thought...

Everything stressful that ever happened was a thought.  I heard this sentence spoken in a dharma talk.

in the light of a new day

A friend sent this poem in an email and I am happy to post it here as it relates so directly to the post I made the other night, "can't sleep".  Thank you Margaret, for this.

Walker

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road, 

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

by Antonio Machado

 

if I could not fail...

Read this question somewhere recently and came to a full stop.  "What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" 

I would write a book... go back to work- this time in hospice care... let myself fall in love again... move house... the list could go on and on but what I would most want to do is... be fully and completely alive and awake.  However that might look.  Whatever it might require of me.

early morning

Would rather be sleeping but since that isn't the reality at the moment, I found a poem to read and enter here;

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

found again after two hundred years...

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...

When the young girl who starves 

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me...

I am the food on the prisoner's plate...

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills...

I am the patient gardener 

of the dry and weedy garden...

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge...

I am the heart contracted by joy...

the longest hair, white

before the rest...

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow...

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name...

Jane Kenyon

Found it soothing- to read such a poem and let the images float in the mind.

can't sleep...

In the night, while meandering around on the internet, checking out blogs with a buddhist flavor, I came upon this quote-

"There are no paths.  Paths are made by walking."  --Antonio Machado

I have worried many times over the years that I was not following my true path. Recognizing then that my life's path is made by the walking, I courageously ventured off into side paths- some glorious, others rather decadent and one day, to my eye,  the whole journey seemed more like a classic tragedy.  I kept walking. 

Suddenly there was no path at all!  Terror ensued, followed by despair. Finally I saw, with some amusement, that my path had only apparently disappeared.  I was still walking.

There is no path except the one that is made by walking.  Some small comfort comes with that recognition.  If I think I am following the path of Buddha, Christ, a living teacher, or even some friend of mine, in the end I must create the path that is my life by walking it- alone.  Which makes it my path- the right path- the only path I can authentically follow.

Sad to say, these sorts of random musings tend to arise when I am awake for too long in the wee hours of the morning.  Must be time to meditate.

sick day...

Had three friends (one is my daughter) over for lunch today.  We feasted on Indian food while one of the women expressed her woes regarding a class she is taking.  Another expressed her woes about a difficult exam she took to get into a medical training program.  I whined a bithere and there about being sick and joked that I had thought of fixing plates of food, handing them out at the door, saying, here is your food, now go away.  

I just wanted to let myself be sick, lay around, go back to bed, be pathetic.   At one point I commented to the one among us who was actually in a good mood and not complaining about anything, that I wished I felt better.  She heard me say that, I heard myself say that and we both cracked up laughing.  What a ridiculous thing it was. 

So now, some six hours later, they are back in the stream of their lives and I am alone and still feeling sick but not fighting it or making inane remarks about feeling better.  How wonderful to recognize that wanting things to change ensures that they never will.  So I can relax and breathe and bring this to a close.

Ahh... sleep... I'm on my way.

Akshobya Buddha

LOST POST- *@#%&#

I blog- 5 paragraphs- hit publish and get the message that it ain't gonna happen.  So I search for the post and it really has disappeared. Jeez.  Not a happy camper here because the post was about a snake in a friend's manbag. Too tired to rewrite so let this suffice.  Maybe tomorrow will be better although dinner at my daughter's was fabulous so if I sleep tonight then it was a good day after all.

cybertrash and beyond...

A few weeks ago I panicked at the thought of anyone reading my ramblings on this blog site.  I believed that somehow if my writing was perceived as being less than intelligent, lacking entertainment value and worst of all, just plain boring that I was then diminished as a person.  In one efficient move, I eliminated the possibility of judgment and cast my blog into the outer darkness of cybertrash. The regret followed almost immediately.  What could cause me to think so little of myself?  I love writing, even if it is often a torturous process and even if there are few moments of real freedom and breaking through.  

The sad truth is that I am the one judging my writing and finding it lacking. Whatever anyone else thinks of this blog is their business and has nothing to do with its actual value or with me.  I find value in the making of it and that is reason enough to do it.  No need to compare myself to other writers (and we are legion).  No reason to expect that I will produce something amazing and that through my efforts the world will be changed.  Only one reason to write and that is because I must.  To feel whole and true and at peace with what arises and passes away in this story of mine, writing must have it's place.  When I write these words I feel a quiet joy fluttering deep in my body like a tiny bird taking flight.  There is a rightness in saying all of this in front of the world- even if the world never knows that it has been said.

My daughter is an artist-  abstract painting is the way her artistry is currently manifesting.  I would never dream of thinking, much less saying the kinds of things to or about her that I routinely think and say about my own path of creative expression... rather, I am open and curious and supportive of her work.  I delight in her successes and feel compassion for her struggles.  Is it possible that I could be so loving with my own slow journey?  My own small achievements such as resuming this blog even after a moment of panic and reckless reactivity?

Yesterday I was reading about rigidity in meditation practice.  The advice given was to continue to do the practice and not to press directly on the resistance because that would just make it stronger.  So here in this blog I will just persevere, writing and not pushing too hard on the tension and resistance.  Not providing myself with more excuses to give up and run away, only to return some months or years from now, still frightened, uncertain, and ashamed but desperate to fill up the pages.  I don't have to try to measure up to the work of Natalie Goldberg, Gail Sher, Susan Piver or any of my other writing teacher/mentors.  I can just be here, writing this and knowing that it is enough.

more than twenty years ago...

... when I was writing on a daily basis after discovering Natalie Goldberg's book, 'Writing Down the Bones', I was on fire.  I would write and  feel overtaken as if I was involved in strenuous physical  exercise.  My handwriting got bigger and sprawled across the page.  My breath came from deep in my belly.  My body swayed as my arm moved back and forth across the page. Inspiration had taken hold and I knew that I was never going to give this up, not for anything. But sadly, I did stop writing and became ill for many years with depression and didn't know if I would ever feel that inspiration again. Grief became my companion through months and sometimes years of not writing.  The grief was as numbing and heart breaking as the loss of a loved one.  

From time to time over the next twenty years the inspiration would return and I would begin my daily writing practice again and then again, I would stop.  This happened more times than I can count but I always came back to it for reasons that I did not fully understand.  I felt haunted and often stalked by this writing self that couldn't find expression.  There were no writing projects in the works- no ideas for anything to embark upon.  Just that deep, wild desire to write.  

Recently I am feeling that old and familiar fire alive in me. Wonderful news, right? Yes, wonderful and wrong, terrifying.  Reading in Ken Mcleod's 'Wake Up to Your Life" I find this quote from James Thurber,  "All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why".  Seems I have my path clearly delineated before me.  It is 11:40 and I haven't done my basic writing practice.  That is as good a place as any to begin.

 

questions, answers...

My daughter sent me this poem by Ezra Pound in an email and encouraged me to write.  She added,  " Ti voglio bene." Don't know the exact meaning (she speaks Italian-  I do not) but maybe something like, to write is good.  I agree that writing is good and  I write every day.  I think that the poem is beautiful and evocative.   I may ask her why she chose this one.

A Girl

The tree has entered my hands,

The sap has ascended my arms,

The tree has grown in my breast-

Downward,

The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,

Moss you are,

You are violets with wind above them.

A child- so high- you are,

And all this is folly to the world.

I love my daughter.  She is beautiful.  She is an artist.  Her existence brings joy to my confused heart.  She loves me.  She struggles with having me as a mother.  She is human.  Sometimes she mothers me. Her name is Claire.

... and furthermore...

That last post I wrote was sheer agony so I posted a photo of the Buddha, brushed my teeth, listened to excerpts of Pema Chodron teaching about tonglen practice and watched a video of a British woman singing a song from 'Les Miserables' that is making people cry. Seriously.  Watch it yourself if you don't believe me- or even if you do.

Life isn't so bad even if you have to walk around feeling like you have been shrink wrapped and can't get out.  What if I never do manage to get out?  That would truly suck... and there are no guarantees.

Time to floss.

Rainbow Buddha