Archive | January, 2015

walking on the fields of slaves

24 Jan

Closing eyes while facing the setting sun,

over marsh and salty creeks,
provides a primitive script
on the inside of my pink-skinned lids.
i was the cave dweller who carved
notches for the ones I’ve been.
i run my cursor over the alligator skin
encoded with the story of all time,
left here for me –
thinking there is no way
she will miss it, this time.

i see the structure of my mundane thoughts
solid like walls built on each side – but i can
push them back with my
shadowy arms.
my house is
a cardboard house, with folding lines preset
to make it gone in a new york minute.
WOLF may huff and puff –
but i tell him,
put your predatory mind at rest:

i

give you my house
and my piggie flesh too
no need for a scene.

i
listen to the drone of rush hour traffic
while my feet touch the land of original settlers.
blood and sweat in the dirt and air,
they are for dinner, whole.
I am thinking again
and the mind conjures
up a rule that I am only pulled down
by that which i have not healed – what
does that mean?
do I/i remember my days as slave,
as master,
beast and bird?

when i move in the world,

i have become
a piece of the sky
in a sports bra.
there is room for every
crazy thing that i can imagine.
the I has forgotten,

but now i remember

the very next person/animal/plant/or insect that i cross
has chosen to cross my path for a holy encounter.
There is only now to

pray as i enter the post office –
talk to my sliver of chocolate –
and study the morse code of the dishwashers whirring
moving my hips to the swoosh:
no need to escape to the cave
any more.
The cave moves within me
as dark and silent
as can be –
a black hole
in motion –
swallowing
time behind her curving path.

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Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. (not mine)

19 Jan

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. (A Course in Miracles)

These lines could come in any form, any teaching, but the truth of them can set us free. More than the golden rule, this shift in perception is an end of suffering.

While Eden and I watched Divergent this weekend, I was struck with how the protagonist was able to maneuver throughout the film by recognizing that the deadly challenges were not real, and in the moment of that realization, all possibilities opened up and she survived.   While she was having these realizations in simulated environments that felt real, I was thinking how this is true for what we think of as real life.  If nothing real can be threatened, then life’s scary spots, themselves,  are not real in the way we think they are –  what is occurring is not perceived in the right way –

Sometimes in traversing our lives, we feel like unmanned sea craft in stormy and treacherous water, but as we learn to separate from the unreal, the ride gets a bit more interesting and fun.  We can still see the unreal, but the threat is no longer there.  We begin to see the shiny lighthouse beacon beneath a foggy coat of confusion.  Those we meet now can often see that we see them and they stand close to bask in spacious place we share under the umbrella understanding of no threat, ever.  This place feels like, for lack of a better word, love.   Love hands us space,  gives us green lights and printed pamphlets; love parks our cars; love soothes confusion. Love promises all of what we can see, rightly now.  Love helps us move out past the threat of harm.

We can know, for sure, that if we are feeling threatened, then we are dwelling in the unreal world of thoughts.  I may be run-over by a runaway bus tomorrow crossing the street, but still, from this perspective, I was not threatened.  I was just run over by a bus, and the larger picture is even clearer to me, now. 🙂  I may take umbrage to a comment that feels as if it belittles me in some way, but this concern for myself is a fantasy, always.  I may lament the aging of this body, the greying hairs, the stiffing joints, the puffy morning eyes, but through the lens of no threat, ever, I can enjoy the process of living in a changing reality that serves to me the experience of nothing staying the same forever – no stream ever stepped in twice.   Life seems to me to begin here, where losing is winning, and winning is just being.

 

 

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laying it down

12 Jan

 

Today,  in the forest, the sound that echoed all around, even a half an hour into the walk, was that of my busy life.  I was deep into the coming semester’s scheduling and the possible conflicts ahead with the juggling for time in days that have yet to arrive.

The trees, the birds, even the crickets who come out for every warm spell, were not very forgiving of the noises I brought into the woods – they asked me to let it go, already.  They compelled me to sit a while on every bench made of fallen trees.  They told me to listen.  They called to me, endlessly, a distant longing at the edge of my compulsive mental mapping.  I couldn’t stop.  I could not find the wire that connected my ears to my perception – I was lost.  Finally –

One tree stuck his tongue out at me and said, “hey lady,” (sounding a bit like a beastie boy).  “We hear you and all your thoughts, but can you do this?”  and he pointed to his naked branches stretching out in 10,000 different directions.  “Hmmm?  I grew out into this from just a little seed.”

Then next to him, another tree one upped us both.  “Yeah, but can either of you hold onto your green all winter, even in the darkest and coldest of days?”

The heron perched nearby turned his back.  He was above this playground banter.  He glanced back at us over his shoulder.  “Don’t drop down to her level, guys.”

There seemed to be some agreement to let me proceed on my way and to trust me to end my campaign to disturb the peace.  Fields of stalking rice and grass,  rooted in the deepest wisdom of mud,  waved to me was I passed by, oblivious that there could ever be any other way.

The wind at last was able to toss me the rhythm of my breath by the time I had to go.  He had been trying to to pitch it to me for over an hour.  “Nice catch,”   he offered.   I caught that kindness, too.

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sea legs

1 Jan

I have yet to sleep a night on the boat myself, but there were years that I traversed the sea and land, shifting between land legs and sea legs daily.

Now I just go on the boat, switch out the sheets, clean her tiny berths and heads, and make my way to land again.  But even just these short, almost daily traipses onto this water platform give me the shifting feeling everyday.  I’ve always had a bit of an unsteady inner ear.  When I sit still to type this, cozy at my land home kitchen table, the world is still swaying with the rocking of the waves.  I feel movement for hours and days after being on a boat.  What a gift, moment by moment, to be reminded, though on solid land, that nothing is steady or still.  Nothing is permement.  I can remember to hold on to my hat.  I am sure that kansas is a state of mind and that I create a wake on land from the sway of my perceptions.

Our planet is most certainly a spaceship, perhaps moving in a whirling hole behind the sun who is in a hurry to go somewhere.  When I look at stars, I feel like we are allowed on deck of the ship of earth to watch our travels as we hurtle through space.  What an amazing vessel is she, designed so that we do not have to wear seat belts or wait for the captain’s light to move about.

I am not a scientist.   I do not know if this model is right, but I like the way it makes my mind open to the sway of possibilities.  I like to zoom out past my seat and look on us from a new angle.  I like to be a bit unsteady, for then I am prompted to be on my toes, ready for anything.

 

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