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

Haunted by Waters

photo by Steve Kye

"But when I am alone in the half light of the canyon all existence seems to fade to a being with my soul and memories. And the sounds of the Big Black Foot River and a four count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."
from Norman Maclean's beautiful book, A River Runs Through It

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy."

"Reverend Maclean: Each one of us today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding."

A River Runs Through It

My friend Steve went fly fishing in Arkansas on a side trip from work. Ever read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It (1976)? Maybe you saw the film directed by Robert Redford, with a truly boyish Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, and more very able actors. I highly recommend both. Both gave me a new appreciation of the poetry in wading in water and knowing fish.

There is true beauty in water that runs so cold and clear and strong. Think of it: fingers twisting flies, the whir of the line in air and radiant with light, the dance of light across the river, a silence surrounding and enveloping and carrying all molecules of water and fins with it.

I see a man squatting by the river's edge, smooth stones in his pocket, his cuffed pants wet and long. He is crouching with the weight of a caravan on his back, memories of gaunt-eyed faces peering through windows that rattled. Greek gods people his dreams when he watches running river water, and their every form appears - thunder, lightning, serpent, quail. So much became about ravishing and conquest, the beliefs in fates like a moody wind. Here, the water removes the chaos he associates with air, since he left that burning house so many years ago. Firemen had carried him out, while he called for his sister, Sophie. Her face was black with ash, but he never heard a cough sound so good.

When he thinks of her, he smiles, and those years between disappear, faint as dust. He puts his palms in the water and feels the current against his skin. He closes his eyes and listens: crackling of leaves somewhere, birds chirping, the slight sound of heavy water moving. The stones in his pocket are from that driveway. They've been around.

One of Many Leaves

“Behind a pointed tip, the minuscule embryo of a potential tree waited, backed up by enough protein and starch to generate a first root, a tiny stem, and its first four leaves. Yet, for all the promise of this crop of acorns, life would be sparingly given; fewer than one in ten thousand would ever develop into an oak tree. “ (Biography of a Tree, 5)


Georgette and I walked by the lake once as a blue sailboat went by, gently enough as though it were not real but only a painting that had changed my life. She turned to me with those lilting looks, those deep-set eyes that had no end, and she was without sentimentality, only full of the memory of those moments gone by.

I used to move my hands that way, as though I was conducting music, and I was lost in my own world. What does this mean, to be “lost in our own world”? When I opened my eyes, I saw clouds then, and the blue of sky was the ocean that covered the world.

There were no endings, no real beginnings. I was a boy in her hands, then a man. She was a young girl in mine, then a woman, a mother. Then I became the child with curls, the girl seeking her mother-love, the girl giggling and sad, the girl with dirty hands, and a loud voice.

The sailboat continued by, tranquil. We continued walking. We held hands. The sun was bright. I breathed it all in, and the sparks and salt that flew from the sun and clouds were like stars in the brightest dark sky. The trees reached for me as they do. To disappear into green had been my dream. Now the green came from me, one of many leaves.

Kid Sparrow Loves

Last night we watched La Vie En Rose, a film about the life of Edith Piaf, in the Varsity Theater across from UNC. The Franklin Street theater is small, with an air of lots of use over years, though not stale. Upstairs leading to the restrooms are a few seats, a smart set-up with bright colors that say retro fresh. My friend had a lemon-mint ice cream combination that was a taste burst of sweet-fresh brighter than the theater itself. Seeing the film brought back memories of grad. School when my friend Tom and I would listen to Edith Piaf sing as we sat in his dark living room. Jacques Brel, old theater set pieces, were conjured up by some of these listenings, and the drama of them lingered in the air. “The Little Sparrow” had lung power and a voice that championed little girls, “little people,” common ground, the force of being alive – very early on, after many had heard her for the first time and were astonished and pleased, an artist admirer told her, You are an immense artist” (en Francais), and she answered, amid the New Year’s hubbub and laughter, “I’m wearing high heels.” Her face and gestures became so distinctively part of her presence that they seem sometimes exaggerated. Those stunning blue eyes seem both purely direct in their gaze and wide open as an ocean, to the vulnerabilities of life and all the winds that blow. What a presence, what a life, what a look, what a voice she had. Moments linger, such as when she first sang, at 9 years old when her father, a “contortionist” was trying to make money for them by twisting up his limbs for passers-by in the street, and the lingerers wondered what talent she had. Her father prodded her to act, so the audience wouldn’t leave, and she stepped up and opened her mouth to sing the French anthem with a sound and strength that brought slow smiles and claps from the gathering listeners. As they sat on a beach an interviewer asked her – what would you tell a woman, a child, any advice – Love, she answered. “Je ne regrette rien,” she sang, at the end.

At dinner we had been talking about choices, how and why we make the choices we make, what it means to use our mind as a sense, to live with our senses as the life force of love that we are designed for. “There but for the grace of choice go I,” my friend said, and we laughed at the depth of this thought rippling in the pond of our lives and lifetimes.

We scan for details of a personal nature when we want to know more. When I think of Edith Piaf and her life, as it is depicted, I scan with my mind as fingers the scenes and ripples I feel as I watch and think. Those hands she had to be encouraged to use, that voice which kept her alive. She shouted often, dismissive of many. Yet she loved deeply. Care was there in moments that stood out in that hard-scrabble early life, and the tragedies that followed. She was bent and sedated by the time she died (cancer), still young but also ancient. She was 48.

I have to sing at least one song, she said (or something like it), or I will forever lose faith in myself – this near her death-time, her collapsing, remembering her fondest career moments as every time the curtain rose. Think of it: An actress acting a part written for the “real woman,” characters chosen as the supporting cast, to represent that supporting entourage of hers, faithful friends. We accept these, moved to tears and more, so why do we question our reappearance on stage after stage, in life after life, with supporting casts of our own? A good moment appears when Edith dismisses an orchestra she had kept waiting, and a Radio official, distraught, says, You can’t do that! She plants her palms on her hips and says, Why not? What’s the point of being Edith Piaf if I can’t? It’s a good scene that sounds a resounding chord. We’re so accustomed to operating by rules and regulations as fact that we forget we created them, that they are not Nature’s laws. We choose what we do. The energy we are becomes part of our every environment, as our environment is what we create.

A friend told me she called another to ask him to come over and join their swimming – what? At 8:30am, this early? He said. Is there a rule about that?, she said to me. Her son remarked about not having to mow the lawn. We use this “competition” mode in every way. I see this better now. With every thought I use that way my energy adds to the bucking-horse energy, the bull-rider out of the gate at the rodeo, with the crowd watching and a stopwatch ready. I listen to remarks about ex-wives and husbands, another friend’s refusal to respond to her ex-husband because he is being judgemental or instructive. I understand her forceful defense of not wanting to be criticized. Not being told she is not doing something right, not good enough. Also, her impetus to want to “stand up for herself,” when she feels her own structures of life (marriage) have not held the weight she thought they did for her. When each thought is new, the world is fresh, and there is no stale air in our interactions. We are free to choose. Je ne regrette rien.

Love, Truth and Perception speaks to these changes that free us from these beliefs. “The emotions that we feel for ourself will always be our definition of the love that we feel for another.” (LTP, 175)

“The intellect and ego is judging itself in relationship to its ability to be loved by others. But being loved by another eases the sadness, pain, and longing only temporarily before our loss is again triggered by the soul and spirit mind saying, ‘ you still haven’t found me’ as our soul and spirit seeks to become one with the intellectual mind.” (LTP, 173)

“But we will forever seek to fulfill our unquenchable thirst for the beauty of love, because love is the hidden power of our life. “ (174)

Our knowing that love is essential to our life comes from our soul motivation, which keeps us searching.

“Our perception of love is accepted from the reflection of our self-image that is reflected back to us from the veil of the ego.” (174) We do not perceive that the love which we physically seek is in truth the love of ourself and our life. The vision that we see of ourself is what we will seek. If we see ourself as physical, we will seek physical love.

My reflection was an image of a “strong female,” i.e., equal to a male, a “male in a female body.” Because I did not see myself as a “strong female” - despite all evidence to the contrary, I did not believe there was such a "thing," and did not even know I believed it! What does it mean to be "strong," willful, free? What does it mean to find your own voice?

“For many individuals who have continued their unexplainable search for true love, there is no logical explanation within their mind to explain the motivation for their actions. They simply feel an overwhelming need to continue their search and they follow their sense of ‘need.’” (174) The external love that we seek is the physical symbol of our internal path as our intellect seeks to unite with the love of our spirit.

One reviewer of Le Vie En Rose wrote, "Piaf's will to live is inspiring even in the face of self-destruction that makes Judy Garland's own battles with alcohol and drugs seem minor in comparison." Marion Cotillard's performance is incredible. She was born in Paris, in 1975. She aged realistically in the film, in hours, through torment, triumph, and with power. Love, Edith said. We are all connected within our spirit consciousness and the spirit never fails to honor that love.

Birds' Eye Views

pic by PIJ (C Buffington)




pic by Dwain Ritchie

Revelations in Ordinary Things

I do not seek to be obscure, Magritte said. I simply want to be understood via ordinary things, and those ordinary things I choose change with each moment. The “Song of Love” painted in oil by Chirico in 1914 changed my view of how I entered my dreams and how I came into the mornings and afternoons awake, with history intact or broken into fragments with luminescent colors.

I met my Georgette at the fair too, and although I did not know immediately that she was to be the love of my life, I felt the atmosphere change around her when we met. We exchanged words the way others exchange gifts, the ring to signify marriage, joining. That is why I wonder and rasp when I think of the mistreatment we give symbols and how they, as we, are misunderstood. What is real is distorted only our vision. Our education of vision has left us to see umbrellas as only a function of bouncing raindrops back into the air with our heads under them. Once we begin to think of an umbrella, and especially when we see one in the quiet of really looking at it, dry, our minds are full of every form and association that may follow – the last time we ran through rain with a lover, or someone we anticipated loving into an eternity we could not yet foresee but could feel, the way raindrops feel fat and full while they are falling; one view from a late life as we stood on the veranda beneath the eaves listening to the rain as the horizon heaved like a tangible and largely quiet ocean; of jumping into puddles while only 3 feet tall, dragging an umbrella given by our mothers. You see how the images float, fly, make their way? Hasty viewing is as disruptive as conversations cut off by a lost cell phone signal; and to have already forgotten that such signals are new is already to have forgotten a path of history as technology grows.

When did I begin to think of symbols as “symbols”? I shunned this later because I came to know the things themselves as the energy of how I moved them in my mind, the way they and I explored together their meanings, like the treasure chests of old wars, and even the paintings said to be found hidden under bridges and behind locked doors. Wars make us seal up art, and what we knew as art turns into propaganda until we change our seeing. What is propaganda? The mysteries of the visible world suffice to show themselves as our minds move with them through time. I tip my hat to the smooth Greek face that stands giant sentinel over so much silence, so much that is hidden and cold as stone, yet so full of the heart of our mind. The gloves that hang in “The Song of Love” tell their own colorful story.

Georgette, I ask you, was our dance the ferris wheel you remembered? I took your hand one day and remembered the gate through which we passed, and that gate opened into a few years’ absence, then into a lifetime of longing and laughter.

With words I reach to you, knowing yet that the realms in which our world works are beyond this ink, and beyond the turnstiles of any local fair. Subordinating visual images to thought, or vice versa, is nonsense. With you I only aim to make myself more visible, as I am.

"AntiGravity: The 2007 Tour"

When I read Ginia Bellafante's NY Times theater review, "Where Bodies Are Perfect and Not Very Earthbound" (June 29) out of sync with other more recent reviews, I landed on her phrase, "the mood is loose" and stayed there for a while. Nan Melville for The New York Times - “Girl Power,” one of the segments of “AntiGravity: The 2007 Tour.”

She writes that the show bears no narrative, message or commentary, and the director says there is nothing to "figure out," yet there was a great deal she tried to figure out. Then she writes, "I wondered, for instance, how it could be that nearly every female dancer onstage seemed able to contort her body into a vertical split while few people I know can muster the flexibility to pick up a fallen bar of soap in the shower." This is a great description I think of how we think about what is "real" and not, and why. Airbrushing our way through our thoughts and deeds as we present them to ourselves and others for review keeps us from truly appreciating the energy and act of creation itself that is so beautiful.

This fits with what I've read about Sarah Ruhl too, the playwright who is being kept busy these days according to reviews. Her new play "Eurydice" was reviewed by Christopher Isherwood in the Times also in June with a headline of "The Power of Memory to Triumph Over Death." "The fabled creatues of 'Eurydice' may look like people you've seen on the subway, but they speak in images plaucked form the blue sky of their mythic imaginations." Shut up and get used to being dead, the blunt-spoken and familiar chorus of stones keep telling her. Constantly we are reminding ourselves of the power of our memory that transcends each single incident in our life, why the ordinary moments are what create the buoyancy within us as we swim in this ocean that is life. Smart, snappy, simple language, but full of the twists and turns which show the paths we take as we learn to know ourselves and what true love is. Risk and loss are continually painful if we have no knowledge of the true value of memory. I heard that voice in my head for years - "shut up and get used to being dead," even as I felt parts of me were alive. It's a very strange feeling without the knowledge of the classical structure and form that such a life story follows. Without form and structure that is well-defined, myth loses its way and such imagery is merely a forest of what feel like ghosts or guests you'd like to get rid of but don't know how without burning down the house.

Eurydice's quest is the same as mine, the same human quest to truly know who we are and what we want. The perfection Gina I's review reveals, in these wordless bodies, is one more image of appreciation of the simplicity of this beauty. The "why" reveals itself. We just have to know who we are to see it.

The One and the Many

At this point in time as in all others we can always assimilate our creation with an other, for if we are not that one, one would suppose we were connected or thinking the same thing at the same moment. As history always shows it is only the one not the many- this too will change as we all invent that which has already been thought of or even brought to fruission- how does one spell that- grammar does not always come along with the knowledge of that subject as someone is always trying to perfect something which has no need for perfection as it is always in the mind of the beholder (GOD, of course). Tennis anyone? That is why technology is sometimes foreign for one drawing on that which we have already conquered or perhaps will have no long term need for- since memory also helps us to see what the future holds for us. (G.L.)


I’m thinking again about what it means to create the present and future from our past – the creativity of the past is obsolete, already gone, “frozen” in time – captured as an image, fixed only in that way. Looking into the picture, its creation, the urges of its inspiration, the beauty of its textures, layers, colors, movement (its energy) opens its infinite experiences, “meanings.” Building upon the past (obsolete) creates for us the circumstances of never being able to go beyond the past. If obsolete means no longer useful, the urge is to create anew, and this is the sense of life eternal, seeds, sprouts, ocean waves. I am gaining a new understanding of independence.

If I relate to all I am, all we have been, as equal, I have no favoritism, no attachment or “possession,” so no need to be envious or try to force one hand or another one way or another. This is the energy of competition and inequality which is the rumbling of war. My urge is to love, to join hands.

To look at all of life energy as one is to know we are one.

When I have felt the jealousy of possessiveness, I know it is because I am crouching before a pebble on the beach, having been drawn by its energy to and within me, and caught with this attention to the one stone and forgetting the roar of the sea, the movement of the tide. The roar and tide continue. The pebble has its markings from sand and tide, a certain shine or trail of dirt.

Friends I have known before have written or spoken fragments of words which make this tide more visible within me, just as my own thoughts and feelings do. The comfort of knowing we were comrades at times, known, unknown – the comfort being the continuity of the stream more than the familiarity of a role. This is the mind-tide turning on the movement and depth of the sea-life rather than a fixation forever on the one pebble, beached, or half hidden in sand. The bond of brotherhood, of “la familia,” with a friend helps me recognize how the sense of “love” was known by its fierce loyalty, this the “unbroken circle.” This is why any sense of “betrayal” was so intensely felt. Rejection, betrayal were unforgivable. They were fixed in stone, forever cast into memory. This is how we create our present and future from the past. So to choose “other than what was” is a betrayal to a “possessed” (ego-controlled) mind. “Other than what was” means change. To know we create each new memory as we live is to know that we are each pioneers, explorers, creators, sharing journeys.

What is true love? Not to cling to the raft of the past, but to know the love within us is real, and infinite, eternal. There is nothing greater. To remember there is a raft and an ocean, over and over, the beauty. This is perhaps where the “greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friend” comes from – the depth of love when we love our neighbor as ourself and have no need to cling to life as on the raft away from a country which oppresses us, not knowing whether we will live or die. The life we cling to is the love that creates and emanates within and from us. This is my true home, and on this plot of land is where I come to know what fertility and growth truly mean.

“Possession” means controlled by something other than ourself. It’s ironic how our definition of possession in one basic historical way is by “demons” – yet it is our beliefs, our dependence and worship, loyalty to those things other than ourself (our perception of Life itself) that define possession, to “own.”

Saturdays at Saxapahaw

The children at the Saturday Saxapahaw Market making their train are fun to watch. I love being able to enjoy the afternoon or early evening there, with fresh produce and treats, music, and this leg-parade dodging little ones as they roll in the clover.

rivermillvillage
satinsax

Explicit Growth

“Our thinking mind controls our internal process of thinking and knowing as well as our reflective physical behavior. Therefore our thinking mind cannot and will not accept the Intelligent Design of our Spirit Consciousness, until it is willing to open itself to thinking as an internal process of self-reflection as it studies the philosophy of its own explicit growth with each life experience in each physical lifetime.” (4, Spirit Consciousness: Our Intelligent Design by Kathy Oddenino)


Certain words conjure energy images that teach me how to know the energy of my reflections. When I have felt a thin veil of “resentment,” the word “prelate” came to my mind with it, and I have this energy-image of a man moving in just such a way, in robes, his hands in a familiar pose, that quiet dignity that is a reinforced dignity, a more physical stacked-up sense of dignity than a true internal strength. There is a smugness in him, mixed with the satisfaction of truth, so the process of change is mixing the mortar of it all.

This is the way he moved, smoothly but not quite gliding, because gliding brings with it a naturalness of movement that is poetic, that recalls leaves, water, wind. When taken this way, his moving revealed an effort underneath, a wooden way just visible that belied that assurance that may first be taken for dignity and the reserve of patience and kindness.

As the public spokesperson for a body such as the “world church,” this man had assumed a mantle with the weight of centuries, but in ways he did not yet understand. The mouthpiece that took sounds already formed and strived to carry them forth into the world moved slowly as a long train full with cargo.

What is his explicit growth in that moment? Moving down that wide road or aisle, smoke rising, the incantations low and steady, he is hypnotized in his own robe and miter-walk, the steady drumbeat of time. The air within and around him has a hint of sulfur, and the strong scent of oiled wood.

Then there is lightness, a freshness I see, with a young woman moving through groves of trees in early morning sunlight. She is happy, with dark curls, alone. The dappling sunlight bathes her face and her bare arms. There is nothing else to the world in that moment but her happiness, which encompasses and comes from the pulse of the earth, the air, the speaking green of those trees.

The realm between these scenes is the energy of change which comes with explicit growth and the internal self-reflection of thinking.

Echoes

“The origin of the map is lost to history.”

“For years I had been the greyhound chasing the rabbit of permanent solutions.” (37, Paul Hawken)

“The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings.” (16, Rachel Carson)

A woman named Sarah reluctantly accepted the idea that came to her for the millionth time – she could save only herself. Why reluctantly? She wondered. It was as though each time the thought came, it came with the roll that made the hill she tumbled down as a little girl, gathering clover. Or it came with the pebbles she saw on the drive ground into glass by the tires of the car she rode in. The sky was bright with clouds and shattered with sun. Leaves from every tree fluttered in her, and they felt like butterflies. With each moment the thought of renewal, of rising from the yeast of Earth, of the groundwater always on the move, rose in her until she felt the sky itself inside her. Sometimes the thought came as a dream, and she felt tiny bones break and blood form, feathers rustle. Speckled eggs rested in nests, watched over, and heartbeats began. With wings to fly, she floated through history, stepped through battlefields made of grass and sometimes four walls, and the throat of history opened with its eyes for her, the yawn and groan and laughter of all voices calling out to be heard. The sharp voices were like swords. When she hung her head, she saw her feet webbed, she counted coins, she knew the hemp that made the ropes, the cloth that formed the sweeping sails. Overland, over the endless sea which tossed and turned, her organs and entrails, every cell, felt its journey through time, finding the poetry and pain in birth, the perfection like a song in each death. Was she ever alone? There was no time without this thought of spring eternal, the ground water always on the move. Poisoning one spring poisons all. The mind must know how it moves and changes, through shadows and bright sun, with the groundwater moving so deep and far.

Reluctantly, it seemed, because somehow the lingering sense of loss hung on to her shoes, her feet, her joints, and when she slept, her heart seemed to open like an accordion. She awoke on a raft in bright sun, gentle waves rippling into a past and future beyond her horizon. No alarm clock needed, time clicked away while caves opened, rocks started avalanches, coral reefs formed. Reluctance turns to liquid crystal, glittering, even with twisting roots.

A boy she remembers touched her like she was something new, a first wonder. Another’s voice came to her like the wind, whispering, whistling, humming, even as a metronome, sweet as strings. The man he became had eyes that welcomed the world in – she saw him in cabins deep in woods, scribbling on pads, whittling. Wood smells, shavings, branches were strong, then switched to steel girders blinding with sun as they turn on a cable, strong as a lullaby. Plate glass, concrete, stone embedded with ground glass and more, the elements surround him, planed differently than what he remembers. Then the sister she remembers, the echo of love which made her lean into the dance with her eyes closed as if she could scarcely believe what she held, this simple beauty of a moment when such a homecoming held together. She remembered, then, what another friend said, with that wish in her voice – My mother, my husband, never there to just hold me and say, Everything will be alright. Sarah’s own mother, a French aristocrat a few generations removed, would wave her silk scarf and say, Ah, life is much more than a dream.

The wounds we hold within us heal, cell by cell, thought by thought, love easing the skin together. She will pay tribute, plant a flag along the way, note the garden path, cry when she feels the heartache that lingers through time, looking for the History of Everything. It’s a red book, and very useful. The pages are blank, and each thought fills them with feeling. Ink spills over like water and runs like a river into holding ponds while we study causes and effects. She has the book of life always ready now, by the piano, or beneath the tree branches that hang heavy. The alphabet of life is always ready to be read.

Each day she drives, her car windows down, and the green and heat bring the world home to her. As her friend cut flowers and gathered them into bouquets, she went to a place inside with a meadow which held memories of every friend, some forever fresh.