Changing Places

All the True Vows (via Hecate)
by David Whyte

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.

“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.” -– Marsha Norman

“The truth is, we are meant to be bountiful and live. The universe will always support affirmative action. Our truest dream for ourselves is always the Goddess’ will for us.” — Julia Cameron

You are just perfect the way you are, and you already have everything you want — you just have to say yes to it and open the door.

When you stop fighting against the flow, the flow stops fighting you, too.

Love is not giving in to all someone’s whims — love is bringing out the best in someone, teaching them to love what is difficult for them. Love what is difficult to love in yourself, and in others, and it will help you to bring out the best in yourself and in others, as well.

A lot of us still think that in order to be creative we need to pen a great piece of fiction, compose a symphony, build a skyscraper or design magical gardens. This isn’t true. Creativity is not restricted to being specifically creative in terms of one area of expertise or talent. The ultimate goal is not to be more creative, but to learn how to live creatively. Simply put, it is much less about what you do with your life; rather, it is how you go about doing it.

Living creatively means approaching each moment as a new opportunity. It’s about exploring, trusting your instincts, and owning and expressing your unique style. It means being true to your needs, experimenting, taking risks, staying flexible, and not always having to rush to conclusion. A person living creatively is always pushing towards new growth, as the psychologist Rollo May says, not without fear, but in spite of it.

via Digging Deep: Creativity.

It was a pleasure to meet you Saturday.
I have been working on the first ash bowl. It’s a natural edge.
The wood is still wet. It will be a few days until I can get a finish on it.
When I do it would be a pleasure to give one like this to you.
The wood on this piece should warp as it cures giving it character.

Allan Schiro
San Diego Wood Turner

“And whatever your path is at this moment, every single step is equal in substance. Every step actualizes the self. Every moment of practice is always the koan of having to agree to your condition, to bring unlimited friendliness to what you are, just as you are, right now. Even your obnoxiousness, your failures, your rank inadequacy is it. Your best revenge is to include it as you.” — Susan Murphy, via Whiskey River

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” –- Ansel Adams

“If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: “He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.”” — Epictetus

“Let no one say that he is a follower of Gandhi. It is enough that I should be my own follower. I know what an inadequate follower I am of myself, for I cannot live up to the convictions I stand for. You are no followers but fellow students, fellow pilgrims, fellow seekers, fellow workers.” — Mohandas Gandhi

The highest Virtue seems empty;
Great purity seems sullied;
A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate;
The strength of Virtue seems frail;
Real Virtue seems unreal.

- – Tao Te Ching 41

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be? — – Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Speech 1994

Actions in life can be reduced to two factors: positioning and timing. If we are not in the right place at the right time, we cannot possibly take advantage of what life has to offer us. Almost anything is appropriate if an action is in accord with the time and the place. But we must be vigilant and prepared. Even if the time and the place are right, we can still miss our chance if we do not notice the moment, if we act inadequately, or if we hamper ourselves with doubts and second thoughts. When life presents an opportunity, we must be ready to seize it without hesitation or inhibition. Position is useless without awareness. If we have both, we make no mistakes. — Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

I am feeling a bit inadequate today. As much as I try to follow Tao, to be unattached to things and people and results, some days it is too much for me, and I fail to live up my promises. I really hate letting other people down, or letting my impulsive actions become a problem for someone. Some days I am simply not the person that I want to be and know that I can be, and usually am. This weekend has been a difficult one for me. Between being stupid and losing my beautiful ash tree, it’s been a really tough time. There have been good moments — wonderful dinners out with my husband, and a beautiful moonlit evening at La Jolla cove, with one of the most gorgeous full moons I’ve ever seen in my life. But my inadequacies are overwhelming the good things for me right now.

This time around, we are the tree-killers. Sadly our big ash got too big and was threatening to take out the entire yard, so we decided it was time to take it out. The tree-trimmer was glad for the work, the woodworkers are glad for the wood, which they pronounced wonderful and promised to make wonderful bowls from, one of which I hope to see in about nine months or so when they wood cures. Others will be glad for the firewood, the garden will be glad for the sunlight.

But, I am sad today, to have to say goodbye to a friend….

Wassily Kandinsky. The Blue Mountain

Marietta Ganapin. Untitled (Blue Mountain by Vasily Kandinsky), 2004 Paper collage

Both yoga and art aim at the same thing, that is, to re-establish our personal connection with the world around us according to our own inner creativity. To render body and mind a conduit through which the creative energy can flow freely, unimpeded by outer restrictions, in the trust that this energy, being a part of the universal energy, is ultimately pure and joyful. — Dona Halleman

This is the work of sauca, “to render body and mind a conduit through which the creative energy can flow freely”. It is a noble endeavor. The asanas do much of the work for us.They cleanse the organs, the central nervous system, and the mind, while strengthening the muscular-skeletal system. Much can be accomplished through the asanas, but not all. For each of us, sauca is a journey of discovery. What works for you? Dairy, no dairy; meat, no meat; lots of sunshine, very little sun; lots of stimulation, or quiet solitude; long ambles, or power walks. We each find our own way to health and balance. Once again, we are on the path that leads to truth, and the means for determining the truth is our own individual experience. What practices render you a conduit through which the creative energy can flow freely? — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat.

Marietta Ganapin is an avid museum and gallery visitor, and her relationship to specific works of art is highly personal and reverential. Her creative method is an expression of her spiritual connection to artwork that she loves. After having viewed the work of art–whether a painting, a sculpture, or decorative object–many times, she then gathers scores or even hundreds of gift-shop postcards or museum brochures which reproduce it. Using a hand-held hole punch and scissors, Ganapin creates a palette of color, pattern and form by repeatedly cutting specific areas of the reproduced image. These hole punches and cut-outs are then used as the building blocks of her designs. With great care and attention to detail, the artist transforms these elements into intricately detailed mandalas. At first, the viewer is dazzled by the obsessive and precise execution in these colorful and beautiful works. Slowly, recognizable details from the source material reveal themselves: a shank of hair in Roy Lichtenstein’s Stepping Out reads as a yellow arabesque in the concentric composition; the eyes and lips of a statuette of the Egyptian god Amun become a ring of dimensional, abstracted forms within the inner rings of the mandala structure. Yet the resultant artworks transcend mere appropriation. Ganapin’s labor-intensive execution and reverence toward her subject parallels the devotional activity of a Buddhist monk creating a sand mandala. As Ganapin has noted, “A symbol of healing, wholeness, totality and spirituality, the mandala inspires contemplation and meditation. For me, what more fitting framework than that of the mandala in reinterpreting other works of art.”

(I love this meme so much I am stealing it!)

I am not in the mood for Christmas, even though the weather is cooperating by feeling very cold and winterish, with more rain on the way tomorrow. I am in the midst of reading yet another David Rosenfelt book, “Bury the Lead”. I started reading this series because of the golden retrievers he writes about. And found myself enjoying the writing, so I kept reading them. I’ve gotten pretty much the whole series now off of paperbackswap.com. At the moment it is beautiful and sunny out — and 52 degrees, which is damn cold for San Diego, although I’m sure it would feel nice elsewhere about now. I’m having fun finding out about new (to me) music from friends, using Google Wave among other means (I have four wave invites left if anyone wants one!). I would appreciate new music suggestions, since I’m getting a bit tired of Journey, which I’ve been playing a lot lately. I also listen to Foreigner, Dave Koz, David Benoit, Peter White, and about a bazillion other rock and jazz artists. I had some amazing connections with Alzheimer’s patients yesterday while we were doing pet therapy — one man in particular who has never really responded to me before in the last couple of years suddenly seemed to think I was someone he knew, and began getting very interested in me and grabbed my arm and was talking to me and wanting to touch my face. It was intense and strange, but I just kind of went with it. I recently got the haircut so perhaps I somehow reminded him of someone else now. But it’s interesting to see people who are usually very out of it suddenly coming back into touch with the world, even if it isn’t quite our world they are in touch with. It does make me realize how much we really each live in our own world, and how our perception of it changes the way we interact with it. I learn a lot from pet therapy work….

OK, perhaps I’m just being Scrooge-like, but I simply can’t get into it this year. My kids are grown up, there’s little incentive to decorate things that then just have to be un-decorated later on, and the money situation, while better than most people’s is not the greatest. There’s no company holiday parties, since they have little profit and are preferring to spend it on the people who work there, which is understandable and fine.

Maybe we’ve forgotten how to have a good time without spending a lot of money. I used to love all that stuff even when we had no money. But these days, I go in the stores and just see more cheap crap from China I don’t need. The most fun I’ve had so far was going to an artist’s sale and shopping for jewelry, pottery, hand-woven goods and the like. But those kind of sales are few and far between. We end up doing most of our shopping online, and having things shipped, which hardly feels like shopping for anyone. The kids have their college finals and so they aren’t into the spirit yet, either.

The most fun I’ll have is probably taking Darwin out for pet therapy, maybe putting his Santa hat on him and wearing mine. We may take some peppermints to hand out, maybe print some photos if him in his Santa hat.

But really, I’m just ready to celebrate the Solstice and Christmas, and move along into the next year.

What are you doing to get in the mood this year? I’ve put my Christmas music on my ipod, but it’s not working….

“Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid,” by Jan Vermeer

She withdrew into herself,
First writing just for one,
Then touching thousands.
She incarnated ghosts, hurt, and joy
Into paper-and-ink stories of wonder.

One author said, “I can get rid of anything by writing about it,” meaning that the process of externalization could liberate him from the pain in his soul. That realization produced a delicious dichotomy; to free himself: or to hold on to both joys and tortures by remaining silent about them.

Writers write because they must: They need to express something from deep within themselves. They hear voices that others do not. They listen urgently, and they must communicate what they hear.

People feel Tao in the same way that writers feel something unique. In the process of listening for mysterious voices and expressing the wonder that comes is a magic akin to the perfection of Tao.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. — Lord Byron

“I started with all the handicaps, incapabilities and helplessness. I didn’t talk when I was twenty. I taught myself by the act of writing.” –Anais Nin

“Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one;
it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.” — Henry Miller

I don’t think there is anything that mysterious about Tao, or about writing. They are very natural things to me. What I see is more that most people are separated from writing about the things they really feel deeply or even sometimes from knowing they feel those things at all. We live in a very shallow sort of society where we are rather actively discouraged from thinking about anything too deeply or expressing our inner thoughts and emotions, and most people come to internalize this and guard their own thoughts from any depth of feeling. Yet we admire writers who are able to make us feel, and end up caring more at times about fictional characters than those in our own lives. Why? Because we see the depth of feeling displayed in those characters, while those in our own lives are trained not to show their own depths.

I’ve lost three friends for the great sin of caring about them too deeply and expressing what I felt. I would have been far better off to pour my feelings into my journals and never have told them what I felt for them. I think a lot of writers write because they can’t express these things in their own lives, so they create fictional characters where they can share their thoughts and feelings.

Tao is about a deep connection with the process of life itself. Once you experience that, you find it everywhere, in everything. It isn’t possible to be separated from it, although some days the feeling is certainly deeper than other days. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to write well enough to be able to express that feeling.

(apologies for all the reposts lately — I’m involved in other projects and not thinking a lot about the blog lately)

Just got back to San Diego. House is trashed and the spa was open and full of leaves. The twenty-something couldn’t understand why we were so annoyed with him, of course, and wanted things cleaned up “right now”. Hmm. Thought we had raised him better than that…

Oh well, we are home. Cleanup tomorrow.

funny-pictures-cat-has-writers-block

I’m off to Phoenix for a week to sort out family affairs. My disabled sister broke her leg and I need to make sure things are ok for her when she gets out of the rehab facility and back home. And my disabled nephew just moved into a new facility, so need to check on him too. Then of course might as well visit the boy in Tucson and my husband’s family…

Hopefully when I get back I’ll be inspired to post more often, once things are back in order….

“Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed.”
- Jeanette Winterson

via Whiskey River

“Artifacts are the physical manifestation of dreams, ideas, and great deeds … some point to successes, some point to great mistakes.” — Bruce Wells

“Perhaps we will learn how small differences in the code of life enabled us — but not chimpanzees — to cook soufflés, create symphonies, translate our own voyages into maps, build ever more complicated artifacts, and write plays that reflect the social intricacies of our lives,” — Marc Hauser

“The muddy waters roiled by Katrina have no doubt flooded some legendary musical locales and wiped out irreplaceable artifacts of New Orleans music. Among the hardest hit areas were the poverty-stricken African-American neighborhoods, where the New Orleans musical traditions are all but woven into the tattered but colorful fabric of everyday life. But the music of Crescent City as well as the people who create it — and the spirit, soul, originality, independence and distinctive locality of that art and the musicians who create it — cannot be washed away, no matter what the category hurricane or depth of flood. It’s going to take some time, but it will come back … We’ve got to put it back because it’s so involved with the local economy and the United States.” — Art Neville

I think for most of us our art is stolen away by what we perceive as our lack of time, the importance of our daily lives or the habits of our routines. Our culture doesn’t place a high priority on making time for art. And yet, many of us persist, with a bit of music, a snatch of song, even just a thought of what we might paint or draw or photograph if we got a moment. Taking the time to create those artifacts in the real world might be beyond us, but perhaps we can start to sneak it back in again, a tiny bit at a time. I love that our new gadgets and phones and toys are beginning to contain cameras, so we can record those fleeting moments that grab our attention. Perhaps next will be those ultra portable touch pads to sketch on, or ways to record our songs on the fly, or create spontaneous poetry slams as we perform and record our poetry wherever we like. Will our culture begin to value more creative work from all of us, let us weave it into the fabric of our daily lives, or just keep honoring the few who can successfully make art their lives’ work?

So, I turn 51 tomorrow. Hubby turns 50 on Wednesday. Last year for our birthdays, we got a new President. Best birthday present ever!

In the last year my mood has gone from hopeful to somewhat frustrated, as at times it seems nothing changed with the healthcare legislation crawling along. But everything did, really. It struck me watching Mad Men last night, where the episode focused on the Kennedy assassination (a great show if you don’t watch it, and their best episode ever last night.) The episode really brought out how everything changed in that moment, how people changed their minds about how safe the world was, about their own life goals, about what was important to them. Children learned their parents could not keep their world safe, watching the drama unfold on television. Like 9/11, like those few minutes last year hearing Obama had won, the world changed forever. I was working the polls last year, and they went from incredibly busy to completely empty almost in a few moments, as many who had eagerly sought to vote decided it was over when Pennsylvania was called. Which sadly probably really hurt the gay marriage issue in California. But those who still came, just to vote for Obama anyway, they warmed my heart, bringing their children in to watch them vote, to be part of that moment and that change.

The changes in our own lives seem to come in moments as well — weddings, birth, anniversaries, birthdays. And death, accidents, injuries, and illness on the other side. But they really take time and sometimes are a very long time in the making. I set goals for myself this last year: losing weight, getting in shape, the usual. I haven’t lost weight, but am in better shape and take better care of myself in many ways. Still, it seems that no big goals were reached for me personally. We celebrate the big changes, the big moments, not realizing how we are working towards our goals along the way. We fail to celebrate the little, small steps we make forward, and sometimes, we forget to focus on those moments in between, the space between the big events.

I think about where I will be next year at this time, wonder what changes will take place in that year. But really, I wonder what I need to do, moment to moment, to live my life as fully as possible and to be myself as completely as possible. Those moments are the ones that will lead me to wherever it is I end up next year. I sit right now in a golden sunbeam, looking at a sticker on my board next to the computer that says “Yes, We Did — Together We Made History.” I don’t know what my equivalent will be for next year. There are other things posted on my board — the photo of the beach in Kauai where I released my parents’ ashes, the photo of a hotel in Ireland where we spent a memorable vacation, cards and notes from friends, reminders to be compassionate, to be who I am, to believe in the possibilities, to be aware of my direction in life, to act from the heart. Two golden retrievers lay by my feet. Stacks of books are at hand, my computer, my camera, and a birthday card asking, “Is this the birthday when you start asking yourself life’s big questions?”

Yes, yes, it is.

Great piece on Van Gogh’s letters at BiblioOdyssey — and more at linesandcolors…

“The feeling for and love of nature always strike a chord sooner or later with people who take an interest in art. The duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others.

But working with an eye to saleability isn’t exactly the right way in my view, but rather is cheating art lovers. The true artists didn’t do that; the sympathy they received sooner or later came because of their sincerity. I know no more than that, and don’t believe I need to know any more.”
{Vincent Van Gogh b. 1853 d. 29 July 1890}

“And we sometimes lack the desire to throw ourselves head first into art again and to build ourselves up for that. We know we’re cab-horses and that it’ll be the same cab we’re going to be harnessed to again. And so we don’t feel like doing it and we’d prefer to live in a meadow with a sun, a river, the company of other horses who are also free, and the act of generation. And perhaps in the final account your heart condition comes partly from there; it wouldn’t greatly surprise me. We no longer rebel against things, we’re not resigned either — we’re ill and it’s not going to get any better — and we can’t do anything specific about it. I don’t know who called this condition being struck by death and immortality.

The cab we drag along must be of use to people we don’t know. But you see, if we believe in the new art, in the artists of the future, our presentiment doesn’t deceive us. When good père Corot said a few days before he died: ‘last night I saw in my dreams landscapes with entirely pink skies’, well, didn’t they come, those pink skies, and yellow and green into the bargain, in Impressionist landscapes? All this is to say there are things one senses in the future and that really come about.”

BibliOdyssey: Handshakes in Thought.

This is a post from April 2006 that I’m reposting, since I was just contacted by Elizabeth Letts who is writing a new book about Snowman!  Elizabeth writes:

I am so pleased and excited to see all of these posts about Snowman and Harry de Leyer.

I am currently working on a new full-length book about Snowman and Harry– it is such an inspirational story that I hope a whole new generation will learn about this wonderful tale. The book is currently titled THE CINDERELLA HORSE and it is coming from Random House in 2011. It is a love affair with Snowman, with horse stories, and with the wonderful world of show jumping in the 1950s and the old National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden…

I would LOVE to hear from anyone who has personal memories of Snowman, including anyone who remembers watching him compete.

Please contact me at ElizabethLetts@gmail.com

Please contact Elizabeth if you can share any information about Snowman or Harry!!

_____________________________________________________________________

For one of those days when lately I’ve felt like an old nag myself…

Snowman, 1992 Show Jumping Hall of Fame Inductee

Snowman’s Wikipedia page.

Breyer Horse Model of Snowman

The Abundant Life

The abundant life is within our reach if only we will drink deeply of living water, fill our hearts with love, and create of our lives a masterpiece.

Harry de Leyer was late to the auction on that snowy day in 1956, and all of the good horses had already been sold. The few that remained were old and spent and had been bought by a company that would salvage them.

Harry, the riding master at a girls’ school in New York, was about to leave when one of these horses—an uncared-for, gray gelding with ugly-looking wounds on its legs—caught his eye. The animal still bore the marks that had been made by a heavy work harness, evidence to the hard life he had led. But something about him captured Harry’s attention, so he offered $80 for him.

It was snowing when Harry’s children saw the horse for the first time, and because of the coat of snow on the horse’s back, the children named him “Snowman.”

Harry took good care of the horse, which turned out to be a gentle and reliable friend—a horse the girls liked to ride because he was steady and didn’t startle like some of the others. In fact, Snowman made such rapid improvement that a neighbor purchased him for twice what Harry had originally paid.

But Snowman kept disappearing from the neighbor’s pasture—sometimes ending up in adjoining potato fields, other times back at Harry’s. It appeared that the horse must have jumped over the fences between the properties, but that seemed impossible—Harry had never seen Snowman jump over anything much higher than a fallen log.

But eventually, the neighbor’s patience came to an end, and he insisted Harry take back the horse.

For years, Harry’s great dream had been to produce a champion jumping horse. He’d had moderate success in the past, but in order to compete at the highest levels, he knew he would have to buy a pedigreed horse that had been specifically bred to jump. And that kind of pedigree would cost far more than he could afford.

Snowman was already getting old—he was eight when Harry had purchased him—and he had been badly treated. But, apparently, Snowman wanted to jump, so Harry decided to see what the horse could do.

What Harry saw made him think that maybe his horse had a chance to compete.

In 1958, Harry entered Snowman in his first competition. Snowman stood among the beautifully bred, champion horses, looking very much out of place. Other horse breeders called Snowman a “flea-bitten gray.”

But a wonderful, unbelievable thing happened that day.

Snowman won!

Harry continued to enter Snowman in other competitions, and Snowman continued to win.

Audiences cheered every time Snowman won an event. He became a symbol of how extraordinary an ordinary horse could be. He appeared on television. Stories and books were written about him.

As Snowman continued to win, one buyer offered $100,000 for the old plow horse, but Harry would not sell. In 1958 and 1959, Snowman was named “Horse of the Year.” Eventually, the gray gelding—who had once been marked for sale to a low bidder—was inducted into the show jumping Hall of Fame.
– Rutherford George Montgomery, Snowman (1962)

For many, Snowman was much more than a horse. He became an example of the hidden, untapped potential that lies within each of us.

YiXing Teapots’ Great Grandmother

Teapot is now a collection of the NanJing Museum.

The sun rose and set today in twelve hours.
We plucked golden pears from arching branches.
Climbing a thousand steps to a rustic temple,
We made our offerings to the gods.
At nightfall, we sat in warm companionship.
A crescent moon joined our circle.
Dipping water from the silver-braided stream,
We set it bubbling in an earthenware pot.
It’s not easy to brew good tea,
But this teapot has a venerable history:
A scholar once pawned all his books for it.
Now it imparts the flavor of antiquity.

Autumn equinox is the time to reflect upon life. If we have enjoyed a bountiful harvest, we express our thanks. If the year has been difficult so far, then we are happy for what we do have and resolve to do better once the chance comes. The appreciation of life does not require wealth or plenty. It requires only gratitude for the beauty of the world.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.” — Dale Carnegie

“Appreciation of life itself, becoming suddenly aware of the miracle of being alive, on this planet, can turn what we call ordinary life into a miracle.” — Dan Wakefield

My year has been a good one, full of a great deal of bounty and a good harvest. I very much appreciate where I am now, entering the autumn period of my life. I have two wonderful sons, a great husband, a small house I enjoy and a garden, two beautiful golden retrievers and a lovely furry cat. Twenty-five years of marriage were marked with a wonderful anniversary trip to Paris.

And I’m grateful that I’ve finally woken up to see the beauty of the world, and to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of a good cup of tea, companionship, and crescent moons.

It’s a tough time of year for me. Six years ago on September 25th, my mother passed away, and this time of year brings up many of those memories. Passing into autumn now feels like truly passing into the autumn of my life, bringing with it those feelings of losing my parents. I retreat into myself, and am sad and quiet, contemplating, and others don’t see why, so I prefer to be alone when I am feeling this way. But I also appreciate the many good memories, the wonderful examples of life I learned from my parents, and that I can carry on some of their work in my own way, through my pet therapy work and helping my kids become bright, creative scientists and computer geeks. I think my parents would appreciate who I have become, and who they are as well.

As good a definition as any….

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

via Carl Jung and the Holy Grail of the Unconscious – NYTimes.com.

Autumn Wind in Gemstone Trees, Tang Dynasty, China

In late summer, heaven’s breath is damply hot.
It smothers the earth with dullness.
Suddenly, thick clouds gather:
A wave of polar air passes like a frigid rake.
Acorns fall like bullets,
And a new wind breaks through.

When the air is hot and humid, there is a feeling of dullness and stagnation. Everyone is oppressed by lassitude. As the seasons begin changing, fresh air comes from the arctic. Clouds that have been building up begin to dispense rain, and damp air is exchanged for fresh, cool breezes. At night, the heavens are changing so quickly that lightening flashes from colliding clouds, and thunder heralds the revolving of the skies.

The same is true of human life. If the heavens cannot endure stagnation for long, how can stagnation last with us? If we find ourselves blocked and frustrated in life, we must look for the inevitable outlet. Nothing is permanent, so how can our obstacles last? We need to look for the first opportunity to set things moving again.

On the other hand, sometimes stagnation comes from our own laziness or incompetence. In this case, then it is we who must show initiative and stimulate a breakthrough in dull circumstances. As soon as we see a chance, we must act. Unless we engage ourselves and events fully, we cannot expect to act sufficiently.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind.” — Vernon Howard

“Oh, my God, this amazing cool breeze is coming through my window and the sun is shining. I’m happy.” — Liv Tyler

“O sweet September, the first breezes bring the dry leaf’s rustle and the squirrel’s laughter, the cool fresh air whence health and vigor spring and promise of exceeding joy hereafter.” — George Arnold

“We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things… but there are times when we stop. We sit sill. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.” — James Carroll

“I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.” — Nicholas Sparks

I’ve been fighting my obstacles and stagnation for a while now, waiting for this to happen and that to happen, to have time, I tell myself. For what, I don’t really know. But, I have time, I just don’t have motivation. I need to get back to my art, back to my reading projects and writing. Yes, I can open the windows now and feel the cool breezes of autumn beginning to blow, feel how refreshingly cool and crisp the air is becoming. And it is energizing, to some extent. I still seem stuck in my laziness, though, my tiredness. The mundane tasks of life get done, but not much else, nothing really grand or wonderful. But then, I have to come back to the Zen saying:

“Before enlightenment – eat rice, clean bowl.
After enlightenment – eat rice, clean bowl.”

Perhaps, like children, we simply need to realize the grand and wonderful in everyday things – the flowers, the animals, the poetry of life, our daydreams, the sunsets and breezes. Is there really anything so much more wonderful than that?

This is a poem I write a few years ago, inspired by my own children:

Choices

There isn’t black or white
Anymore today,
I suddenly woke up
To a thousand shades of gray.
I’ve lost the either/or,
And now forever more
I will know there is more
I have yet to explore.

I looked into your eyes
And I saw the past
And then I realized
It goes much too fast.
You’re not a child now
I’ll turn around and how
You’ll have grown
And have flown
And I’ll never have known.

I’ve got to find a way
To make this moment stay!
I’ve got to find the time
To really make it mine.
I look behind me and it’s gone
I’ve got to carry on
And find the path
That takes me back…

It’s there in your eyes
It’s such a surprise
To see the world again
As if it were new!
The joy that you show to me
Now you have set me free
And I see that at last
I can reach to the past.

And so I carry on
With the chores today,
But somehow now I know
There is more to say.
I’ll find my voice again
I’ll have a choice again
You have shown my how
I know even now.

That life is what you make it -
The chance is there so take it!
And when you turn around,
Then at last you’ve found
There’s an open door
Into nevermore …
But what you’ve done here
Will not disappear.

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs–all this resinous, unretractable earth.

– Jane Hirshfield
(thanks to Whiskey River)

See those trees
Bend in the wind
I feel they’ve got a lot more sense than me
You see I try to resist — “Rubberband Girl”, Kate Bush

There was an old man who began an orchard upon his retirement. Everyone laughed at him. Why plant trees? They told him that he would never live to see a mature crop. Undaunted, he planted anyway, and he has seen them blossom and has eaten their fruit. We all need that type of optimism. That is the innocence and hope of childhood.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

In the beginning, all things are hopeful. We prepare ourselves to start anew. Though we may be intent on the magnificent journey ahead, all things are contained in this first moment of our optimism, our faith, our resolution, our innocence.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

A flower’s fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile,
available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar.
Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigor, life-force,
all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth.
We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages,
we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire.

– Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.” — Virginia Woolf

“When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.” — Samuel Ullman

“Optimism is a seed sown in the soil of faith; pessimism is a seed hoarded in the vault of doubt.” — William Arthur Ward

I don’t think there’s anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that’s because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that’s such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life.” — John Clarke, Calendar Girls