If She Could Take a Picture of Herself Taking a Bow...

... she would.

She just hasn't learned that trick yet. Her legs are too short, I think.

Thank you, one and all.

I Know I Said I Was Taking a Break, But...

...as I sit here, the window open beside me, I am listening to the Barred Owl saying over and over, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you too?" just like my brother said it does. In almost twenty-one years of living at three different locations in the Pacific Northwest, I have never once heard that, though I've always lived surrounded by dense woods.

Somehow I need to announce this to the blogosphere, you who have witnessed my journey. I cannot describe the awe I feel. I know owls exist. Knew it before. They just never existed for me before that (near infamous) sighting in Kopachuck.

Thank you for being the (sometimes hilarious) support in this very strange and mystical-seeming journey. The fact that the Barred Owl found me here tonight feels like it is the complete circle.

I'm still planning on returning to the blogosphere, but not just yet. Know, in the meantime, I am at peace in my PEAS (Post-Ecstatic Anticipation Syndrome).

Cynthia

Oops, Forgot Something

Whenever I leave anywhere I inevitably have to return for what I forgot. This makes all goodbyes anti-climactic, which in turn makes them so much more bearable. I don't like goodbyes one bit, and often won't even say them in the real world, so why should the blogosphere be different? I used to say, "Thank you so much and I'm sorry for everything," but now I'm not so often sorry for anything.

Anyhow, my son just sent me the link he created for the PDF file of the story I've mentioned several times by Gina Berriault, "Who Is It Can Tell Me Who I Am?"

Don't worry. The title does not mean to suggest a contest. (Although a whole lot of heart-shaped rocks, leaves, pieces of bark, etc., will be awarded to the winner.) Really, I'll figure it out myself, one of these days. Besides, Jung says, "If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions you get rid of the self along with it," and I'm not quite ready to do the ladder, Jacob. (Anyhow, didn't Mark Twain say, "Heaven for clime; hell for company"? My Rascal soul knows just where it's going.)

Even though it's not a contest, it is, however, a test. As in, if you ever plan on being my friend again in any Mixed Reality you'd better read it or else I'm not going to play any more. I'll take my teddy bears and go home. So please read it and tell me if I'm wrong, that it's a profoundly moral tale.

My son says it's a file on Adobe Reader, which can be downloaded for free, if you have a mind to. Let me know if you can't access it and I'll either send it or personally hand-deliver.

Thanks, Nathaniel Daniel Glockenspiel - I love you with every beat of my ticker.

I seem to have exhausted my capacities. At a really wonderful Branford Marsalis concert last night at the Bellevue Jazz Festival, I realized again how subtle is the art of jazz, how reliant upon the finest, most attentive cuing in to each other. But how can we possibly be that finely attuned to each other in the blogosphere? We are all merely projections. The riffs are like the parallel play of children, sometimes innocent, and sometimes, regrettably, hurtful, the way children's play can be.

How can we know things before we know them? How can we know and not know (you know, Lee's River) such crucial truths about ourselves at the same time? It's the shadow aspect, perhaps, of my invocation of Heraclitus. Everything is both a good thing and a bad thing, and I don't get to get just the catalyzing complexity of contradiction, I also have to deal with its cacophony, a cacophony I myself might contribute to. Even the legacy of my name, my wish always to synthesize, makes me my own worst enemy at times. I feel like Clotho, one of the three Fates, frantically trying to spin the very (too many) threads that I'm simultaneously trying to weave.

Which formulation I much prefer to the "we're building the plane as we fly it" cliche, given my fear of flying.

At the beautiful new YMCA in town, every day there is a different quote written on a white board at the door. Yesterday's quote was from Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Men are not prisoners of fate, but prisoners of their own minds.

I'm imagining that applies to the fair sex as well.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle posits that we change events even as we observe them. One of my deepest held principles is to do no harm. Does that mean I should cease observing?

If this is truly a Jupiter-Capricorn dilemma (astrology and reincarnation are quantum logical leaps for us all) perhaps I need just to pause. I keep finding myself thinking "the center will not hold," and can't for the life of me remember the source. Nor can I even pursue the clue.

I know about myself that I always must understand what I feel before I allow myself to feel it. The understanding is essential. Lately I have been trying to tell myself something, and I can't hear it. I am guessing it is about my mother, but that is merely the deepest stratum.

We need Mother Earth more than ever.

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bush beside
you are not lost.

Is it true Albert Einstein said the above?

I am going to try to stand still for a bit. There's a kind of momentum to blogging, like a river, that impels one. A part of me fears it will not be the same river when I return. But I know, of course, that we can never step into the same river twice. No matter how lovely and treasured it is.

For now my "words must stay unsaid."

Holding in Compassion

The photograph above is to protect you from the photograph that will follow. I didn't want yellow to be as implicated in desecration as it would seem it will shortly be.

Having so extolled the power of love in my last post, I know that my task today is inevitable. It is one I have been avoiding for a while, but if this blog is truly to be any guidance to my children and their children, I need to level.

Interesting choice of phrases, that, particularly in view of this:



There is always a Shadow, always. It will fall. And is it a good thing, or is it a bad thing?

Yesterday, when Karma and I were returning to Pt. Defiance Park (we never made it; I'm more of a pacifist than a rebel), we drove by this section of the road. It isn't where I saw the Barred Owl, but it's surely some creatures' homes, and in fact the bulldozer operator, a very nice man who has lived here almost forty years, told me that there was an eagle's nest nearby but now it's the "county's" property.

I don't much like the eagle in terms of its nationalistic symbolism, but when we lived in Alaska (where I was born, oddly, in Kodiak, but only lived for a year) I saw and heard a very different side. The eagle's song is far sweeter than is reconcilable with its image. You can hear it here.

But Devastation occurs. Both with human and natural causes. And the house I live in at this very moment displaced that which was wild, raw and beautiful. A place that belonged to itself, no one else. Once.

Chief Seattle is said to have spoken these words (taken from Earth Prayers from around the World):

This we know
The earth does not belong to us;
we belong to the earth.

But we inevitably lay claim, each of us, and in so doing, are capable of harm. So it is hypocritical of me to condemn the devastation we witness of the woods around here every day. It is parallel to my eating chicken and fish. I could never personally kill them, but I benefit from their sacrifice.

Shortly after meeting up with the Barred Owl, Karma and I came upon this:



I have no idea what might have happened to this little mole. There did not appear to be any injury. It was just lying on the path, still somewhat soft to the touch, so it must have died recently. At least I am certain neither Karma nor I played a role in its death.

I was shaken by this. Its perfectly formed little paws were almost too vulnerable to be witnessed. But I who have spent countless hours scooping up ants and returning them to the outdoors, catching flies with a butterfly net, transferring even the hairiest of spiders in a specially-designated cup to select spots in the garden, raising baby birds from infancy, taking in entire clans of orphaned cats and finding them homes, stopping on busy freeways on dark, rainy nights hoping to entice stray dogs into my car (and once locking myself out of my running car - before cellphones, mind you) - I cannot stop if I see something dead or injured on the road.

Death. I never (or seldom) talk about death, though I deeply believe in Plato's injunction to Practice Dying. I do, all the time, I just don't write about it. I have rehearsed with both my children what to do in the event of one of us dying without the others of us around (it is: as a last conscious wish avow the intention of continuing in consciousness with each other after death), but we've only attended one funeral, though many we know have died. We avoid funerals. I'm not convinced our ceremonial traditions serve anyone all that well. But their grandfathers are both likely to die in the near future. What do we make of that?



When they were little, I read Nat and Amira "The Mountains of Tibet," by Mordicai Gerstein. It is a book I wish every parent would read to their children, because I think it is the most consoling of all perspectives on death. In it, shortly after being introduced to a young boy who lived in Tibet, he grows up, grows old, and dies. About six pages into the book. It is a simply shocking moment.

But then he has a choice. In a series of beautiful pictures and conversations with a Voice, he gets to decide what he will reincarnate as next.

I had a black cat named Holmes for 18 years. When she died, and I was crying as I buried her, Nat, who was four years old, said, "Don't cry, Mommy. She became the night."

When Amira was asked to draw a picture of herself in first grade, her teacher called me later, very concerned, saying she thought I should know that my daughter had duly drawn a very nice face but then colored it all brown. When her teacher asked her who it was, Amira said, very matter of factly, "Oh, that's me in another life when I was a black person."

Children take very naturally to the idea of reincarnation. It suits their intuition about the magical, ever-transformable nature of everything. And how is it any less plausible a vision than heaven or hell? If you ask me, we have both heaven and hell right where we live, every moment, every where, on the planet. Let's let children believe in the power of transformation, in the connection of all beings. I think it would contribute to a more moral universe, take us beyond the dualities of black and white, dark and light, bad and good.

Jotun Hein writes from the journal Nature, in the book Mapping Human History by Steve Olson:

“Had you entered any village on earth in around 3,000 B. C., the first person you would have met would probably be your ancestor,” Hein marveled. "It also means that all of us have ancestors of every color and creed. Every Palestinian suicide bomber has Jews in his past. Every Sunni Muslim in Iraq is descended from at least one Shiite. And every Klansman’s family has African roots. How can this be?"

Olson adds, that as of either 5,000 B. C. or as late as 1 A. D. there is one common ancestor for all human beings.

I cannot help but think we would all be kinder to each other if we truly believed that. Metempsychosis or a belief in reincarnation allows for an inclusivity that I believe would benefit not just humankind but the natural world, for how likely would we be to permit the wholesale leveling of our planet if we truly believed we too were one of those creatures, or would be in our next life?

Someone once said there are two emotions: love, and fear. We act out of one or the other.

I wrapped the little mole in leaves, and set him in some brush on the side of the path. It occurred to me that Barred Owl would have hunted it. The natural world is hardly the world of whimsy and light I represent it to be in my Words from the Northwest Woods.



No, it isn't entirely the world of whimsy and light. There is Shadow. But Karma and I stood in the woods that were deracinated, above, and stood on the path by our leaf-shrouded mole, and we asked that all dying things return to Mother Earth, our first mother, our most blessed one.

And we prayed:

May I and all beings

be free from pain and sorrow.

May I and all beings

be held in compassion.

May I and all beings

be reconciled.

May I and all beings

be at peace.

Live in joy, in love,

Even among those who hate.

Live in joy, in health,

Even among the afflicted.

Live in joy, in peace,

Even among the troubled.

Look within, be still.

Free from fear and attachment,

Know the sweet joy of the way.

Four Beginnings, as an Example of Overdetermination

(Image above courtesy of Paul W. Carlson of M B Fractals.)

Although I loved reading Freud, I didn't much buy into his schtick, for the most part. I was a born at a very Jung age. But among the Freudian concepts I've really subscribed to (I'm remembering here when I was fourteen and thought it was pronounced "Frood") is the concept of overdetermination, which Wikipedia is sparing me an hours-long trek into "The Interpretation of Dreams" by giving this definition: the idea that a single observed effect is determined by multiple causes at once (any one of which alone might be enough to account for the effect).

Be warned. I haven't written much in my previous posts so I get to write twice as much tonight. (Is that like saying if you take two showers in one day, you don't have to take one tomorrow?)

Beginning 1.

I woke up yesterday and today to the rain. Well, actually, so did everyone else in the vicinity, so I guess it isn't personal. I found myself reciting "Il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la..." What? I couldn't for the life of me remember the word for woods, or beach, or forest. I stood at the window waiting for the water to boil (you know what happens if you watch the pot) and perseverated. "Comme il pleut sur... la table, sur la tête, Alouette.. sur le pont d'Avignon - sur la"... drat. Three years of French was just not enough.

The fact is, mostly I like misty, grey, overcast, chilly, wet, miserable days. They seem to help me contain and focus myself. It just occurred to me that perhaps the derivation of my name predisposes me to those sorts of days, although in truth I also love the Sun, which can bring me out of my moony self and into the light of day.

In any event, the pleut in my coeur feels relentless right now, surely a lesson (though let it lessen).

Beginning 2.



My dear friend Heidi Kim told me that my real problem is Jupiter's transit through Capricorn (that's Io, its moon orbiting Jupiter in the photo above from here ) which is said to continue until January of 2009. A wonderful astrology website says that:

The tendency will be to gain understanding and wisdom only through experience and maturity. Jupiter's transit through Capricorn in 2008 means our growth and expansion in life will rarely be a matter of haphazard luck or whimsy. Circumstances will force us to keep track of where we have been, where we are at present, and where we want to go in the future.

Moreover, "Interestingly, modern scientists have determined that planets broadcast unique radio signal patterns, which when translated into audible frequencies, make good listening. Thus planets could be said to "sing" - the proverbial Music of the Spheres (which I heard one night when I was eighteen, and have not been quite the same since - another tale I'd love to tell).

Listen to Jupiter here.

Whatever is happening, it is very powerful for me. The last time Jupiter was in Capricorn was 12 or 13 years ago, when I turned my entire life completely upside down. It was essential for me to have done so: there were some major pieces of my unconscious that, if not brought to the light of awareness, would have, I believe, ensured my premature demise. But I am disoriented right now. Very disoriented, like my Chinese student (this is regrettably true) who had surgery to westernize her eyes.



Not to perseverate on things astrological or regurgitate old posts (ew, that sounds unpleasant, though I bet they'd taste quite like certain energy bars I've had), but late on May 19th I wrote a post with a picture of two moons, and, as it happens, the next night there was one of the two Blue Moons in Scorpio for this year. Perhaps that accounts for how blue I've been lately (when I haven't felt wildly joyous).

Oddly enough, Nat and Amira have been blue too. Both of them have called me asking what to do for their (differing) heartaches. I once created what I thought was just the perfect antidote to the lovelorn called "The Heartbreak Hotel." It was a little box with some 50's hotel on the outside and a collection of symbolic little things (candle, chocolate, gold string, small scissors, matches, paper boat, effigy, magic pen, etc.). I only made the one, however, for the daughter of a friend, so I told Nat and Amira they're going to have to cut back on the heartbreak until production starts up again.

Amira, the "female George Clooney," found her heartstrings were tugged by a young man who turned to her a ways into the relationship and said that, oh, by the way, his dream was to be a fighter pilot and he had just signed up to fight in Iraq. Talk about drop a bomb. He's leaving in another few months. (She just IM'ed me to tell me "the sun is a bright orange gem in the sky right now.") Given my peace marching, political ranting, and just short of Marxist leanings, I initially responded that for me that would be a deal-breaker. Goodbye and good luck. But I met him, and he really is a sweet (if very misguided, I think) young man. I wish I could persuade him not to go, for any number of reasons. I've lived enough to know, however, "What we have never had, remains: it is the things we have that go."

Well then, the poem in its entirety, from my ESVM book (click for a larger and more legible view).



Beginning 3.



Now to the more complicated beginning - Owl. Lady Blue, whose blog Blue Bicycle is a gem itself (as is she, of the tourmaline variety) says that Owl suggests all kinds of significant "medicine." I'm simply flummoxed. That moment. His gaze. Karma standing at alert attention the whole time. The gloaming. My heart beating so fast it hurt. My tension: can't be late to hear poetry, when there it was, Poetry Incarnate, right there in front of me.

And after Owl ... Well, you may know of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Since the day in the woods, I've had PEAS, Post-Ecstatic Anticipation Syndrome (I plan to add a Wage Peas bumper sticker on the other side of my Wage Peace one). Every day I go to Kopachuck at about the same time, my heart beating fast, my camera at the ready, my eyes scanning the brush, the sky, the trees, the path, thinking, will I see him again? Beating the Bounds, who sees the most marvelous things on his wonderful wanderings with his lovely family, once told me I would, and I believed him.

The truth is that along with Shirley Horn, I fall in love too easily, though not with people (well, except for this one time when I sat near a family at a park at dusk and there was a salsa band playing and as all the adults sat talking, their little three-or-four year old girl would periodically get up, cha-cha around the whole oblivious group, and then sit back down again. My fingertips ached. My heart so swelled up in my chest I was breathless. I wanted to laugh and weep at the same time. I felt this tremendous joy, and this painful urgency - live this minute don't forget it be here completely see see listen remember don't stop don't ever ever stop.)

But usually what I fall in love with is something far less explicable. A ray of light, a raised eyebrow, a phrase, a shadow, a moment, a painting, a poem, a memory, an inflection, a riff, a whiff, what I see when I close my eyes, a curve (I have a set of ship's curves, and oh, they slay me), a mathematical formula, a scientific concept, a word I did not know, a star a moon a sun a planet a flower a cloud... Enough

This love - it is as if the thinnest most exquisite blade is drawn across my heart.

I had thought that across my life certain doors would close, necessarily, of their own accord, even as puera eterna as I am, (thanks, truly sincerely, to a very mentally ill mother), and I am stunned: they don't. They haven't closed. At least not yet.

I tell my children the point of romance across the first span of their lives is for them to learn how to fall in love with themselves. How's that for an invitation to narcissism? But, truly, I think loving ourselves is the hardest thing we can learn to do, even if we are loved as much as my children are loved. Most of us are still consigned to having to discover the Divine in our selves. We do it, I think, through our suffering, if we are fortunate enough to have guidance, and through others (which are not mutually exclusive, as we all know).

And then I think there's some point in the Self-Other continuum when our own Selves are intact enough, and we can truly discover Divine in Other. To truly love another is my experience of God.

Beginning 4.

This is a breakthrough for me. On my computer I have Photo Booth. It allows me to take instant photos as I sit at the computer. I've always disliked myself in photographs. My father used to ask me if my face was hurting, and I would ask, puzzled, why, and he would say because it was killing him. But when I know my picture is being taken, my face actually does hurt and I don't know where my real smile is. With Photo Booth, I can take picture after picture with a click of the mouse and I never have to smile. And I look like I imagined I would when I was this age. The lines are all there, the ones I've proudly earned.

So, finally, I like my face, after all these years. I'm not afraid anymore. At least of some things.

The Effect.

Isn't it amazing how we can both know and then not know something? This makes me think of my favorite joke in the world.

Question: How many Zen Buddhists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: Two. One to screw in the light bulb, and one not to screw in the light bulb.

I wrote in one post that my name means "of the moon," and then in another post on balneology I had learned some fascinating terms for the sun, "Sul, Sol, Sulis." On February 20 of this year there was a lunar eclipse. I wrote about it:

Tonight's experience also immediately brought to mind the wonderful lines from Yeats in which he pledges to:

Pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

The lunar eclipse left the impression of the sun superimposed upon the moon, as if it were the synthesis of the sun and moon, as if it were a golden apple of the moon. It was an honor to have seen it.



Goodnight, Moon.

Quietly Awaiting

Two more poems from William Stafford, with certain apologies.

WHEN I MET MY MUSE

I glanced at him and took my glasses
off - they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. His voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," he said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took his hand.

JUST THINKING

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot - peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.