anonyrrie

quiet times

I've been at a loss for words for so long; feeling quiet and introspective, wondering when my voice will return... 

Even so, I look around to find what's there, reading faces inanimate and living, looking to see what they might reveal... 

Some faces are serene, some are intent.  Others are smug and inscrutable.  In the end, it's just a puzzle.  

captures & captions

early morning,
still dark outside
shadows and light inside,
game face on,
and the week goes by. 

green bottles,
gifts from friends
hold feathers of all sizes.
feathers of all sizes,
gifts from 
hawk, 
turkey,
bluejay,
grackle,
crow...
hold messages of love and hope and trust.

trees laden with fruit,
dropping 
pods
nuts
seeds
to wait for Spring

 there's magic
here,
there,
and everywhere. 

 

here you are (metaphors, second person)

 

Boxed in, tired of  spending your days putting people into boxes so they can go out into the world and fit into more boxes...

 

 Imagining what it would be like to just break the rules...

 ... and unravel this web that's woven with the dull, thick, coarse threads of duty and obligation...  to weave a new web with delicate fibers that let the light shine through, a web created with calling and passion... 

 

"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time." — Mary Oliver

 

But you already know that, don't you...

It takes just a moment to focus on what's beautiful.  In that one still pause, everything that spins finds its center.

Entering the labyrinth

 

This is what I see when I look out the window at work.  Right now, it's lush and green and ripe with animal and vegetable life.  In another month or so, the leaves will change and drop, and soon after the snow will come. 

I realized today that I mark a new year three times within each twelve months. There is of course, January 1, to which I give somewhat perfunctory attention. My next new year starts with the Vernal Equinox, the time of rebirth and awakening. This is the new year that resonates most deeply with me – the golden green of new growth, the lengthening of the days, the hints of warmth in the air, the animal kingdom rousing itself to get food and procreate  – I feel my own genius reawakening along with the Earth.  

Then there is the start of the academic year, the time when I must enter the labyrinth.  I enter with trepidation, wondering how I am going to navigate the paths that go around in circles and those that end up at a wall.  I wonder if getting through this twisting turning puzzle is really worth the trouble it takes.  Wouldn't it make more sense to take a more direct route?  I don't ask these questions out loud, but they are always on my mind.  Finally, I wonder how, when I get to the end of the maze, I will be able to find the way back to my own path.

How fortunate I am, then, to have a room with such a view. Looking at the always-changing scenery outside my window centers me at the start of the day and offers me brief  transcendental moments whenever I need them.  I am comforted by observing the seasonal cycles of the flora and fauna. This view is a gift from the Universe that knows how fettered my soul feels from its vantage point within the labyrinth.

 

A gift from the hawk

"Hawk is the messenger, about visionary power and guardianship. Hawk is very protective of the young in its nest, and teaches us about providing for family and self. Hawk teaches us to be observant and to pay attention to what we may overlook. This could mean a talent we don't use, a blessing for which we haven't expressed gratitude, or a message from Spirit." - Animal Symbolism

 

I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole process of paying attention and how quiet mindfulness can open up so many doors between the self and the universe. 

In January when I chose the words mindful balance to shape my year, it was to prompt me "to follow the higher path, always mindful that a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step."  But as the months went on, I found myself falling more and more out of balance as I allowed my inner voice and the whispers of the universe to be drowned out by the static surrounding me.  By the time June came around, I felt like a broken-wheeled wagon stuck in a bog in the wilderness.  It was pretty dismal.

 

A short time later, the Hawk showed up.  Every day, he would circle our property, screeching incessantly out over the trees before roosting at the top of the highest pine tree. After surveying the landscape for a while he would take off for another ride across the forest canopy, screeching, circling, landing, over and over...  One day he swooped down across my window, an awesome flash of tawny reds and browns. It felt as if he were trying to get my attention. Oddly enough, I soon began to sense all kinds of good things reawakening within me.

After that, it seemed as if there were hawks everywhere... crossing my path where I walked, flying across the road where I drove, dropping feathers on the ground like little gifts for me to find... reminders to pay attention to the universe, to listen to my inner voice, and to have gratitude for my blessings.  

  

 

The forecast called for rain...

on a moody, dark morning... 

 

but I headed out anyway, just to explore... 

   

and all along the way...

there was something beautiful to see...

  

and soon the sun came out from behind the hills...

 

shine on. 

 

Impressions (August Break - Day 1)

There are days that feel like a dream... 

 

 images so distant but somehow familiar...
 

 
 climb or descend?
   

 

 nothing is eternal, but we mark our memories...

 

 "A child said, What is the grass?"

"

 

"...it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves..."
 

"All goes onward and outward. . . . and nothing collapses..."

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

 

Frozen Lull

All afternoon
the tree shadows, accelerating,
lengthened
till
sunset
shot them black into infinity:
next morning
darkness
returned from the other
infinity and the
shadows caught ground
and through the morning, slowing,
hardened into noon. - "Recovery" by A.R. Ammons

Winter is the frozen lull, a time of suspended animation and stillness, a time when the sun flashes briefly from east to west, "a spark hung thin between the dark and dark" (John Updike).

 

Yet somewhere in the silent darkness, under the snow and frozen earth, there are bulbs and seeds waiting to sprout.  Beneath frozen ponds, under leaves and inside the stems of plants, frogs and insects succumb to the frost and wait for the thaw, while other creatures slow down... slow, slow, slow...  slowly slumbering  in their winter dens. 

 
journal page - 1/4/10

Winter... a time of waiting and a time for traveling in dreams that grow large as the nights are long.

Mindful Balance

Blue Moon Lunar Eclipse.  Fireworks cracking the silence of the forest at midnight.  Goodbye to one decade that held so much change, and hello to whatever comes next.  The New Year started with a cosmic and literal bang.

This morning we awoke to stillness after an overnight snowfall, the eclipse and pyrotechnics long over.  The sky was a serene wash of pearl-grey, the trees were laden with damp powder and the forest creatures were burrowed deep in their under-tree nests and rock dens.  And right now, the only sounds I hear are the chirping and calls of the birds that come to feast at our feeder:  warblers, sparrows, finches, bluejays and our resident cardinal couple.  All is well.

Last January 1, I set my intentions for the year by choosing two defining words.  I wrote: "First, I want to learn to Listen more deeply and fully, both to my inner voice and to the unspoken words of others. I want to turn off the static that surrounds me and tune into the messages that come in silence. Then I want to Reach - reach within, reach out, reach for, reach above, reach below, reach beyond the limits I have intentionally and unintentionally set for myself. Listen ~ Reach... my mantra for 2009.  It makes me feel that anything is possible."  Good words, good intentions... and I do feel that I've held true to them throughout the course of this very challenging year.  Sometimes what I learned while listening was tough to take in and sometimes the reaching stretched me thin, but all in all... it's been a worthwhile and enlightening journey.

 

This year, my intention is to continue to listen and to reach, using what I learn to bring myself closer and closer to real integrity.  I'm talking about stepping fully into the process of being authentically myself in all parts in my life.   I know what it looks like, but what it means in practice is something I will have to discover as the year unfolds.  

So, in addition to listening and reaching, 2010 will be all about mindful balance.  I am sometimes impatient for change, and that impatience often leads me to feelings of discouragement.  That's a path I want to avoid this year.  It has too many ruts to trap my spirit and low hanging branches to snag my resolve. Instead, I want to follow the higher path, always mindful that “a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step” (Lao Tzu).  Big changes often come through evolution.

Mindful Balance... my mantra for 2010.  It makes me feel that anything is possible.

What word would you choose?