
It is refreshing, and feels strangely new, to see so clearly how my mind has been able to refocus on those things that are healthy and healing in life. When I visit my thoughts about the events of the week, I can see clearly that I’ve placed them in a box and closed the lid for a bit. But I also can see that this is providing me with a chance to recharge, to enjoy this time with our family, to rejoice with my boy and my nephews as they all frolic together, instead of living in my thoughts and imaginings of awful things. Surely I will delve back into it all, surely I have a lot more to explore and accept about it all, but I gladly accept this moment now, in which the beauty and goodness of the world are in sharpest focus.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Sharing
Had a fright today. Tonight, after putting the chickens in, felt some very strong directions in my walk back through the yard. I was led to a red maple near where the incident had occurred, and from it a vision came to me that helped me understand how the issue would be resolved. I was grateful for the gift of some sense of how things will work out, and reached up to touch its leaves, look up into its branches in the dark.
I gave my thanks to the tree for sharing what it knew, and then knelt down to touch the earth and asked that I may give as I am able, that I may act when I am called to act.
I gave my thanks to the tree for sharing what it knew, and then knelt down to touch the earth and asked that I may give as I am able, that I may act when I am called to act.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Tapping
Out in the dark tonight to close up the chicken coop. Paused for a moment on my busy way back to the house to take in the vision of the fireflies' lights hovering over the shadowed lawn. Promised myself I'd only stop for a moment, but then, in stillness, I saw how many of them there actually were - far more than I'd been able to glimpse while tromping along in my mind.
Stopped finally. Stopped after days, weeks of choosing to be pulled on by the leash of productivity and busyness. Sensed the curvature of the earth in the yard, awoke to the coolness of the breeze touching my skin. The leaves in the far trees rustled, rustled in the wind dancing through them, satisfying music after a long, dry spell of blocking out most ambient outdoor sounds. The apples behind me held silent in their patch of still air. The pullets in the coop pecked against the walls, a quiet, surreal tapping in the dark.
What a fantastic argument our minds are able to present: We are so important on this earth, it is so necessary to devote each second of our time to "getting things done," that we cannot allow ourselves even such a five-minute stillness.
Stopped finally. Stopped after days, weeks of choosing to be pulled on by the leash of productivity and busyness. Sensed the curvature of the earth in the yard, awoke to the coolness of the breeze touching my skin. The leaves in the far trees rustled, rustled in the wind dancing through them, satisfying music after a long, dry spell of blocking out most ambient outdoor sounds. The apples behind me held silent in their patch of still air. The pullets in the coop pecked against the walls, a quiet, surreal tapping in the dark.
What a fantastic argument our minds are able to present: We are so important on this earth, it is so necessary to devote each second of our time to "getting things done," that we cannot allow ourselves even such a five-minute stillness.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Edge
I've been hearing on the radio about two young women who were kayaking in Maine this week, disappeared, and later were both found "unresponsive" in the 48 degree water - dead. First they had not shown up when they were expected to, then their empty kayaks were found, and finally their bodies were found. They were 18 and 20.
With our world-wide media, tales of young people dying come to us all the time, and we can develop a numbness to this information out of necessity. But something about these girls' story struck me deeply. I heard about it when they were simply missing, and then again once their bodies had been recovered. I can imagine them going out happily for their Sunday kayaking, I can imagine a variety of waves, accidents that could have flipped one and then the other into the water, their last moments in this life. And I can imagine the people who love them, mourning them now and forever.
Their deaths came to them with such swiftness; not through an illness in which it could have been anticipated, but just by an accident that happened to befall them both that day. In the morning they were alive, planning an adventure, and later that day their lives were done.
The knowledge of what has happened to these two young women reminds me forcefully, deeply, that we are all right at the edge of death all the time - potential death, at least. Are we not? A gas explosion, a heart attack, food caught in our throats as we eat alone... A few years back, a man in western Mass was walking down the sidewalk when a manhole cover was blown high into the air by a freak explosion in the sewer pipe and landed on him, crushing him. Death is with us, around us every moment, and we simply don't know when it will take us. (Garrison Keillor's chosen poem for today's Writer's Almanac touches this subject, as well.)
This knowledge is a gift: we are straddling the line between life and death at every moment. When this knowing comes to mind, it offers an effortless route to an especially sacred presence. Because if I might die in five minutes (or one minute), then it does not really matter if I get through my to-do list for the day. It matters that I really listen to and look at my boy as he chatters about his world to me. It matters that I drink in the astonishing sheen on the swallow's feathers out the window. That I notice and point out to my boy the gentle way the clouds are moving across our sky. What a precious gift, this awakening to what actually matters, when we are also gifted a little more time to love it all.
With our world-wide media, tales of young people dying come to us all the time, and we can develop a numbness to this information out of necessity. But something about these girls' story struck me deeply. I heard about it when they were simply missing, and then again once their bodies had been recovered. I can imagine them going out happily for their Sunday kayaking, I can imagine a variety of waves, accidents that could have flipped one and then the other into the water, their last moments in this life. And I can imagine the people who love them, mourning them now and forever.
Their deaths came to them with such swiftness; not through an illness in which it could have been anticipated, but just by an accident that happened to befall them both that day. In the morning they were alive, planning an adventure, and later that day their lives were done.
The knowledge of what has happened to these two young women reminds me forcefully, deeply, that we are all right at the edge of death all the time - potential death, at least. Are we not? A gas explosion, a heart attack, food caught in our throats as we eat alone... A few years back, a man in western Mass was walking down the sidewalk when a manhole cover was blown high into the air by a freak explosion in the sewer pipe and landed on him, crushing him. Death is with us, around us every moment, and we simply don't know when it will take us. (Garrison Keillor's chosen poem for today's Writer's Almanac touches this subject, as well.)
This knowledge is a gift: we are straddling the line between life and death at every moment. When this knowing comes to mind, it offers an effortless route to an especially sacred presence. Because if I might die in five minutes (or one minute), then it does not really matter if I get through my to-do list for the day. It matters that I really listen to and look at my boy as he chatters about his world to me. It matters that I drink in the astonishing sheen on the swallow's feathers out the window. That I notice and point out to my boy the gentle way the clouds are moving across our sky. What a precious gift, this awakening to what actually matters, when we are also gifted a little more time to love it all.
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