Learning to Read

Dave McKean
Kathy Oddenino

I have been a full-stream reader ever since word patterns began to make coherent meaning (sense) in my mind. Some call this learning to read. I don’t remember exactly what age we were when my brother, sister, and I began to read, but I vividly remember the sensation of sitting on the bed or couch with them, or with our mother or father, with open books scattered over our laps, and studying patterns on the pages. I am a triplet, and because we were so much together and following the patterns taught to us by our parents, and by our older brother, we mostly learned things at the same time. I asked Mother once what she remembers about my learning to read, and she said one day the words suddenly clicked into place and I started reading and never stopped. The feeling reminds me of learning to ride a bicycle, beginning with the training wheels, wobbling along, getting used to the feeling of movement, and of guiding my own movement, then suddenly one moment my feet move the pedals with power and assurance and the wheels turn faster, my hands grip the handlebars with purpose, and I’m off! This pattern is familiar in any context once we recognize it.

When we were children, we read a variety of things, such as Zane Grey novels, a whole series of them. We borrowed them from a missionary doctor friend who had the entire collection, along with every novel by Wilbur Smith. These were "thrillers" connected to the land, to Africa, as well as to the dramas of families and their networks of intrigue. Mother liked certain types of mysteries. We had encyclopedias, world books, the Bobbsey Twins, Tintin’s Adventures, Mary Stewart’s offerings, including her "Arthurian" series, which began with The Crystal Cave (1970). I remember this book on our shelf in the living room of the apartment my parents’ lived in while they were house parents at the boarding school in northern Nigeria. That book had a white book jacket with an alluring cave opening. In interviews Lady Mary Stewart has said she always wanted to write a historical novel, but had no real interest in Arthurian stories – or to the Medieval time. She was drawn to Roman Britain, and also she so admired White’s The Once and Future King, that classic of Arthurian tales, that she didn’t want to tread on his ground. When she read of early Merlin, before he was a priest, a druid, the magician of great legend, she found her subject, she said. What made this man this man, I imagine. The story of each character, Arthur, Merlin, Mordred, more, is tangled and complex, easily recognizable and familiar.

I was never particularly drawn to Arthurian legend either – although I read The Once and Future King and loved it. I entered that tangled, troubled world with full will and senses. I read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, upon the great insistence of our American cousins, and again plunged into that invented world full of every pathos, tear, loyalty, creation. The list of what I read and was drawn to continued to unfurl. I was interested in what got my interest and how I usually responded quickly when taken. I waded right into the pool and went under.

When I went to college the only thing I was sure of was what I had always been sure of – I would study literature. Beyond that was unknown. I wanted much more than "English literature," but my thinking was narrowed into what I assumed such options would be. I found wonderful teachers and a few friends accustomed to such loyalty to reading. We found, then, Garcia Marquez, and 100 Years of Solitude. What a revelation it was - to walk into that dense tangle of jungle and sound that was so different than mine, yet so familiar. His language opened my mind to new worlds. Wright Morris was another favorite. I found in Wright Morris’s writing a clean and clear style, straightforward innocence and honesty, that still held all the evancescent poetry and profound permanence of a moment in memory, including the development of photos. Wright Morris’s book, Field of Vision (National Book Award winner in 1956), is one of the treasures of my early exploring in the book world. Wright Morris wrote more than 33 award-winning books, and Stephen Goodwin said of Morris – No writer in America is more honored and less read. The clarity of his style reveals his subject clearly, with artful grace, without drawing attention to "the writer." This is a true characteristic of artful grace to me. He captured for his characters the fleeting sensuality that is so profoundly memorable and also starkly physical in a way unlike any other writer I know. This is his uniqueness, and something I cherish in the gift of being introduced to his writing when I was.

Joyce Cary was another – particularly his book, The Horse’s Mouth (1944), with his "hero" Gulley Jimson, memorialized again, courageously, by Alec Guinness on film (1958). Gulley Jimson is a painter, an artist, a William Blake lover, a man on fire for the passions of life, and the chaos of following his muse wherever "she" may lead. He is overtaken by color, and the challenges of each vision, each penny that needed making when it came to that break in between. Another connection with Cary, which I think I discovered after I read his book, was his colonial service in Nigeria before 1920. His government service gave him the experience to find the "common humanity" among us, and he wrote movingly about this in some of his books.

Michael Ondaatje, Annie Dillard, and Jeanette Winterson are other favorites. There are many. This doesn’t begin to name the other "poets." To tell this is to name persistent threads through my reading life that have "shown me my way." Each has his or her place in this map of mine, as each gave me a foothold, an anchor, or a kite to hold which felt natural in my hand, in my mind, and I flew or dove with them into the depths or heights within myself with their easy prompts. With prompts from certain teachers in college, I filled pages with my insights as I read, each word, sentence, or paragraph exploding into visions or caves. Some were so intense to me that I had to stop, just finish sentences. Others trailed into air and I followed them silently at other times, dark, light, shifting.

Through school I read poetry and novels mostly, along with the science, history, and political intrigue introduced to us by teachers and sometimes parents. I dove into novels and poetry and found myself at home there more than I often did in the "real world" which required my attention to "do what I needed to do." What did I need to do? Go to school, eat, sleep, play intramural sports, shower, spend time with my friends, boyfriend, do homework – whew. What a life, I thought. When can I get back to my reading?

A friend said to me recently – my personal life is getting in the way of my doing these other things. I laughed about this, because this reminded me myself. Still, now, as I get behind in some of the physical details of my life – such as paying bills, taking trash to the landfill, the overgrown shrubs – sometimes I feel the frustration of "I’d rather be…." The difference now is that I am coming to know myself as an evolving consciousness of "energy and matter." My freedom to choose does not begin and end at what task I focus on at any given moment. It begins with my creation as energy, and my creation as energy and matter with my parents’ cooperation. Spiritual Philosophy has taught me this, and therefore taught me to get to know my own mind as itself, in its energy intention to cooperate with "the rest of me" as an infinitely evolving sensory being.

I introduced myself to changing my thinking focus most effectively through reading. When I was 29 years old, a friend insisted I read Kathy Oddenino’s book, The Joy of Health. Kathy Oddenino lives, breathes, and teaches Spiritual Philosophy. I was living in Annapolis, Maryland then, as was Kathy. Living in the same town as the author whose name was spoken so excitedly by someone I was so close to, was a prompt in itself. I had lived many lives by then, since college, and my reading tastes had changed somewhat, but not my reading habits. I had a stack of books by the bed, and was constantly thinking about, reading about, wondering about books. I shrugged it off, saying I would, and her excitement continued. She insisted I read them, as I had borrowed them for her from the Library of Congress, where I was working at the time. Tired of being pestered, and curious, I picked up Kathy’s first book and began to read. I was captured by the words, though not in a way I was familiar with. Her introduction explained the "channeled" message, what that meant, and then laid out the cycles of life and the chemical foundation of us as humans – air, food, water, energy and matter in motion. The energy and pattern of creation was defined in specific ways – how to eat and why, the patterns of lessons we create through our different ages of life, as mother, father, embryo, through relationships, children, families, life, a cleansing and maintenance program and how to keep a balanced "energy." How to keep your engine running smoothly? I didn’t know much about my car engine, and certainly had not treated my body very well much of my life – smoking, drinking, depression feeding self-destructive habits that cycled up and down. As I read Joy of Health I found myself following along intellectually, thinking I understood, that the words "made sense" and that I agreed with them (therefore "understood" them). Yet I felt this growing reaction inside me that felt like irritation, then anger. I was familiar with the slow-burning volcano. Why? What was happening? I had never had exactly this reaction to reading. I knew that how I felt was related to what I was reading, and I also knew that my mind didn’t understand why I felt the way I felt. This confused me. My mind could not "make sense" of this – Houston, we have a problem. I couldn’t make it go away. I was determined to figure out what was happening and why. I resolved to keep reading some of the book every day to help me understand. I did this, and gradually (within a week, two weeks?), I began to notice that I was reading more and more pages and the feeling was dissipating, or gone. Why? The words were having their effect. I felt better. Responding to words and the "energy of words" was not new to me, but the fact that these words were talking about "energy" and the energy of us as human beings, the creation of thought and matter, had a different meaning for me. I had read plenty of science by then, in school and out, but rarely had I felt that level of interest, motivation, spark that I knew came from inside me to Know More. Other sparks were more like shooting stars that shone brightly, high and quick, then disappeared into the dark, faint memories only.

Not long after this, I went to an event at Kathy Oddenino’s home in Annapolis, and this began a friendship and mentoring process that continues today. I began to work with her shortly after this meeting. She had published three books, and was working on her fourth, Love, Truth & Perception. I was glad to be "helping her," and eager to work with her books too. I began to read the manuscript, studiously marking a few things here and there. Then I found myself repeating sentences to myself over and over, trying to "make sense of them." I quickly realized what was happening. I could not read these books in the left-brain manner I was used to. This was part of the challenge and invitation I had found with reading Joy of Health. My intellect was accustomed to introducing itself to subjects, objects in its own way, and using them or backing off accordingly. Kathy’s books had an energy altogether different. The words were inviting, stimulating, provocative, yet not confrontational, not divisive, not insistent. Does this mean these words are "true"? I was not even used to thinking of "truth" except as right/wrong, substantiated or not, etc. An intellectual approach mostly, or a way of thinking influenced by emotional heartache, heartbreak, or need – either to control, or make sure "everything was alright." To think beyond this as "truth" as a mind was an insight, a revelation in itself.

This insight seems self-evident to me, as the mind that experienced this. This is part of the point that makes itself known to me all the time, and why coming to know "Spiritual Philosophy" has been the best mentor for my mind – Spiritual Philosophy explains to us why it is only our mind that has to "know itself" – the rest of us, as infinite senses, and loving emotions, already "knows itself" and is eager to cooperate with the mind, as our male energy creation (no matter our gender). As I began to read Love, Truth & Perception, and came to a grinding halt more than once, very early on, I recognized the gift to me in this work showing me the difference I had already made in my mind, and what it meant to open my mind to thinking differently – to the beauty and potential of thinking as an infinitely sensory being made to love.

To embrace a word! As a child, I had been taught, "In the beginning was the word." I knew this was true. Yet what in the world did that mean, really?

For a brief time, in Richmond, I taught reading to a few adults as part of a public program. It broke my heart to imagine someone, especially in our culture, going through life without being able to read. I also admired the courage people had as they made their way through life without these skills. One man I tutored briefly had his own successful business. He was married with two beautiful girls. A big burly man with beautiful eyes and black skin, he cried when he told me he wanted his girls to know he could read and was tired of hiding. They are beautiful, he said, and I don’t want them to be ashamed of me. Even here, he showed his love, not pity for himself. He taught me in those few sessions, and I loved the way he read each word and how they came together. I hope he never stops.

A mind wants to "know itself." The joy of reading has been a gift to me all my life, and my mother and father gave it, fostered it, as did my brothers and sister and teachers beyond. Words that offend are not part of this art – words with the energy that enhance the beauty and joy and power of creation, the celebration of the lifeforce of us – that is the joy of "in the beginning was the word." Read on! Thank a teacher! Let the mind love.I love to read, and now I know why I never would have made a "good academic."

Blue Ridge Travelogue

My friend Steve took a 1041-mile trip on byways and highways of Blue Ridge beauty. He shared some pictures with me, and names of towns I'd never heard of, or hadn't thought about in many years. It's nice to be reminded. Saluda, for instance: A town in Henderson and Polk Counties, North Carolina. The population was 575 at the 2000 census. It is a quiet country mountain town at the top of the Northfolk Southern Railway's Saluda Grade, the steepest standard gauge railroad line in the country. Tourists like it, I've heard, and I like this: The town festival is named Coon Dog Day, after raccoon hunting dogs.

Learning to Kneel - Poem by Mike Martin

i am learning to kneel
to rivers and sky,
mountains and earth,

solid
intimate

God’s forms
Presented in structure and motion.

These powers we resist,
Threads spun in infancy.
Twirls of color spiraling in cycles,
Returning again and again,
Renewed even as they burn.
Just like the sun, burns,
Burns down our faith,

Our name
Our place
Our worth

The clouds are moving
Somehow holding these burnt threads,
Offerings, familial patterns,
Collages we cannot escape in our gatherings,
Pondering changes, illness,
Trailing our fingers in the sand.

The memory of water,
That prayer,
Spills in hinting of blessing and beauty,
Undeniable grace.

We feel the desert wind blowing,
Hearing the call,
The thread that waits for response.

We collect the amber silt simply through stillness,
The dusting showers left in the telling of our stories,
Butterfly coating,

Shapes
Textures
Reflections,
Angles of dust,
Soul forces thriving in this place of sharp light and thin soil.


copyright by Mike Martin

Atlas Winced

Lester Kraus

Harriet Rubin's 9/15 NY Times article on Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism included a quote from John P. Stack, a business executive who took Rand's ideas to heart. Stack says to save his company he took action like a hero out of Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He created an open-book company in which employees were transparently working in their own interests. The best motivator of all may be when we see the direct relationship of our thoughts and actions to our quality of life and how that quality of life relates to others and our world. It's the best business book I ever read, he said. To get something that tells you to take your dreams seriously, that's an eye opener.

I couldn't agree more. To feel the rumble and racket and even disfigurement that happens to us on the inside and outside when we ignore our dreams, or see them as nightmares, bats and gnats bothering us, is to know the need to take our dreams seriously as our personal urge to create with the power that gives and sustains life. What do our dreams call us to do? Surely not war. The hero stories are those in which lives are saved, life is enjoyed. Rand called her book a "mystery," "not about the murder of man's body, but about the murder - and rebirth - of man's spirit." Her book was published in 1957 to scathing reviews and criticism from all sides, even as groups of fans grew. Many were secret fans of the motivation of self-interest she proclaimed, but afraid to be visible. One of her big fans was Alan Greenspan, whose memoir is now in the news. The world needs prime movers as much as ever. What does it mean to live the truth of our convictions, to dare to be dreamers, and to take our dreams seriously? Be realistic. We are creators!

Spiritual Philosophy is shining the light for me on the cave walls of my memory, and our collective memory. I have often feared success, just as I have feared failure, not dared to be "visible." This fear itself is the nightmare. My eternal dream has been to awaken. What a wonderful world. Healing happens.

Snakes and Ladders

What is love?
Sometimes we think we have to explain, justify, when what is asked for is love. This shows why we cannot truly love until we know ourselves as spirit energy – that it is the spirit energy within us that is love. When we suppress this, we create pain, chaos, destruction, war. The levels at which we create this depend upon our own level of growth and the relationship that we have to ourselves as energy – the images of ourselves as energy that we recognize and relate to. In the same way that our friends reflect our energy, our energy reflects our relationship to ourselves as energy beings. Why would we choose violent friends, for example, unless that is an energy we are comfortable with, intimate with, within ourself? An energy that we have not yet changed, healed. Why would we choose war if we knew the reality of peace?

Let’s be realistic, someone said to me.
What does it mean to be “realistic”?

When we look at the history of art, what we call art and why, we see patterns that artists, appreciators, critics have recorded that may help us recognize our perceptions and beliefs about what “realistic” means. Does “realistic” mean a recognizable facsimile of life the way I see it? Does “realistic” mean an image that is recognize as “real” to any human that looks at it? A landscape of beautiful green leaves on trees that bloom in spring – is this recognizable to someone who has grown up in a desert where there are no shade trees, only other kinds of blooms? What does “abstract” mean? At a local library recently I looked at pictures in an exhibit by a local artist whose work was called “abstract” – forms, images, mixed media, some very large. The colors were muted and soft, with some bold strokes. One image brought immediately to my mind a very large painting I saw once in an old friend’s apartment many years ago. The old friend and I are no longer in touch, but the image of the painting in my mind remains vivid and its impression at the time of our last visit is a memory now imprinted in a way that will last forever. Does this mean consciously? When I am “another person,” in another life, does this mean I will keep this memory of this moment and this painting in this room as this person and I felt what we felt and spoke what we spoke? Moments live and die as we do. All are there, within our mind, to be called upon and conjured up, at Will? When we do, what do they mean to us, how do we feel, what do we think of ourselves, of them, how do we relate? Energy never dies, so knowing why we sense as we do, what we do and when, becomes an adventure and the fun of it multiplies when we share it openly as the energy of who we are as we change.

Now I see the danger in our ladders and levels of learning to know ourself as we experience life, as we create experience. With each opening, the myriad of pinpricks and sunbursts of light we may rejoice in, until we know ourselves fully without fear, the shadows of our beliefs which we have willed into being, lurk behind doors, under beds, in the shadows of our thoughts like clouds, or storms, and reinforce the same old beliefs we are more and more ready to release and change. In Bernard Berenson’s Rumors and Reflections , I read a good example of this, which he wrote in diary entry in 1941. He is writing about his friend, Carlo Placci, in Florence, and his reflections of friendship, interaction, images, intimacy, and thinking, are interesting to me. Intimate as they were, B. writes, Carlo seldom gave an indication into the depth of his private thinking. He gave enough to make B. suspect that he was incapable of a wholehearted conviction about anything. He had many fervent opinions, but they seemed only skin-deep, which he showed by the rapidity and completeness with which he turned away from them to whatever was most up-to-date, whatever he had been next convinced of. He relates the habit his friend had of needing the last word. Because I can relate to this, his example means something to me in my learning about the images we create of ourselves as energy beings and the progress we make through life in our learning and living.


Here is B’s example: “…this swift and sure turnover from the extreme of leftism to the opposite extreme was made easy in his own eyes by a book just published that I had in all innocence lent him: William James’s The Will to Believe. It gave him the pragmatic justification for choosing the principles which his whim of the moment and his tropism led him to prefer. Like the Scot who when politely told that he was eating asparagus from the wrong end retorted ‘I prefer-r-r it,’ Placci would bang the lid on every discussion by rejoicing in iniquity, despising reason, and rejoicing in the right James had extended to him, to believe what he willed.”
As I said, it takes one to know one, and I recognize Placci – and what patience it takes for us to grow through this stage, as well as for our friends who remain, to love us despite our annoying habits and not encourage them.

Lost & Found

One day I walked down the street in late afternoon light, and I felt the rough stones under my feet like little rising bread loaves. I smiled inside somewhere, even though outside I was beginning to feel the new chill in the air, and my past seemed both large and empty. How could that be? I thought. I’ve lived 54 years, with a wife once, and a young son. He must be 12? I haven’t seen either of them in so long, I’ve almost forgotten their mannerisms, their ways. I wonder if they are happy.

I had spent so many years inside, in that office full of piles of paper, paint faded and beginning to peel. I almost forgot why we were doing what we were doing. Filing court orders, filing official notices, recording liens in different languages. Why did this seem so important?

Always, we choose to climb stairs and enter doorways, to walk down one street rather than another. The motionless sense of time passing you by is a strange sensation. All of this would make sense if all I have seen were true! The passing of windows, cars moving slowly by, the way rain falls on the cobblestones and bricks, leaving slick patches and reflecting puddles. We watch ourselves, don’t we? What do we see?

Socrates may have said Forgetting is just losing knowledge. Where do we put it when we lose it? Plato wondered what it meant to remember. Who first used the phrase, “hidden in plain sight”? I’ve been known to lose things. I hear myself saying, It drives me crazy when I can’t find something! When something is “found,” does this mean it was lost? “Lost” at times has implied hopeless. “Lost forever.” “I lost the feeling in my leg.” How do I find it again? Is it hopeless? This thought clings to loneliness and solitude and denies the power of each generating energy cell of life. We are humans together, creations in the image of creators. Are our thoughts extinct? Genetically engineered? Or do we know our power, and “it must be here somewhere.” What creates reflections from the puddles in the street? Who made the car I pass in whose window I am reflected? Why is the car parked here, and for how long? Energy is real. I touch the metal, feel the rain, take in air, and expel. Energy pulses. Energy plays, dances, creates, moves, changes, expands. There is nothing stale about creation. Remember?

Another Day, Another Dollar

I walked on the beach, by the river, on the mountainside, and the sky opened above me. I remembered each moment, each cycle, cataclysm, then, and the faces that spoke goodbye, hello, the smiles and tears. Love letters to my world. I write them to myself and send them to the sky, late nights to the stars, the spread between, early mornings in the air before it changes with the sun’s heat or the day’s chill, I wad up inked pages, sometimes with the smile of send-off as a message in a bottle on the ocean of all I remember. The children next door jump in their cluster on the trampoline, some in their dresses, others in shorts and t-shirts, all squealing. They light up the heat-filled sky, and I listen, letting their sounds show me the different in the shrillness of what I remember as the bats in the cave in my mind, the memories of the darkness, the rough cave walls, and the clanging cymbals. This is the joy of the world, the way we all light up as we listen. Spread this, with a thought, let it blend with the motion of water, the rhythm of all reeds and strings and wind. Then I’ll pay bills, spread that.

Skateboard Leaps

Anna sat herself down at the edge of the creek and studied the swirls in the water, the leaf patterns as leaves moved with the current, then caught on rocks, twigs, at angles. As she sat she felt the whole world within her. What did it mean to have landed her, in this spot, as if she were from some alien ship? Of course, she wasn’t. Why would the thought even come? Weren’t there lights and ramps and whirs and bells that she heard sometimes that seemed to signify other launches, other exits? Then again, wasn’t the curl and urge and nudge and stretch and suck from her mother’s canals a practically indescribable ride full of lights and ramps and whirs, liquids, smells, all manner of earth coming alive and pulsating with life? With the palms of her hands she can feel the ends of the earth? Are there ends of the earth? With the palms of her hands she can feel the rings of Saturn? With the palms of her hands and tips of her finger she can sense the inside of every cell, every course and flow, every organ, every signal? If not yet, then why not? Isn’t it because this nerve language is one that grows and changes like the grass, the sky, the water, only individual in its expression of its collection of the moment, and she has always been attached to anchors, to alphabets, to some root she thought might mean forever, unchanging?

When her son, Daniel, approached, she closed her eyes and felt him walking toward her. Every step was an earthquake, his stare a laser, a rope swing, his sloping shoulders a ready range for the weight of the world. He was 13, big, and his eyes were still that innocent blue, with just a bit of a shadow in them, a sadness. He had felt a lot of sadness in his young life. His father, Anna’s husband Carter, shot himself the day before their 8th anniversary, when Carter was 7. Carter’s is another story, yet part of mine, ours, and I feel the weight and the waste, and the eternal love within it, now, she told me. Her eyes, when she says this, are closed just for a second, then back open and blue-grey, clear.

This was a day by the creek not far from her house, when she sat on cold smooth stones and studied the water and its artifacts. She told me some of this later, how this is her way of following the flow of the world and knowing her place in it. There are no true stops and starts, only knowing the place where thought makes itself known, and the way leaves flow, twigs catch, temperatures change, water levels rise. There is knowing how and why this happens, which becomes in itself a study of life, and an easing of the pain that comes with blocking each thought and then letting it go.

I never had children in this life, and when I hear their voices in my sleep sometimes, it is my own playground. Anna and I talk about this sometimes, she telling me how she dreamed of Daniel before he was born, Carter’s terror at moments of knowing such life was in his hands, such joy, and I coming to know all things that make such nurturing known in other ways, finding that flow. This is mother’s milk of love, I think, this sweetness which lets us know that what we create is what we know, the endless, boundless joy of life itself, a constant creation of goals, spin-offs, thoughts, fantasies, the roots and anchors the creations themselves.

Sometimes when I hear music which reverberates and warbles in notes that drown these whispers, I know the cacophony that happens inside always when confusion reigns, when signals are missed, train wrecks happen. It takes time to clean up the debris, and this is with the most dedicated workers imaginable. Tonight at the restaurant earlier the music resounded and I remembered this. I remembered ropes, mist, smoke, loud clanging, dark night, fog. Those strings do not call forth morning. Yet it is easy – remember the stars that appeared as the sky cleared, the silence and sense of the breeze.

Anna loves Daniel. Daniel loves his mother. His innocent blue eyes with that dark shadow flitting through show his need to be with her, not to fear her disappearance or death. I watch his face when I can, and I see the placid lake of a cool Fall day, the heat of summer underneath. He questions, likes the prompts alright. I remember my own questioning, the shadows in my eyes as a child, and I remember swinging on vines of the thoughts in my mind. This way of energy I did not know. Obviously, we are falling.

The roots and anchors are also the creations themselves, each step, each skateboard leap, each goal achieved. As love takes roots in a mind, the sky inside lights up. Daniel, take my hand. As you remember you, I will remember too.

"You have created your life in the exact design that will allow you to learn the lessons that you have come here to learn. It is your design and you should love it. You first need to understand that you are more than you can see on the surface. You are not blown back and forthby the winds of events. You are an integrated being. You are body, mind, and spirit." Kathy Oddenino, Sharing, 66.

The Big Picture

Kerry Skarbakka


Yesterday I went to Kathy Oddenino's latest seminar on Hidden Memories - Here is something she wrote, which I've been thinking about since:
We live countless lifetimes and as energy we create them intentionally – when we accept this we can see how we are changing and growing internally through our growth of Spiritual energy experiences, how we preserve our past-life memories in the neurons of our brain, and why our past-life memories are pure diamonds within the dual soul memory of our endless past lives.

Our mind is always seeking new knowledge, new experiences, so what is sought after by our mind is an image of the “carrot” that is leading us, motivating us in our continuing creation. What urges us on, to live, to get up in the morning, go to bed at night, eat, dream, read, swim, walk, fly, talk, laugh? A life without any sense of momentum is no fun – it is depressing!

When we feel or express that we do not want to grow and change, we are writing our obituary as a human being. We are not getting through our head the storybook of us as a human being.

Believing that we live only one physical life has kept us focused on only black keys on the piano keyboard, only one or 2 colors in the color spectrum, only a few tastes in our taste palette. We do not know how to use our hidden memories to our advantage because we do not “know” (accept) they are “there.” This is because our beliefs are “cast in stone,” as “fact,” and we have become accustomed mainly to proving only what we already accept as “true.” This is an internal image of what it means to make ourselves into “graven images” and worship this image as immutable, omnipotent, and to-be-obeyed. We misread what we see in the mirror. Kathy’s seminar yesterday on Hidden Memories (past life memories, past life memories as bleed through with flashback memories) brought this up again in my mind in a new way. We worship this image of ourselves as a monument to our history, to ourselves as we are, even in our struggle to survive, our struggle to conquer, and divide, even as we think we commit ourselves to unity, support, and love of our fellow human. This also relates to our iconic memory of the “Ten Commandments” cast in stone and given to Moses on the mountaintop - think Charlton Heston in his flaming fierceness as a bearded image of Moses on the mountain with those tablets, in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film. We saw this film as kids in Nigeria, I think on a visit once to the theater in Ibadan, the city closest to Oyo, where we lived. Certain images imprint themselves in our memories. I remember looking up at the big screen, a towering Moses, towering waves on screen, Charlton Heston’s booming voice, a slave woman being crushed by a gigantic block of stone because her a piece of her clothing was caught beneath the weight. For those who saw the film, or read about the history of film and animation, the technology and skills which expand the ways we manipulate images, that film had plenty of drama – the River Nile turning red (dye) and more staged effects that add to landmarks of memory. The drama of images fascinates me, and understanding them as energy fields simply adds to my fascination.

In disgust, the stone tablets are broken. When we are fed up with our own waste and denial and wandering in the wilderness, we break the stone of our beliefs and see the truth of the ethical values which the “love your neighbor as yourself” intends as an energy message.

The day before Kathy’s latest seminar on Hidden Memories, I went to see an exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Art called The Big Picture. The exhibit featured 23 large-scale photographs by 13 artists, including Kerry Skarbakka. I’ve been intrigued by Rosemary Laing’s photographs since I first saw a print a few years ago from another N.C. exhibit catalog called Defying Gravity. Some curators and art observers are saying that photography is now the dominant force in contemporary art. This adds more emphasis to how we manipulate and interpret images as our skill and technology creations expand. Kerry Skarbakka is one artist who had 2 prints in the exhibit. His series of photographs of “perpetual falling,” and how he simply and profoundly describes his “impetus for change and “the challenge for self-improvement” all fit together for me in how we each sense our rise and fall. We “fall” through the energy levels within our mind when we don’t open our mind and rise to the occasion of the momentum of growth and change that our mind is seeking. This is depressing for the mind! We capture these images of ourself in many ways, in life, in art, as we learn the art of life through change – the death of loved ones, our own demise, our own rise and fall. The knowledge of who we are as evolving consciousness explains this pattern of creation and expression. It is beautiful to see how we change our view from "defying gravity" to knowing we can fly, or, as my friend PC beamingly acknowledges, Levitation of the mind!

Kerry Skarbakka
Kerry Skarbakka’s images picture a world full of physical and emotional dangers. His web site refers to German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who described human existence as a process of perpetual falling. This creates the framework for much of the falling/tripping photographs in his series The Struggle to Right Oneself, for which Kerry has become known.
Lightwork catalog

Punch & Judy

I was at a resort once, where pools of radiant blue water shimmered in the sun, and people ambled around them half-dressed, lazy, like they were all happy and dazzling themselves. This was a delightful feeling. There was the occasional sharp voice, such as when a man ran to pick up his little boy as he spoke to a “stranger” who seemed maybe a little too influenced by the sea-breeze cocktails and beer. In the boy’s eyes was a sudden fear, an unknown, as if he didn’t know what had happened in the rush and grab and run. The tipsy man seemed unaware of any change in the breeze, turned away, laughing, on with the next note. I turned back to listen to a woman in a wide-brimmed hat and large sunglasses. She had been talking to me for a few minutes, only I heard maybe half of the words. The airflow continued until I put up my hands to shield the sun and we smiled, she delighted in the day’s welcome and the moment of joy. We were “strangers” to each other, yet no thought of danger.

I woke up the other morning with these shimmering views. Why? Change happens, and I am feeling my way into knowing what do we do with what we "know"? What does this mean to me, and why do I care? The other day at work Kathy exclaimed after seeing a client, as she often does, I love the nervous system! I often think about those words, her excitement, what this means to her as I hear it. The excitement shimmers all around and within her. I have not always loved my life, loved life itself, so I recognize again why this learning for my mind has been an unlearning of the blocks I had put into place, the gates that block the fields of flowers, and the intense pleasure of this slow awakening to what it means for me to "love my nervous system." I have been afraid of "it," without knowing this, because understanding such "things" was not my domain - it was to be the realm of those who specialized in this, the "doctors," or...... Those with expanded knowledge of subjects are animated by them as they relate the knowledge to the gift of a mind using the knowledge in ways that are fun, exciting, creative, helpful. We abuse what we do not understand, because the "unknown" frightens us. This is one way for me to identify what it has meant to "fear the spirit within me." What an amazing gift it is to Awaken - like the pins and needles of a foot awakening after being "asleep." Think of the words - "pins and needles" - sometimes we say, I am on pins and needles (anticipation, waiting to hear....); pins and needles we use for so many things - to insert, embroider, knit. The complex design of any landscape is there to appreciate for those who awaken to it. I am grateful for life, for what moves us, every way.


Seeing the truth of who we are in our life experiences beyond the limited way we think of "physical mirrors" helps us to see our need and urge to grow from the energy level we are living into the next energy level of appreciating life as an energy being. What we haven’t yet learned will flicker in and out of our mind, images that leave very little lasting impression. We must learn to pick and choose our own energy fields like walking through fields and picking flowers, noting those that bloom. Transient hidden memories are more like sheet lightning, or “transient wanderers” we may pass on the street, or take note of – each energy image makes such an impression that we take note (we feel the sadness sometimes, the doggedness, the persistence of pushing that cart or clutching that cardboard sign, the dirt that clings, the hunger that persists) – and then the image recedes, as landscapes do when we pass in our car and the scene through our window changes. We often cling to hidden memories that we are afraid to let go of, rafts for us in the ocean of our energy and our mind. As we open ourselves to the flight of all thought, we feel freedom and know it.

Telling Time

Rosemary Laing


Bill's grandfather's boots, not just a flash in the pan

Watch fobs most of us have seen one way or another. I'm thinking of them because of their role as artifacts in our marking of time, ways we punctuate minutes, days, lives, experiences. A Watch fob is a medallion or ornament attached by leather strap or chain to a pocket watch to assist in locating and removing the watch from a pocket in clothing. Some were originally coded or numbered to assist in return to the owner. Watch fobs became popular when mens watches were predominantly carried in the pocket, and are still used today, especially by nurses.The term is also used to refer to ornaments hung at the end of such a ribbon or chain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_fob


It is the energy that people, we all, respond to – the energy of love. I feel how I can get caught up in the physical nature of change, as the rush and tumble of needing to get things done, the distraction of the “task” rather than the energy of creation. The images of many lives of picking up hoes, picks, shovels, canes, needles, quills, the bending and rising, even how this relates to tying children’s shoes, smoothing their collars, touching their hair, squinting into the warm morning sun between dirt rows. What does it mean to me to be a creator who has taken unto myself multiple images of lessons through lifetimes, making my way as a “mind” seeking to know itself as “it” creates, snaking its way learning to feel the openness and energy of all as love makes itself known, as the infinity of energy and every creation insinuates itself in its own making? It is to know that a mind is not a mind alone. I have all of the knowledge available within the Universe, I read this morning (Sharing, 66). What an awesome Thought. So to be limited, to feel limited by the physical is only a reminder of this, except when we believe we are only the physical matter. My mind took upon itself also the many lives of “being itself,” of the quiet study of book after book, sea-view into eternity, watching water from tall ships and cliffs, because this was also part of balancing the picking up axes, shovels, picks, even jewels strung on a chunky chain, and more. Seeking solace, the mind began to turn into itself, taking next steps to remember that internally is the horizon where all knowledge will make itself known as we experience and open ourselves to all, as the spirit speaks to us. Opening to the communion of all souls, in the physical, as sharing the banquet at the table, the feast of life, the feast of knowledge as all other savory pleasures, is the best next step of the moment, healing.

Savannah Sights

Once, Making Music

I went with a friend to see the Irish indie film, Once, at the newly restored Carolina Theater in Durham. How refreshing to see a not-so-slick film just like a slice of someone’s life (much as I can enjoy some of the slick ones!). I’d heard an NPR review a while back which kept my attention and had me humming along to the actors’ laughter, even before I heard any of the songs. Here’s my review: we missed the beginning scenes, but what a beautiful theater the Carolina is, in its restored grandeur (complete with new toilet seats, as the signs point out)! The sound of this young woman’s voice, the real commitment and momentum energy as she walks down the busy Dublin streets selling single red roses, the way she overrode her frustration of dead or no batteries when she walked to a nearby market late to continue listening and lyricking, putting the words to music he had asked her help with - she walked, bed-clothed, singing to herself with earphones in, completely absorbed – back to the bedroom where she slept with her young daughter; her wistfulness and also sudden smiles, optimism, encouragement, then the song she wrote with her piano, a song she had written to her husband which he didn’t understand then, which ached, still strong, with her desire for her strength to be seen, waited for, patiently, as she knew she must nurture within her. A romantic view, only my own? Maybe. If you see the film, you’ll know your own view. He walked purposefully, guitar strapped to his back, those sort of bulging eyes sweetly innocent, even when nodding at his bitterness over disappointed love. His voice rises, strong, over the sound of his guitar strings, that strumming not letting up, easy, then like steady cavalry. I thought at first I might struggle to hear, to understand with the recorded sound and accents, but it wasn’t difficult then, after a few scenes. There is low light, dim rooms, some. There are priceless moments, such as when our young hero is playing his newly recorded songs on a small cassette player for his father, a Hoover-sucker-repairer. His father’s face and communication with him are a memorable delight. The long recording time, the studio man who begins to warm to their determination, their sound, then the beach moments, the playfulness in early light. Those tough choices of should-I-stay-or-should-I-go, and that thrill of a gift of love which is passed from one to another in different ways: his father’s gift to him, to cross to London and make a go of music; his buying her a piano, having it delivered to her apartment even as he is on his way, air-bound. Wistfulness is real, and so is moving on, in supportive ways which honor all. Love never dies, only changes form.

We left the theater into a cooler evening than many of late, and those fountains were running, water running as if it had never stopped.

Once

A Savannah Story

Watch the long arms of those live oaks and the dripping green. They are beautiful, unforgettable, and tell every story, some sordid, some hopeful. Their own stories are in another language, sometimes equally charged with change, always adapting, no questions asked. Listen.

We met in the park near my office after Nina called me.
I would like to state my case, she said, her head down, voice getting softer and a trickle of tears slowly moving down her cheeks.
Tell me, I said, my voice soft too, even softer than the way it felt inside me.
I didn’t kill anyone, she said.
Who said you did? I said, not believing what I was hearing.
You’re going to be hearing this, she said, but it’s not true.
What are you talking about? I asked.
You’ve heard me talk about Randall, haven’t you?
Yes, I answered.
Randall is dead, she said. I was with him the day before.
I could not figure out where this was coming from.
We’re friends, aren’t we? I said, lifting her chin so she would look at me.
She nodded, her made-up eyes filled with tears.
Tell me about Randall, I said. What happened?
I don’t know, she said. I only know that he was found dead in the parking garage at his office, and I know my name is going to come up. I thought I loved him – I didn’t love him, but he was a force in my life, a wind that swept up everything so I would be persuaded to do things he said. When I did, he seemed happy, and I just got caught up in it, that seemed so simple, for a change. For a change, everything was simple, and happy.
You were having an affair with him? I asked, not just wanting to state the obvious, but feeling compelled to be crystal clear.
She cried more, and nodded. You don’t understand, she said.
You’d be surprised, I said.
I had loved her a long time. This love I felt had gone through every stage of upheaval, it seemed, though much of it was on the inside. She knew I loved her, but had never felt the same for me, so we had softened it over, glossed it over, and tried to be kind to the pet in the room called My Love. This was at least amusing to us. I had never married, but I was happy. My friend Angela and I shared parallel lives – she was divorced and happy to be friends with me. We had grown to appreciate life and the little things. Divorce is no walk in the park, she used to say, quoting her ex-husband and enjoying every taste of chocolate-mint ice cream as we walked through the park.
Who knows about you? I asked Nina.
His wife, now, I think, she said. And one of his friends at the office. I met him one day when we met up for lunch. His friend knew right away, gave me that smile that said he knew, then I saw how that smile between them went. It disgusted me, but I went with him and jollied up, enjoyed myself by the time we finished that fresh, delicious food and champagne.
This story is going to go on a long time, I thought.
There are lifetimes to solve this one, not just the details of what bullet, what finger, what trigger, what gun, but the whys that converged into all of these “only for the moments” which seemed happy and overrode the true love of all true kindness, compassion, the heart-sleeve which wiped the mouths of children after sipping juice, the laughter which came from a moment by the fire, the joy that is impossible to make small, and deadly.

Tessellations

The other morning I had a dream in which, among other things, in two scenarios I was in front of a computer screen and a different man watched me work, then, at a perfect moment, gently pointed out to me a new view. In the first moment, the man was standing near and behind me as I sat at a table, and he leaned over and touched a key on the keyboard after asking me if I knew what this key did, which I didn’t. The key had a half-symbol below it, like a sun icon. He touched the key and on the screen began to appear multiple designs, like Mandelbrot’s fractal images and more, in bright reds, blues on a white background. The screen was dynamic and alive. I smiled at this and laughed because it showed me how one-button access (knowledge) can open up a whole new world.

In the next scenario, later, I sat at another table with a different computer, and lively happy kitchen creations going on nearby in a big communal kitchen. A different man standing nearby behind me leaned over and turned my screen from its landscape orientation to a vertical one, which of course changed the view entirely and the picture suddenly made sense. I smiled at this, too, turning to the man with recognition.

This morning I was thinking about how we control our minds, our patterns of thought, and how this feels to us, what this does to our creations. I was reading Kathy Oddenino’s book Spirit Consciousness, and here are quotes:

“The smaller the amount of energy that we consciously use within our thinking mind, the less loving energy we reflect into our physical body and our physical behaviors that create the world that we live within. “ (5)

“As an Intelligent Design we are eternal beings, unless we mutate or destroy our internal chemical design and function with the toxic foreign chemicals that we are exposed to in our physical lives, which have the power to mutate our human chemical design by denying our emotional self.” (8)

“True love is the collective energy of our loving emotions, which works together with our thinking mind, and together they function as dual soul partners that are growing together into the Trinity of Spirit Consciousness, which is the Intelligent Design and function of our brain.” (11)

I am learning to consciously change my thinking as I communicate, but I see why this has to be an absolutely conscious process and change. Control is one more way of "shaping"(or manipulating or controlling)the pattern of change, or the intellect alone trying to rule with an iron hand/fist, keep things in control. I see that what it comes back to always is the reality of the way I feel about being responsible for my own thinking, choices, my own reality, my own creations, every moment. If I still feel any inkling of a “victim” energy, a need to be saved, then I am denying my loving emotions and the communication of my spirit senses – mightily resisting their influence in my life. I think this is part of the dream image the other night – the turning the computer screen to “get a new view,” the man showing me how with one button I can access many different tessellations, designs. Escher comes to mind, and I can appreciate now the precision of repetitious images and how we come to know beauty as love.

See Ferrell McCollough's photo Shattered Dreams, on Flickr

Little Tybee Island, Georgia

Cheeks Soft As Down

Cheeks soft as down, strings of hair fall soft across her face. Those eyes were closed but I could imagine them open and looking at me as she had once, achingly open and with every memory of such a childhood intact, every memory of such happiness of being together, a family, intact until shaking apart with the slow shudder of an earthquake. How could I not sense the shuddering deep inside her, every memory that went as deep as the earth, feeling the urgency of creation in that urge that rose like the lava of a volcano, skimming the rim. The village I imagine below waits, families by smoldering fires, sipping tea from metal cups. Legs wrap around me and I carry her down the mountainside, breathing smoke. There is nothing else to think of. The breath of us, the sweat and smoke, the threat of annihilation, the way searing of tissue comes. With each shuddering comes a squeeze of tears, and fingernails dig into my slippery neck as I run, stumbling over the rough ground.

Every time I feel the earth shudder, and lightning blaze, I remember. You know the moments I mean, don’t you? I will wrap you in blankets and breathe life back into you because this isn’t over. Our time isn’t over. There is nothing to fear. Safety is what we come home to, what we birth within us as the fire rages around us. We remember the gardens, the blooms, the way ash turns over and over, oily and impressionable. My sweet baby girl, you will forever be, in this memory, though you are grown. The fear of you gone brings me to tears, and I remember dying myself. Joy comes in the morning, we’ve heard, and the rim of the ocean beyond the volcano reminds us as light spills over silver.

Memories of Our Cellular Design

“Before the advent of worldwide forecasting systems, islanders watched for subtle changes to predict the behavior of weather and wind. They studied the sky and the animals the way a mother might look for the telltale signs that her young child is growing tired and cross.” (7, Wind)

The recent 3-day conference on hidden memories really made me think. I’ve been reading the handout given to participants, and there is no end to the rocks and roots and swirls I am uncovering in this landscape within me. It is strange and yet oh-so-familiar to think about what it means to me to have infinite self-images that pop up, linger, hover, stay, and so much without my really knowing what they meant. Think of it: Just as within me I hold memories of my cellular design, my mind holds memories of mental and emotional energies of lessons that are in their own motion and change. (The roots for our refusal to learn and to change can be found in our belief that we live only one life, which keeps us from recognizing that when we grow and change in each life we can have more fun and balance within our physical lives. – 31)

We don’t have to imagine this, just think about it: We prefer to live in strict accordance to the internal images that we have in relationship to ourselves. There are as many internal images of us as human beings as there are human beings. (32) We can never evolve into our next level of growth until we are willing to change the internal image that we have of ourselves.

Our hidden memories in the mind and cellular memories stored in our physical cellular body. If our thinking mind is functioning through fear, we are not aware of the endless nature of the fractal patterns of energy that we are living as human beings. (4) When we live in fear, we use multiple fractal patterns of our fear to control every aspect of our living human existence. When we learn to live our love with our thinking mind, the fractal patterns of love that we live will change our lives, because it will change our thinking from fear to love. As we learn to love ourselves, we will learn to love others.

Now I know the way this sleight-of-hand “works” – I am juggling, juggling, the way cards fly in the dim light of a small room, then in a larger room, and still larger room, and then the dusty blue and red and yellow lights as in a carnival arena. The man stands straight as a wand, with the energy of him blurry and fading with the flames, bright then blurry. His leg is bent at the knee now, easily balancing, his eyes intensely focused on the movement and rhythm of these cards, the jacks, the balls that float and fly. This is the image of life after life, the many-headed monsters that scare us in the night, the light-hearted fireflies and smiling jesters that turn up, surprise! With fear, the shadows of night leer and loom, and the sounds of night echo like space, cavernous, bottomless and dark; with love, the echoes bounce and fly and ricochet the way light does, bright and bending without breaking bones, splintering only energy.

Where are the children?
They are delighted in the front rows, breaking up rows, crowding because edges could never hold them. Edges are man-made, in the way we have drawn them. The children are transfixed, completely in motion inside, and delightfully themselves, animated by both light and shadow.

The seduction of our sight that is caught by both light and shadow – seeking what flickers and flutters in shadow, to bring it to light – is a key part of this dance. Having spent the week with my family, with the energy of those beautiful “children,” I am reminded of what an infusion of light energy means to any body, any environment, any room, any brain. Early some mornings I read through the words from the 3-day conference, about hidden memories, and as I read different sentences I saw myself in them. I saw my juggling of images of myself as I sought “to be liked,” as I sought to “rule my world,” as I sought to find the path to follow where my feet wouldn’t be constantly wet. I could see the roles and identities like playing cards and how we shuffle them, awkwardly laughing at the ways we bet money and make others guess what cards we hold, how we bluff them, what importance we put in game of interaction.

The simplicity of love in its fractal patterns is also infinite, and more powerful. Think of the uses of rope, and the way someone, some mind, began to think of twisting fibers together to strengthen and lengthen, to make a line. This week my parents were in the hospital, my mother tending to my father, while we were on vacation. My sister-in-law agreed to be with them a few days as we dispersed, and I felt the rope lengthen and strengthen as we thought of them all week and as this choice was made, the first of many in a string of all travel, all support, all change that this ripple makes in our world.

Keyholes

I looked through the hole made of skylight and metal and I saw the biggest rainbow ever. There was rust on the metal fringe, just a hint of white cloud, and that impression of rainbow somehow all together like a picture framed on the wall of the world. There is hope in every view, it seemed to say. Look again. If you linger at the edges, then study the edges. Find every crevice, every dark crumple, every scrunched up wrapper, and imagine what left it there, think of its journey from being made to this moment. (This doesn’t have to take long.) Just as every leaf has a life, a genealogy, every scrap of metal, every dot of dye, every broken steering wheel, every crank case, every abandoned tire, has a story. It doesn’t so much matter what they are, to everyone, just that they have one.

I used to hide in abandoned tires, when I was small enough, and even when I got big enough to think that I could never fit. Fitting into a tire and imagining rolling down an endless hill seemed perfectly logical to me since sometimes I felt like everything was rolling inside my head like inside a dryer. This sounds very strange, I know, but why so strange if you can so easily imagine a donut hole, a spin cycle, a wheel with shiny silver hubcap spinning so fast it’s a blur. This is the strength and speed of a thought.

I was once spraying paint on a wall, with the screaming wind behind me. That was before I knew what I know now about wind. Wind has carried every vowel, syllable, word through time. Wind has formed, with its partners of water, fire, and earth, the tunnels and plains and mountains, even the shorelines we explorers and travelers follow, the same way we lovers follow the curves of a body, and look into the tunnels of eyes, kiss the strands of eyelashes as though they are the most precious hair in the world. I heard howling in my sleep, when I awoke beside the train tracks, when I stood on the high platform and closed my eyes, bowed my head, feeling the vibration of the steel and wheels, the memory of all motion hurtling through time into now, feet planted like a great oak.

That moment on the platform was a comic book block, bright colors and cape and smoke swirling; high wooden platform rattling like a roller coaster and clattering like a cacophony of wooden spoons and bookcases falling over while outside a storm rages.

This brought every other moment of softness, even potential gentle raindrops, into giant relief. I imagined the fields of golden flowers I had once read about, tulips that shone into a horizon like just opening, overlapping hands. I opened my mouth for the raindrops and tasted the salt of ocean spray and the neck of a beautiful woman as she lay beside me in the twilight. Then the cascading of leaves that touched me as I walked under them with a man who bent to kiss me with a smile full of satisfaction and humor that could not be held back. I felt the caress of human life being stroked into being, bringing me the globe of the world and a belly rising like sunrise.

Violence has no place in such a world. Nature’s way of change, the teeth of creatures horror-like to us in miniature, has its writhing and tearing and searing. We are to be thinkers, lovers of the way flesh is made, the way flesh moves because its insides and contours are beautiful simply by nature of their design and being. What we add and do to them may camouflage and damage, but think what the polish and shine of love inside can do – the way green works because it is alive. Pain and blood come with birth, and some changes, red light/green light.

Kiss us goodnight, touch our hair, stroke the forehead which has a fever and glistens. Tuck us in. Love us into being, and we will glow for you, we will show you why the sun shines.

Salt of the Earth

"Air moves from high pressure to low pressure, deflected to the right or the left by the rotation of the earth. It’s a simple matter of physics." (Jan Deblieu, Wind)

"The prayer flowers were ships built to sail nowhere – set aflame they unreeled a bitter scent and carried the tiny pleas scribbled on their petals only as far as the limits of the glass bowl before they died." (Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House)

The way one baby can light up the world shows how shadows take form, how light travels through time and stays in its own way its own form, even while constantly changing. One baby has entered our world with a gummy smile and the softest pink cheeks and wide open blue eyes, and this is its own transfer of energy in the tiniest green dress with colorful flowers. I watch the way her father watches her as he lifts her hands as though she is playing the piano on the smooth kitchen counter with the music playing in the background. She is alternately smiling, giggling, gurgling, and turning her head to see all that is, all that may come. The energy of all moves in her, around her, and we wonder aloud what she sees. Her mother laughs in front of her, gently pushes her stroller and lullabies her, marveling at this little girl who has become herself, from her.

There are flowers in the air around them as this happens. The honey flowers that have floated from the past into this air linger like a hardened sugar coating and a lacquered kimono which has folds with stalks and leaves and limbs that fold and unfold, delicate and still somehow as strong as the oldest tree roots. What oldest roots are these, I wonder, as I sift and sort among the white tendrils that are stronger than any cable or cord. My fingers are dirty now, and I have been digging in dirt for longer than days, more than what time I thought we had allotted to this adventure. This air blowing so freely, with lightning flashing and thunder sounding so close, brings up clouds and rainbows that tumble together.

We are together on Tybee Island for this vacation, only our parents are not here, and I feel their absence with the blustering wind and flashing lightning, as well as with the rainbows that fill a path through the sky. We learned that "tybee" is an Indian words that means salt. The salt of the earth was taken from the water to trade, precious. As we drove back from the store, sun showers brought a full rainbow after a heavy pour, and I thought of our parents, salt of the earth, on the fourth floor so far away in a hospital – a room and floor and place opposite from this where we, their children and grandchildren, are. Dad lies in a hospital bed, up and moving some as he can, as he is encouraged to do. Mom is, we know, undaunted, weary, and disappointed. She has fed him, covered his feet when they are cold, helped him to move. He is forgetful, grateful, docile, aiming to be simply comfortable. Here, we are surrounded by palm fronds, magnolias, thick brush, and the loud sounds of crickets and so many more creatures unknown to us. Three of us walked on the path around the park today, looking for signs of the old railroad and smelling ashes of a burned out old house as we walked by. Wax myrtles were planted, egret images lingered, and beside a drainage ditch we saw oyster shells tied together in net bags, shoring each other up. I’ve never heard of "Wax myrtles" before, though I’m sure I’ve seen many. I’ve learned it is the southern version of Bay Berry. The small waxy berries give birds good food to keep their strength up during those long migratory patterns. I think I did see a Painted Bunting once, in Kathy’s yard in Pittsboro – painted or indigo? Electric blue, with orange markings, absolutely striking and beautiful. Here we read about cowbirds, too, which are parasitic and preys of buntings – they take over nests and push out bunting eggs.

Intermittent bright sun, then showers. I don’t know what all of these plants and bugs are called, but their presence is known, and I feel them making themselves known here. They know their place. Yesterday we walked the island perimeter, on the busy street, the beach, and through neighborhoods with houses and trailers old and new, slick and well-used.

We went to the beach today, driving and some riding bicycles. The dark brown sand is packed hard, and shells and stones are pulverized in clusters. Sea gulls walked and stalked on the sand, easy among people. The sand bars at the island tip reach far out into water, and we don’t know where the river and ocean converge exactly. The flat empty expanse is beautiful. The water is warm and cool in streams as we move through, pulling each other in trains in the shallows, walking on our hands, submerged. A jellyfish or something with tentacles crept over my sister’s leg and left its mark. Tiny creatures burrowed with bubbles into the sand in pools. The tide was strong in some areas, and smooth and easy in others. The salt in the water was heavy and strong-tasting. We drip water and drop sand as we walk, laughing.

We know love as we do. There is so much to do within us, and with each other, within our world. These beautiful growing children bring us back to the wonderful way the world is made, the joy that is already here, within each seed, each creature, each life.

We prepare food, with my sister-in-law’s recipes and stirs, we choose local produce from shelves. We grilled fish, and tasted the flesh of water in it, with its oil and herbs and savory rich life. The fresh revival of life comes with it, with "our" new baby here, and our thoughts of our parents who are so distant from us, yet ever-present in every move, every choice, every thought. Emily brings them closer with her kindnesses, and we share our moments every way we can. We know love as we do.

Sweet Lowland Tybee Tours

Tybee Lighthouse