Thursday 5 January 2012

The Coming

Greetings of the New Year!  I begin this writing at the end of the first week of 2012.  Funny, but I've suddenly realized that in the rich and active new Age of Blogging (how long has it been running, now?), I admit to being completely "green" regarding this aspect of modern culture.  In fact, I have hardly even really read any blogs.  There must be so many millions of excellent writers, blogging away out there!  But for the record, my exposure thus far, and my interest, is owed to three bloggers.  Well, four, actually.

The first is Gluten-Free Girl.  Shauna James Ahern, from Seattle.  This woman “saved my life,” quite literally.  That’s all I can really say about her without having my whole first blog post taken up with adoring gratitude for her amazing work!  Now formally named Gluten-Free Girl and The Chef, this blog is a testament to how endlessly enjoyable it can be to immerse one’s life in a contemplated exploration of food and love (The Chef is her husband), among other subjects of note.  

I ordered Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna’s first book, about four years ago.  Sub-titled: How I Found the Food that Loves Me Back... & How You Can Too.  Imagine a world where we all eat, everyday, with the experience that our food is loving us?  What a life that would be!  And how then could we not, in turn, love how we seed, grow, harvest, raise, distribute and otherwise create/produce humanity’s food system?  How healthy, how vital and creative, would our species be?  Not to mention a few other species around here, too, many of which we eat and lots of others whose survival cannot but be affected by our need to eat.  Now there's an interesting topic for a blogger to take on... 

Shauna's January 2nd blog post is entitled "going quiet," and she graciously tells her readers that she won't be available for a time:

"It’s the bleak dark winter. Starting the year in January, when the light is weak and the cold air sharp, has always seemed so wrong to me. This is the winding-down time, the slowest time of the year.

And yet, every magazine article and blog post right now is about Improvement! New Start! Green smoothies, kale salads, and a clear denunciation of who we have been in the past year. Organize yourself now! Most magazine covers this month read: lose weight, clear yourself of clutter, improve your memory, get your financial life in order, and be happy now! How is that last one possible when we’re so busy bustling, doing all the things needed to become a new person?

I don’t want to become a new person. I just want to be here.

That’s why I’m not going to be here for awhile."

Go inside, Gluten-Free Girl!  Be right Here and Go Inside, quietly...

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I have two dear friends who are currently sharing thoughts, stories and experiences through blogs.  My friend Paula is writing about her travel musings in Spain.  It is inspiring to absorb the flowering and maturing of Paula's delight, as she enters ever deeper into the mythological force that surges from the Corazon (Heart) of Espanya: “I find a strength here that I have not encountered in other places.”

Another friend, Nowick, writes from India at this moment in time.  Soon, from Bali.  In this blog, Nowick shares his sublime perceptions of truth, love, and ordinary everyday happenings:

Merger and Wholeness
I want you to be merged with me.
And I want you in your own wholeness.
These desires are not contradictory.
We are holograms; each reflecting the whole.
Oneness manifests in individuality.
As you give yourself to me, you find yourself.
You find and maintain and grow in your own expression,
enfolded in my love, and in the greater One.

If this is “Wisdom on the Fly,” as Nowick's SEEKER's MANUAL is aptly sub-titled, I look forward to how wisdom reads when he's not on the fly...

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Oh, and the fourth blog I referred to... Taxi Tales.  Stories of a UK (Cumbrian?) taxi driver.  Great stories!  Brilliant mind!  Thoughtful and honouring of his occupation.  You never know what inspiration, wit and cleverness might be at the wheel of your next cab ride... worth your curiosity.  But of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that.  No, not me...




The reason I’m offering my first post today, of all days, is because this week I discovered a poem I wrote over a decade ago and had forgotten about, which I want to “give away.”  I’ve never been much of a writer of poetry, although like most people (I imagine) there have been brief pockets of time during which the raw wonder, beauty, desperation, horror, appreciation and/or frustration of living must be “let out” in a few random stanzas, with pen and on paper.  Or, as the case may be, with typing fingers and a word processing program.

I found the poem while executing a purge of old documents.  My two-year-old PC has recently developed a few pesky issues and is no longer running efficiently.  It requires a good cleansing, so to speak.  Now I need to “transfer my data” onto an external hard drive so that we can strip the PC’s software back to basics and start with a clean slate.  The we I am referring to is me and the techie I will speak with in India after I call the toll free number for iYogi.  

This “technical support agent” will take remote control of my computer and doctor it up.  I’ll watch him do it all in real time—yes, I am conscious during the procedure.  As the ‘zip’ and ‘click’ of his-my cursor darts around, I’ll forget all about sipping on my tea, because there’s nothing else to do but stare in utter amazement into the screen of this totally mind-blowing Quantum Reality.  

iYogi.  That can’t not but elicit at least a laugh or two...

*   *   *

My meditation teacher always used to say that sitting practice – learning to be Quiet Inside – is analogous to "deleting useless data from your hard drive.”  We all grow up 'downloading' information from people and the world around us.  Much of this information is helpful, and necessary.  We need it to develop our full personhood.  The learning process is about survival and the creative possibilities of Mind, which have evolutionary value.

Lots of our downloaded data is just plain garbage, however.  We absorb diverse forms of garbage through many of our faculties, everyday.  We can’t help it.  We are sensitive, receptive, and constantly building identity...  

At some point, if we’re lucky, we discover we want to learn what it feels like to unlearn a few things. 

*   *   *

My PC’s data purge was executed with the goal of at least a 2:1 ratio between the two options of trash and transfer for each of the hundreds of files (mainly Word documents and digital photos) in question.  The first option actually refers to the “recycle bin,” except that this time—after the remote-realtime procedure is complete—there will be no hope of my ever returning to the bin to sift through what I threw away.  

So I really am trashing this old stuff.  Which I like.

*   *   *

This poem is a gift for the New Year.  I am already loving this year, amidst all the anticipation and hype and prophecy and financial, social, & ecological calamity.  Amidst all the unknowns of what is in store for us, here on this particular planet, in 2012 and beyond. 

I fell in love with 2012 on January 1st.  Yes it's true—it was love at first sight.  As the clock struck twelve, I was just climbing into bed after a very quiet evening at home.  I was sad to have missed the dance party I was scheduled to attend, but a flu I had been fighting all through Christmas held my dancer’s feet and my socialite nature at bay.  The next afternoon I was well enough to go for a walk.  Leaving the house, I discovered that New Year’s Day in Victoria was beautiful!  It amazed me how many people were parading the Dallas Road boardwalk, walking their pooches or gathered in conversation along the beach.  The air was mild and dry.  It hardly even felt like a winter's day, at all.

The Olympic Mountains rose quietly before me, and far to the southeast in the tiniest spot of my visual field stood four glacial peaks, stark and glinting like pink fire from the setting sun.  I have just consulted Google Maps but cannot figure out what mountains I was looking at.  These peaks rightfully remain nameless in their splendour...

During my beach walk, I was reflecting on how privileged I truly am.  When I look at all the major 'quadrants' of my life—my strong circles of friendships and family, my ability to meet my basic needs (and much more), my skills and level of education, my trust that I am not imminently threatened by acts of violence, my access to nature and freedom to recreate, my mobility within my geographical home and outside of its borders—I realize without a doubt that in terms of relative privilege, I form part of “the 1%.”  There are many ways in which I consider that I am part of “the 99%” too, but for the sake of genuinely taking stock of my relative privileges I remembered that the lives of billions of people are consumed day by day with matters of securing access to food, clean water, sanitation and shelter.

As I pondered on these rather sobering realities, there on the beach, my relative privileges suddenly seemed to have a voice of their own.  This voice had rhythm, lapping against my heart like the sound of waves against pebbles.  

Rhythm appeared as questions:

How is my privilege to be used?
How will I apply my skills, my education, my knowledge, my health?
Can I live taking responsibility for the Whole, as the Whole, the 100%, within my own day-to-day life?  Can I do my best to act responsibly for the sake of All Beings? 
How lightly can I walk?  And, when I make choices I know are not in alignment with “walking lightly,” can I remain conscious and be humbled by the fact that I do not act in isolation, that my actions have impacts and effects on the vast, dynamic complexities of this tiny spinning Planet?  Can I not be hampered by guilt, but still be accountable to myself and the Life that sustains me, which are inseparable?

These questions came without need of any immediate or concrete response.  In fact, I prefer to hold the questions as the answers, too.  This will allow me to keep learning, be attentive and ask more questions—to find the question inside the question.  

And then, without any satisfactory answer forthcoming from the limits of my own imagination, perhaps I will keep quiet and wait long enough to let the Natural Intelligence of life show the Way... 

*   *   *

My New Year’s Day walk came on the heels of eight days spent with my family in Kamloops.  I am tickled by the diverse and colourful personalities now surrounding me in the form of the children in my life!  “Auntie Sally” is utterly proud to be so, to seven nieces and nephews between the ages of five years and six months.  They are all vibrant, intelligent and creative little people – as an extended family, we are so very blessed.  And my extended extended family includes other wonderful children of dear friends. 

One of these friends is Cindy, who now lives in the Kootenays.  Cindy & I both grew up in Kamloops and have been close for over twenty years.  She was the "first ever" of my friends to have a child, Alesha, in the fall of 2000.  When I met Alesha almost a year later, needless to say I fell in love.  She was a baby, and babies are Love.
   

For Alesha

I thank you for the day
I held you and listened to your soft baby snores,
While Ma-Ma and Da-Da played on the rocks.

The little birds wanted to play, too.
Tiny squirrels chased each other up a tree.
Ma-Ma lowered her chin and replied “moo” to the cow that
greeted us from far away.

Your warm, small body calmed the inside of me.
The coolness of the autumn air silently kissed our faces and lungs.
I humbly accepted the honour, witness to the late afternoon
sunshine's reverence for your rosy cheeks.

You came awake.  Da-Da did a silly dance,
And you clapped and waved in rapture.
We all played together in that tender nook of the woods.

I put you up high on my shoulders –
Noisy twigs under my boots said “snap, snap”.
You giggled when I picked rosehips from the bush and
hid them in my pocket.

Delighting in discovery, you learned to dig with a stick,
The fragrance of fertile earth rising up from your activity.
Does the dirt taste good, little One?

I remembered the beauty of Life that day.
A Creation Story was gifted to my senses and my Heart
From the essence of the living moment, flowing unmistakably
through your being.

May Da-Da dance with you, always.
With Ma-Ma, may you speak the language of the cows.
And may you know that digging matters, my Child.
May you know that digging matters.  


This poem is for all children everywhere!  Blessed be!


Nephew Eli, born August 2011.

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On Monday, I will begin new but temporary employment in the BC Public Service—my first government job.  I will be responsible for completing some policy development projects and editing/publishing a number of reports for distribution to various provincial agencies and public interest groups.  My official title is Auxiliary Information Officer, which I don’t think sounds like me one bit!  However, I’m excited for the challenge, the new learning and connections.  An adventure!

All the best of 2012 to You & Yours,
Sal

2 comments:

  1. Great start to 2012, Sal!I can hear your voice in your words and it makes me smile.

    Rock on!
    J9

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ha ha J9, I read your post in my newest favorite font, "Rock Salt."
    ROCK ON!
    SR

    ReplyDelete