9 yards of rain
5 perfect kumquats
a thimbleful of old odds and ends no one remembers the names of
Sit in darkness and feel the rain fall. Shake the memories, filling the darkness with the voices of the past. After they have settled down, eat one kumquat. When the taste just lingers on the tongue, eat the second. There are times when we must feign insanity. Eat the third kumquat. For really bad cases of darkness, eat the fourth. Otherwise, bury it with the fifth. Cover the seeds with memories and let the rain soak the ground.
Showing posts with label rubies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rubies. Show all posts
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
Personal Excellence
Because it's really all about facing the day while loving fiercely and excellently shouting down the bastards who would tell us we suck.
Know what is personal excellence for yourself. It isn’t winning or being the best, or better than. There is striving and allowing, striving to free the scales from your eyes and allowing them to fall away in their time. Striving to nourish the flower and allowing it to bloom. Striving to know your true will and allowing your best in this moment expressing it.
The virtuous path honors all desires, seeking for all the self to become whatever it is becoming. The virtuous path includes allowing the whole effort to drop excellently into the subconscious while you eat chocolate or veg on the sofa, or do whatever lets you off the hook when that is what’s needed. Being excellent can mean getting the bills paid. It can mean lighting a candle and getting on when the electric is turned off. The virtuous path just makes sure the life keeps going, understanding that we can even be total crap excellently.
Allowing what we desire to happen even when the chic pencil skirt pattern we found on that new craft blog totally looked like granny when we actually tried to make it and we realize making all our own clothes isn’t what we were desiring after all.
And so is bearing up and getting through, changing you game as the list of stressors gets shuffled on the wheel, and you are being pulled in too many ways, don’t know whether to buy food or keep the gas on, and every attempt to think of excellence sounds like failure, And in your excellent alignment with your true will you discover that a night on the couch is just the thing. The whole is the flux of all the standard obstacles in the course. The things that attack you and the things that just suck included. In all this movement we can stay with ourselves and then just do it the best we can. That is enough. That is life and love and everything called for.
You have checked all the boxes on the list just by staying moment by moment and being who only you are.
Facing all those moments with the knowledge that you are unique and always in the process of becoming something even more uniquely developed, with a great history to draw on and more adventures to tell, more people to draw the life forth from you, in the good way, so it joins with your friends, dancing under the stars and the tiki lamps befores returning to you refreshed and infused with new light and life. This is all excellent.
Know what is personal excellence for yourself. It isn’t winning or being the best, or better than. There is striving and allowing, striving to free the scales from your eyes and allowing them to fall away in their time. Striving to nourish the flower and allowing it to bloom. Striving to know your true will and allowing your best in this moment expressing it.
The virtuous path honors all desires, seeking for all the self to become whatever it is becoming. The virtuous path includes allowing the whole effort to drop excellently into the subconscious while you eat chocolate or veg on the sofa, or do whatever lets you off the hook when that is what’s needed. Being excellent can mean getting the bills paid. It can mean lighting a candle and getting on when the electric is turned off. The virtuous path just makes sure the life keeps going, understanding that we can even be total crap excellently.
To know what is personal excellence for yourself is to know what you want, to know your true will.
Allowing what we desire to happen even when the chic pencil skirt pattern we found on that new craft blog totally looked like granny when we actually tried to make it and we realize making all our own clothes isn’t what we were desiring after all.
And so is bearing up and getting through, changing you game as the list of stressors gets shuffled on the wheel, and you are being pulled in too many ways, don’t know whether to buy food or keep the gas on, and every attempt to think of excellence sounds like failure, And in your excellent alignment with your true will you discover that a night on the couch is just the thing. The whole is the flux of all the standard obstacles in the course. The things that attack you and the things that just suck included. In all this movement we can stay with ourselves and then just do it the best we can. That is enough. That is life and love and everything called for.
You have checked all the boxes on the list just by staying moment by moment and being who only you are.
Facing all those moments with the knowledge that you are unique and always in the process of becoming something even more uniquely developed, with a great history to draw on and more adventures to tell, more people to draw the life forth from you, in the good way, so it joins with your friends, dancing under the stars and the tiki lamps befores returning to you refreshed and infused with new light and life. This is all excellent.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Orion and the Devil
I love that we are made of stardust. We are. We contain elements (like GOLD) that can only be made in supernovas. Yay!
Right now I have this picture of the constellation Orion on my desktop. You can just make out the Horsehead nebula to the right of the first beltloop, and further towards the hunter's knees, the eponymous Orion nebula.
There's Betelguese, at the left shoulder, all orange and sending the light of its own supernova hurtling towards us. It has already exploded, already made its gold, and we are just waiting for the light to arrive, which could happen AT ANY MOMENT - astronomically speaking. And in a billion years, there could be people made out of that star.
It should be known that I come down differently about the Devil's Bargain. That was a great deal. We get to live a whole life in the crazy incarnate state and the garden is just there waiting for us whenever figure out how to get back to it. Of course, the Devil had to make it seem like a rip off, had to pose as a snake in the grass, otherwise we would have suspected some trickery. It's just too good to be true!
I say that knowing that my middle-aged back is starting to hurt. I just got my first reading glasses last year. 150 works miracles, but my mother has just gotten 300s so eventually. I have one very close friend and for Christmas there was just my parents and my sister. I have a heartbreak still seeping from the 11 year marriage that fell apart 5 years ago. And through all this I've managed to not write that much, not create very many things, not break into management and also not get horribly addicted to anything, also haven't gone on a rampage, haven't oppressed anyone religiously or otherwise. I have neither had children nor left them on a bus. I have managed a mediocre life. And yet, when I look at Orion, I think there's something amazing echoing through me, through all of us.
To zoom in for the details of Orion go here.
Right now I have this picture of the constellation Orion on my desktop. You can just make out the Horsehead nebula to the right of the first beltloop, and further towards the hunter's knees, the eponymous Orion nebula.
There's Betelguese, at the left shoulder, all orange and sending the light of its own supernova hurtling towards us. It has already exploded, already made its gold, and we are just waiting for the light to arrive, which could happen AT ANY MOMENT - astronomically speaking. And in a billion years, there could be people made out of that star.
It should be known that I come down differently about the Devil's Bargain. That was a great deal. We get to live a whole life in the crazy incarnate state and the garden is just there waiting for us whenever figure out how to get back to it. Of course, the Devil had to make it seem like a rip off, had to pose as a snake in the grass, otherwise we would have suspected some trickery. It's just too good to be true!
I say that knowing that my middle-aged back is starting to hurt. I just got my first reading glasses last year. 150 works miracles, but my mother has just gotten 300s so eventually. I have one very close friend and for Christmas there was just my parents and my sister. I have a heartbreak still seeping from the 11 year marriage that fell apart 5 years ago. And through all this I've managed to not write that much, not create very many things, not break into management and also not get horribly addicted to anything, also haven't gone on a rampage, haven't oppressed anyone religiously or otherwise. I have neither had children nor left them on a bus. I have managed a mediocre life. And yet, when I look at Orion, I think there's something amazing echoing through me, through all of us.
To zoom in for the details of Orion go here.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
G*d (Whatever That Is)
Gods are those parts of existence that are bigger than we can understand as individuals. They are like mountains. We can see them in their wholeness only at a great distance. From the other side of the valley we can look across to the far horizon and see the triangle shape of the mountain. We can point and say, "Mountain," or "Amaterasu," or "Desire."
But to come into any relationship with the mountain, we must move in close, come into direct contact with the mountain, with the god. As we move closer to the mountain, the god looms and then disappears, breaks apart into meadows and lakes and forests and the innumerable details of its actual existence. We may identify the god in its entirety only at a great distance; we can only know the god a piece at a time. We must walk in this meadow, aware of these flowers and that ground squirrel and remembering the ridges and peaks and other places, as we smell the heather around us.
G*d (whatever that is) is whatever the sum of everything plus the knowledge of that sum and the ability to comprehend both the sum of the parts and the whole. It may or may not be what we were expecting. G*d (whatever that is) is represented in our minds by figures of old men, or women with a thousand arms, or a giant winged snake with the head of a dog that shoots lightening out of its eyes. (It could happen.) We may see g*d (whatever that is) as a force we call compassion or creativity. But whatever we point to when we say g*d is just a mountain at a distance. We cannot predict what the old man is going to look like up close. She may look much younger in places. We cannot yet know what g*d is until we walk through her meadows and breathe his air. And we can’t begin to do that until we are willing to let go of our nice perfect view of the mountain.
But to come into any relationship with the mountain, we must move in close, come into direct contact with the mountain, with the god. As we move closer to the mountain, the god looms and then disappears, breaks apart into meadows and lakes and forests and the innumerable details of its actual existence. We may identify the god in its entirety only at a great distance; we can only know the god a piece at a time. We must walk in this meadow, aware of these flowers and that ground squirrel and remembering the ridges and peaks and other places, as we smell the heather around us.
G*d (whatever that is) is whatever the sum of everything plus the knowledge of that sum and the ability to comprehend both the sum of the parts and the whole. It may or may not be what we were expecting. G*d (whatever that is) is represented in our minds by figures of old men, or women with a thousand arms, or a giant winged snake with the head of a dog that shoots lightening out of its eyes. (It could happen.) We may see g*d (whatever that is) as a force we call compassion or creativity. But whatever we point to when we say g*d is just a mountain at a distance. We cannot predict what the old man is going to look like up close. She may look much younger in places. We cannot yet know what g*d is until we walk through her meadows and breathe his air. And we can’t begin to do that until we are willing to let go of our nice perfect view of the mountain.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Food Meditation 1: Fresh Fruit
Find some really fresh fruit, something you love, maybe berries or watermelon or an apple. Find a fruit that just thinking about that fruit makes you a bit happier. Find the freshest one you can. If you can find a tree or a bush that is okay for this, pick the fruit yourself. Or go to a farmer’s market and get something picked that morning. Or it can be the day before; really you just want fruit that hasn’t sat around forever.
Have the fruit ready to eat the way you want to eat it. I once demanded to eat my banana "like a monkey" when my grandmother tried to slice it up and put it on a plate. But if you picked watermelon, you will probably want to slice it up. And make sure pets can’t get to it (I knew a dog once who loved grapes.) When you've got your fruit ready, go to a place where you can relax comfortably for a while without being disturbed, someplace peaceful. Hammocks are good, but it can be a yoga mat or lazyboy chair, whatever.
Get into a meditative space, breathe deeply, ground, do whatever brings you into awareness of your body. And just get a felt sense of your body. You don’t have to put names to whatever you’re feeling, but if words come, note them and let them go.
When you are ready, eat the fruit. Notice the taste, the texture. Feel yourself chew and swallow. Enjoy every moment.
When you are done, take a moment to notice how your body feels now. Allow all parts of your consciousness to notice the difference. Again, you don’t have to put words to anything, but if they come, notice the words and let them go. For the next while, however long that may be, just lie there and pay attention to your felt sense of your body.
You can fall asleep if you want, especially if you are in a hammock and the afternoon sun is filtering through the tree leaves. If you aren’t in a hammock, feel free to imagine that you are.
Have the fruit ready to eat the way you want to eat it. I once demanded to eat my banana "like a monkey" when my grandmother tried to slice it up and put it on a plate. But if you picked watermelon, you will probably want to slice it up. And make sure pets can’t get to it (I knew a dog once who loved grapes.) When you've got your fruit ready, go to a place where you can relax comfortably for a while without being disturbed, someplace peaceful. Hammocks are good, but it can be a yoga mat or lazyboy chair, whatever.
Get into a meditative space, breathe deeply, ground, do whatever brings you into awareness of your body. And just get a felt sense of your body. You don’t have to put names to whatever you’re feeling, but if words come, note them and let them go.
When you are ready, eat the fruit. Notice the taste, the texture. Feel yourself chew and swallow. Enjoy every moment.
When you are done, take a moment to notice how your body feels now. Allow all parts of your consciousness to notice the difference. Again, you don’t have to put words to anything, but if they come, notice the words and let them go. For the next while, however long that may be, just lie there and pay attention to your felt sense of your body.
You can fall asleep if you want, especially if you are in a hammock and the afternoon sun is filtering through the tree leaves. If you aren’t in a hammock, feel free to imagine that you are.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
What’s a carbuncle
To paraphrase Wittgenstein, “carbuncle” is a funny word. It sounds like a coconut dropped down a stairwell. It bounces from the ah!-I’ve just dropped my coconut!-to a deep, hard “unk”-Oh, that’s a chunk of wall I’ll need to replace!- to the final, horrifying yet comical “ul”. Better call 911. That last bounce took out the building's super.
But unlike coconuts, carbuncles themselves are rarely funny. They are either beautiful or painful. You see, "carbuncle" has collected a pair of the most mismatched definitions ever. A carbuncle can either be a beautiful gem, such as a ruby, or a skin wound that oozes pus.
A carbuncle is something that can be beautiful and priceless beyond measure, coveted and killed for. Or it can be that painful thing which makes others reel back is disgust. We all have our own carbuncle, and at times it can be difficult to see the ruby in the boil because it's not just a matter of perspective. When the carbuncle hurts, it is not a ruby. We can't turn it into a ruby just by knowing it could become one. We have to work to make it a ruby. And that's hard to do when you're in pain and don't really believe carbuncles can be rubies.
But unlike coconuts, carbuncles themselves are rarely funny. They are either beautiful or painful. You see, "carbuncle" has collected a pair of the most mismatched definitions ever. A carbuncle can either be a beautiful gem, such as a ruby, or a skin wound that oozes pus.
A carbuncle is something that can be beautiful and priceless beyond measure, coveted and killed for. Or it can be that painful thing which makes others reel back is disgust. We all have our own carbuncle, and at times it can be difficult to see the ruby in the boil because it's not just a matter of perspective. When the carbuncle hurts, it is not a ruby. We can't turn it into a ruby just by knowing it could become one. We have to work to make it a ruby. And that's hard to do when you're in pain and don't really believe carbuncles can be rubies.
