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.

💗