Shouldn't...but Do

Another day

Cynthia — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:04:30 +0000

Dawn over the strip mall. Deep indigo sky, vibrant reflection in sheet ice over asphalt. Blue above, blue below, a shock of pink apricot on the horizon. Just for a few moments – wish you could have seen it. Reason to be.

Cars roll up to the everlasting light of a nearby gas station, coffee, fuel. Indigo to robin’s egg sky. The day has begun.

A simple song

Cynthia — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:05:32 +0000

Try this at home – hum or sing a tune – no words, just a tune.

While moving into the song, change it. Just decide here or there that it might go up, down, slower, faster.

Uncomfortable at first, not familiar, no pattern to speak of as it rambles a bit. But then it repeats - now you have a little structure. Add another change. You might end it there for now, or keep going.

Change it up, do it different – or better yet, hum your own song, one played before only in your head. Melodies pass my way on occasion, I appreciate their flavor and let ‘em go. Here and gone – some return, some do not.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell said [i]f you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Maybe that works for songs too.

Anew

Cynthia — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:49:22 +0000

Of things gathered but not described, researched but not written. Excerpts, pages, references and me – needing an organizing principle. A work of life, of years, an effort frustrated and sidelined by the very events it foresaw and sought to explain. Experience takes time.

The scratch again of pencil on paper, I am Home.

Breathe

Cynthia — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:44:06 +0000

Short, sharp, shallow, the brutality of breath.

Sinuous inhale, 1-2-3-4, exhale the same way. Juice of mind and body. Languid, giddy.

Breath, simple, accessible, powerful. Rise and fall.

To inspire.

Sensation

Cynthia — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:09:38 +0000

A world so bold, loud, large, ceaseless, angry, joyful, spreading.

A world so small, infinite, still. One sound can raze a city, one colour create a civilization, one sensation can capture eternity.

From one to another, and back.

In the trees

Cynthia — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:36:49 +0000

On New Year’s Eve my children and I were on late night walkabout. No snow, a breeze, lit homes and a last show of Christmas lights along roof lines, lamp posts, and in the trees.

Up the street, the pin oaks were whispering louder than usual. We stopped to note the conversation. White pines said little and the deciduous trees were downright silent.

Rounding home, our Norway spruce stands over 20 feet now, festooned with lights, pine cones for ornaments. It caught my attention as my children ran in the house.

Deep, brilliant, dark, with majestic green leader pointing toward a waxing moon half hidden by clouds. The tree spoke of shifting years, of mystery and invitation to the unknowable – an eternal, ephemeral moment. How far can flesh and blood go into that beckoning? How far can a cellular creature blend and survive? Never has the question, or the invitation, been more concrete.

I wonder.

Stop and start

Cynthia — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 01:53:12 +0000

Early morning neighborhood drive last week. A school bus pulled even going the opposite direction, its lights began to flash, signalling pick up of precious cargo bound for the elementary. I stopped.

Throughout that mildly grey day, stop signs at corners, in parking lots. I stopped for each, and started again.

Within each stop is a start. And who is to say which is first? Beginnings get all the press, but endings do most the work. Even the universe was doing something before the Big Bang.

They say change is constant, I believe it. Human equations, fluid equilibrium, stop and start.

Shed my skin

Cynthia — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:06:55 +0000

All that is old is new again. The shedding of skin, the work, exhaustion – the gift – of emergence. Tis’ the season. Happy New Year one and all.

And all good wishes…

Cynthia — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:14:18 +0000

On this Christmas a silent wish – carried in these letters you read. Peace, health, love, happiness – may they sink long into your life, and the lives of those that love you.

Each year is like no other and this one has been exceptional for me – in its challenges, and its discoveries. Thank you so very much for your presence in this little bog, and in my life.

The winter festivals – light in the darkness – Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas. Blessings to you and yours.

In Your Eyes

Cynthia — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:31:43 +0000

Made stew yesterday. Had the strangest feeling I had worked with meat and plants many times – for millennia. And I have.

Washed a pot today, same feeling, a thousand years of wash-up, store, reuse. Not the realm of deja vu, but of Being, once and again.

For all their diversity and unique individual nature, humans are collective creatures. Experience, pain, action, inaction, curiosity and so much more. Cellular, physiologic, emotional, and spiritual inheritance. We flow – through day, lifetime, epoch – despite incessant belief in bodily punctuation.

The fundamentals, food, shelter – the needs of you, of me, of those that walked before, and those that will walk after. Witness, live, and relive the coarse rich necessity of our species. Energy passing through skin, bones, blood, inhabiting new lives, seeing with old eyes. Storied.

I have lived for a thousand years.