twinkle

stuck lately on this theme of carrying the joys and hopes and pains and pleasures of our ancestors in our present days, in our DNA...

carrying unfulfilled hopes, carrying dreams, living out dreams, living out the unfulfilled lives of others...

as she walked, she was not just her...she was graceful like her grandma...and stubborn like her dad...or was that just her?...her only...how can you say she is but her and her only? the wry smile, the eye twinkle, the chin dimple, the thoughts about last night's dinner, the wanting to leave this place, the desire to go nowhere, the decisions about future pathes, the regrets about lovers lost...

she cannot possibly be just her...only this body made up of, what is it, 80% water, just this what you can see and only what you can see...

she is so much more---spinning inside is the feather-weight dream of all those who came before...

we are the individual, the collective, the past, the future, the never-will-happen, the did-not-happen, the regret, the joy, the answers, and, most definitely, we are the questions...

Shown

Walking with friends...drizzle...scouting high-bush cranberries...Crestview...in swoops the hawk...sweeping and screeching...

down low like, through the break in the trees, right for us, along the path...

And then up, away...over the hemlocks and away with her call of flight...

visited by the hawk...

Ownership

Will you understand?

I do not understand this divide between in and out, internal and external

Beauty, you see, is hearing the colour of birdsong

Love knows no ownership

The ghostly stride of the wolf is mine not hers; yours not mine

Speak to me not of what you know,

But bathe me in soft whispers of your mysteries

What part of me is just me?

What part of me existed before me?

What part of me is you?

What parts of me and you are carried by us all?

Lodestar

Can you love a place as much as another? Can you love a time as much as a place?

Beautiful baby bunnies...Stella by the shower drain as a puppy...green tops, twisted earrings and sunglasses pushed up on the forehead...

Samuel Glacier, mountain bikes, and heavy packs...wind-whipped tarps, dirty dogs, driving rain, and the laughter...of missing her...the insecurity of early days and missing her...

laughing because of it all...I am living this for others who would want to...and for me...for others who cannot...and for me...she is SO happy...to dance with green sweeping undulations, heavy misted ground-covered soft pleasures...

let's set up here, and eat...and sleep, and watch for breaks in the weather or not...pedal power---the absloute DEEP inner joy of physical exertion mingling with outdoor beauty, and beautiful souls...shared joys...common ground...

this is our common ground...shred it...worship it...kiss it with hiking boot rubber...kiss it with rolling, gripping tire...whip through trees and sing silent songs of desperate love for this northern dry silty earth...they are not white birches, they are trembling aspen...grey moutain, bald like a corpses skull, boogaloo, my trail, el camino, broken truck, ride on...

I don't know...

Lambchop sideburns. Tired eyes. Worn out. Just answer me these few questions while I search your being for answers to the question of how to live a life. Am I using you? Or am I curious about your long, beautiful path?

This man from Dawson. Very tired and now dying. Struggling for responses to my questions about his competence...about his ability to care for himself...about his SHORT TERM MEMORY...

Looking to please me...valiant effort until the end of days...fight for it.

I have to do my job. And take from him at the same time. Fill me with stories of traplines, and snowmobiles, and the colourful 5%, and mutterings of "never shake hands with someone you don't know", "that goddamn woman" "we shook on it."

How might I live? Like him? 96 years old and failing beautifully...ready for rest...determined to rest...quiet eyes open and close according to him not me...he's not on my schedule...the world does not revolve around me...this glorious life over in the beat of a dragonfly's wing...infinitely long...delicately uncertain...live it! Man, live it...

Walk the earth...

remember

The past holds answers to present challenges. Moving about through time, patterns emerge. Old ways of coping or not, show up again.

A past friend told me "to be gentle" with myself. This is beautiful advice...for us all...

I am presently falling a bit into fear...of the unfamiliar, of falling itself, of having left friends and family, of not knowing myself, of not having answers, of lack of control...I am feeling ungrounded and yet I know this place from past years...I know this place of fear very well...

And I know it is but the opposite side of joy and delight. I know the coming AND the passing of "good" and "bad." And I know the beauty in being able to experience the true and wide range of human emotion.

Awareness of emotion...allowance for distress...humility in happiness...receive without condition what it is that comes your way...

self-knowledge through repetition and pattern...

fear of fear breeds panic and reaction...soft, gentle allowance of fear breeds response, learning, acceptance, self-soothing...

outside inside

I am home. I will always be home. In me. Inside of me.

What of this boundary? This thin skin that keeps my bitter sweet bloody heart from falling to the earth. Outside of me. Why this containment of thought? Can't you see what I think of this and that?

Why not turn it all inside out? Bring the out in?

Give the in to the out. After all it isn't mine. I am made from the out.

So here--take it...take all of it...for I am of it but I own none of it...

I am me, and I am you...and I am of the trees and birds and mountains...

Separate, joined, apart, together...

Will you understand?

obligation

So perhaps it is such that happiness is a duty. The gentle pursuit of happiness is a duty. Pursuit being the wrong word. In my happiness I offer to the world innocent, anonymous gifts.

Bitterness, anger, jealousy, discontent are easier and weak. Weak being the wrong word.

Our obligation is to be humbled by our on-going attempts to live here now. Nothing is to be done simply to get it over with.

Other people have the answers to our big questions. To our small questions.

There is an obligation to find solace within. An obligation to be gentle with ourselves. This is it. It doesn't get any better than this moment.

What I am feeling is what I am feeling. There is no right way to feel.

These thoughts, at the moment, obviously coming forth from past readings in the buddhist realm...

an obligation to accept our reality and to also create it--to the extent that we're able...