The Hum

I am grateful.
A sweet small hum
trails through me.
Soft, wispy, caressing.
Totally uninhibited, ignorant
of a larger context demanding allegiance
to chaos and fear.

I love this hum;
child-like whimsy and innocence
skipping rope
deep within me;
tucked away, vibrant,
insistent that play and gratitude
are the core of living.

I'm not sure
where the hum comes from
except perhaps God,
and I am quite comfortable
giving God credit.
The hum is somehow,
definitely,
a part of me,
but is also,
so not of me.

This hum is sensory;
I hear the hum,
sometimes I even
feel the hum
as a subterranean tickle
tingling my fingertips;
my very cells
singing back
a chorus of life.

My hum and I are playmates....
       school girls giggling over a secret.

The Knob

Words
fill me; guide me.

I touch the cabinet knob
as I reach for a breakfast dish
and words spill into my mind
and escape through my heart.

Often I touch this knob,
but I never really see it.
Or rather, I never really
hear it.
The knob says, "remember?"

...remember how you scrubbed,
           claiming me;
...how you had no knob,
           and now you do;
...how you listened to Knopfler on Pandora in the background
           as you wiped off sudsy residue
           in rhythm to his cadence;
...how the hum in you
           snuck out through the dish rag
           as you whirled and twirled
           your fears away;
...and how in one moment
           you wanted to drop the rag
           and walk away;
           no,
           run.

But here is the knob
and my breakfast dish
and the sum of our conversation
as I
"waltz with fear in my heart."

Primal Friendships

I was reading one of Julia Cameron's essays in The Sound of Paper, titled "Befriending Time."

There is something about this word combination, befriending time - befriending the moment, that makes me smile.  Cameron writes how time, like a dictator pushes aside and smothers into the background rich and plentiful details daily surrounding us; but even so she insists, we can befriend time.  Like taking a few moments to catch up with a friend, we can slip away from our busy-ness and connect to the moment, connect to that specific time.  By opening up to and absorbing the sights, sounds, smells, and impressions of life around us, we fuel our creativity.  We become friends with the moment; we come alive.

And I smiled because it reminded me of a recent walk with my five year old friend, Kailani.  We took a mini-hike along the Cape Falcon trail.  I had picked her up for the afternoon and we were going to play super heroes (Wonder Woman and Bat Girl) at my house, French braid her hair, and fill up coloring book pages.  The hike was a spontaneous last minute decision as we loaded into the car.  She had on her new pink rain boots that flashed a sparkly light each time she set her heel down, purplish-pink paisley leggings, and a brand new white sweater appliqued with a black Scottish terrier on the front.  She was also wearing a good sized tiara.  Not typical hiking gear but oh, so Kailani.

We held hands as we traipsed along and chatted about all sorts of five year old things.  Kailani is a thinker with a delightful and sophisticated vocabulary, and what we talked about most was the current experience we were enjoying spawned from her observations.  Since she is so much shorter and closer to the earth, she was continually pointing out to me her discoveries.  And I realized, how much wisdom we can enjoy through these little people, still closely tethered to rich details hiding on the underside of leaves or tucked into tight, mossy carpets.

She was the one who spotted the racing black beetles, one dull the other shiny; the dime sized mushrooms erect and stubborn and charming in their teensy-ness.  She stopped us on the bridge to listen, to listen as the rivulet of water hid beneath the skunk cabbage but sang to us never-the-less.

Cameron associates creativity with child-like wonder and reminds us how essential to living are these primal friendships with the moment.

And what a gifted way to befriend time than through the magical friendship of a child.

Another Way of Knowing

I study her.
Day after day
I sit and stare.
I watch how she
Curls over
On top of herself,
Splays out
And then inhales
Herself back in.

I notice how
Sometimes
Her face stiffens,
Is steep;
Sometimes
Soft and rounded.
Sometimes
She darts
Here and there and all over
And then I'm not sure
Of her,
At all.

I observe how
Her shoulders
Uplift,
Perky,
Sassy-like.
Flirting,
I'm sure of it.
But then
They will
Drop
Like a deep sigh;
Almost cave in.
Often times
They do.

At times
Her arms
Stretch so wide,
Her fingers
Reaching for me
Sparkly
Like a giggling child.
Other times
She hugs herself tightly
Wrapped up
Like a yoga coil,
Creating
An expanse between us.

This fickle one I love;
I want to
Know her
In a glance.
Without looking at
Her tell-tale edges,
To peer into her core
While gathering my notes
And answer -
"Is she incoming
Or outgoing?"
And with my proficiency,
I will guess.
Almost always
Incorrect.

But one time,
In that moment
Deeply corralling the clues,
Amassing my observations,
She startled me
And said,
"Forget your scrutiny.
How do I feel
To you?"

And I stood there
And let go
Of what I thought
Or didn't think;
And I felt her.
Absorbed
Her presence
Into me,
     And knew her.

"Incoming,"
I said.
And this time
I was right.

...my beloved,
The sea.
She taught me this.
 

The World At Bay

A busy intersection

Fingers thrumming on the steering wheel

Looking left

Looking right

Waiting for a gap

Ready to spurt

Toward an appointment

Peripheral, to the left

There he is

At the curb

Stepping into the street

With his dog

On a limp rope leash

He squares his shoulders

Through a fatigue jacket

Soiled and heavy

Grins

Whiskered and creased

And then pauses

In the middle

Of the traffic lanes

Slowly

Deliberately

Calculated to a rhythm

Of his own orchestration

As if

He has done this before

He cocks his head toward the sun

Squints and adjusts his tattered cap

Looks back at the dog

Gives a little tug on the rope

Shifts his bulging sleep roll

And moves on

Into the heart

Of impatient merging quadrants:

A coffee date

Bus schedules

A court hearing

Soccer practice

Restaurant supply deliveries

 All waiting

Eyes rolling

Horn honking

Fist pumping

As he

Strolls

Savors his moment

Holding the world at bay

The Road to Ritual

I never cared much for sacred rituals.  They seemed archaic and got in the way of some sweet Mystery I sensed ached to step in and say, “hello there.” I wanted the ache, the Mystery, the simple hello.  I didn’t want formula.  I didn’t want to practice…anything.  So I dismissed ritual as useless.  

Until recently.

It wasn’t until I set aside a recent habit, and then picked it back up, that I realized I had created a ritual for myself.  Without understanding its value, I had been putting into practice a tangible pathway to connect to Mystery – a touchable way to process, to listen, to trust, to become.

What made this habit a ritual were the narratives I unwittingly assigned, one of which was “Carol, go the distance; just put your toes in the creek;” and the other, “Sweet child, put it on the rock; just leave it there. Let it go.”  The habit was a simple beach walk. The narratives were my way to tussle with truth.

I have different types of beach-walks.  There are times when I take a day long trek with a snack-pack, will snooze next to a warm dune after poking around tidal debris, and get caught up in filling my phone camera with shot after shot of the same smooth stone reflected in a pool.  

But there is a type of beach-walk I call “pounding sand,” where I hammer out whatever is bothering me.  I don’t head out intending to have a therapy session; I just want a quick peek at my beloved stretch of beach and sea, a brisk walk to breathe deep, to sigh big.  And invariably in that relaxed state, the embrace of sea-breeze, the sand-crunch and gull-cries will slip into that sigh and draw me into something else.  I begin talking to myself, to the sea and sky and gulls…and to Other.  I will vent, cry, laugh, ponder.  And then, for some reason, I will listen.  I will hear myself.  And so very often in hearing myself, I will hear Other – this wondrous Mysterious ache; the simple “Hello there.”

And this connection will come as a shell; the kind of shells I particularly treasure.

Usually it’s either a white limpet I call sand-kissies because they look like a white chocolate Hersey’s Kiss, or a worn purple-y translucent fragment of something iridescent I have yet to identify, or a perfectly un-fractured peachy scallop, or the exquisitely coveted whelk I have only seen twice (one of which the creature was still intact and I was tempted to dig it out with my finger so I could keep the shell but then I felt like Cruella Deville with a full throaty head thrown back cackle, “I vant your shell,” and thought better, and threw it back into the sea).  These particularly meaningful-to-me-treasures will be at my feet, catch my eye exactly the moment in my dialogue when I am most confused or angry or blubbery or frightened.  There it will be, speaking to me.  “Hello.  I’m here.”

I will scoop the treasure up and fondle this tangible comfort in my pocket.  And in this cracked open state, in this conversation, I will hear my truth.  

On one of those occasions as I was nearing the creek at the south end of the beach, I heard myself say, “You can turn back now; you don’t need to go all the way to the creek.  It’s almost the same as if you did.”  And as if a curtain pulled back revealing some dark, dank thing I saw my truth – my resistance to pushing through, my fear of the unknown, my inclination to fall back into the shallow, stagnant comfort of familiarity.  I saw it in direct relationship to the big, frightening, life-changing do-over decisions I was in the throes of navigating.  In that burst of insight I knew I needed to walk the remaining distance to the creek, that a simple few yards of sand was so much more.

I somehow understood I needed the physical, tangible practice of making myself push through my resistance; that I didn’t need to understand or define my resistance or which fear lay at its root, I just needed to choose a new habit.  I told myself, “Carol go the distance; just put your toes in the creek.”  And as I did, time after time, unbeknownst to me, I established a ritual, a physical practice bathed in a meaningful narrative, which helped me connect to a dormant inner strength, to hope, to a Mystery.  I always came away from these moments re-framed, comforted.  Better.

And then, right on the heels of that epiphany, on one of my walks back from the creek toward the rock wall, my other ritual developed.  Fingering my pocketed shell treasures and reveling in the joy of that day’s particular find, a most lovely, pearly, shapely scallop, I heard myself say, “You need to let that go; you need to give it back.” 

And I was shocked by the thought.  In the few minutes of delightful possession, this shell was now mine, and meaningful.  I had lifted it out of the sand, received it as an intimate comforting gift, an assurance I was not in this alone.  I felt my fingers clutch around the scallop and an intense argument ensued.  

“How ridiculous.  I don’t need to give it up.”

Silence

“Well, ok.  I get it.  I can be open, let go.  I don’t need all of these….I’ll put the others over there on the rock wall.  Kind of like an altar….of surrender.”

Silence

“Why does it have to be THAT shell?  I want that one; I NEED that one!  That one is SIGNIFICANT!”

Precisely.  

“Oh for heaven’s sake, it’s just a shell!”

But I knew.  I knew.  It was not the shell; and it was the shell.  THAT shell was the screechy, panicky part of my heart clawing for security, demanding control, insisting that possession and peace are synonymous.   

“Sweet child, just put it on the rock; leave it there. Let it go.”   

It would take me several more yards of clutching and screeching before I could let go of that simple, complicated exquisite shell of my heart, but by the time I reached the wall, the work was done.  I let it go. 

And I would need to do this again and again.  I would need the repeated physical battle, the experiential, tactile act of surrender to help reshape my heart as I struggled through an intense part of my journey.  At the time I understood these were meaningful moments, but I didn’t understand how essential my two little rituals would become until I got busy, set them aside, and attempted to grapple with a new ordeal.  In a moment of panicky frustration and exhaustion, I reminded myself that maybe I just needed to go pound sand again for a while; relieve some tension.  

For certain my beach walking relieved tension, but it was the literal stepping into a familiar practice I had created around a meaningful story, a sacred narrative enabling me to connect to The Sacred, that brought true relief.  I realized how much I needed these moments on a regular basis.  I needed to practice my metaphor to keep my truth in perspective – that I am prone to  cowering and clutching, but courage and trust are within my grasp. 

We develop physical stories, rituals, to help us connect to Something so much bigger than us; to become what we sense, but cannot seem to reach.  Whether we share a cup and bread, light a menorah, bow our forehead to the ground, beat a drum, or walk a beach picking up shells and sticking our toes in the creek, we need our rituals.  

I need my rituals to help me push on, to let go...to become.

Aperture

I could pretend
we are not fractured,
still.
That gauzy memories
fade truth,
and dimness
is the same as
Grace.

I could pretend
my impression
is whole,
framed by
a manageable sorrow.
That my prism
cast true:
a collected, refracted light
against a sepia canvas.

I could pretend
wounds close,
time heals,
Phoenix rise from ash;
the effigy I hold
and behold
will still cradle
my soul.

                          ...or not.


For sometimes
you cast your stone,
shatter my image.
A violent lens
boring down on
smudged edges,
blended hues,
seeping
watercolor memories.

And I must look anew,
widen the fissure;
gape
at another
reflection
and wonder,
what is true?

I could pretend
yours was
the sharper eye;
your palette,
loud with vitality and
crisp borders:
the sole herald.

Yes, I could
pretend
dimness
is the same as
Grace.

                          ...or not.


For sometimes dimness
                                       is Grace.
                                                        Precisely.


Aperture - regulator, opening, hole; exposure of time.