WALKING LIKE A MOVIE GUY

Where I walk in the mornings is along a bluff overlooking the rocks and sea.  I follow a path that curves along the edge but wide enough for three people to walk abreast.  I walk for about 40 minutes along this route and then make the turn home but I go upwards towards a road which is inland and above the cliff walk by about a quarter mile.  It gets my heart going a bit faster and I end up higher on the ridge where I can overlook a broader picture of the ocean, craggy shoreline, and the ridges and sand dunes to the north.  Once I reach the top, there are a few dips and rises but mostly it is a rarely traveled paved road that parallels the bluff walk in reverse.  

But the time I reach this higher point, I can see the distant speck of the white  van and I feel happy.  The hormones secreted within my brain and nervous system, peptides, are activating my body’s opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.  We know this process as the “endorphin rush.”  If you are active at all, you know this as a welcome and pleasant feeling.  

There is a spot on the road when it is only downhill to the car and I can see the ridges above the cove and the Rock at a distance.  It is such a vast and spacious view that it always takes my breath from me.  The way that I am walking and putting down my feet changes, in this small almost imperceptible way.   I begin to feel something in my body, a bit of ego, probably, for completing the loop.  But there is a kind of swagger in my body and steps.  I am immediately mentally transported to a movie image. 

Do you remember the movie Witness?  It is a police thriller about an Amish child who sees a murder, and Harrison Ford, the detective John Book, goes undercover on the child’s family’s farm to hide and protect him.  He falls in love with the lovely Amish woman, Rachel played by Kelly McGillis.  At the end he is torn but ends up leaving and not pursuing the relationship with her.  All along there has been this big strapping Amish man who has had eyes for Rachel.  In the final scene, John Book is driving out the long driveway, heading back to Philadelphia to his life there.  His car heads up a rolling hill and as he is about to go over the crest, he sees Daniel, the Amish man, casually striding towards the house where Rachel lives.  You see John Book's car stop for a moment and then he drives on.  As we watch all of this, Daniel takes long steps coming down the hill.  We know, as did John Book, that he is heading for the porch where he will woo Rachel to be his wife.  There is a quiet confidence in his walk.  One might say swagger, but it is more of confidence than ego.  There is a solidness to his step.  He comes down the hill and you can almost feel his feet hit the dirt, each step landing solidly and strongly in the dust.

This whole movie scene gets played out internally each time I come over that final rise and start down the hill.   I suddenly feel that heavy footfall, the brightness of spirit, the confidence or maybe pride coming down the home stretch of my journey.  It is just like Daniel did in that final scene in Witness.  I am embodied by his image and character, solid, sure, content.  I was thinking yesterday about how often movies have amplified my life’s experience.  How like theater, the arts, opera and myth, movies become portals to our experience, a way to see the big and small moments of our lives, from just a bit outside of ourselves.





There was a TV show named Northern Exposure.  It started in 1990, and took place in a fictional town in Alaska called Cicely.  If you have never seen it, you might take a peek.  It is a wonderful blending of people, culture and ideas, and for TV, way ahead of the cultural curve.  There was one particular show where a young Native American: Ed Chigliak, a man who is in training to be a Shaman, is visited by an elder of his tribe.  Leonard, the elder, is asking about the white people’s stories.  He comes from a society where story is like myth, it holds lessons, healing and cultural references that inform and companion his people.  Ed, who lives among the white people of the town cannot answer Leonard’s question about where the stories are.  The show follows this quest until the ending minutes where Ed, a budding filmmaker is sitting in a dark theater watching Citizen Kane, when Leonard comes in an sits beside him.  I don’t remember exactly what is said, but it is clear that they both might understand that movies in Western Culture are our stories.  Or at least one of the ways we hold our personal and cultural knowledge.

In the final minutes of my walk, I do like the silky feel of shifting between the threshold of my own feet hitting the pavement and the imagery from the movie.  It is a sweet place of resonance, introspection, amplification and separation.  

I would like to ask you to think for a moment of one, or twenty of those times where your own breathing life is blended with an image from a movie.  Maybe one where the images seem to blur and become one.

A little consideration, a moment, a memory.

Send them on to me at bmwmft@aol.com.  Thanks.. and good walking to you!  Misty

FOLLOW THE WORD

Good morning.  This is a follow up to my piece on Haiku as meditation.  I did get a few responses which I have included, and one of my own.  We are often intimidated by sharing something creative.  Even if you did not send them on to me to post, I do hope you take up the pen and sit with the process for a moment.  It, like yoga, centers and slows us into our hearts.     New post shortly….Misty

 

What white land is this?

Peopled by ones now ghosts,

Walking on shoulders.

Paris Rose

To live without want

Dancing is a middle way,

Desire fulfilled.

Anonymous

Hazy sky at dawn,

      Fire raging in the forests.

Bring rain to heal us!

~Susan

O Buddha sit me

Under ancient Bodhi tree,

And then I fly away.

Anonymous

My boat, on water,

Floats along the tidal rise,

Forgetting I ride.

Misty Wycoff

 \

Old notes....BOULDERS TO DUST

January 23, 2013

Part of the border plants died.  The Martha Washington geraniums have taken over the entire bedded area around the statue of the Buddha.  Gardens teach us to let go.  In science and nature,  perhaps since the writings of Heraclitus, the idea that “Nature abhors a vacuum” is a cornerstone construct.  It reminds us that life is always shifting around on us.  Empty spaces get filled in the real world.  Also things disappear, die or become dormant.  You cannot be a gardener, or a naturalist and not know this on a deeply physical level. 

Animal trails through the wilderness are not straight.  Trees are not symmetrical, and we cannot take one step without seeing a dying life form, a leaf, a bone or the rich loam of decaying life.  Although in one lifetime we may not perceive it, but too, the mountains are slowly letting go of their shape and making boulders into dust.

One of the subtle and persistent experiences of being in the natural world is to relax.  We are small again.  We are just a piece in the bigger thrust and pull of the universe.  Life out there is simple.   That which adapts and gets the right nurturance survives, until it doesn’t.  Simple.  Dying isn’t scary, wrong or evil, it just is.  It is part of it.  Part of the wide screen, the molten apricot sky, or the water dropping thousands of feet down the hillside to the deep caverns and cool riverbanks below.  We belong.  We are here for a piece of that long time, and then we are not.

Some of our interior borders will be dying off right now, and other parts of us will be taking over a zone of our consciousness.  We do have the ability to prune things back and to replant, but sometimes it is just interesting to see where the big spin is taking us.  We spend so much of our time trying to control things.  We get used to comfort.  We want things our way.  Nothing is wrong with that. Work it.   Get some things you want.  Make some space for yourself.  But don’t let that take over your experience of things.  Learn to sit back and watch.  Be still.  Give time for things to emerge, for relationships to develop, for ideas to reach maturity.  Let time edit the process.   Meditation helps with that, because it is scheduled reverie but reverie nonetheless.  It is a moment of not acting, but just observing. 

Oh yes, that border plant has died, but look at those Iris!











Coming attractions:   A few Haiku poems that came in from last posting....stay tuned.

Haiku

I start today with a poem, a Haiku.

                                   Northbound pelicans

                                   Where do they gather and land?

                                   Always, my heart!

I thought I would give some examples of Haiku Poems and invite you to consider writing one.  Haiku writing is a form of meditation.    I have included some information about writing them and some examples to let you see how powerful they are. I invite you to write one and send it to me in the "comments" section.  I will publish the entries in my next blog (with or without your name...).  I think you will find it a calming exercise.  I particularly like the one that starts...."O snail..."(I just heard that sometimes the comment button doesn't work.  I will try to get that fixed, but you can email me the Haiku to bmwmft@aol.com....)

Haiku poems date from 9th century Japan to the present day. Haiku is more than a type of poem; it is a way of looking at the physical world and seeing something deeper, like the very nature of existence.

History and Structure of Haiku Poems

A haiku poem consists of three lines, with the first and last line having 5 moras, and the middle line having 7. A mora is a sound unit, much like a syllable, but is not identical to it. Since the moras do not translate well into English, it has been adapted and syllables are used as moras.  

Haiku started out as a popular activity during the 9th to 12th centuries in Japan called “tanka.” It was a progressive poem, where one person would write the first three lines with a 5-7-5 structure, and the next person would add to it a section with a 7-7 structure. The chain would continue in this fashion. 

The first verse was called a “hokku” and set the mood for the rest of the verses.  Sometimes there were hundreds of verses and authors of the “hokku” were often admired for their skill. In the 19th century, the “hokku” took on a life of its own and began to be written and read as an individual poem. The word “haiku” is derived from “hokku.” 

The three masters of “hokku” from the 17th century were Basho, Issa, and Buson.  Their work is still the model of haiku writing today. They were poets who wandered the countryside, experiencing life and observing nature, and spent years perfecting their craft.

Haiku Poems From the Masters

A review of haiku poems is an excellent way to become familiar with this form of poetry. Remember that in translation, the moras won’t be the same as syllables. In Japanese, there are 5 moras in the first and third line, and 7 in the second, following the 5-7-5 structure of haiku.

Basho Matsuo

Here are three examples of the haiku of Basho Matsuo, the first great poet of haiku in the 1600s:

An old silent pond...

A frog jumps into the pond,

splash! Silence again.

Autumn moonlight—

a worm digs silently

into the chestnut.

Lightning flash—

what I thought were faces

are plumes of pampas grass.

Yosa Buson

Three examples of the haiku of Yosa Buson from the late 1700s are offered here:

A summer river being crossed

how pleasing

with sandals in my hands!

Light of the moon

Moves west, flowers' shadows

Creep eastward.

In the moonlight,

The color and scent of the wisteria

Seems far away.

Kobayaski Issa

Here are three haiku from Kobayashi Issa, a haiku master poet from the late 1700s and early 1800s:

O snail

Climb Mount Fuji,

But slowly, slowly!

Trusting the Buddha, good and bad,

I bid farewell

To the departing year.

Everything I touch

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble.

Natsume Soseki

Natsume Soseki lived from 1867 - 1916.  He was a novelist and master of the haiku. Here are a couple of examples of his poems:

Over the wintry

forest, winds howl in  rage

with no leaves to blow.

The crow has flown away:

swaying in the evening sun,

a leafless tree.  

Recent Poems

Whitecaps on the bay:

A broken signboard banging

In the April wind. - Richard Wright

ground squirrel

balancing its tomato

on the garden fence - Don Eulert

Remember, haiku is more than a type of poem; it is a way of looking at the very nature of existence.

So take a moment and look around you.  Be in the present, find those 17 moras or syllables, and send them on to me.  PS- Enjoy those moments while you are considering what to write   ~~~~~~~~~~ 

THE INESCAPABLE DISAPPOINTMENT OF INTIMACY

Been a busy month for books. 

I recently came across the phrase:  “The inescapable disappointment of intimacy”  It was in Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest book called Committed, A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.  After her Eat, Pray, Love book, she goes on happily in her life with the Brazilian man she met in Bali.  Two years later there are problems when he is refused entry into the United States.  Both their relationship and his import business are interrupted by this challenge by Homeland Security.  This book is not only the story of their year, or more, of going through the channels to become legally affianced, and for him to be allowed back into the USA so they can be married, but she has also researched the whole marriage, relationship history from sociological, religious and personal perspectives.

It is interesting, charming, riveting and funny.  By contemplating her own life and doing her research she has once again allowed an opening for the rest of us to benefit from her life path.  In Eat, Pray Love  we were able to see the end of her marriage.  This was a journey of self, that led her to a deeper understanding of her own sensuality, spirituality and centeredness.  Continuing along her path, she leads again to places where we have all traveled, but pulls us into a deeper look at our own journey and our consciousness.  It helps us  to look at intimacy, relationship and marriage and commitment.

The phrase “the inescapable disappointment of intimacy” has ridden around in the back of my head for a few weeks now.  It seems that all my conversations with clients and friends, all things read on the topic and all relevant movies, have been the mirror upon which I reflected and considered these things.

Isn’t it true that at some level we have all been disappointed by intimacy?  Given some of the perspectives of her book, I have wondered why.  What expectations do we have of our love relationships or even our friendships?  Are these ideas, historically, religiously, or culturally instilled?  Or is it a more fundamental question, where we try and fulfill our need for spiritual connection in our relationships to other humans?  

What I do know is that having read the book I felt more at ease, my perspective opened up, my understanding deepened, and I felt more free regarding this topic.  Whether you are in a relationship or looking for one, or even recovering from one, I do believe you will enjoy and be informed in subtle and obvious ways about who you are what it means to be committed to someone in relationship.  It will give you an opportunity to see where you lie on this continuum of understanding.

So, for today, I recommend a book.  A good book, a fun book, and a smart book that brings a little fresh air into an area that is so laden with expectation, history and sociological meaning.  I downloaded it in digital from from the library and listened to it.  Nice!

Til next time......Misty

A STRONG FARMER

I have been reading Irish literature and history of late, and came upon the phrase "a strong farmer".  It makes reference to sequential legislation known as the Land Acts in Ireland at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, whereby tenants were allowed over time to  lease larger plots.    This allowed them, in effect to become more self contained or self sustainable.  As time went on, the phrase came to mean a person who managed his plot in life in a self sustaining manner.

It was not about who had the largest land base (the most toys) but how well, equitably, generously, community consciously he provided for himself, his family and the wider group of farmers around him.  This farmer was a good citizen who tended to his own business in such a way to provide to his family's needs and to be rooted in a strong presence in the agri...culture of the area.

I thought this was such a clear metaphor for leading a balanced life.  As with many indigenous cultures there is a consciousness to return to the land what you have taken from it, I believe it holds a marker and meaning for us as well.  Certainly, like the Maori tribes of Australia who teach their young to not take all of the root vegetables from an area, leaving some to seed for the next rainfall, we can perhaps measure our friendships in similar terms.  Do we take too much from our relationships?  Do we reseed energies for the coming season.  Do we provide for the individuals in our close family and do we participate in a larger community in meaningful ways, sharing our experiences, benefits and seeds for the future.  Do we help bring their crops in when we can? Do we participate in helping someone move or paint their bedrooms.  Do we bring positive energies to our encounters with people



If the landscape of our social, financial, emotional, and spiritual lives can be compared to the husbandry of farming, what kind of farmer are you?
Are your fields well tended?  Do you nurture them so that the harvest will be more bountiful every year?  Or are you stingy with your gifts, taking but not giving back to those who have companioned you on this earth, the animals, the people and yes, the land itself?

I also recently came across the the phrase of a "second puberty".  The first reference was from Kant who said that we need a second puberty to be mature enough to have sex in relationship.  The phrase also became connected to something akin to a midlife crisis.  W.B Yeats the Irish poet, referenced it as he struggled through a miasma of sexual/relationship losses and problems. I saw it in more positive terms than this last one.  I see puberty as a time of awakening, certainly of our sexual, but also of our emotional and spiritual selves.   Maybe in our SECOND puberty we could allow ourselves to awaken to a deeper connection to our lives.....the land, the animals, the relationships that we have with other in our families and communities, and whatever is our sense of spiritual connection in the world.

In our newly awakened  selves, we might find seeds of hope and interest that we didn't have time for the first time we passed this way.  As a farmer who reseeds annually and sometimes more than once in a year, maybe as a STRONG FARMER, we might plant a new crop.  One that nourishes us in a different way than previously.  Nurtures us in a way that gives meaning and value to what we are doing and how it interacts with the larger community.    We can replant, we can redefine, we can have that second puberty, where things begin again and we have boundless energy, and yet this time, more consciousness, more kindness, more purpose driven interaction with our world.

If we allow ourselves this gift of starting over, of setting the goal of becoming a STRONG FARMER all manner of things will become possible, and in the words of the14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich:  "All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."

LONGING FOR BELONGING

We are all afraid.  A passing shudder.  Paralyzing life stopping panic.  Middle of the night terrors. Pre-event butterflies.  Deep belly rumblings.   Loose bowel, over the chasm, heart stopping horror.  Even enthusiastic anxieties...  This is something we share as humans.

Whether it be for threat of our lives, or those of our families, or perceived threats to how we think our lives should proceed, we all have experienced the loss of our stability, our sense of peace, and our carefree view of our day and what is to come.  Fear is about the future,  It is what we think is coming.


We are genetically arranged to handle sudden danger, but through our life experience we have overused that system with a variety of life stresses.  Many of us lived our lives feeling outside of belonging.  Drifting, like an untethered astronaut, into the abyss, or at least it seems that way.  In times of stress, worry, anxiety, fear, terror, panic, the question that we could ask ourselves is:
                                 

                                        Where do I belong?


It is the connections that we have to family, community, country, planet, spirit, ancestors, totem animals, or God, that gives peace.  In which tree is my nest?  In what sphere do I travel?  Where do I belong in the world?

For some of us, or for all of us, some of the time, we fear this question.  We fear that we do not belong......anywhere.  But of course we do.  First, we belong to the question, then we belong to the life that seeks the answer.  The answers.  The answers that we spend our lives discerning.  

Perhaps our task, each day, our task TODAY, is to answer, just for today that question.  Today where do I belong?  We need to be kind to ourselves, and both look and answer gently.  Today it may be: my garden, my job, my family, my home group, my church or my God.  But it can also be to the homeless man I see and feel touched by, the imagery that came to me in a dream, and, the sky, the people who smile at me or that I smile at today, or the bug I stepped over on my walk, or just the air around us.  Whatever the answer is....let it be so, gently, and just for now.

 Fear!  The antidote is belonging. Longing for belonging..  It gives meaning.  It gives metaphor.  It gives a container, and in that we are held, like a baseball player rounding home plate..... SAFE

 Today's word:   BELONGING...... find your spot......just for today.  

HIDING IN YOUR SKIN

Good Morning World!

Is this how I meet the day? 

OR

IS

IT

MORE

LIKE

THIS

???








Today
is
the
day
to
be
BRAVE!

          There
           is
           only
           one
           of
                     you
           and
           one
           of
                     me
           and
           we
           are
           perfect!

                                        Look
                                        for
                                        the
                                                              love
                                        coming
                                        your
                                        way
                                        and
                                        let
                                        the
                                                             love
                                        pour
                                                             out
                                        of
                                        you
                                        to
                                        those
                                        around.

                                        And
                                        let
                                        the
                                                            love
                                        pour
                                                            into,
                                        in
                                        to
                                                            you.



                         Everything is alright.                                 You are safe.

Now BREATHE...deep IN............slow OUT.

Say I am GOOD, I am BLESSED, I am SAFE, Good Morning World!

A LONG PERIOD OF SILENCE

My father and I were picking blackberries off the mountainous vines that engulfed the back half of the barn.  This, an annual event that produced both jelly jars of jam and a few moments of easy peace between us.  He kept threatening to raze the labyrinthian prickly mess, but each year passed and the mass of brambled vines grew larger.  I am not sure if it was the enormous, nasty labor that it would take to bring them down, or simply the hour or so we would have with each other out there each summer, that leaves them arching up, ten feet thick, over and around the rafters of the cowsheds.   But here we were again, risking the pokes and scratches of a plant that trades battle wounds for sweet dark fruit. We filled those little green plastic berry baskets that my Dad hoarded all year for just this event.

I told him again about leaving soon to do our kayak paddle on the 125 mile wild section of the Upper Missouri River in Montana.  He doesn’t appear to remember this plan.  Possibly the shadows of his recent stroke has wiped this corner of his brain clear of the image.  I can tell that he is covering his  not remembering by staying quiet.  I sense his confusion and and say that I am looking forward to seeing Montana for the first time.  He perks up and says he remembers how beautiful it is.  I cannot think in my lifetime, of he or the family traveling there so I ask him about it.  He says it was when he was still pretty young.

“So it was after the service?”

“No, before.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I was going to pick apples up in Washington, we went up there every year as farm workers.”

“Did you live in California?”

“No, I was still living in Arkansas.  We would pool resources for gas and head up there each summer for field work.  There wasn’t much work  during The Depression, and there were more people from Arkansas up there during picking season that there were Washingtonians!”

I had a sudden picture in my head of my father as a young man.  It came from a photo that I had seen of him around that time.  He was young, thin, and unlike most of my lifetime, he had a dark head of hair.  He looked like a lanky farm boy, somewhat shy in front of the camera.  The picture had the look  of Depression era clothes and attitude.  He looked dry and hot, and his clothes mostly fit, larger collars, and lose pleated pants.  I tried to imagine him as a 16 year old orphan piling into a lumpy fendered dusty car from the thirties and traveling about 2000 miles to pick fruit.  What was he like?  Was he nervous with those people in the car, or did he know them?  Where were they from?  What did they talk about and do on the trip?  And then, what would he think about when he lay in his bed in the bunkhouses on the orchard ranches?  It was one of those pieces of a person’s history that lets you know just how little we really know of someone else.  Just how much we miss, even when we live decades in the same house with them.  I wanted to ask more about this, but just then he moved his ladder to the back side of the barn to pick from a different spot.

Later, as I was driving back to Nevada, with flats of berries, dripping inky color, awaiting the mash and heat of jam pots, I did the calculations and determined that the years he was talking about had to be in 1937 or 38.  Just as I had done this figuring, the jazz station that I was listening to shifted shows and I began to listen to a program called “The Swinging Years”.  It was music from the 30’s to the 50’s.   The first piece was a gravel voiced black woman singing about the Depression while picking occasionally on a guitar, and it was followed by other tunes from the same era.  I was given an opportunity to hear into Dad’s past, to some of the songs that may have been on the radio in that big clunky car, lumbering up the road to the Northwwest.  I imagined him sitting in the back seat tapping his fingers on his knee, or maybe just leaning his head against the window and watching the land go by.   It was a good moment we shared.  Even though he might never know.

I wrote this in 2007 two years before he died.  His birthday is coming up this week.  He would have turned 91 tomorrow.  With all the postings around Father's Day I went hunting for this piece to share. I was talking to another friend this week, one I have known for over 40 years, and I referenced a period in my life that he had no knowledge of.  The conversation that  followed  reminded me of this moment with Dad.  It reminded me that  even our best efforts to get to know someone leaves us often short of truly knowing them.  


Although there are great and wondrous things it, I think the current culture of social media, which is so "me" oriented takes us even farther from the possibility of a deep connection.   It seems to me that we have all gone into the publicity business, personally advertising who we wish to be known as.  In the case of the conversation with my Dad, it took standing next to him, and allowing for the conversation to wander down the wind and find this topic.  To me some of the best conversations occur after a long period of silence between two people.  In these moments, things can rise to the surface that stay out of sight in the "touch-you-are-it" world we live in.

Try this..    find someone you care about and just sit with them, on a bench, in the kitchen, on a walk.  Don't, for a minute listen to music or have the TV on, and do not pick up that phone.  Just see what happens.

Other than that................Happy Birthday Dad!   love, Misty