Beauty in Riding Mountain National Park

Dispatch from An Arbornaut September 13, 2023

Two things.

I am not sure I’m comfortable with calling myself An Arbornaut for these reasons:

• I am not sure what An Arbornaut is and who defines what An Arbornaut is

• I am afraid of what other people might think. 

• I am not afraid of what other people might think.

• The experience of living an Arbornaut’s life defines what An Arbornaut is.

An Arbornaut communicates with trees. An Arbornaut pays attention to the space between the forest and the field, the mountain and the prairie, the human and the other in nature. As in nature, as in life. An Arbornaut lives a life of being in nature and being in community, no matter the chaos. 

I guess that’s the first thing. 

The second thing is…update from here. 

I’m driving through the land of the birch, the bear, the moose, the lynx, the white sucker fish. We are driving through Riding Mountain. Riding Mountain is not a mountain; it is an escarpment, a birchwood forested rise of earth and rock in the middle of the inland sea. A former shoreline. A place where people would have gathered. Where the Sabre Tooth tiger, the mammoth, the great bear and beaver lived as predator and prey. It might have been a place where beings were visible who are not visible now. 

Corn fields grow here. And, hay, hay, hay, hay. We’ve driven through great dust clouds rising from the combine engine as it pulls roots, rolls stems, orders and compacts the plant and whatever wild-like experience it’s had in the field. 

The rocks have held significance on this trip. In Grasslands National Park, we rubbed up against a buffalo rubbing stone, a great pink and purple/red piece of granite (I’ll have to look up the type of stone) on the top of a bluff. In Riding Mountain the eastern end of Clear Lake, an amazing fossil lays in two pieces. One half of a two-bums-wide rock is one piece of the fossil- it has a converse impression - (a sticky-out impression)- of a long ridged…something. A snake, a reptilian behemoth neck or spine, about 50 cm long. The ridges are well-defined. The second half of the rock lays two metres away. It is clearly the other half of the first rock because it shares the fossilized impression. This half is concave, caved-in, with the same ridges as the first rock in the same placement and order. Surely this find is significant to many. 

The eye is drawn, at the Wishing Well park away from the impressive rocks to an English garden with a bit of wildness in plant choice and decomposition.  Two red Muskoka chairs set under a big tree signify “this is a spectacular classic Canadian stop.”

The small flowing river wends back and forth and five or six bridges span her curves as she empties into Clear Lake. A pathway connects the land between bridges and leads up a south westerly slope to a Wishing Well, a semi-circle bricked and mortared wall one might lean over and look down into. A sign suggests all coins will be collected and donated to help keep the area blooming and tidy. 

I wonder if it’s a good idea for people to throw money into a body of water?

I wonder if where that well is, if that spot was a spot where people came to drink from a spring, long before it became a well for wishes you could buy-in to get a chance at having them come true?

A cedar tree stands at the last groomed bend of the river before it flows under a road bridge and into Clear Lake. The cedar’s three trunks emerge from the ground as if to open to the sky, like an early-stage of a blossom. The cedar’s flat, lacy leaves are green with orange-dying speckles from skirt to crown. I moved close to the cedar and asked, How’s the view? I looked ahead through the trunks. The lake shimmered blue, the air smelled of cedar spice and sun and a bit of water. It was cold last night. And damp. A perfect nasal sensory condition. What’s happening to your leaves? I asked. The cold, I heard, and something they’re spraying on the lawn and flowers stresses me. 

As the set of red Muskoka chairs signals, this is an Important Location and Instagram-worthy-stopping-spot among the wild and tidy flower beds. Here, you look out and see water, your ally. Whether or not your mind remembers this fact: 95% of you is water, your body knows. You feel a pull of a smile on the corner of your lips, a softening around your eyes. You let your gaze wander, let your hearing surf on the trickling of the water. Closer to the river, just west of a set of picnic tables, the unusual rock with the fossil impression (the sticky-out half) is in the middle of a circle of rocks– a circle marked by solid rocks placed equidistant from one another, north-east-south-west. Three smaller-sized rocks were placed on an imaginary line between each large rock and the next: 12 smaller-sized rocks, four larger sized rocks, and one 1/2 of a largest, fossilized middle rock. 17 rocks total…that I could see. Did someone like me, someone who listened to the cedar tree, ever sit here and watch the water and listen to the trickle of the river? Did the someone see beauty? Did the someone say thank you? Did the someone find a way to give the cedar a drink of water?  

Do you see the fun in all of this? The fun of listening to a tree, of noticing the way the light touches leaves? Of drawing what you see? Of writing what you hear? Of letting the imagination expand? Do you think it’s possible in your sometimes tamed life for an expanded way of noticing?

We’re sleeping outside, under the shelter of our tent, on the comfort of our thermarests (we travel long days to our put-in five days from now). Each night, we are in a new land. Each land has something to say. Sometimes I hear little. Sometimes I hear more. 

An Arbornaut is a risk-taker in the area of communication. An Arbornaut wants to be understood and wants to understand, but may make many mistakes in translation. An Arbornaut wants to sing, to dance, to draw, to photograph, to communicate in sign language and symbols. An Arbornaut is looking for the evidence of love. An Arbornaut wants to be evidence of love. 

I’m handing out bookmarks I’ve made with pencil and watercolour. The back of each bookmark includes my email address and my website. This is a project of engagement: An Arbornaut’s Dispatch, a documentation process of thread and needle, watercolour, scroll and drawing pencil and fine point black pen. 

I dreamed earlier of a sticker on the side of the Subaru. A tree as symbol. An Arbornaut’s web address. Why? I wonder. Is there something about what I’m doing which might help someone? Is the novel I’m writing the help I’ve been asked to provide? Is all of it, all the time, the way of being in the world with gratitude? 

Recommendations:

National Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan. West block has an incredible 11 km hike through hills and valley among sage and bison, rattlesnake and hawk. East block has an awesome ecotour and a campground with a panorama view. 

We listened to Becky Chambers’ second novel in the Wayfarer series. Highly recommended. Love is always love. Even in the future. Even among inter-species. Also by her: Praise for the Wild Built and Prayer for the Crown Shy, future monk meets robot. Much more than I thought it would be.

Mixed Nuts and Seeds as snack mix! I roasted them myself- salty and delicious and whole food. 

Falling. Rising. Breathing out. Breathing In.

First, a poem. By Alice Oswald, a poet who listens and plays, listens and plays. Please read it aloud, two times.

A Short Story of Falling

BY ALICE OSWALD

It is the story of the falling rain

to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower

to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary

that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale

hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass

as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip

turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance

the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong

and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue

to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain

that rises to the light and falls again

When I read this poem, I notice cycles of being, cycles of growth, cycles of decay. I notice the feeling of a drop of rain in a being… I notice a lifting of energy from the base of my spine to the top of my head. The energy oscillates back and forth across my spine like the switchbacks in a steep mountain climb. At the top of my head, the breath pauses and, then, as the out-breath begins, the thoughts, the tension, the holding of anything lets go and a stream of letting go flows through me and out through my feet.

I practice this letting go all day long. Any emotion arising through me, I notice and let go.

I am practicing an experience of peace. Long ago Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart helped me to recognize: things fall apart and they come together again.

At first I focused on not freaking out when things fell apart. This was very helpful. I’d remind myself, “Oh, looks like it’s all going to fall apart.” And, then, I’d practice relaxing the body. I’m reminded by the story of victims in a car crash who are relaxed as opposed to clenched and tightened at the moment of impact. The relaxed bodies make it through with less harm.

A Noticing: deepening the practice of relaxing the body in the face of uncertainty or pain expands the capacity for holding more uncertainty. The practice will adjust to the practitioner’s capacity.

More recently, I’ve been focusing on not expecting the form of how things will come together again. This has been fascinating. I have so much expectation! I want to be pain-free! I am closer to pain-free when I have no expectation and allow life to unfold.

A bee, between one and another. Intention: to be here. now.

My Intention Today: To Bee here. Now.

Notice. Notice. Notice. You are safe. You are safe. You are safe.

I’ve been waiting for this morning. I’ve been writing for this moment.

A moment of clarity. Of kindness towards this body, this body’s experience.

I detailed my suffering, best as I could, through the previous blog posts. I wondered if it might be helpful to read later, if it might reveal a pathway. If I might be able to follow it again. It’s been an experiment in holding myself, paying attention.

Holding myself doesn’t equal peace. Holding myself equals noticing and observing everything which happens. I have been the observer. (Thank you all the beings in my life for the pointers towards noticing!)

Lone Pine, Bow River, just below Ghost Dam.

I visit Lone Pine regularly. I sit under their branches, sit beside the big root which erupts from the rocked embankment and roots, deep and deeper and deepest to pull water from under rock and dirt.

I wonder, when we love the land, does the land begin to help us work through our troubles?

Through symbol and metaphor Lone Pine helps me and has helped others, too. How does Lone Pine help me?

Water, being pushed and pushed and extruded and released, flowing by Lone Pine.

I haven’t noticed until this moment the way the water’s release from the dam– big, big sprays of water under pressure– mimics my own rise of the blockages in the unconscious erupting into conscious.

I haven’t noticed until now the way Lone Pine drinks from the water however it can, like I might drink from the unconscious made conscious, the invisible made visible, grateful for the opportunity to be freed from pain by going through pain.

I haven’t noticed until now how the felled mountains, eroded into rocks, become rocks eroded by water and weather. How rocks become beauty and beauty and beauty and beauty. I, too, have grown more beautiful by erosion, by weather.

Flowers amid the rocks, in view of the water.

I haven’t noticed until now: small pines and flowers and plants I cannot identify, grow and flourish among the chunks of concrete and rusted iron rebar from the dynamite-blasting of the energy-hungry seekers. I am the plant and the beauty among the blasted-out bits of my childhood.

Beauty, up close.

I notice I am wary of grasping onto all this beauty I’m seeing. The swing of pendulum from beauty to fear (and memory) is a swing I experience in my heart and my body. So tense and painful my muscles! So weary my body from the onslaught of the unconscious blocks. Be wary of grasping. Be wary. Let it all flow through. Pain and Joy.

The tiniest of flowers, sky blue, amid the rockiest of ground.

The need for safety is something I’ve been noticing. And, underneath this need:

• I want a heating pad along my low back and/or low belly.

• I want to hear someone reassuring me about how there is a pathway forward. I would also like instructions, life-hacks, pro-tips. I ask for help and the help comes from people I love, from the beings I love, from the observer who is observing all of this.

• I want to center self-care and I’m confused about self-care: juice, silence, soothing music, walks in nature, stillness in nature, stretching, going to sleep early, waking up early, waking up whenever I want, napping whenever I want, moving when I feel low energy, talking to others, meditating, being all alone and doing nothing.

• I notice I envision safety as as being loved by anyone and everyone.

Small Lilac Love.

Isn’t that funny? I want to be loved by anyone and everyone!!!! I want to make them see me, love me, listen to me, want to hear me, make myself irresistable! So much want accumulates when the small girl feels the betrayal, the harm, the embrace of love and the withdrawal of love. I have so much love in my life. I have all of the love I have ever wanted. I remember. I likely will forget again. I have forgotten many times. So great is the harm the small child endured.

I’m trying to make the invisible visible. Yes, to pain! Yes, to pain! No need to skip over the mud stage of the lotus growing through the mud! That would be cheating. Not seeing reality. Clear seeing requires a willingness to see pain, to experience it. The practices of the Warrior for the Human Spirit help in this regard.

Some clarity/honesty: I notice other writers, other storytellers, other facilitators, other teachers, other culturally-aware humans and I want what they have, the safety of being someone who listens to themselves and is heard by someone in their group. This want feels like jealousy and I hate feeling jealous because it feels like I’m being the lowest of the low of who I am. I have rejected jealousy as embarrassing, immature. I have rejected myself as embarrassing and immature. I have wanted to feel superior to this feeling and have thus attempted to experiencing superiority over others. And, here I am, admitting to my jealousy! Suddenly, I also feel like laughing.

Hello, envious Instagrammer Mar’ce!

Hello, jealous Leo-in-the-limelight Mar’ce! Hello Mar’ce who would love to learn the secret of being whole through any cultural practice/belief I notice! Such a seeker I’ve been. Such a seeker I am!

Hello, girl who could not listen for fear she wouldn’t have a chance to speak! Welcome. Welcome to the party we’re throwing for you!!

What might this party be?

• Photos of you posted everywhere with waterballoons filled with orange and blue- the liminal colours of dawn and twilight- to throw at your green eyes?

• How about a big pinata in the shape of your body and filled with candy? (thanks to my sister for the pinata idea) We can hit her with big sticks and let all the love out!

• A rock cairn with something inside, some scroll of symbols showing the seasons of your life, the time loops of joy and love, of despair and fear?

• A funeral for who you have been. A celebration ritual for you who have always been! Both are true.

Sunshine yellow reflections.

Somehow it feels I’m zooming past of all these rituals already, as if they’ve happened and I’m just now noticing.

The sun is here. The birds call. A swallow family with brilliant blue wings (the colour of twilight) nests only 10 feet from where I sit. What do they know of my fingers tapping? How do they react to the humming sounds I make? What do they feel when I am silent? Me, Silent: when the stillness flows through me, like water, like energy, like sound vibrations, not heard. Sound vibrations, felt.

What will today hold? I have so much more to say, but the moment is calling me and I don’t want to write anymore. I’ll come back later. I promise myself.

All of my cheerleaders. Embodied. : ) Thank you, Tanya.

Morning. Witnessing and Rendering.

I remember striving to write beautifully. I experimented with rules for beautiful writing: eliminate most adverbs, use adverbs near the end of a piece as a way of deepening the emotional connection with the work. Use adjectives sparingly. Focus on nouns. Focus on verbs. Thinking of these rules today, was I attempting to embrace minimalism? A writer in a workshop said, “the writer’s” (my writing was being heard) “writing is beautiful but I have no idea what it says.”

Ouch. I stumbled over her words then and I’ve replayed them now for five years, as if it’s a skip in a record, or a rock in the middle of a trail, or a trail I randomly walk, over and over.

“I have no idea what it says.”

I have felt this way when I am in a forest. I have felt this way in conversations with people I have just met or people I love. Sometimes I walk away, confused. Sometimes I stay still, I keep listening, and, then, I being to feel what is being said.

When I say feel, I mean my body feels. When I am aware of what my body feels, I might also be aware of content, of expression.

To express the experience of life through words, the way a writer does, might be an attempt to communicate- “is anybody out there??” or “this is noticed” or “love” or “beauty” or “pain” or “fear” or “we are”.

When listening to writer Melanie Rae Thon’s interview with David Naimon (Between the Covers podcast), the room filled with a confident voice, a jazz singer’s voice, a jazz writer’s words. The experience filled me with wonder. Here are some of my notes, followed by italics of wonderings:

There is no safe place in this story.

The safe place is in the body. Love is here. Fear is not.

The literary, the spiritual and the scientific converge in this work.

The fullest experience of life connects the mental, the spiritual, the physical and the emotional.

Anytime you remember an event in your life, the memory changes.

Anytime I offer water to a tree or a conversation, does the tree change?

I’m not writing about my experience, I’m writing from my experience. I’m writing out of my experience.

If we write out of an experience, do we let go of the experience, do we release it into the flow of life? Does it become part of the pattern of patterns?

All Life is Love: the name of an essay Thon wrote.

This is in my bank of experience.

Surrender to love is my life quest.

Can I put this on a t-shirt? Surrender to Love.

Witnessing and rendering story is my pathway to surrendering to love.

ahhh. I think back to the comment which has stung me repeatedly for five years. “The writer’s writing is beautiful but I have no idea what it says.”

Perhaps witnessing and rendering beauty was necessary in that draft of the work. Perhaps some writing is a way of describing experience with little story. Perhaps some writing is a way of only witnessing.

Perhaps beauty is just as important as understanding.

The interview is wide and deep. Melanie Rae Thon is generous and authentic. Intention: I will write today, witnessing and rendering story.

Solstice 2023

Gratitude.

Intention: Let the old decompose, let it nourish the emerging new, let all be held with love, with compassion. Let all beings be seen and heard.

Peace. While Reading the News.

I avoid “the news.”

This is a statement from observation.

I notice my attention focuses on what is in front of me: the rain, the trees, the water, the swallows, the ravens.

I notice my recent internet-surfing followed a deep plunge into this body’s memories of darkness. Perhaps I surfed to distract myself from my dark memories? Or to dig deeper into the shadows which are always here (not just the ones in my memory). Perhaps to inspire me to keep courage alive, to stay with the body and to listen.

This writer’s job is to listen. To allow whatever comes to be seen and held. To trust the unfolding of movement; the shifts into pain, the opening of the chasm, the moments of great beauty and emerging life.

To listen to the emergence of our collective experience is a deep act of trust.

After surfing collective experiences captured by the internet, I noticed three stories settled with me:

• the sinking of the people-smuggling ship off the coast of Greece (I noticed I read three or four accounts of people who made clear why their loved one left- the desperation of poverty and lack of opportunity and the promise of a better life in Europe for themselves, their loved ones, their descendants.) I wonder if my own ancestors were operating by similar motivation/intent when they set off to locate themselves from Ireland, from France, from England to North America?

• Hunter Biden: tax evasion and firearms offence. Does it matter I don’t remember the exact details? What I remember is holding Hunter in my noticing and asking for grace, if it’s possible, to move towards him. Perhaps grace will help him to open his heart even as he’s suffering such a public humiliation, being used as a pawn in a great game of chess. Let him begin again. Let him become the person he’s always wanted to be.

• Donald Trump: going to court in Florida on August 14. I have family and dear friends who don’t like Donald Trump but like his policies. I’m confused about loyalty at this point in my life. Loyalty, it seems, should be reserved for the most trustworthy in your life. Loyalty, it seems, should follow from a reciprocal relationship, one where honesty and integrity are evident, are directly experienced.

Human beings, I’ve noticed, follow beliefs down many pathways. I have gone down many a path with untrustworthy others. I have been an untrustworthy leader of others on paths. Perhaps this is the experience we are meant to have in order to let go of our need to grasp and hold what seems to be secure and safe. So much harm has been caused to create safety around a person, a people, a nation, a government, a political party. We have convinced ourselves we must build safety like we build houses and nations. We have convinced ourselves safety is found in a building or a nation or an ideology or a set of beliefs.

Safety has been one of the biggest needs in my life. As a little person I experienced harm from my father, a man who I loved and trusted, a man who I laughed with. My body held the experience of his betrayal in the fascia, the muscles, the blood, the organs, the skin. Sometimes my small self comes to me in my dreams and I cradle her against me and hold her and stroke her forehead, run my hand from the part in her hair to behind the ear, this sweep of love over her head seems to calm her. I tell her, we are safe. we are safe. we are safe.

Decades. I’ve held and comforted my small self for decades.

The experience of betrayal of this magnitude begins a cascade of explosions, a cascade not unlike the factors which trigger a great flood. A great flood which changes the trajectory of the river. A trajectory which destroys life through rocks thrown, through drowning, through sweeping away the soil and the small plants, through destroying the dens and homes of animals, through wiping out so many future possibilities. The experience of a small girl being betrayed by her father shapes the landscape of her life in ways she cannot understand. She ruminates for decades on the importance of being good as a way of being loved again and not-harmed again.

For five decades I’ve lived in various stages of trying to navigate the chasms left in the wake of my father’s betrayal. Some of those stages have included trying to recreate my father’s betrayal, but having a different outcome. Heart-break begins with hope. Discernment begins with clear-seeing.

My father was abused as a young man. This information came out not long ago and in an email to me. Was I the victim of his replaying of the chasms in his life? Did he, drunk and acting on impulses he could not acknowledge in the light of the day, repeat, over and over, versions of what was done to him? Did he end these experiences feeling relieved that the pressure was no longer contained? Was his shadow side allowed to live, where he could not see it or know it?

And when I spoke up– I did speak up– did he begin to tell everyone a story of me which he wanted to believe was true? Dad: She makes things up. She tells stories. If she tells people this story, they will think she is crazy. Dad: You don’t want people to think you’re crazy, do you? You’ll have to go away. Live in a place with crazy people. Bad dreams are bad dreams. Dreams are not real. Dreams are not real. Dreams are not real.

And when I spoke up again as an adult– I did speak up– he suggested I suffered from false memories. Such pain he caused by not being honest.

I’ve noticed the news seems to be a continually reporting of the shadow, the harm. It appears we are both perpetrators and consumers of the shadow, we obsess over the shadow, we carry the shadow thread through our conversations, our negotiations, our precious moments with ones we love, even the smallest among us. Our children grow up with the shadow, whether we acknowledge it or not. What would clear-seeing of the shadow look like?

I’ve noticed sanity lies in the practices of listening to the body. With practice and intention, the body’s sensory receptors seem to be able to notice a shadow and to allow a shadow to come and go. I’m writing these words after being tossed and turned again by the shadow for days now. I’m allowing writing to happen through me, the way I’m learning to allow the shadow to move through me.

Met with the posture of peace, the intent of peace, the response to the shadow can be acceptance with intention to respond.

My intent to be a Warrior for the Human Spirit, a journey I began in response to the pandemic, asks me to take my seat with this vow: I cannot change the way the world is but by opening to the world as it is I may discover that gentleness, decency and bravery are available not only to me but to all human beings. Chogyam Trunpa

Millions and millions of human beings are practicing the peaceful ways of warriorship in this way.

It appears many of them are writers. I notice many of them are my friends.

Writing as a Warrior for the Human Spirit feels like being An Arbornaut: willing to live with an open heart and clear seeing in a space between. In a space between the chasms created by great harm from another. Among the great liars and murderers and the power hungry, is it possible to know gentleness, decency and bravery?

Writers who live in this space may be able to live life-situations of gentleness, decency and bravery. Their words might invite communities of gentle, decent and brave others to gather.

Their actions might be guided by a community of gentle, decent and brave others. All actions might be guided by a community of the gentle, decent and brave.

In my writing today, I notice I am attempting to embody the principles of the gentle, the decent and the brave. I notice I am attempting to acknowledge and see the reality. I notice I will publish this post. This will be my first response today.

I notice the tossing and the turning inside me is calming. I notice I love being alive. I have a reason to be here. I have meaning and purpose. I have loved ones all around me. Cheering me on.

In my darkest hours, it is possible to remember I am safe. I don’t need to take someone else’s land. I don’t need to repeat the harms I’ve suffered on others. I can acknowledge the shadow, the impulse, even the desire for revenge and I can listen, in stillness, to the gentle, decent and brave voice I’ve been tuning into for years now.

This is the possible dream.

This is the possible news stream.

This is the possible way through the river after the flood.

Much Love, Mar’ce

Peace. Even in the experience of a monster.

It is easy for me to write, to be honest, about joy– about the joy I’ve experienced again and again as observer of the weft and weave of this life situation.

Writing joy=a spider and their web glistening in the morning dew and the light sifting through the forest canopy.

It is harder for me to be honest about suffering. I have a deep collection of memories of darkness.

Yesterday, despite instruction and daily practice to welcome any emotion in my guest house (this body I occupy), I projected a dark cloud of rain above my head, an arrow piercing my heart, a snake strangling my gut. My jaw tense, my shoulders spasmed as I tried to control this life situation.

Why so much resistance?

The content of the memories. Betrayal by a father remembered on Father’s Day. Twenty-four hours earlier, I played out in my mind a potential phone conversation with my father- the first time I might speak to him in over a decade. Words of forgiveness. Patience to listen.

Me: Hey, Dad. Just wanted to say I’m grateful for the teaching, the experience of being your daughter. I’m grateful for the pain, it’s made me who I am. I have a great life. An amazing life. (Christina Aguilera’s voice plays in the background- thanks for making me a fighter.)

Dad: Princess. Oh, princess. I’ve been wanting to hear your voice. (Much crying.)

Me: (Calm tears flowing.) I want peace in the world. This is very hard for me. The suffering is still deep, and very painful. Peace begins with me. I’m calling to repeat, again, I’ve forgiven you. I’ve let go of this heavy anchor that’s kept me from growing up. I’ve let go of the shame. I’ve let go of the expectation that you will show up for me. I’ve let go of the belief that any of your actions was personal. I have compassion for you.

Dad: ?

Me: ?

When, yesterday, Father’s Day arrived, I woke up with a heaviness in my body I describe as sadness: a numb gut, a dull heart, shielded eyes, a tight jaw.

I’ve survived many a Father’s Day with little or no thought of my father. Instead I’ve celebrated my children’s fathers and in recent years my son-in-law’s fatherhood. I remind myself we can create in our own families what we did not receive in our first family.

We can create an experience of life and it can be full of joy. And…sometimes the ways of our conditioning will return and we will be asked to greet them. If we do not, we will further deepen the groove in our psyches about who we are and what has happened to us and we will further cement a perspective we might, actually, wish to set free.

Skin of Rock

The victimization of a small girl can last her whole lifetime. She can carry the monster’s memory for so long she loses her ability to imagine herself as something other than the monster’s daughter, marked by the monster, scarred by the monster, dreaming of the monster chasing her, catching her and her…allowing herself to be victimized, again and again. The small girl’s belief that it was all her fault– didn’t she ask the monster to notice her, to target her– may also lead her to believe she is flawed and worthy of whatever betrayal comes her way. (even if she angrily denies this is true, she might still believe it)

She might re-create, the way the monster did for himself, situations where she experiences again and again, the victimization. When she realizes what she’s doing, she might try to hide her own monstrous wishes for acknowledgement and forgiveness. Or she might try to face the horror of it all. Of her actions. Of the monster’s actions. She might begin to love the monster for what it was always trying to protect, to avoid, to run away from, to bury: so much pain.

I moved far away from the monster (who was also a charming human) when I was a teenager and each time I visited I looked for evidence the monster was gone, but I always found the monster again, in a squeeze or a too-long lingering of the eyes, or an inappropriate sexual kiss on the mouth or innuendo, lying, or the clear alarm at a statement I’d make pointing towards the way I experienced my father in childhood. I cut all contact decades into my adulthood when it was clear his honesty was buried under a cairn of protection and denial.

I’ve used rituals to forgive my father. Years ago I worked with a writer in an online class to transfer my pain and suffering into an amethyst stone. The ritual led to deeper ways of exploring forgiveness, to expressions of deep wailing and keening as in the Irish tradition over the grief of these victim-memories, over the grief of losing so much. I let it all flow through me, the way the buddhists describe.

Yesterday’s experience took me by surprise:

Me: Why the resistance?

Me: I’m tired of being human.

Me: Really?

Me: I’m tired of the suffering we’re causing.

Me: I have incredible experiences with other humans in writing and life. I am so glad to be alive. I love life. I experience deep joy.

Me: I don’t want to be reduced to weeping. I don’t want to be immobilized by this suffering. I want someone or something to fix me.

Me: The only way through is to allow your body to feel the pain.

Me: Not again. Not again. I’ve done this enough times.

Me: Let go. The feeling will pass.

Me: I do not want to do this. I do not want. I do not. I do. I

Me: I’m falling apart again. My psyche parts are scattered everywhere. I’m getting flashes of memories I don’t want. My body is inflamed in pain. Every cell howls. How much longer do I have to suffer this?

Me: Call them back.

Me: Who is them?

Me: All the parts of you. Call them back. Gather them. They are scattered in memories. They’ve been waiting for you. They want to come to home. To come home to you.

Me: Who am I?

Me: You already know. Remember. Remember.

If you find yourself confused about this reading experience, please forgive the confusion. Some experiences, when exposed to the light, retain their shadowy and obtuse natures. I’ve avoided writing about all of this for so long. I’m surprised by my own actions! I’ve thought the world does not need my suffering added to the pile. The world needs peace.

I listen to a beautiful song on repeat as I write this: The Lost Words Blessing

A harmony of voice sings instructions for experiencing the present moment, for holding bravery and revealing the peace inside you.

Enter the wild with care my love

and sing the things you see.

I work with writers online and in person and I ask them to notice, notice, notice. To sit with stillness. To allow. This instruction is founded in my experience of greeting peace in my life-situation.

The Rocky Mountains face me. Clouds, grey and dark grey seem to be stuck above me. To the northwest, the clouds are blue-tinged– evidence of a shift in density, of water, released. Rain has already loosed itself in the northwest, like my wailing earlier today, like the tears I let flow and did not stop.

The back of my throat aches. My jaw muscles pull from so much clenching. I listen to the song. I notice the horizon. I feel my body in this moment. I am here with all the parts I’ve called back.

• two year old me meeting my sister

• four year old me meeting my brother

• six year old me waking from a nightmare which will repeat and repeat and repeat

• nine year old me in a circle of trees by a flowing river meeting nature’s reassurance: I will survive. One day I will be able to handle all of this.

• all the other me’s who remember the hope and the inevitable heart break.

Enter the wild with care, my love,

and sing the things you see.

We are all here like a Best Of tribute album. All of us in our hilarious hair and fashion. We lived through Three’s Company sitcom influence of ponytails all over the head, the 80’s flashdance phase, soccer mom nostalgia, Back Street Boys concert with a thirteen year old, all black, all yoga clothes, torn jeans, and now, a ball cap with the words: Love Can Make It Better.

I remember the brilliant yellow finch who flew into the window behind me two mornings ago, the day before Father’s Day. I heard the strike. I wrapped the dead body in a gigantic rhubarb leaf and left it in a high place where Athena couldn’t get it. I cried. I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t want you to be harmed. I saw other birds around the yellow body on green leaf all day. Tom buried the little finch in the late afternoon. He, too, said last words in his own way.

At twilight yesterday, the small watching birds called out to me, two of them, over and over. I don’t know what they were saying.

I understood, though, that this is the way of things. The experience. This depth of suffering is important to feel, because this is how we arrive at the peace underneath.

We can give up the blame. We can forgive. I would like to go on record to say I am not special. I am not more able to forgive than the next person. I am responsible and I have been irresponsible. I remember: I have children and grandchildren who deserve a mother and grandmother who can be present to them.

In my life situation, forgiveness has been necessary to drop the obsessive thinking about who is at fault and the regret about what I’ve said or done. Forgiveness has allowed me a doorway into being present. Being present has opened up this: a way of seeing the world in all its beauty, of gratitude which flows through all moments. For example: I am, in this moment, grateful for all the suffering I experienced yesterday and today and three minutes ago. I am grateful for the victimization. I am grateful to be here. now. I understand you, dear reader, might think this is strange. I think all of this is very strange, too, sometimes.

This is what it means to be a warrior. A Warrior for the Human Spirit.

This is the vow I’ve taken, under Meg Wheatley’s teachings from Joanna Macy, from Chogyam Trungpa:

Our Warrior Vow: I cannot change the way the world is but by opening to the world as it is I may discover that gentleness, decency and bravery are available not only to me but to all human beings. Chögyam Trungpa

Peace is possible. It begins with me. It begins with you. Our peace ripples out and it influences those around us. One day I will call my father, or I will meet him in a park. I will thank him. It didn’t happen yesterday or today. I am gentle. I am decent. I am brave. I will find my way forward.

Thank you for reading this far. If I haven’t met you, perhaps you’re on a journey like mine…trying to find voices in the community, on the internet, who might shed light on how to survive unbelievable pain, imagine a life-situation of peace, and experience the balance of peace.

When We Break

I have no wisdom, only direct experience. Direct experience is the moment-by-moment awareness of life.

I worried yesterday: Writing takes me away from the direct experience. Why write? Indeed, why do much of anything if the direct experience, the present moment is here? To be present is to feel a current running through the body, a buzzing, an awareness.

As I write this I listen to Ludovico Einaudi, a composer who, unknown to him, collaborated on one of my first experiments in 2017: I walked long and slow kilometers each day with a heavy pack on my back, my headphones tuning me into his Seven Days of Walking album.

Today, Wind is playing on the speaker not far from me. Rain falls in noticeable splat sounds on the roof above me, on the roof of my car outside my window. Athena wakes from her nap-after-a-long-swim-in-Ghost-Lake and stands to watch the rain fall. Thank you rain. Thank you rain-maker, perhaps a dragon deep in the lake. Perhaps a dragon released from a multicoloured rock, glistening in the morning light and smooth. Perhaps hit by lightning over the last weeks, lightning which started fire and fire?

My imagination is high today. I woke with stories in my head, both at 4:47 a.m. and again at 7:28 a.m.. I am imagining a moment like this moment: who might be here? What might they be doing? What is their intention? How do they live?

Now, Rolling Like a Ball is playing. A pattern repeats: Da. Da. Da. Da. pause. Da-di-da

Thank you, Ludovico.

The rain is paused, the swallows swoop again. Two of them have nested in the small swallow house on the back porch. Baby swallows wait for their parents to bring them food. I delight in such direct evidence of emerging life.

Ghost Lake, this morning. Cloud Light. Cloud Shadow.

I am patient this morning. Each time I feel resistance rise (often accompanied by thoughts of what am I writing? Am I wasting my time?), I notice my breath coming in, I relax my jaw, my shoulders, my forehead. I close my eyes and exhale. Tension fades. I relax and relax. This is the moment I am in. Is this a way of listening and writing? I guess it is. Would I recommend it? Yes. Experiments with the breath can be helpful in accumulative ways. I like accumulative ways, gathering, perspective shifting, relaxing. I’ve noticed when I relax, I make more space for peace, for the inner voice of peace to come in.

The big question I’m holding today: “Why am I writing this novel? What is the vision for the story?”

When I woke in the early hours and the sun was just making its way above the horizon, I wrote down my dream of approval for my writing focus. When I woke again, about 3 hours later, I wrote some of the vision of the novel and of a newer work, a non-fiction piece, a memoir. I am surprised and grateful.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I repeat these two words often.

When the vision was still fresh, Athena dragged me to the lake and while she swam and in-between throwing sticks, I noticed, noticed, noticed. The lake’s smooth surface. The clouds in the sky. The shapes of rocks. The colours of rocks. The dense-ness of rocks. I took some photos, as I do, to document the beauty of this life-situation. Even on a day when I also think of the victims of mass shootings, of mass criticism, of mass harm.

I imagine a dragon or a lake monster lives in this lake. The rock (the one I’ve taken a photo of) is broken and, now, the dragon is released.

While I was making coffee earlier, I listened to Rick Rubin’s interview (author of The Creative Act: A Way of Being) with Krista Tippet, On Being podcast. Cam, one of five brilliant children I’ve had the privilege of nurturing [;and listening to and doing homework with and playing and playing and playing with, gave me Rick’s book. It sits next to me as I type. I’m tempted to open it up and start reading. I’m tempted to pick up my phone, too, to see if anyone out there is noticing me or if anyone out there is doing something interesting I want to participate in. I’m always on the look out for friends I can trust.

Ghost Lake, this morning.

Dragons must go into hiding because they can no longer trust the predators who might have once been friends. The mudfish. The humans.

We need humans who can live with dragons and not freak out. We need humans who can live with each other and not freak out.

I think this is the vision for the novel: what can we withstand without freaking out? What happens when we remain calm and centered in the midst of the suffering?

It makes me cry. I’m tired of people hating each other, not understanding each other, being willing to hurt one another in the name of ideology, belief, and power. I understand they do not know what they do- to them it is the only option they have. We’ve created a society with layers and layers of conditioning and protection and fear and drama.

I’m excited to notice we are also awakening to consciousness, to knowing peace in the direct experience of life.

I think this is the vision for the novel: what happens when we see clearly? What happens when our youngest people hold themselves relaxed and at ease in the moment as it unfolds?

Have you seen a video of an old woman on a subway, holding the hand of a man who was, moments before, enraged and losing his shit? Her head is bowed, as if in prayer. I imagine her saying, “please, let us help each other.” I imagine her calmness comes not from her fear of the future. Her calmness comes, I imagine, from an awareness that peace begins with one person and it can spread and spread and spread. What if he turned on her? What if he did? Wouldn’t it still be worthy to reach out a hand to help peace spread? What better moment than the one we are in?

Life is not a fist. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand to enter it. Elie Weisel

Atoms is Ludovico’s track I’m listening to now. My heart, expanded, notices Athena is playing with her tail and the coffee I made an hour ago is cold. I’ll read back over this piece and notice what arrived when I was listening and feeling my body.

I’ve noticed the title of the piece is When We Break. I smile. I’ve noticed writing today felt like the direct experience. I smile at the wonder. The wonder of how writing is a direct experience, of how writing uses the mind as a tool in conjunction with the body, not in exclusion of the body.

Athena now has her arm over my outstretched legs as if to say, “let’s go outside, the rain has stopped.”

Thank you for reading. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

An Arbornaut at Ghost Lake. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Saltspring Island Retreat: Thoughts on Deep Trust. Deep Listening. Deep Play.

We’ve been running an experiment. A fascinating experiment. A significant workshop completed its run a few days ago. 

What an amazing experience. The things we navigated! Warriors. Amazing warriors!! We did our best to care for one another, for people closest to us, for strangers, for new life emerging. We practiced our roles within the container we created. We practiced bringing in parts of ourselves we were afraid of entrusting to other people’s noticings/observations. 

We took care of ourselves as best as we could. We committed to this experiment. 

On our retreat we completed one major experiment with writing. It began with Bri’s generous leading of us all on a hike. The silence we walked in led us deeper and deeper into the forest and inside ourselves. When we stopped, we were lighter, more at ease. Bri’s provocation, deceptively simple but delivered with such playfulness and authentic curiosity: what would your 9 and 90 year old self say in this moment? 

The words we heard set the stage for the next few days. Their responses revealed insight into each person’s lens on the world, what sort of thought loop they might be investigating. Bri held quiet and sacred space for all attendees, taking into account layers of direct experience with some people and just meeting others for the first time. 

Our first evening together ended with an invitation to walk in nature, to revel in it and to wake up the next day for action, for fun. 

Our Writing Experiment asked us to sit or walk in stillness and allow whatever comes. We each experimented differently.

Our experiments, offered up in trust, told a shared story of deep connection with the present-moment-experience and the expressions-of-past-events, the desire for connection with others, the desire for forgiveness and peace.

We listened to each other’s voices outside sharing, honing our abilities to notice, observe and respond. Grounded in love and wanting freedom to be our selves, we challenged our habitual patterns and noticed the effect of our being on others.

Deep Trust. Deep Listening. Deep Play.

Not always bliss, not always pain. An on-going experiment with life.

I witnessed a show of strength I am still marvelling at: a partnership I will always be in awe of. A partnership who inspires with their desire to embody love and compassion and to face their anger/fear over what it means in our society to represent a way of knowing unfamiliar to many people, feared by many people. 

In our communities, we encounter people with pent-up rage about difference and discomfort. Many humans want to relieve their suffering.  Our unconscious patterns are difficult to notice. We despair over our inability to communicate and/or to resolve our differences.

Intense fear spirals out a community of confusion, of dulled antennae, of static communication. Turned on one another through blame and anger? It’s a knot of buzzing and tightness, of strands coated with layers of suffering. It’s a very hot experience, this fear meeting fear, like a solar storm with lightning.

To embody steadiness in the storm requires practice. 

To be willing to live life intentionally with a set of principles is a profound shift. Startling. What will you do with your power?

Sometimes being present feels like bliss because it feels like you are in the place you belong. You breathe the air of the cedars and you are a cedar. You are fully you and more than you. You imagine a future where this happens minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. You would like to transcend. You’re willing to try to earn it. To practice. To listen. To be patient. You test yourself. The more care you give yourself through a cycle of attending/meeting the present moment, the deeper your ability to process your experiences. And when this shift is happening, the magic begins. This is the time when openings occur whether realized in the moment or not. In the evening, the moon entered the horizon: a huge ball of light-reflected shone shades of dark yellow tinged with orange.

We took care of the others on our retreat in the best ways we could.

All of our retreat participants expressed gratitude. 

We built relationships with our retreat members. We expressed a lengthening of the number of days. Also, a pre-gathering experiment to prepare our retreat members for content they might experience as we deepen our inquiry into relationship and various expressions of life. 

Stay tuned for an opportunity to join us in our next experiments.

Dream it

〰️

Dream it 〰️

Cell. Spider. Spiral. Cell. Spiral. Spider. Cell.

Note: This is a first draft of a work I shared last night in Bri Strong’s Ecotone Writing Circle. Fascinating prompts. Amazing people in the circle. Much gratitude for the inspiration and the support!!!

Spirals form in my life.

As a child, I played a spiral game with my siblings. The memory is as vivid to me now as then. My memory follows a spiral to a day on a front lawn, devoid of dandelions, but marked on each side by lines of yellow daffodils and red tulips. Lines of flower beds define the do-not-pass-if-you’re-not-us lines of our property. It is a square of front lawn. A cell.

My sister, my brother and me play in the cell. I am the spinner, the spiral-er, because I am oldest, because it’s my game first, because I am very bossy. My mother tells me to play with them, take care of them and I do my job well. I am 11. My sister is 9. My brother is 7.

My sister is first because she is bravest.

Now, as then, our hands grip each other’s wrists. I yank her arms and begin to turn my own body at the same time.

I am the beginning of the spiral. The dot. I turn and spin. Her feet lift off the ground, her body flies through the air. Around and around. Five spins. Seven spins. She has to be dizzy when she lands. Very dizzy. So she can make a good statue.

Nine spins is her limit. We go by our age. On the beginning of the ninth spin, I lean far back and really throw her when I let go. She lands with a big oof.

Statue! Statue! I yell.

Her body is a bit out of place. One leg stays in the air. One arm is outstretched.

My brother and I name her:

Dog on the road. Cat flying over the fence. Poop in the toilet.

Nope, she says, I am a falling star.

The dot at the center of my spiralling memory ends there.

I remembered this today, perhaps because I spent time with the artist Louise Bourgeouis’ cell sculptures. Sculptures large enough to walk in but defined by do-not-cross-lines of property. She made 60 of them.

Note: I wrote this piece yesterday. I dreamed about this piece last night. I remembered a few more details: sinister details… Now, I’m really onto something interesting… hahahahaha!

How do I respond? Offering Opportunities for Gathering and Learning

I’ve been engaged in writing a series on water. Water is Energy is an essay in a forth-coming book, Re-Imagining Fire, April 2023. I’ve also been writing a Water parable which is about fear, a monster emerging from a lake, and love. It’s due out in a collection in September 2023. My novel remains in progress. Hooray, it is so much fun to write!!!

I’m making my way to the front of the crowd of writers, speakers, educators, leaders, thinkers, artists, who offer opportunities to directly connect with a creative process and engage with others involved in the same encounter.

Why?

I’m responding. I’m reciprocating.

I began my response to the pandemic by writing How do I respond? in the center of a piece of paper. During day-long walks, during my year-long sun rise experiment in 2020 and, again, in 2022/2023, during slow cooking meals, during long conversations with people I love, I have asked again and again, how do I respond? I suppose the question is attached to another of my favourite questions, Why am I here?

I believe I’m here, in part, to directly experience life. To feel the physical sensations of being alive. To be shaped by life. To be in flow with life. Life has met me half-way. We are in co-creation. I’ve been living through an expansive period in my life. My days are marked by gratitude and love.

How do I serve love? is my current question. I ask it every day. For over three months I’ve been asking what is needed to serve love. Here is an invitation:

February, March and April 2023, I’m offering the on-line opportunity to directly experience a community/writers group held by love, shaped by experiment and in service of a greater sense of ease and meaning for all. Joy is here. Laughter is here. Six consecutive weeks starting the last week of February.

The beginning: We’ll meet in a generative workshop on February 11, 2023. 2.5 hours with two movement practices and a 30 minute break for walking. SIGN UP for the workshop here. We will write and use writing/symbol making/story telling as tools of expression. As a published writer in essay, personal memoir pieces, short stories and novels, I have experiences and experiments with form I’d like to share. You are not required to sign up for any writing group by coming to the workshop. You can only attend the workshop if you like.

To REGISTER, click the banner at the top of the page.

I’ll make a recording of one of the practices available for those who register but are unable to attend the workshop.

We welcome you. We welcome your fears and anxieties, your frustrations, and your longing for a different way to live or for everyone else to live like you! We welcome your skepticism and your belief in possibility. We welcome your weird and your rational mind. We welcome you.

Our experiments involve:

• Delving into relationship between you and ______(earth, mycelium, water, intimacy with a loved one, your memories, your dreams, rocks, mountains, prairies, the body, etc…) ________ in a direct experience.

• A period of noticing and observation.

• A reflective expression in writing/symbols/story being told.

• An experience of sitting with/seeing/hearing experimenters with varied perspectives.

• An experience of deep compassion, joy and laughter.

• A writing, revising and editing process with the goal of practicing/gaining skill in being present to the writing experience. Considerations of form, sentence building, word choosing, image and metaphor, pattern and rhythm, will arise through deep noticing and specific craft instruction offered in PDFs and notes. Also included are craft resources and reading recommendations tailored to the group’s needs/interests.

On February 11, 2023, I’ll open registrations for writing groups: six writers per group.

To REGISTER for the WORKSHOP, click the banner at the top of the page.

I’ll make a recording of one of the practices available for those who register but are unable to attend the workshop.

Scheduling concerns: I’ll offer writing groups on Tuesday mornings 10:30 MST, Wednesday evenings 6:30 MST, Thursday mornings 10:30 MST, and Thursday evenings 7:30 MST. The times are a bit flexible, so if you know you’re interested and the timing won’t work for you, send me an email with a suggested time and we’ll find a way.

Cost: I’m conducting three experiments related to reciprocity.

1. Half of all money I earn will go towards fledging the non-profit organization The Academy of Life as a Learning Lab. I will receive no income from The Academy of Life as a Learning Lab, now or in the future. It is an organization I’m helping to nurture. The other founders of this organization, Bri Strong and Miranda Logan-Webb are vibrant writers and artists and facilitators who are conducting inspirational life experiments.

2. I would like to embrace an option for a gift economy which does not involve money. Gifts are made. Gifts are found. Gifts are chosen. If you, for any reason, prefer a gift economy experiment option, you will consider how your skills and talents can be shaped into a gift to offer this reciprocity opportunity.

3. At the end of our group work together, you might want to make an offering, ask for something more, begin to lead experiments with a different group of people. Please follow your intuition. Please speak up. We are here to support one another. : )

My teachers: since 2017, I’ve been in deep study about writing and life. My MFA introduced me to amazing teachers Gayle Brandeis, Patricia Smith, Sunil Yapa, Peter Mountford, Lidia Yuknavitch, Rebecca Makkai. In 2022, Artists Eveline Koljin and Liz Ingram have been influential in my development through the water projects. Margaret Wheatley has helped me gain ground in living with intention, bravery and dedication during a difficult time in the world since 2020. Meg has brought qi-gong into my life- a movement and breath practice. I’ve also sought the knowledge of Carolyn Sargentson, a UK breathwork teacher. Close friends and artists have welcomed me into worlds of wonder and deep-caring. Andrea and Hap Wilson at Cabin Falls in September 2022 expanded my perspective again with their great love of the land, of respect for all. Bri Strong has been in my orbit for over eight years and their prompts of questioning life have expanded my perspective exponentially. Our 17 month old dog, Athena, has been a primary teacher. I practice many experiments in my relationships with all of my family, children and grand-children, ex’s and my current life-partner, Tom. We are all growing together.

Writers I continue to work with: The BC writers, The Island Writers, The Ghost Lake Writers all contribute to more and more experiments and a healthy and thoughtful me. I like to think we’re shaping the world with our kindness and love for one another. I’m thrilled to imagine the potential for 2023.

Notes on Reciprocity:

• reciprocity is a noun but the latin root of the word– reciprocus– is a verb, an action of rise and fall, move back and forth.

• So…I’m running back to my experiences and forth towards you and I’m always holding gratitude and love.

• I am grateful for my life. I am in love with being alive.

• The experiments we conduct collect direct evidence of life being lived around and through all of us, all beings. They can guide us in how to live and how to love. For me, many of the experiments provide a literal feet-on-the-ground, body as sensory organ, experience. Love needs a be-ing.

Patience. Listening. Emerging.

My mother went on strike once. She heard about other women going on strike in the 70’s– on strike from housework, from being the emotional middleman, from being the one-who-does-it-all-once-the-door-to-the-house-is-closed– and she followed their lead.

“I’m on strike.” She stood in the middle of the living room with a pile of laundry in her arms. She dropped her arms and the clean laundry splayed on the floor.

We didn’t know what to do. One of us kids didn’t pull our clean clothes from the pile. One of us cleaned up only their share. One of us cleaned up everyone else’s clothes.

I begged her to tell me why she went on strike. To tell me when it would be over. She refused. I begged her to forgive me for not doing enough. She walked away from me. Not because she didn’t love me, but because she couldn’t square her love for me with how much she gave to me and everyone else. To talk to me about the true nature of her pain? She didn’t have enough energy left.

Unfortunately for us, this pattern continued in our lives. Even when I was an adult and moved away from home for years and years, when I came back to wherever she was living, I was immersed into the mystery of what-is-really-going-on. So much mystery created a felt sense for me that everyone kept secrets and you didn’t ask and you didn’t tell what you were really thinking. You held your grief and suffering, you cleaned up your tears, you left all your emotions for the moment you said good-bye. When I was 9, I dreamed of being taken away in an ambulance and of hearing my parents tell me they loved me one last time. I loved that dream. It was a favourite repeat– fear-of-death with love-at-the-doorway dream.

The strike. Lots of dirty dishes piled up. The dishwasher went un-emptied for more than a day. The toilet began to scum over. I think Mom hoped we would all see the invisible ways in which she supported us. The scheduling, planning, cleaning, cooking, homework supervision, kid supervision.

I believe she might have wanted to force my father into the bright light of interrogation and self-reflection. My father spent weekends in the garden and on the ride-on lawnmower he loved, especially with a six pack of beer on a hot day. I remember him saying, “Do you want to hire a maid?” My mother wouldn’t have agreed to spending money on someone else to clean. At least not when I knew her.

I don’t know exactly why the strike ended. Or how. Or even how long it lasted. I’m glad she went on strike. She showed me you can stand up. You can do something different. You can be the change. Though it didn’t appear anything changed, maybe it did and I didn’t realize it. At 15, I paid attention mostly to me and my needs and my problems.

We moved shortly after she went on strike, the last move of more than a dozen moves since I was born. The last move before I left my first family.

I wonder what would have happened if she’d sat in a circle with us and told us how she was feeling, really feeling. I wonder if we would have been able to hear her. Maybe we would have mocked her. We were un-practiced in emotional conversations that didn’t end with slammed doors or a silent response to being told what to think and how to feel. I wonder if she would have accepted our help even if it came? Maybe she felt guilty for even asking for help! I wonder if she knew what she wanted and needed or if she was mostly fixed on what she didn’t want and didn’t need? I wonder how life would have been different if she’d divorced my dad that year when she told us she was thinking about it?

I wonder how my life has followed the shape of her life without me being fully aware? I wonder if, before she died, she thought I made a good decision leaving the way I did, moving 3,000 miles away and making a life for myself in another country? She made a similar move from her family, though not as far…

I’ve lived with the uncertainty of my mother’s support for most of the days I remember. I understand her desire was not to push me away, but to not harm me. I understand that because when I am silent and brooding, this is the reason I give myself: I don’t want to harm anyone else with my emotions.

I’ve had such a difficult time remembering how hard it was to be the small girl, the pre-teen, the teenager and the adult daughter of a mother who wanted to protect me from the truth of her pain, her sorrow, her suffering. Our emotion practice was about hiding and avoiding. When she was dying of breast cancer, she only cried uninhibitedly with me one time. She was visiting her brothers and sisters, gathered in South Carolina, over Christmas. I was in Winnipeg with my youngest son, Ben, 2 years old and my husband, Dennis and his family. Ben and Dennis and I had all been very sick. Some awful flu. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be in Edmonton. I didn’t want to be with Mom. I think I mostly didn’t want to be.

My mother sent me a picture via email. She is on the stairs and all her brothers and sisters (she had 9 of them) and their families are around her. You can pick her out immediately, she’s the one with a red bald head and face and neck and arms and hands. Bright red.

“I can’t wear my wig,” she says, “It’s too painful. All the radiation. And I’m having a reaction. I’m allergic to sulfa drugs. I told them I’m allergic to sulfa drugs.”

She cried. She really cried. Sobbing like I’ve never heard her sob. She itched all over, she said, and the pain came in waves, like radiation from inside her. And the nausea.

I cried and cried. I didn’t know what to say. I told her I loved her. I told her I wished I were there. I told her I missed her. It was her last Christmas. I didn’t spend it with her because we weren’t in the kind of relationship where that was possible. Maybe we were each worried about our feelings spilling out and messing up the living room floor. I got off the phone and went back to a Christmas I didn’t want to have, but at least I could say, “my mom’s dying and she’s in a lot of pain and I wish I could do something."

My mother’s been with me for several years now. I started noticing her presence during Covid. At first I thought she was a ghost I couldn’t see. Then, I thought it was my mind giving me what I needed. Now, I think she came because we both needed her to be with me. She came to comfort me. I’ve told her everything. I’ve been honest about all of my secrets. She’s a great cheerleader. She holds me close and tells me one person’s healing matters. Talking to my mom was the only way I could get to the point of being able to be honest with my daughter, my sons and my partners in life.

I think she’s getting ready to change the nature of our relationship. I think I won’t be able to access her as often, as fully as I have. I think something new is emerging. I’m not certain what it is. Tonight, I made her dinner and we enjoyed it together. I wrote all these words about her. My mom. Judith Ann. She loved St. Francis of Assisi. She loved her sisters and her brothers. She loved me, my sister and my brother. A woman of honour and humour. Thank you for her. Thank you.

I wonder about the earth. I wonder about sitting next to water, really sitting with the land, and talking it out. Telling the honest truth. Thanking the water, the land, the earth, all the invisible beings for their support. Trees create the air we breathe. Water sustains our lives. Land is essential for keeping us alive. It could be an interesting experiment. I wonder what prevents us from trying an experiment like this?

As we look back on centuries of violence and oppression and begin to confront the very real wounds we have inflicted on the land and on each other, it is important that we don’t try to accelerate through the difficulty.

Ultimately, sorrow is not healed. It is held. It is honoured.

Sorrow is melted and blended. It moves with the body, not through linear episodes, but through slow, conscious, spiraled dance.

- Sophie Strand from The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine

Coherence and then emergence.

Make contact. Tune in. Listen.

Anything can happen.

Grasping

I’m walking here with someone I love. I have loved for a long time.

We no longer live together and we sort of do. In my mind, I still travel back in time to our lives when we first met. All those struggles of getting to know someone, trusting someone, finding safety in them and discovering a deeper sense of self-worth.

When did it go wrong? I ask. I don’t know all the answers. I think, though, it begins with a calling out, likely near-silent or cloaked inside big feelings carelessly expressed, which isn’t heard.

The identity begins to loosen. The idea of being confined to a role begins to waver. The doubt of whether or not you could be loved if you showed your whole self, the side of your self you don’t much like.

It is no one’s fault. It is.

Observing the dissolving of what we’ve known is hard. Waking up and finding it disappeared is painful. The imagining of a new life that’s just like the old life is full of suffering.

All truths wait in all things, Walt Whitman.  

How to help the one who is suffering? Listen deeply.

How to help the listener who is suffering? Listen deeply.

Walk into nature: among trees, long grasses, a frozen lake, a windy path. Let the emotion rise. Know you’re being held.

Nature does not judge.

Nature does not tell secrets.

Meet again, the ones you love and have loved. In person or in your imagination. Tell them what you want them to know. Let go. Believe it will be understood. Let go. Believe you are free.

See the world as it is again. What is in front of you right now.

Life Experiment.

Look at an older photo of you. A photo of you which you believe captures the essence of a moment when you felt life was being lived through you, with you, in you, around you. A full moment. A moment of incredible memory– sensorially, bodily.

Remember who you are now. Remember who you are.

Remember

by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky you were born under,

know each of the stars stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. you are evidence of

her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

The Sun. Life Experiment

When I started my sun rise experiment in 2020, I did not understand how a simple practice could lead to such a big shift in perspective. I believed people who lived close to the land probably felt a deep connection, probably understood life differently than I ever would.

I started to walk to see the sunrise because I wanted to prove to myself I could do it. I could get up in the morning and dedicate my first minutes of the day to watch the sun rise. My biggest barrier was the doorway. I wanted to avoid getting close to the doorway in my weather-appropriate clothing. I have enough clothing I can be warm on the coldest days, but I remain avoidant of being cold, of shivering. If I stayed away from the doorway, I would feel the pull to open the door to the outside.

After three months, I felt the hang of it. It was still February and cold, but I didn’t have to rise too early and my legs were used to the route. I noticed, still, how impatient I felt on the walk to the ridge. I didn’t want to miss dawn and all the colours, I wanted the best part to last the longest.

By the end of the year, I didn’t mind the walk. I’d gotten used to letting go of my nighttime dreams during the walk, thinking a bit about my intention for the day- to serve love- and the flowing movement of walking.

Sun, mid-morning at the dog park. January 8, 2023

Seeing the sun rise everyday didn’t become my habit. Appreciating the sun rise each day has become a way of life for me.

My testimonial for engaging with life as it’s unfolding: You’ll feel. Your body will feel lighter. Your mood will shift. The sun as teacher is warm and kind, consistent and radiant.

Present Moment... Life Flowing

A representation of the possibilities of life: observing the sunrise

A beginning after a full moon night.

A beginning after a dream-filled night.

A beginning of what is not known.

A beginning. Each day is a beginning.

Moon rise on Nose Hill.

From one of the crests of Nose Hill I stood between east and west. Between moon rise and sun set.

I felt seen.

Strange feeling. Nice feeling. Want-to-repeat feeling. hahaha.

This morning I met Ally, a woman walking Myto, her lovely dog. She mentioned Nose Hill is considered by many to be the form of a dragon. She mentioned, (and a medicine wheel at the top of nose hill may confirm), Nose Hill is a sacred place to Indigenous peoples. The mystery of Nose Hill deepens…

Reasons to be here, fully and completely?

Meditation. Movement. Nature.

Sitting with. Joining in the stream of the space in between all the things...

The photos I take, the stories I tell can’t capture the answer to Why am I here?

Every photo I post attempts to show the flow state of experience. An experience which comes and goes without grasping onto outcome or pushing away the uncomfortable.

Every story I write attempts to show the little and the big ways of life. I write with the details of care, trust, honesty, and love.

This is a photo of Callie Danae. Born February 3, 1988.

The granddaughter of an Austrian immigrant and a Scottish tinkerman.

The granddaughter of two Americans, one of English/Viking descent, the other of Irish descent.

The daughter of a scottish/irish railroader and an Irish/Viking writer.

Conflict runs through her ancestry.

She lives with peace. With love. With a commitment to integrity and joy.

So much is possible in this human being world. So much love and connection. The tastes of life. The smells of life. The great beauty: seen, heard and felt with the body.

This morning I woke up from a dream, and I seemed to have been dreaming these words: Dig deep into relationship. Show up with discipline, reciprocity and a sense of the sacred.

Callie Danae. What a gift.

Who are the gift people in your life? How can you honour them?

Sometimes...

I want to feel a weight on my shoulders,

a stretch across my spine,

a hug,

a carrying of a child

piggy-back.

My own small self?

Not a pressing down weight,

a caring-for,

carrying for fun,

for safety,

love.

I feel this when I’m strong,

well-slept,

long-enough dreamtime.

Most of my life is inside

but, today, especially today, I want to feel

the shift,

the weight,

of whatever is to come.

I used to wrap myself in a blanket–

I’d always be cold.

When shivers ran down my spine–

I’d add a layer.

Now, it is different.

I am open to hearing, to feeling, what

wants to be known.

m, Jan. 3, 2023

One of few poems I’ve written. : )

Breathing In

"There is something that relates lightness to the sun and the hours of light. But I feel that the lightness comes from our capacity to have inner sun that shines all the time, which doesn't mean that we are always happy. It's more about being closer to the lightness that life brings about and maybe a bit distance from the difficulties,” Sandra Sabatini, author of Breath, The Essence of Yoga

Have you ever watched the sun rise?

Have you ever watched it more than one day in a row?

Have you ever watched it and asked, How do I respond? How do I serve?

If you are a sunrise viewer, if you are curious about sunrise experiments, perhaps we will meet one day. If not, enjoy your life.

So much is possible here.

Earth: Listen.

Earth. Cosmos.

Here’s an interview between Micah Mortali (a nature lover/author of a book titled Rewilding, Meditations, Practices and Skills for Awakening) and Colonel Mark T. Vande Hei, astronaut and recent meditator.

My curiousity took to the wind when I heard Vande Hei say he’d never seen the stars from the space station until his second tour during his meditation. His first tour, he never bun-geed himself into a window frame, turned out all the lights and sat in stillness. His first tour, six months long, he stayed on a schedule of workouts and work. His life changed in many ways during the second, 12 month long, tour. He worried less about time management, though he still managed his time. He missed wind. He missed the feel of sand under his feet.

Our bodies are designed for earth conditions, he pointed out in the interview. I haven’t read Mortali’s book, but I’m curious about his nature meditation practice.

Reaching and holding.

Earth. Meditation.

My friend, Tess Callahan, leads meditations. She’s studied with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield among other amazing teachers. She’s a writer, too.

This is a link to a powerful meditation Tess leads about solstice and the earth.

I recommend listening.

It could have an unexpected impact on you. It did on me. : )

Ghost Lake Dam, New Year’s Eve 2022