Meditation

Hello again.  

I remember once, heading up the Loxahatchee River out of Jupiter Florida.  We left the busy bay with motor boats, condos and houses with river docks.  We were heading for the river source and as we passed under bridges, the river  got smaller, changing from wide bay to river and becoming the size of a country lane.  The mangrove trees bent into the water, fish jumped ahead of our boat and rounding one corner we saw an alligator larger than our boat. There was a kind of shuffled talk between us, more like the sounds of leaves underfoot and the music of the dipping of paddles in the water.  The branches came closer and eventually we were sliding underneath them, silently ducking low.  Thoughts of the Manatee that we were  told of, living deep in the water, a behemoth munching on sea grass, somewhere beneath the boat brought my heartbeat forward and filled my consciousness.  Progress was slow now, inching forward, everything in present time.  Finally the river stopped us.  Wordless, we sat in the water, filed up with the moment.  We stayed for a long time.  Neither of us needed anything. 

 I thought: This is meditation.


Offstage cues:  Water, Silence, Plenty


Here is a poem by Rumi

Say I am you

I am dust particles in sunlight.

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.

To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its braches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark of stone, a flickering

in metal. Both candle,

and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale

lost in the fragrance.

I am all order of beign, the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is,

and what isn't. You who know

Jelaluddin, You the one

in all, say who

I am. Say I

am you.

The Essential Rumi translated by Barks and Moyne

Bough Dancer

IN THANKS FOR TREES
For apple, damson, pear, for apricot and cherry,
For holly and for elder, all trees that bear a berry,
For needles, cones and catkins that hang upon the twigs,
For dates and pomegranates, for persimmons and figs,
For cabinets and pews, for boxes, casks and caskets,
For matches and for hatches, for cane and wicker baskets,
For violins and cellos for basses and their bows,
For shaft of axe and hammer, for stale of rakes and hoes,
For coracles and gondolas, for schooners, sloops and sculls,
All rigging, all rudders, all keels and decks and hulls,
For magic wands and wizards’ staffs, for flying witches’ brooms,
And more prosaic brushes with which we sweep our rooms,
For all the many blessings they unknowingly supply,
(For cradles, beds and coffins in all of which we lie),
But mostly for their beauty of stature, shape and hue,
For trees of every quality our deepest thanks are due.

Oliver Leech

http://leopardpoetry.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/featured-poet-oliver-leech/



In the late 70's and early 80's, I used to do these treks in the Ventana wilderness area near Big Sur. We would often be heading out to do 5 - 10  days of solo time in the woods and we would choose new names to resonate to our sense of place.

Today my name is Bough Dancer..

What is yours?

Moving

While driving up the inner corridor of California yesterday, I was musing on the joy of moving around in the world.  What an easy way to shift our focus and get into our bodies in present time.  I was treated to the beginnings of California spring, miles of budding to blooming orchards that line the highway from mid state to Oregon. It was a deepening pleasure to think about the myth of Persephone, who, in mythology was stolen by her father into the underworld and became the Queen.  After some trials for her mother, Demeter, Persephone was allowed to return each spring from the underworld and with her return, we see the budding of flowers and life, a revival from the little death of winter. 

 

In that same myth, an almost forgotten fact is the smell of the flower Narcissus, that allows her to tumble into the darkness of Hell.  The character of Narcissus is synonymous with sleep and numbness.  This God was known for his attention to himself, staying in that little world of his own self centeredness.  I think it is easy to get bogged and mired in our world of troubles and concerns, and we lose the perspective of where we fit in the larger world, a hell of our limited vision.  Our world is known, usual, familiar and we move around inside of this place, and perhaps as Narcissus's name alludes...we are asleep and numb.   

I was heading north and traveling about 350 miles to my destination, but I was thinking that, it needn't be such a big trip. Whenever we leave the usual, the normal, we pop outside the unconscious bubble and we see everything as new and different.  Think of your last vacation when you were out of town and noticing EVERYTHING.   When we break the routine, we wake up a little and SEE again.   Think of your day today as a wake up day!  Look at something new!  Don't just blow past your neighbor's yard, or the fallow field on the way to town.  Take a new path!

Move yourself around in the world.  Allow the world to wake you up.  This can mean a trip to Bolivia/Paris, driving over the hill to see what is on the other side, taking a new street to work, or simply taking a walk.  Remember to breathe deeply.

Offstage cues:  Move, Contemplate, Wake up!

The Myth of Persephone - Greek Goddess of the Underworld   


These works of art are from the above website.

Rowan - Tree of Life

90" x 96" acrylic mural

Vortex Banners

48" x 96" acrylic on canvass

WELCOME

Crossing the Sea,  Threshold Imagery

Hello out there!

Welcome to my new blog.   This will be a multimedia site, with pictures, poetry, prose from me, that I will try and post weekly, and perhaps some things that I find in my files that might have a second or third life as a post.  Anything goes.   You are welcome to comment and I will be posting a portion of these.

Whether your movement is about recovery, personal growth, grief, marriage, retirement, change in physical and health status, or moving to a new place, I offer imagery to feed the soul and calm  and focus the brain.  This can also be a place to entice the creative impulses...writing, painting, cooking, gardening, photography etc. The artist within loves other creative energies.  Perhaps a permission, or maybe just an invitation.

Our psyche, soul, and mind does understand metaphor, and translates without dictionary, meaning and relatedness to whatever we expose it to.  Allow yourself to sit with the imagery, whether it be a thought, a written image or photo.    The dreamer within, loves another poem, another mystery, another dance.  So we begin……to move, to write, to dance, maybe crosssing over the sea, maybe beneath it.  

Let our beginning word be reverence.... and let us be reverent in our own task of orienting to our true path.  When in this state, we move slower, we tend more to the details of things and we breathe deeply, taking it all in.  What do you do when in a garden, on a beach or watching the night sky?  We find a stillness within that resonates to the outer world.  We retune the mechanism of our being to match how we value the place that we find ourselves.  Today, allow the idea of observation to take the lead.  

Offstage cues:  Stop...Slow...Watch...Enter...Relax...........Value. 

Morro Rock at Dusk