Open Asking Hand

Photo: On the window sill of the abandoned lighthouse on Burrows Island.

“The simple clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose.
For we meet by one or the other.”
Carl Sandburg

We also part by one or the other.

Last words often come as a surprise. One of the last things I ever wrote to her was “The next time I see you it will be as if we are meeting for the very first time.” The last thing that she wrote to me was: “I swear in the days still left we will walk in fields of gold.” These parting words came from an open hand. They delivered an unexpected prophecy. I truly do feel that I will meet her again, and everything will be healed and new. I picture a place like the field of grasses and the single great tree we loved. Who knows which words will be our last. Who knows which words will spell out a soulful future of unexpected joys and karma.

Today is the second anniversary of this earth without her laughing eyes, without her mysterious dance with scarves and without the pleasures the beach cobbles feel beneath her feet. It’s a day to remember with an open hand. I’m grateful that she came into my life and taught me how to say “Yes” with my whole being. I’m especially grateful with how the poems began to arrive the day I first met her. And they have never left. She taught me that there is a place beyond right doing and wrong doing… a place where love blooms and grows and evolves without judgment. She taught everyone that she met how to be passionate about every transient moment. There is so much to be grateful for.

I miss you beloved, friend.
Soon the green grass will grow
bonny on this side.
How is it with you?
What are the fields like on the other side
of the hole in my heart?

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A New Story

Photo: From my front yard. Sun and the fire beneath a walnut tree named “Artemis”.

The November writing experiment is over. There are now 52,542 words written by hand in a single large sketch book. I wonder “Now what?”. I feel out of sorts. And I feel like I met my life’s purpose in living the creative process. I dreamt about my book last night. My first real mentor came to me. We shared fine coffee around my kitchen table. I could actually smell the beans in the coffee grinder… delicious. In the dream she read every line of my tome, made suggestions and then placed the book in my hands. She said “Now is the time to write a new story.” I remember feeling disappointed and a little excited by the prospect. She smiled at me and walked out my front door into a sunny spring day.

I woke up to a Northwest morning of muscular winds and waves of rain. I felt keen to remember her face and her hand on mine when she handed the book back to me. I thought: “She died ten years ago and here she is still helping me to stretch my self limitations.” I wanted to be happy and grateful. But the rain had a way of seeping into my heart. Because I also woke with the weight of losing someone beloved this week. And next week marks two years since she, a song of my heart, died.

I felt the wind of this past Fall coming in off the glaciers of Mt. Shasta. I remembered the laughter of friends in the Autumnal sun, all of us hiking down to the most beautiful lake in the woods. I remembered how a shaft of sun bent in through the branches of a great tree and lit her hair and eyes by the outdoor fireplace. And I remembered the cloudy year of sitting alone in my quiet house. Then I thought about my mentor’s advice: “…time to write a new story.” She’s right again. Perhaps part of the new story is about how to stay connected with this world, this moment and the rich and transitory sensations of being alive. The rest of the story is a mystery. I guess I’ll have to write it…maybe even live it. The tale begins with a friend and mentor’s hand upon mine. It begins after someone has read every scrawled messy word, looks up and says “I love you even more than I knew.” It begins with someone who actually wants to share my ordinary full life. It begins with me.

Unconditional love comes from many surprising places: a storm, a dream, a voice of the dead or even a bent shaft of sun around the fire. Unconditional love usually appears in seemingly ordinary events. Unconditional love begins with simple attention and circles around into gratitude.

Thank you for sharing this brief journey with me. I’ll write to you next week and then close this portion of the story. Who knows what will begin after that?

PS The name of my book is The Weight of Beauty.

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Catching Joy in the Breath

Photo: Last night’s full moon from Washington Park, Anacortes.
I felt my brother walking with me in the dark.

“…We may yearn to rest in some small piece of pure humanity, a strip of orchard between river and rock. But our own heart is too vast to be contained there. We can no longer seek it in a place or even an image of a god or an angel.”
End lines of Rilke’s Second Elegy.

This is my last real trip to the cabin. Friends, who are family, were kind enough to drive me here from Vancouver. I would not have wanted this ending to begin alone. There’s a vista from Interstate Five moving north, just before Conway, that always takes my breath for a moment. A hundred islands spread out off the edge of the Skagit Delta. The view reminded me of the Thanksgiving table shared with kin of choice this week. Our horizon served up with so many succulent dishes. Lummi Island is the turkey, Orcas Island the bowl of mashed potatoes, Lopez is the pie. I was in the back seat, behind my friends, feeling so sad and so blessed, even happy. The table is full of so many inner experiences.

This led me to wonder, what is it that catches the breath with joy? When you first spot your beloved at the airport curb. When you sit back and really see the painting you coaxed into the light over a long winter. Or driving away after the last day at a job that was beneath you. I don’t think it is the experience itself that fuels the power of the heart to sigh. The catch of joy in my case comes from an inner landscape. The islands are inside of me every day. The lover at the airport, in my adoring intentions. The paintings come from a dimension that is eternal. The actual objects and experiences are worthy (and loved) in themselves. But they are not the whole story.

As I stepped out of the heater’s hiss and the lantern’s glow of the cabin for the last time I knew that I would never forget the joy and dreams associated with the little home. This was a place for visions shared with a beloved. It became a lonely place with the song of ravens and coyote. And it was a place full of house plans made out of paper and prayers. Most of the intentions were not actually met. And I had to leave. Yet, the home is still inside me. Her hand still can rest on my shoulder as we sleep in the tall June grasses. The raven spinning songs in woodland flutters in my chest. It’s not necessarily about particulars. These things are real dreams. The catch of the breath, the joy of the unexpected moment are inside. And they are too big to be defined.

When I start the old Ford pickup for the last time in this place, I will ride the blue smoke and the turning wheels somewhere else. What do I take with me? Gratitude. Sadness. A little fear? But what I really take is Mystery. There is a joy of feeling every feeling, beyond the judgments about what is good or bad. There will be a new experience from within the rusted cab of the truck lumbering down I-5 toward the city. There will always be home. It just won’t be what I first expected.

42,181 Words

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Truth or Consequences

Photo: Lenticular Clouds hovering near Lava Beds National Monument.

“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“This is going to be too messy.” I’ve said too many times. “Let’s deal with this some other day.” Sometimes another day does not come. And sometimes hiding an important feeling or event can lead to a fragmented self. That’s how affairs continue. That’s how people fall apart. I’ve hidden much of my life in fear of making things messy. Perhaps a mixed up dynamic is occasionally necessary for the growth of whole being. I found that there are certain moments in life when the truth, ruthless or kind, rears itself up through the consciousness. At these times suppressing the message would be a way to segregate and maybe even kill a part of the self. The “truth” seems like a moving target. Perhaps it can never really be seen without taking a chance on screwing up and processing it. Perhaps true feelings cannot be known without the witness of a loving friend or partner… where love wants the highest good for self and the other at the same time. I write about this because I made a few seemingly benign decisions in my life that had vast consequences. One was to play it safe and not hurt someone dear. They were hurt anyway. Another was to be dishonest about my own abilities and vulnerabilities. It was a way to act but not live. Secrets always come forward in one way or another. Why not be empowered by them instead of afraid? My writing project is a way to begin putting the truth out in the universe, into the embrace of the Creator and even myself. I want the process to move into my whole being so that I can be free in the world, not hiding parts of myself in shame. The ghosts of the past hover just above the internal landscape. But the ghosts are not really someone else. They’re only cast off parts of ourselves, parts that need to come home.

31,755 Words

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Relationship

Photo: Flying together in a storm near Weed, California.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”
From Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”

I just returned from the southern part of my spiritual territory: Mt. Shasta and Klamath Falls. I’ve been thinking about how writing, or any other creative act, is made up mostly of collecting experiences from a place of curiosity and presence. Having an ongoing relationship with a particular place and people adds layers and depth to the stories. I’ve been going to visit my friends in Bear Valley (on the Oregon California border) for a decade now. I have found that the juniper steppe, the white wings of Mt. Shasta and familiar hum of the desert wind have actually seeped right into my bones. And the voices of the people that love me become the story tellers in my dreams. Right relationship builds lives and a rich story. What I have found about writing is that witnessing a particular part of the earth and her people, while being seen in return, can build joy from the inside out. I wrote so many words while I was with my friends. But the words (or any physical manifestations) are just reflections in a broken mirror. What rises above our thinking and planning and moves into our beautiful wounded world feeds the creator within each of us. I’m grateful for the witness of my friends and the love of the earth. They are the chorus singing within me.

26,002 words.

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Vows

A photo of standing stones near Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island


“When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing or frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s Poem: When Death Comes.
From her New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press 1992
(Perhaps the best poem written in modern times.)

I’ve been considering the vows I made in a ceremony on Whidbey Island in April of 2001. In a round sanctuary called the Marsh House I fasted and prayed for three days. On the fourth I was met by two friends. I read a long elaborate list of vows of service for the world I was then asked to boil them down to three. I have kept those three vows close to my heart and private. As St. Francis said: “Preach the gospel constantly, and sometimes use words.” I was anointed with oil. I was given a blessing by the elders. Then I was sent out of that round house into the world. I felt like my life finally began to break the surface and breathe on that day. And I found myself actually making more messes and crying more after my initiation. Living is not an ideal or a thought or sixteen thousand words in a book. Being human is as messy and as rich as you allow it to be. In the six years since I have lost the friends from the circular house, experienced family turning their backs on me, lost a great and mostly unrequited love.

Today I dug up my long list of vows. One vow was to simply experience every emotion and event as a guest walking through my life, being grateful for their teachings. This writing project is opening internal space to be grateful again. Another vow was to allow room for creativity and art every day. The lifeline of the Creator’s voice speaking through art saved me. In the writing I’m reminded about how messy and actually delicious life is. Even the sadness and losses along the way. We all share these experiences. For me, the vows and the witnessing of/by friends has given me a structure to fall back on in stormy times. These have also helped me to call for the Oneness to bring compassion through me in some way mysterious and kind. I hope that kindness is the result of this project. Getting the resistance and turmoil to move through the body and onto the page is a step. Perhaps this project is another dedication to be real and live in the messy world.

What vows do you keep in the private areas of your soul? What brings joy to your heart?

Sixteen Thousand words this week.

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Sunrise Again and Again

This is a photo of sunrise this morning, facing the Northern Cascades.

Anacortes:
There is something bittersweet about walking through this town at night. After writing in the Brown Lantern Tavern I became a ghost. The main drag was empty save for the brooding victorian buildings, and the mist making grey hair fall from the street lamps. I became the dry leaf scuttling along the gutter. I became the shadow that should not exist in the already dark alley. I became a hundred memories singing with the keen of the foghorn. Last night I stepped out of my skin and melded with the salt air, dark as the raven dreaming. I simply let the words flood with the tides and then ebb at sunrise. The sun always comes. A million years from now it will still come. But I’m going to experience, if not celebrate, every particle of my life now. Facing the ruthless truths of seemingly small decisions that killed dreams. Then meeting the sunrise, when I know I can go on. It’s another day. Let’s see what beauty or pain comes. Let’s be present. And let the sun come. The night will return soon enough.

9220 Words so far

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