Redwood Trees, Dreams, & Life Writings

I think I've found out the secret of making a dream come true. 

Just don't stop. Don't stop. Don't ever stop. 

~Michael Taylor

co-discoverer of the tallest tree on earth,

quoted in The Wild Trees.

I've just finished reading a magnificent book about redwood trees and the handful of remarkable people who have loved them so much they dedicated their entire lives to exploring and studying and protecting them. If you love trees, especially if you love these gentle giants, I cannot recommend The Wild Trees, by Richard Preston enough. It is both a thrilling and an incredibly moving read, and what I learned about the trees both stunned me and left me in awe of the absolute mystery and sacredness of creation.
            Redwood trees once graced most of the land in the northern hemisphere, dating back at least to the age of dinosaurs and possibly long before. Now, they are found only in one small valley in China and in Northern California, where all but two percent of the old growth trees ~ some more than two thousand years old ~ have been clear cut and logged, lost, if not forever, at least for thousands of years. Preston tells the story of the young men who bushwhacked through miles of dense torturous underbrush, sometimes shimming on their bellies long distances through creeks shrouded with thick brush, in search of the tallest of the tall. Beginning in the 80s and continuing since, they discovered trees that were not even a thought, much less previously known, at least, of course, to non-indigenous peoples, including those in the middle of both national and state parks, including the tallest trees on earth and the tallest tree on earth, whose locations remain precious secrets to all but a handful of people, mostly scientists. He writes of the passion of these modern day explorers, the men and one woman who have climbed them, slept in their canopies hundreds of feet in the air, to study the trees themselves and the brilliant and diverse ecosystems that they support.
            From a pinecone no larger than an olive, and a seed the size of a grain of rice, grow not only the largest living beings on earth, but the tallest, some reaching the staggering heights of a thirty-eight story building. They are phenomena of nature in so many incredible ways; resistant to fire, flood, and the invasion of insects, with the bark of the old growth titans growing to a foot thick, protecting the center of the precious and beautiful heartwood, the reason they have been logged nearly out of existence. I learn about Redwood Cathedrals, also called Fairy Rings, where new trees have grown up in a tight circle around a living or fallen tree, generally sharing the same genetics and root system as the original, their tall canopies mixing, becoming as one. Also, that one tree can grow dozens or even hundreds of additional trunks, vertical trunks, not branches, far up off the ground. Mosses and old-world lichens that fertilize the trees; and most surprising, mystical even, creatures that have previously been known to only live in water, that require living in water, reproducing and living their life cycle in the redwood's canopies far from the ground. And possibly most awe-inducing, especially for this gardener are the aerial gardens in the canopies of these giants, not only unseen before this time, but unimagined; large pockets and burned out caverns that are filled with soil from which grow hanging ferns, blooming rhododendrons, fruit producing huckleberries, elderberries, and currants as well as canopy bonsai trees such as buckthorn and laurel and hemlock, that can range from tiny to many feet in height.

I am inspired and also galvanized by the passion of these individuals, the trust they placed in their gut instincts and knowing, the tenacity to keep their dreams alive and not give up. They inspire me, not to climb trees ~ oh, I wish! ~ but to get real about my own dreams, one dream in particular, which is to write about my life in a more purposeful way, which has, for many reasons, seemed an impossible dream. "Prove that it is possible," Michael Taylor went on about dreams coming true. "... and keep going," he added. This from the man who co-discovered the tallest trees and tree on earth, yet who was terrified of heights, plagued by the fear that he would jump if he ever ascended a tree and yet he did, he did one day ascend, with the heartwarming support of a friend, botanist and fellow redwood explorer, Steve Sillett, who not only encouraged him each step of the way, but who held him, literally, held and soothed him when the panic overtook him as they dangled on the ends of ropes far above the ground.

So. I will be taking a break here. I will be seeing what it is that might want to be written in a different way than I write here. What might want to be discovered, learned, practiced, honed, over and over, what it might look like to believe in my my own gut instincts, this dream enough to follow it wherever it might lead, to commit myself to myself. 

         
         

The Irony of Orange

"Impression" by Claude Monet

You must cherish the blank paper in front of you
and write out words that cannot be erased.

From “Paper” by Ha Jin

Just moments ago, as the sun rose through the low ceiling of coastal fog, suddenly the leaves at the very tops of the trees caught fire. In the blink of an eye tiny golden, specks of light~hundreds of them~shimmered like glitter, electrifying the tips of the leaves, as though someone had flung strings of tiny iridescent lights like a net over the topmost branches. Behind them the horizon looked as though orange sherbet had spilled then melted softly, filling the edges of the sky and the contours of the distant hills. As I stared in rapt marvel, was it a minute, two, maybe five? just as quickly as it began the lights twinkled out, just like the stars fade with the first sun's rays, and I was left wondering if I had really seen what I knew I had seen. 

Cherish the blank paper in front of you.   

Yesterday I watched a family of quail run across a small country lane. It was possibly one of the most heartwarmingly charming things I've seen in a very long time. Two adult birds flanked by little marbles of light orangey-brown downy feathers rolling across the road. Like the light this morning, there and gone in an awe-struck instant. 

and write out words that cannot be erased

For years I attended process painting classes. It was not about learning to paint, but about learning to let the subconscious speak through color, texture, and form, trusting that what you are intuitively drawn to is somehow exactly what is wanting or needing awareness, process, expression. Like dreaming or meditating, only with a brush, blank paper, and tempura paint. Sometimes when I had no idea what wanted to come next, when I felt stuck, the message from our teacher was always the same: pick whatever color you most do not want to paint with, then pick the shade within that color that you dislike the most, and paint with that. I never had to think; I knew the unwanted answer before her question was even complete, truthfully before she even sat at the stool next to me to see how I was doing. Always, every time, it was orange. And not just any orange, not the soft pastels of apricot or peach, but ghastly neon orange. I can still smell the unholy scent of it as I opened the bottle. Yet the strange thing was that once loaded onto my brush, even with the very first few tentative strokes onto my paper, every time without fail, I felt alive and energized and vital; the block miraculously evaporated as I melted with ease into the mystery of that strangely repugnant hue. 

Feeling very stuck right now in writing takes me back to those years in painting. What color, or in this case, what words am I reluctant to write? Or, put another way, what words want or need to be painted on the canvas of this page that cannot be erased? 

I wrote so cavalierly last post about feeling fully alive. About the helix of joy and sorrow, and being open to the continuum, the full spectrum of what being truly alive can encompass. And it was all true, every word, in that moment. It's still my most genuine thing, my true north, the star I would follow to the ends of the earth: In order to feel fully alive, all will need to be welcomed. 

But what I forget, what is so often forgotten, is that with trauma, it's not just about joy and sorrow and all that lies between, which are authentic experiences true to simply being alive, to living and loving. Post traumatic stress, which occurs when traumas are not properly seen to so that the wounded parts can heal is a thing unto itself. For me, it's overwhelm, and also, especially, shutting down, and in the resulting numbness is the inability to feel. It's the freeze part of the fight, flight, freeze response (along with less well known but intimately familiar cousin, collapse). It slips in unnoticed and parks itself; it may take days or even weeks for me to realize it's arrived again, with its numbness, its deadening, its suppression of all feeling except, I've realized recently, the utter pain of living anesthetized, exiled from connection with the precious light of my being, where it all lives, the sacred inner garden from which so much arises in my life, including words.  

I had also forgotten orange. Happily. (Such irony~) I look around my house, in my garden, my closets, there is nothing resembling orange. I don't use it in art; I never photograph anything close to it. Years ago, after the process painting classes, but long before now, in a color for design class I learned all about orange for my term project. But I have forgotten that, too; the way it vibrates with aliveness more than any other color. How warm and inviting and stimulating it is. That in color psychology it is associated with enthusiasm, rejuvenation, vitality, freedom, happiness, adventure, and courage. 

In her frankly joyful book, Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, Ingrid Fetell Lee writes, "From the moment I first started studying joy, it was clear that the liveliest places and objects all have one thing in common: bright, vivid color." She writes about bright color changing not only individual's lives, but entire school and town populations. That health improves when vivid color is used, healing is accelerated, and depression, conflict, even violence and crime, decrease. 

Seeking to understand my loathing of the hue that is so often described as the happiest color, I am relieved to learn that our brains are actually wired toward negativity, which served our ancestors well and helped us to survive as a species. Having unsolved trauma doubles down on that, and I recognized years ago that I simply do not trust happiness. It is not because I am skewed toward pessimism innately because I am not, not by a long shot. Though it could well be argued that this is exactly how trauma has shrouded my true nature; because things happened that caused that groove in the limbic system to record over and over again that being happy, that being carefree, that simply being at ease was just not safe.

The great news from Lee's research is that just the act of incorporating more color ~ as well as many other things she identifies in her book, like abundance, harmony, and play ~ changes things as if by magic. Over and over studies bear this out. We don't have to "try" to be joyful, we don't have to "try" to change those pathways; they can transform on their own simply by what we choose to surround ourselves with.

Lee writes, "Every human being is born with the capacity for joy, and like the pilot light in your stove, it still burns within you even if you haven't switched on the burners in a while." Oh, happy day: To be reminded that even through these times of painful disconnect, nothing is actually gone, merely masked. I see how nature herself provides the kindling, in vivid sunrises and sunsets; in trees alight with the first sun's rays; in spectacular light and color everywhere, even in those sweet baby birds scurrying wildly across the deeply shaded road. It's everywhere, readily available, penetrating even in moments gone otherwise cold with numbness and apathy.

Here, now, are words. Words written out. Words that live on this cherished page, words that rebound in my cherished world; colorful words like a soft breeze against that inner flame; sacred words that cannot be erased. 

I grab my camera and go in search of orange. 

Attraction Desire & Longing OH MY

Longings are one of the most eloquent ways
 the soul speaks to us.
~Sue Monk Kidd

This morning I open the curtains about an hour before sunrise and there, hanging low outside the window is the crescent moon. Just a sliver of white-gold, the only thing visible in the clear dark sky, and oh, the brightness of that tiny lune. My breath catches and I go still, she a magnet drawing me to her like she always does, always, no matter what, but especially when rising before dawn, especially when I am just waking from sleep, especially when she's so unexpected; and like the seas and the tides, I am powerless over her magnetism.

I've been thinking a lot lately about attraction and magnetism, these everyday enchanters, harbingers of desire and longing and falling in love--with anything really, though most often we think about it in terms of another. The truth is I've not only been thinking about it, I've been wrestling with it, I've been resisting it, and worst of all, I've been feeling not only embarrassed, but in some moments, quite abashed by it. 

Then these words arrived, so beautifully timed, as happens so often when I'm in the midst of exploring something. From Deborah Eisenberg's new movie, Let Them All Talk: 

I think attraction is the animating force in the universe, really. Like gravity or the pull of the poles, what pulls the monarch butterflies to fly across the world. If you feel attracted to someone from your heart, and you look at them and you feel you can see their soul, there is no bad version of that; to want to be a part of that, and we should treasure it, we’re lucky to have that feeling. It’s the greatest, it’s the fullest expression of what it is to be alive. 

Attraction, the fullest expression of what it is to be alive.

Oh my. 

A favorite thing I'm learning in photography right now is to shoot through, where you photograph through something. It can be a crystal or prism or a translucent film of color, a plastic bag even, or, as in the photo above, it could be the blossoms in the forefront when focusing on the blooms behind them. It can create a hot, confusing mess, or, it can create something wildly, unexpectedly beautiful.

Hearing Eisenberg's main character's words changes everything in less time that it takes my heart to skip a beat. And it makes me think of shooting through, when with a single click, suddenly there is a focus point that is remarkably clear, and all the struggle that has stood in the way is now soft and supple, shapeless even, yet still, inexplicably, part of the beauty of the thing itself. And there in brilliant focus is the gift, the treasure of attraction... to be fully alive... no matter what may or may not come from it, which is not even the point, the real point being that it's incredible to feel so awake, to have a heart so very open, to be tender and vulnerable in spite of living in a world that incessantly suggests only the opposite is safe, and to bask in that, just that.

Yes, attraction's offspring is desire, which may or may not be met, and desire's child is longing; unmet longing can make the heart ache for sure. Though contrary to what I've learned elsewhere, it is only when diving deeply into the world of the Beloved Feminine that I understand longing as the beautiful tiding of the heart that it is, the profound solicitation to open, and yes, where we can actively engage with the soul, as Sue Monk Kidd writes. And it's true that we may find pleasure, or we may find pain, we never know, because aliveness invites the whole of life in, it endows us with its full spectrum, the joyful, the grievous, and everything in between.

Some magnetisms are fleeting, they may last a day or a season. Some last a lifetime. Like tall bearded irises and tiger swallowtails. Like music and the color blue. Like the sunrise and the moon rise. Like the ocean and dolphins and Maui. Some fill you with joy, others break your heart. Some stay with you, against all rationale, against all better judgment, against inner criticism and outer, through years of therapy and letter writing, some sent but most shredded. You wring your hands, you struggle, you pine, you weep, then one day you turn on a movie and in an instant, click. Everything else melts into the frame: the self judgment, the quest to understand, the resistance, even the shame, and in that moment you accept with gladness what is, and you let this great and marvelous mystery, this aliveness, have its way with you. 

💓

Joy & Sorrow, Pigeons & Swans

 

“Every morning
before the birds start
trilling me their stories,
I give birth to a new love
through my same old heart
when a lake’s placidity
finds life in the swans breath
Only for you...

~Munia Khan

There are so many things that I could write about. For starters, I could write about the wildflowers I unexpectedly came upon on a trail I hadn't visited in a while. There they were just around a soft curve in the path, all together as though someone had planted them there; the elegant poison hemlock rising with such dignity against the golden hills and blue sky; the graceful, lacy yarrow; the bright yellow field mustard, a non-native that can cover entire hills with its wildly vibrant hue; the totally surprising abundantly charming little blue-purple bells that I almost missed hiding among the grasses. I stopped in my tracks, everything gone still, taking the scene in, watching how the sun played with them as they danced together in the soft morning breezes.

Or I could write about the way my fingers came to a screeching halt after the word wildflowers. Just froze on the keyboard, like they have every single time I have tried to write anything in the past couple of  weeks. Straight into a trance, I stop, stare at the word, stare into space, eyes glassing over, thinking of all the things I could write about; all of the myriad of things that occupy my brain at three-thirty a.m., the hodgepodge, the mishmash, the potpourri; lacking the capacity right now to choose one and take a deep dive into it. 

I could write about my absolute love of writing, the way that something entirely new is born, something that simply did not exist before suddenly is~  the profound mystery of how the words braid themselves together the way they do, those precious singular entities coming together in a whole new way, weaving an entirely new tapestry, with its unique colors and textures, heart and soul; giving birth to a new love. 

I could write about trees. More specifically about the loss of trees. How tomorrow morning the beloved tree outside my window, the one I have written about time and again, the one whose heady pink blossoming got me through my first spring here, when the darkness was just beginning to lift but not entirely; the one the birds flock to singularly and in groups, the one the little finch is sitting in right now singing his heart out in the still dark morning; that tree, that cherished tree, will be gone. 

I could write about the way I told the men walking across the lawn eyeing it like a lover, revving their chainsaws like a souped-up Chevy Malibu to stop. Just STOP. How they did stop. How kind they actually were. How these past two days have been filled with phone calls, information gathering, letter writing, me channeling my no-longer-secret inner Norma Rae. Not because these will save the failing tree, the mismanaged unproperly cared for tree. But it might stop mine and my daughter's unhinged sorrow for another day or hour or moment.

I could write about overwhelm. I could write about brain rewiring. About humming. About fingers snapping, about laughter in the face of terrifying thoughts; the miracle of singing with my tone-deaf daughter as we are huddled in the small bathroom me washing her hair. I could write about that. I could stop right here and twist some words together about that that may or may not shatter my already quaking heart.

Or old boyfriends (speaking of shattered hearts), except there is only one old boyfriend, singular not plural or, only one that matters anyway. That has ever mattered. That still inconceivably matters. I could write about taking a risk leap of the kind that is beyond unnerving, that is actually so tender, so sacred that it simply cannot find itself as words forming patterns on this page, not now anyway. Maybe not ever. 

Or I could write about this being my sixty-ninth birthday. That at this moment, five-fifty-one a.m., this exact time sixty-nine years ago I was born. Holy shit. That could go so many ways it boggles my already boggled mind. Except here we are. I have just turned sixty-nine. I am now sixty-nine. Fait accompli. Though how that is possible I have no idea. Because inside, deep inside, in this fathomless being that is me, that is called Debby, the light and energy that are this unique creation, I do not age; whatever it is that animates this me is simply ageless. 

It seems that maybe I just need to write about sadness. Though it's also possible that I need to write about joy, and the amazing book I'm reading right now called Joyful. That between this book and my daughter sharing with me about her brain retraining program, something is starting to shift. Possibly seismically. 

I could write about hope. About surprise. About watching great white egrets taking flight this morning; over and over; a sight that just completely stops me, that takes my breath away in such awe; the most elegant, the most beautiful thing I think I ever witness in nature. About the tiniest gosling I've ever seen. Just one, sitting with its parents, such a flaccid ball of soft downy fur I was worried for her until finally she poked her little head up, eyes wide, and then back to rest. Or the flight of pigeons, so many pigeons taking off all around me, me instantly grabbing my camera except that it wouldn't focus, again and again trying only realizing after I gave up what an amazing experience I was missing. So many pigeons flying en mass, up and down, gone and back, around and around, in and out above me. But what really got me, once I became wholly present, tuned in with all of my senses, when I stood still with eyes closed, was the sound, the soft purring of dozens and dozens of birds swooping and gliding low over me again and again. 

And the most amazing thing of all, the tundra swans. Never in my entire life have I seen swans in the Bay Area. Not in my wildest dreams, not in my almost seventy years, but there they were on the morning of my sixty-ninth birthday. The sweetest pair ever with their six babies gliding so peacefully across azure waters at a small waterfowl preserve, an expanse of water set aside between a busy freeway, an oil refinery, and a landfill, with large, noisy, and very smelly trucks constantly coming and going. What luck, what incredible timing. Five minutes later they were gone, lost in the maze of reeds and the acres and acres of inaccessible marshland.

The incredible beauty set against the stark crudeness of modern life. The entanglement of joy and sorrow, the helix of love and loss and longing; the intertwining of grasping and letting go; the circle of endings and beginnings. Maybe that's what I should write about.

 

Dappled Shade

Photography is love and light made visible.

~Karen Hutton

I had no idea how much I loved dappled shade until I began to explore light much more consciously through my photography studies. And, in those studies, not until I began to come across teachers who are expansive enough, who see beyond the stifling dogma of traditional photography, rejecting rules of all shapes and sizes in order to arrive at what's truly important: what you love, what turns you on, what lights you up. 

So to speak; no pun intended.

There is a tiny space in my already tiny garden. It might be no more than twelve inches square. It sits between a birdbath and a wall under a weeping Japanese Maple that is planted in a half barrel. I noticed recently how often and for how long I stare at that little space of earth during certain times of day while sitting out there, something so arresting about it. Mostly shade but some speckles of light filtering in through the dense canopy of the beautiful little tree onto the foliage that lives beneath it. Then a few days ago I drove by a house with irises planted under a big evergreen and instantly hung a u-turn. There they were, tall bearded beauties of several colors regal in shade highlighted by snippets of the passing sun. And then yesterday, walking around where I live looking for things to photograph I spotted two pure white landscape rosebushes in a deserted corner, yes, beneath a tree. Bursting with pure alabaster petals mostly in shade except where the sun lit pieces of its petals. I took picture after picture and then went back again for more.

Suddenly I remember how I loved sitting out in my sister's dappled shade garden when we used to visit her years ago at a former house. I would sit in the swing, book open but forgotten on my lap, just watching, mesmerized by the way morsels of light would catch on the hostas and ferns, the soft pink astilbe, the yellow and white columbine. The way I could disappear into it, forgetting every care and worry. And when the trees swayed in a gentle breeze, the way the flecks of light danced as if in their own joyous wonder. 

It's not lost on me that I could describe my experience of life right now as living in dappled shade. Mostly shaded but with unexpected spots of surprisingly brilliant light.

And I don't mind. I relish it actually. Because when you've lived in the full-on shade of depression, when you've experienced a John of the Cross-type dark night of the soul that like Jonah and the whale swallows you whole, when you've known intimately so much trauma, when it seems that each time you've gotten yourself up and dusted yourself off, ready to have a real go at life again only to discover that life has other ideas, when you never know when grief will snatch you again or for how long, you welcome even those little pinpricks of light. You open your arms to them, really, you run to them like a lost lover, you gather them to you because you know what it's like to live years without them, you know the numbness, the pain, the heaviness, the broken heartedness. 

Also it's not as though dappled shade is the runner up, the place to sit and wait for the return of the full blast of afternoon sun. Not in the least. It is a destination of its own, the winner pure and simple if that is what draws you in, if it touches you, moves you, soothes, uplifts even. If the play of shadow and light gets you, if you find awe, if you love the epiphany of it, if your breath catches at the way the sun unexpectedly paints the center of a petal or the tip of a tender bud, the lacy edges reaching toward it, illuminating it as though from within, wow; if you can feel the magic, feel if not see all the little garden sprites, the fairies and the gnomes scurrying about, the indescribable essence, well, what an incredible gift. 

More than that is the fact of light itself. How, as Leonard Cohen wrote and sang, it's the cracks that allow it in. The same way the cracks in the heart allow the love in; and then out again. Dappled shade is nothing if not a canopy filled with cracks. Light and love; love and light. Darkness cradles light in its tender hands. Light needs darkness the same way that darkness needs light; one without the other, the yin without the yang, simply cannot exist. All that is born, is born of the primordial darkness. Nowhere does light shine more brilliantly than in the dark, nowhere; just think of the candle burning in a bright room and then think of that same candle's flame in the dark, how it fills the space with its holy essence, its pure radiance. 

Light and love, love and light.

Thank you, Karen Hutton

Thank you to all women who are the rule-breakers, 
candles in the dark~
for your hearts
your intuition,
your knowing, your courage,
your wisdom.

💗

Making Your Unknown Known: Creative Angst, Grief, Nature, and Photography

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant. There is no such thing.

Making your unknown known is the important thing.

~Georgia O'Keeffe

 

About a decade ago I went through several years of terrible writer's block and resulting writer's angst. I say terrible because it consumed me, and I moaned about it constantly to anyone who would listen, mostly my oldest daughter, herself an actual writer, when we explored the Seattle area together after she moved there. Cameras in each of our hands, we drove through neighborhoods and across floating bridges; we sat at our favorite coffee shops and walked our favorite parks, we took ferries and explored nearby islands. So many of those otherwise wonderful memories are infused with me going on and on about how I couldn't find my voice, didn't know if I had a voice, couldn't write to save my life.

Somehow, exactly how I don't remember, I eventually found my way back to the flow with words. I don't think it occurred to me to grieve the loss of words after having written daily for a year and a half before that, producing over three hundred pages of a story that felt vital to tell. One day a friend, also a writer, said bluntly, you just have to face the page, Debby. Every day. There's no way around it. And then I remembered Hemingway's famous quote about just writing one true thing, one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Again and again I came back to those two things: Face the page and write one true thing. To this day those two things are my constant, intrepid writing mantra. 

When I bought my new camera and my new Lensbaby lenses, when I signed up for an online photography course to help me find beauty in my immediate surroundings, when in my off the charts excitement I dove full-on into webinars and Instagram feeds and tutorials about using Lensbaby lenses, the last thing I expected was that these things would bring on a whole new round of artist angst; that in a few short days I would go from being excited and inspired to feeling less-than on good days, and like a dismal failure on all the other ones. 

In this new journey with this new camera and gear, I'm discovering so very much. I've discovered and fallen in love with a neglected and very shabby public garden in a neighboring town, and also a neglected and very shabby giant old rosebush in the heritage cemetery a block from where I live. I've discovered that as opposed to an iPhone, taking good photos with an actual camera is hard work. It requires muscles that I never really developed, even when I took photos with my previous "real" cameras. Actual muscles, for sure, always coming back home after shooting for a couple of hours stiff and sore, my body standing and bending and twisting in ways it is just not accustomed to. 

But other muscles as well. Like patience and discernment and tenacity; like slowing down and being more mindful; sitting and communing with the tree or blossom I am endeavoring to capture. And reminding myself to see. I mean truly to see the whole of what is in my viewfinder, both foreground and background, not merely the one particular thing or place that I am focused on. 

Once again, as in art, so in life. Wanting to see a fuller picture, longing to understand, I dive into angst, both literally and figuratively. I find that angst, a word that seems little more than a cliché these days, is real, and can be exquisitely painful. That dictionary dot com defines angst as anguish and then defines anguish as agony. The morning I read that I walk outside into the warm sun and without provocation the sweet birdsong impales me and suddenly I want only to keel over and sob, feeling the acute pain of frustration and disappointment, the wounding of the heartless self-criticism and judgment, the perceived unworthiness, the unfulfilled longings. In therapy we explore how so much of this is related to my past, and even more, we see and honor the one who yearns to give expression to all that is within, who craves wild creativity, who hungers to be worthy of this camera and the incredible elegance and grace in our world; to create beauty from beauty as she, as I, experience it.

Like facing the page in writing, each day I pick up my camera and I practice again and again, just like my therapist who tells me about learning to play the piano, her fingers dancing with the keys creating chords and scales and much loved melodies. At the same time, each day, I endeavor to take one true picture. Not in terms of success or failure, which for me anyway is anathema to my creativity--and also a habit that is really hard to break, living in the world that we do. One true picture would be capturing what I see and feel and perceive in the way that I see and feel and perceive it; moving beyond general aesthetic to personal aesthetic, to exploring less with ideas of right and wrong, and more with curiosity and openness, wonder and marvel; though mostly, simply, it is one that makes my heart skip a beat. 

Hours of insomnia bring confusion, deeper questions, and ultimately, more profound truths. Silent inquiries about angst and guilt and privilege. About suffering. Both big picture and closer to home, and about loss, both universal and intensely personal. About the way chronic illness has stripped one of my beloved daughters of everything that has ever brought meaning, pleasure, or joy to her life; how it has taken her very ability to care for herself, how she has lost not only her independence and autonomy, but her ability to function even remotely normally; and how it has altered my own life in huge and fundamental ways as well. 

When I seek to understand the artistic related angst I am experiencing and have experienced in the past, I see suddenly that I cannot do so in a vacuum. I can only do so understanding the role that underlying grief has played. Those years of pain about not being able to write were against the backdrop of the enduring grief over the ending of my marriage, the loss of my home and flower garden, my life as I had known it and thought it would continue to be. The same is true for the pain I am experiencing now with my photography; that it cannot be understood as separate from the grief I live with day in and day out, for our world, for humanity, for my daughter, for myself. 

Yesterday morning I left the house at sunrise. After weeks of focusing up close on flowers I craved a more wide-open expanse, the kind I can only get right now by driving into the nearby hills where I am surrounded by their vistas, their soft rolling curves, their massive oaks and native grasses--caught right now between winter green and summer gold--cradling bright orange poppies everywhere I turn. Turkey vultures circle high overhead, actual turkeys are mere feet from the side of the road in full amazing spectacular strut, sparrows dart in and out of wild rosemary bushes, and a single Anna's hummingbird perches on the vivid red-blossomed grevillea, just right there, right in front of me, at first blind to it, then shocked as I reached, with all the stealth I could manage, for my camera. 

There, away from the busy intersecting freeways, the noisy city streets, I breathe in the fresh young air of early morning. I don't so much hear the quiet as feel it, and even more, the vast, empty-yet-full stillness that is the mysterious and invisible texture of existence. I see instantly what my camera has given me. It's true gift. Not the resulting images, as satisfying or frustrating as they may be, as much as I may adore them, but the experience. Those moments, I see now, are the process part of the perennial process not product wisdom as it relates to all of life and in particular here to photography. 

Part of the reasons that justified the purchase of the cameras and lenses was that life was hard and I needed something to help. But they've given me so much more than I could have imagined. They've given me back early mornings, my favorite time of the day by far, and the natural world in that pristine time when she is just waking from her night of slumber. They have given me not just permission to leave the house--something my daughter is not able to do--but to give myself rest and respite, comfort, nurturance, and momentary amnesia; a time to sit, to walk, to breathe, to be, to let nature do her work massaging the jagged edges and soothing the breaking heart. And even more, bringing freedom and inspiration, and the life blood of creativity in the form of observing and recording nature, even when life is hard and uncertain and sorrowful, especially when life is hard and uncertain and sorrowful. My camera and gear help me to put my own mask on first; they help me attend to myself in order to be able to attend to those whom I love and that need me. And just as important, they keep me feeling the feelings, even when said feelings are anything but clear, even when they keep me mystified and on the hunt, even when they are unknown and simply longing to be known.  

Birds, Birdsong, Dawn, Dusk, Women, Healing, Joy~

 

Once upon a time, when women were birds,
there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn
and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world through joy.

~Terry Tempest Williams

When I first read these words by author and earth activist Terry Tempest Williams I was moved to tears. And I was transported. They didn't merely knock on some mysterious door, they flung that door from its hinges; nearly literally picking me up from my mundane every day existence, and taking me to re-membering, and, in Alice In Wonderland style, straight to the heart of the great and profound mystery. 

Birds, birdsong, dawn, dusk, women, healing, joy~ oh my.

Reading the quote again makes me think about a story about birds that I love so much. I've written about it here before but it's been a couple of years, and a story like this deserves to be told again and again~

One day, driving my daughter--who was newly into her now way-too-long journey with chronic illness--to a doctor's appointment, she read aloud a story from a book she was reading called Radical Remissions. It had to do with dawn and trees and photosynthesis and birds... and a man who had a spontaneous remission from "terminal" cancer. Up very early each day due to his illness, he began to observe a pattern that had to do with birds and their singing; specifically that birds began to sing at the same time each morning relative to the sunrise, exactly forty-two minutes before, in fact. Day in and day out, at forty-two minutes before official sunrise, birds began, in the still dark, to sing. Intrigued, the man began to research and he learned that the birds were singing in response to the trees releasing oxygen, the oxygen release triggered by the very first invisible-to-the-eye rays of light from the sun. He began to spend those forty-two minutes outside each morning, day in and day out, in the rich oxygenated air filled with birdsong, oxygen and birds, birds and oxygen for months and later, at his next scheduled scan, no evidence of cancer was found. 

Tears streamed down both my daughter's and my faces, this story transporting us to the extraordinarily enchanting world of our earth and nature and magic and expansive possibility.

Speaking of dawn, I am, after way too many years as a photographer, discovering the golden hour, that magical time when the sun is closest to the horizon, the time just before and just after sunrise and just before and just after sunset when the sun's rays pass through more of earth's atmosphere and soften, when more of the sun's red rays reach us, warming the light with a velvety golden glow. 

But even more than that I am rediscovering myself as a photographer. I've put down my iPhone and bought myself the gear that I need to be the creative photographer I have longed for so long to be. 

And I have birds to thank for that. 

Because I love birds so much, because they effortlessly bring me that so often elusive joy, the all-too-rare delight, the slippery sense of wonder, the same way that photography does, when I find that flower, that tree, that cloud in my view finder, when I go still and it is just me and that moment; and the exquisite glory of nature. I'm surprised only that its taken this long for these two Great Loves to merge. Except that I did not have the equipment, the tools necessary to photograph birds. 

So I started looking at lenses. Then I began to explore newer technology. Then broadened my horizons to something different altogether. And exactly one month ago today I placed my first of many orders. Camera, lenses, miscellaneous accessories. I switched brands, from Nikon to Fujifilm because Fuji makes cameras that remind me of my first camera ever. The one I ultimately chose makes my heart light up and sing, just like that little fixed lens 35mm camera that I bought on layaway at Sears when I was barely into my twenties.

Switching brands meant I needed everything new. And I gave myself that, though it was a precarious journey at first, muddling through the tricky landscapes of old patterns and habits, beliefs about myself, my worth, the world. Encouragement came not only from my therapist, but from beloved friends who see me clearer than I often see myself. And so I've bought what I need to create what yearns to be created; including the artist that I so yearn to be. Creativity, be it photography or writing is for me a spiritual practice and a spiritual path; it is where I meet my own spirit, where my own spirit meets the sacred; It is prayer, it is worship, it is devotion. It is how I express the sacred as I experience it, bringing the formless, the ethereal and intangible, into form. It is my life blood, some days my sanity, always, my well being, and my inspiration to leave the bed each morning. 

My first shots of birds nearly undo me. Sitting on my patio, the melody of the water in the little fountain against the melody of the finches flying in and out of the tree. Waiting. Waiting for one to come into view. Then praying it will sit for a moment, please, just long enough for me to remember what I am learning about this camera, which setting is where, is the shutter speed fast enough, is the exposure right, then pressing the shutter release halfway and the box appearing that brings the bird miraculously into perfect focus, I mean so close, so beautiful; how long I have waited for this moment, not even knowing I as waiting, and then the soft click, click, click of the shutter. 

His little eyes, his expression, the incredible color and texture, the exquisite detail of his tiny feathers. 

Once upon a time when women were birds~

Scratching the Sacred Surface

 

See in a new way 

~Lensbaby Motto

Gradually I came to understand that these events, or recognitions,

 have to do with something mystics have always tried to convey;

 that the knowledge and the truth and clarity we are seeking isn’t

 “out there” at all, but deep inside.

 

~Carol Lee Flinders

Yesterday I put my Lensbaby Sweet 35 Optic lens on my very old Nikon D60 camera and walked over to the two tulip trees that we have in the complex where I live. As I snapped away, trying to figure out where the focus would be and therefore also where the blur would be, plus where the light would be just right--a lot, but not too much--the tree shuddered in a slight breeze, and a host of large petals fell, like sweet spring rain, bouncing off my cheeks and my head on their way down.

I love Lensbaby lenses not only because of the amazing blur but also the great beauty of the bokeh, which is the quality or effect of the blur itself. Also, the mystery and adventure of never quite knowing how a photo is going to turn out, most likely because these lenses have a big learning curve that I haven't ever quite mastered. It's either going to work or it isn't, like the Holga cameras my daughters loved, and each time I snap it on the front of my camera, this small thrill of anticipation, possibly even joy, runs through me. 

I recently began a twelve-week online course about women mystics and goddesses, "A journey of tenderness, fiery empowerment and radical transformation," with Mirabai Starr, whose book, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics I loved so much. From the very first lesson two weeks ago I have been trying--and utterly failing--to put into words my thoughts and feelings about the nebulous, numinous, profoundly mysterious world of spirit and god. It's hard to bring into focus and see clearly, never mind find words for...  a lot like a Lensbaby photo, I realize suddenly. 

When I was ten my mother had a sudden, blink-of-an-eye conversion, becoming a born-again Missouri Synod Lutheran overnight. Just after dawn on an Easter Sunday morning, we sat in our Rambler station wagon at the drive-in near our house listening to a local pastor preach Christ's message of redemption from the roof of the snack shop/restroom building. Through the small, crackling speaker attached to our window we heard all about how God had sacrificed his only son to save us from our sins. We heard about Jesus' suffering and death, about the women finding his tomb empty, that we have been saved for all eternity by our act of faith alone. We all sat freezing in the crisp morning as the sun rose over the hills, except our mother, who heard something that warmed her hardened heart, and swept her away as though she had lost her balance in a flash-flooded desert stream. 

She quit smoking, threw my alcoholic father out, declared that she was so close to god she never had to experience normal, human feelings again, and began a life-long study of the Bible; from the Old Testament through the Book of Revelation, especially the gospels that told of the life, death, and resurrection of her new best friend, Jesus the Christ, and the letters of St. Paul, who had had his own out-of-the-blue conversion experience on the road to Damascus, and who she identified with and came to seriously love. Day in and day out, as she cooked, ate, and sewed beautiful garments to keep food on our table, our home rang with the radio voice of Dr. J. Vernon McGee, teacher and Bible scholar, who took her on years long journeys through her beloved scriptures. She became the first woman ever Bible teacher in our church, and she lived the godly life as a fine Christian woman, no needs, no wants, no desires, no emotions until a cold January night twenty-two years later, my younger sister and I at her hospital bedside holding her hands as that very same pastor, the one from that Easter morning where her life changed in a heartbeat placed his hand tenderly on her head and read from the Psalms as she took her last ragged breath and passed gently into the night to meet her sweet Jesus face to face.

It wasn't until lying in the dark this morning, hearing the first bird call in the dawn, thinking about all those years ago that I had a startling epiphany: my mother's journey and mine have actually been quite a lot alike, strikingly similar in fact... just in polar opposite directions. 

She was thirty-eight when she found the church, I left the church the year I turned forty. Her arriving and my leaving began each of our journeys to the sacred, and heralded the beginning of profound passages for each of us, literally changing our lives, and our passion for our subject led us to deep inquiry and study. Though there, the similarities end. For my mom it was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, and Paul, for me it was women writing about women and about women's spirituality; women writing about their souls, their wild natures; women reimagining goddesses from patriarchal mythologies; women writing about their journeys from the "he" god to a god who looked like them, women writing about antiquity and how devastatingly far we have come from our matriarchal, matrilineal, goddess-loving roots. I devoured titles like Women Who Run With the Wolves, A Woman's Journey to God, At the Root of This Longing, Circle of Stones, The Goddess, Crossing To Avalon, The Feminine Face of God, When God Was a Woman, Odyssey with the Goddess, and countless more.

The path that appeared before me took me not only to Her, but into the labyrinth, and to the often joyful, often painful holy messiness of living life as a human being. While my mother's journey was out and up, mine was down and inward, a much more common path for women I read again and again, traveling not away from myself, but closer, where I discovered my own soul, and descended to my own inner being. It took me to the archetypal divine feminine, the archetypal wild woman, the archetypal great mother, She, who looked like me, was like me, is like me. Who for years and decades I read about, dreamt of, retreated with, wrestled with, rejected, reclaimed, lost, refound, was ashamed of, gloried in, wept with, and ultimately, like my mother did her God, loved with my whole heart. Wild and untamed, ferocious and gentle, passionate, courageous, earthy, wise, compassionate, sensuous and unashamed, warrior-when-necessary Divine Feminine.

As the sun rises this morning, just days from Spring Equinox, as life bursts back after winter darkness, as I struggle to write that which feels impossible to name, I will admit something that I have never spoken outside of my therapist's hearing: If I could be anything, anything, I would choose to be a mystic. I would choose to be a wild, unadulterated, unconditional lover of whatever it is I feel but cannot find words for. I would choose a contemplative, devotional life, not in a monastery, but right here in my own home, in my own life. I admit my ironic longing, after all these decades, after all the damage inflicted by my mom's conversion and the church itself, that I yearn for mystical union with whoever and whatever is out there; for a profound, life-altering, heart-to-heart Teresa of Avila-type love for and merging with the Divine, the Beloved. 

I have been a seeker for decades. And still, I have no more handle on what "god" is than I did years ago, though I do have a lot of ideas about what "god" is not. It's also true, I am coming to realize, that the divine is not something that can be understood cognitively, but known with the body, and felt with the heart. That in all my seeking, in all of my desperation to know, to name, to figure it out, to understand, I'm beginning to think that I have missed what is right here, right in front of me. 

The first sunrays. That lone bird singing in the dark. The glorious tulip tree, its petals hitting my face. Our earth and every creature that lives upon her, the moon in every phase, the falling star, the tender green coneflower shoots bursting through the soil. It's the very breathe that flows effortless in and out of my body; the beat of my heart. It's in human connection, and also in our aloneness. In confusion, yearnings, pain, sorrow and in our joy; it's our passions; it's in the profound love we feel for those closest to us, my daughters, my granddaughter; her sweet, joyous or sad or frustrated, always animated face on my iPad screen: the grief at our separations, the happiness in our reunions; the way our hearts break when we witness suffering; it is whatever moves and touches us that puts us squarely onto sacred ground. 

God is love is a well worn, ridiculously tired cliché that defies logic, not to mention a staggering amount of evidence to the contrary. Still, at the heart of the esoteric traditions of all major religions is just that: love. It's the not so secret mystery all mystics long for and experience. Love, pure and simple. Everyday love, ecstatic love. What else is there that truly matters; what else is there that has the power to heal us, our wounds, our earth, our world, our minds, our hearts~

See in a New Way. 

Sweet invitation.

Ferocious Love

I remind myself that the heart can simply break, or it can break open. 

A broken open heart is awake; it's alive and calls for action. 

It is regenerative, like nature.

In my experience, to have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart
every day. It's a grief I rarely speak, though my work calls
on the power of voice.

~Katharine Wilkinson

 

A friend told me the other day that she was so enjoying the emergence of spring. It is the sign of renewal that she needs right now, she wrote, especially the tulip trees in her neighborhood right now, with their dazzling profusion of pink blossoms. 

Just a couple of days before I had noticed that overnight the tulip trees in my complex had exploded into bloom. But unlike "normal" times, my heart didn't skip a beat, I didn't stare doe-eyed, I didn't rush for my camera. Instead, all I thought about was the climate crisis, and how it is way too early to be spring. That we haven't had near enough winter, near enough rain, the temperatures stuck in the sixties, the January and February skies for the most part just blue, blue, blue, day after day after day. 

Reading about my friend's experience, I saw that I was missing the moment, the beauty, the exuberance, the renewal, the very hope of spring. My denial wasn't stopping it from happening, it was stopping me from enjoying it, communing with it, and deeply appreciating it.

That afternoon I looked up from my book and out the window and there in the tree, for the first time this year, were robins. Sweet red-breasted robin, one of my favorite birds~as if it's possible to have favorite birds. Harbinger of spring if ever there was one; symbol of abundant new growth. When I looked around I saw that they were actually everywhere. In my tree, in other trees spread out around the grassy area, on the grass itself. Oh my goodness; they had arrived. As I watched, cedar waxwings joined them, the two species often seen together in spring. There were also the usual goldfinches and a few house finches. Even through the closed window I could hear all of their raucous, glorious singing. They flew in and out of the patio, back and forth, back and forth, all of them; fat robins bathing themselves in a too small birdbath, goldfinches in the fountain, even sparrows, I saw, clinging to my little leafless Japanese maple. Constant, frenzied movement and chatter, as though they were celebrating some invisible something that I, in my grief masquerading as stubbornness, could not see. 

My friend's words threw light on what I was doing, but it was the robins, and the great bird party that I was so joyously privy to that snapped me out of my climate change despair, allowed my spring fever permission to blossom, and opened my heart not only to these sweet, life-affirming creatures, the quickening of this, my very favorite time of year, but also the sorrow that is never far from anything I am witnessing in nature. 

It is not only the birds that bring me back to hope. At the same time, in mysteriously synchronistic fashion, I happened upon an interview with feminist, writer, and environmentalist Katharine Wilkinson, who when speaking of the climate crisis work she is involved in, uses the words ferocious love to describe the approach of women she sees who are involved in the work no matter their particular corner; their incredible love and conviction, their commitment to forging a just and livable future. 

Speaking on the climate crisis podcast, Outrage and Optimism, she recalls a time when she was told to check her emotions at the door, to play by the rules; those rules being you don't bring emotion into the equation: "It is sort of hilarious," she says, "to think that we ever thought we could address this challenge with only the powers of the prefrontal cortex. Why would we leave the is whole of the human super powers to the side?" She peppers their conversation with terms like radical imagination and emotional muscle; integrating head and heart; nurturing the vision. She speaks so beautifully about showing up with our human wholeness, and the deep, raw emotions that are not only present, but wholly appropriate. "You can't watch it all and not have grief," she says, "not have fear, or rage, but also courage and determination."

I am so profoundly moved, so affected, so infused with optimism, so utterly grateful for her presence, her work, and her feminist platform. It is like spring breaking out in my own heart and soul. It makes so much sense it is mind boggling. As Einstein said, we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. Emotionless climate communication hasn't worked, Katharine points out. We can and must lead in this movement in this way, she reiterates. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears in her TED Talk when she speaks of how the climate crisis is affecting women and girls so disproportionately, and how if we can turn their fortunes, we will turn the fortune of this crisis, we can save them and our earth. She sees a shift coming; she speaks of the much needed change that is, albeit slowly, happening, the "flowering" of the climate leadership; the passionate involvement of women and youth; the all of a sudden broadening appeal for the Green New Deal. 

And, she says, you can indeed be taken seriously and recite poetry. 

Ferocious Love. 

Of course.

I Keep Forgetting

 

I keep forgetting 

I keep forgetting that life is not normal

I keep forgetting the sky

I keep forgetting to lift my face to the sun

I keep forgetting that you just have to let life have you

    that sometimes you have to abandon your own ideas

    plans, priorities, agendas, wishes, thoughts

    longings

    yearnings

    cravings

I keep forgetting my soul needs sustenance

I keep forgetting I even have a soul

I keep forgetting to breathe

I keep forgetting who I am

how hard it can be

compassion

how to write

how to lay back and surrender

I keep forgetting tenderness

    to forgive myself

and that grief is an ocean

    a deep, dark greedy sea

    

At the last minute I remember to order flowers

I remember to pick up my camera

    my real camera

    the one whose shutter sings in 

    melodious staccato bursts

I remember the glorious pleasure

I remember the nourishment

I remember color, texture, light, line, blur,

    freedom 

I remember rules are made for breaking

I remember my love of blue

    and too much light,

    that beauty is in the eye of the beholder

    that nature Herself is filled with chaos

I remember the irises that grew over the septic tank

    iridescence unmasked

    when seasons could be counted on

    when spring still came each year

    and butterflies were bountiful

I remember that life is anything but normal

I remember that sometimes you have to let life take you

    in all of Her wisdom

I remember to breathe

I remember who I am

    that I am~that we all are~so much broader, deeper, divine 

I remember that hard is a necessary part of the journey

I remember that it's just words, no rules, just words

    amazing, fantastic, prosaic, 

    bring you back home words

I remember it's okay to surrender

I remember to cry

    to place both of my hands on my heart

    to let it all come

I remember moments pass, one after the other

    that the only true thing is change

I remember the darkness holds its treasures too

I remember what they say about the cracks

    and light

    brokenness

    and healing

I remember that the ocean arrives one wave at a time

    bathes the shore

    and recedes

    one after the other

    that some waves roll in with great gentleness

    others pound away taking everything with them

    returning everything to the depths

    again and again

    leaving you in a heap on the sand

    to be born over and over and over again.

So Thank God for Birds (And My Apologies to All Real Birdwatchers Out There)

 

I worship every bird that I see.

~Drew Lanham

For weeks, months, almost a year now, days have bled one into another. For weeks right now it seems every day has held the same blue skies the same mid sixties. More like early April than the middle of winter. Though finally the wind howls through a long night, rain arrives like a beloved friend who has been absent far too long, its pitter patter on the roof, the shiny asphalt, droplets hung on the freshly cut rose canes soothes me beyond imagination.

Birds, I find, set the days apart. One day the call of the hawk. Another the rambunctious lesser goldfinches, still another towhees and juncos. Then the wingbeat of the mourning doves as I walk out the front door and startle them. Yesterday I was looking at the sky and way, way up there, I mean way up, in a deep blue space, the nothingness held between the puffy white clouds, was a small V, made up of seagulls on their invisible bird highway, the Pacific Flyway, their white and gray wings in a sacred dance with the air and currents and some invisible and mysterious force that propels them to take flight. Then this morning, the repeated hoot of an owl.

The biggest surprise of all is when I glance out the window and there are dozens of cedar waxwings lining the branches on the bare winter tree; so still, as though someone has decorated it with beautiful Christmas ornaments. Where have you been all the years that I've lived here, that I've stared day in and day out, season after season, into that tree? And what took you so long to arrive? I stare rapt for the longest time, until they take off in a group, fly into my small patio, and then turn on a dime, a split second before they hit the wall or the big glass door, amazing choreography, perfect symmetry, and then they are gone in a hush, as though they had never been.

I had not intended to actually write about birds. But then I had a remarkable day full of synchronicity involving yes, of course, birds. It began when I unexpectedly sign up for a National Geographic video Birdwatching course. The same day a new On Being podcast drops, in which Krista speaks with Drew Lanham, ornithologist, poet and professor of wildlife ecology. And that evening, I go looking for a newly recommended movie about fishermen but before I find it, there is this other one, about a family struck by tragedy being healed by an injured magpie. 

The next morning I lay in the darkness and I think about my love affair with birds. The day as yet unborn, I listen to Krista and Drew speak and I am struck with wonder that I have never considered myself a bird watcher. I mean technically, of course, I am not. I cannot name the body parts of a bird, aside from wing, beak (bill?), tail. I cannot tell you what kind of feather does what, nor can I name most birds by their common names, much less their proper Latin binomials. I mean I don't actually go places to see birds, I don't own binoculars, a folding chair, or a pocket sized field guide. 

And yet I watch birds incessantly. Literally I watch birds. Day in and day out I watch them, I look for them, I draw them to my postage-sized patio with a fountain and four, yes four birdbaths. In my heart I feed them, though when I've tried this, I get birds, yes, but I also get rats and squirrels, the former doing damage to my nervous system, the latter doing damage to the exterior of my condo. Whether at home, out walking, or driving my car, I am constantly scanning for birds. I'm pretty sure all of this makes me a bird watcher. As though knowing their names, as though knowing a primary wing feather from a secondary one, as though knowing that a group of waxwings is called an "ear-full" or a "museum," or that the beloved mourning doves are from the family Columbidae, their proper name Zenaida macroura, that they are also sometimes called rain doves or turtle doves could ever change my experience of them, could possibly enhance my pure love for them. 

(For the record, I do so dream of a time when I can have more outdoor space where I can create a true and proper bird sanctuary, with multiple types of feeders scattered everywhere, shelter, hunting areas for the ground feeders, berry bushes for the waxwings and others, even more water features, and on and on, though that is a post for another day; though also, perhaps, one never knows, perhaps sooner than I might know...?) 

It is humorous or ironic that what led me to the bird watching course in the first place is that I have given up Twitter (speaking of birds~) and I now have huge holes in my day that I have no idea how to fill. I am literally beside myself with nothing to do and no ability to do it--because things like Twitter take their toll on a brain in no time at all. The Great Courses catalog arrived unsolicited in the mail and lay unopened on the table for days until I wandered aimlessly by it again, seeing it perhaps for the first time. 

What I had planned to write about was reading, and how I have turned back toward one of my very first loves, books, now that I am in recovery from obsessive news intake and interneting. That it's slow going to get those brain grooves back on track again and part of the way I'm dealing with that is reading many books at one time. I'm reading about wisdom and wonder; about wintering and walking and doing nothing. I find again my true longing for wisdom; that wonder has become one of my favorite words. I am reminded that I have long been intrigued by very, very long, sustained walks and pilgrimages; that I have been unknowingly "wintering" off and on now for a good deal of my life. I have also perfected the art of doing nothing. Not because I have wanted to. Not intentionally. Not ever with intention. I have just ceased to be able to function for periods of my life, beginning with my first clinical depression in my early twenties. And also now. When I feel as though I've been swallowed whole by grief, and life feels heavy and hard and some days near impossible.

So thank god for birds. Beautiful, utterly remarkable birds. Our little feathered, flying, singing friends. Ambassadors between earth and the heavens, capturers of imagination and wonder and enchantment. What amazing beings you are. I do so want to learn more, and beyond that, I am so interested and grateful for your "medicine," the gifts you bring to us. From Animal Speak by the late Ted Andrews, I have learned, for example, that flickers, whom I've seen in my tree recently, bring growth, healing, and trust. Goldfinches awaken us to nature spirits, gulls encourage us to take responsibility for our behavior and communications, while hawks awaken our vison and inspire us to a creative life purpose. Doves bring peace, and awaken us to the possibility of new birth. And waxwings, whom I pay special attention to because they showed up in such a new and profound way, are about gentleness, and just that, right there, moves me to want to weep. Thank you for seasons of joy, but more importantly right now, thank you for those stolen moments, the flickers of light, the wholly unexpected moments where everything else disappears, thoughts, worries, sadness, and I am seared by the simple magnificence of life.

With Love, from Pluto

The interesting and challenging thing about this moment is that we know the
old forms aren't working. But we can't yet see what the new forms will be.
~Krista Tippett

I feel we are in an evolutionary process with its fits and starts.
~Jack Kornfield

When I studied and practiced astrology many years ago, I had a deep and abiding love/hate relationship with Pluto, god of the underworld; which represents the archetypal energies of death, rebirth, and transformation. I loved the profound changes that the energies of this planet wrought; real, lasting, all the way to the bones shifts; caterpillar to butterfly evolutions. But I didn't love what led there; the chaos and confusion, the resistance, the painful dying away of the old, the wrenching letting go, then sitting, knowing not for how long, in the barrenness, the penetrating discomfort, the terror at times, of the unknown. Pluto does so love to take his time, his fire is the long, unbearably slow burning one, leaving you despairing if there would ever be light at the end of the tunnel, and not only light, but regeneration, renewal, and, finally, the coveted, promised, long hoped for rebirth. 

Nothing is ever sure when languishing in the dark, except maybe assurances born of ancient wisdom traditions and myths, the writings of mystics and Jung, plus trust accrued watching nature year after year renew itself, though even those are lost for long stretches of time when one is engulfed by stormy seas. I was reminded yesterday that the darkest time comes just before dawn. The thing is, at least with actual dawn, we know the sun will rise, we are even privy these days to exactly when it will arrive. We have no such timing assurances otherwise. It's like what I've heard about walking the labyrinth. You have no idea where you are, how far you have traveled from the beginning, or how close or how far you might be from the completion.

If ever a god personified the great Mystery, it is Pluto. In the first years of therapy so many years ago now it seems like another lifetime, my nights were filled regularly with dreams of being thrown overboard into the deep night sea, slipping and falling down watery black abysses, being capsized, cascading deep into the ocean or deep into the bowels of the earth. Again and again nocturnal plunges, always into darkness, always into water, always descending, while intense and raw emotions like rage, greed, jealousy, revenge, and guilt plagued me in the daylight hours, insisting on being recognized as part of the human experience. 

It taught me that when visiting the underworld, we are really visiting the unconscious, and also, so importantly, that the Plutonic journey, though so challenging, is a benevolent one. It invites us to look into the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves, to let go of all that keeps us from wholeness, to find the treasure buried there and claim it as our own; and to find one's deepest meaning of life. Though I often went kicking and screaming, I did learn through the many experiences to honor and even appreciate the death-rebirth cycle, the process that is at the very heart of all life; for it is necessary that what does not serve our highest good be allowed to pass away so that we can evolve, which all of life longs for and is created for, so that our untapped potentials and our truest natures can be born. 

The same is true collectively. When I am in fear or despair about what is happening in our country, I take comfort knowing that nothing new can be born without the old dying away. Not that understanding that eases the primal emotions that I and so many others experience because it doesn't. But it adds context and it provides meaning; a container to hold it all. Yes the election turned out for good, and yes, I was moved beyond words by the beauty, the humanity, the joy even of Inauguration Day. Still, there is much in the unconscious of our country that needs to rise to the light of day and be dealt with so that something completely new can be born. Biden and the goodness, the empathy, the compassion, the knowledge and ability he embodies aside, we are deep in it; in for the long haul slow burn; we as a nation, a world, really, are in the middle of the archetypal descent, we are walking the labyrinth, burning in the crucible. The old is dying away, it is intense and will likely remain so for quite some time, the new as yet unknown. 

 

As an aside, though possibly more important than we can know, it is interesting to note that while Pluto~and others from different mythologies around the world~is god of the underworld, the archetypal journey itself, the sacred descent, has long been the province of goddesses and the divine feminine. The best known is Persephone, from Greece, who saved the world from much suffering with her compassion, by agreeing to spend half of the year in Hades after she was kidnapped by Pluto in order to help those who die to make the transition. I think of the Dalai Lama saying that it is women who will save the world. I think of Kamala Harris, and what an incredible gift she is to us. I think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I think of Ayanna Pressley, I think of Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and LaTosha Brown. I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I think of Krista Tippett, Joanna Macy, Greta Thunberg. I think of Amanda Gordon. Wow. Brave, stunning, passionate, creative, wise, beyond capable women. And so many, many more.

One morning, also in that other lifetime, I woke and wrote the following dream in my journal that until then had been filled with all of those other dreams: I am in a large building made of some kind of light-colored, smooth stone. There is a high domed ceiling, and the whole space is radiant with light. In the middle of the space is a grand staircase made completely of white marble. I wear a long white dress trimmed in gold and am walking up the stairs, at my side, my companion, a beautiful large, golden bear.