Ringing In the New Year

My wedding ring makes a really cool sound sliding along the wooden banister on the left side of the stairwell going down into the underbelly of the house. It's a wind-like sound with a little rhythm. As my feet take me down, step by step, there's an almost imperceptible pause between each stair. 

I like the constancy of the accompaniment to my descent whenever I go to my office - early each morning for yoga and meditation, and later for office tasks. 

Welcome to my space. It's a small space, just large enough for a desk and a chair and a healing cot. If I want to set up my massage table, it's really cozy. Squished feeling. But clients don't seem to mind when they're supine and their eyes are closed or they're prone in the face cradle. Nor do they mind when I slide the healing cot into the middle of the room on a diagonal so I have access to all sides. 

The only problem is when I want to do a boundary exercise with a newish client. Then I need to move to the official guest room. Even there, it's a little cramped. Too small to have quite enough space for a big circle of rope or yarn or ribbon around a client to determine where a boundary may have been breeched by an unwanted or unexpected event. 

It's important to know where someone's boundaries have been breeched. Dad's good right hand smacking against our cheek as we accidentally spilled milk at the dinner table can leave a lifelong imprint - meaning, child (now adult) is always looking out for that smack to come, thus ignoring the other side. OR we know what's coming to us from Dad's right hand, or a remembered auto accident, surgery, or other assault, so we willfully ignore that side and get hyper-vigilant toward the other side.

Boundaries count. They keep us healthy. Repairing them is a fun puzzle. But we need a big enough space for the body to speak its truth. Hopefully, when clients who have boundary breeches come to me, they will not be disrupted by walking down the hall to the Hobbit Room. We call it the Hobbit Room because it's snuggled into the hillside. The only window is three inches too high up from the floor for safe egress in case of fire, according to the Oakland's Department of Building and Safety, but we keep a stool handy, just in case.

Boundaries R Us. Don't leave home without one. 

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Israel is said to have the largest number of traffic accidents in the world - more than any other country. Think of it as an island of land that was  initially petitioned by Zionist leader Herzl when the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine in 1896. 

Not until May 14, 1948 was Israel officially declared a Jewish State, by the United Nations after the Holocaust led so many Jewish refugees to flee Europe. The very day of Israel's establishment as a country, bombs were being lobbed into it from surrounding Arab nations in the morning, and by Egypt in the evening. 

Surrounding Israel are Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt. The Red Sea is to the South; Mediterranean Sea to the West. All these countries still want that precious land originally given to the Israel, then under rule of the first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. 


The reason for greater numbers of car accidents perhaps lies in the  number of wars that have been fought over the land of Israel. War breeches boundaries like nobody's business. It is a huge factor in making humans crazy with a feeling of "Not Safe." We need to have a certain base level of safety in order to be able to function with any coherence. When boundaries are breeched by bombings, there's a sense of not knowing when or whence the next blow is coming. That sort of gun shy reaction makes terrible drivers, because people in shell-shock are always ducking and covering while trying to navigate through a city's busy streets. Syria may run a close second in number of traffic accidents. What atrocities we are capable of perpetrating against our fellow humans! One Lifeboat, Earth, folks. ONE lifeboat. 

Peace, man! Peace.

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My Ring... makes a joyful noise as I go downstairs. It's like a Pavlovian bell indicating it is time to meditate. Yummy. Or write a blog. Yummy and challenging. Or pay bills... Mehhh. Or to work with a client... Definitely yummy. I love to work! I love to work with clients and kids and babies and old folks... 

Sometimes, the ring sound is missing, replaced by clunk, clunk, clunk. I am carrying the vacuum, the feather duster, and vinegar for cleaning toilet, sinks, and mirrors. 

Sometimes, cleaning happens. 


Although I've worn my wedding ring for nearly forty-eight years, it's not getting much thinner. I remember looking at my grandmother's wedding ring and thinking how very thin it had become. Worn away by busy hands doing busy work every day for over seventy-five years! That was a long marriage.  The only time each of them married was that auspicious day, September 1, 1914, the day they both said, "Yes! I do."

My mother was born August 23, 1919. She would have been 100 years of age this past August. Her brother, my Uncle Larry, was born May 10, 1924, on the chicken ranch where they lived in San Bernardino. He was a twin. His brother, born dead, had a separate placenta which was not expelled during the birth process. Grammy got systemic blood poisoning. The invention of antibiotics was more than twenty years in the future. She was in bed for six months. Three of her sisters rotated caring for her, while my Granddad cared for the livestock and small garden. 

During her infirmity, my Grammy Florence cut and sewed together hundreds of pieces of fabric from her husband's worn-out shirts, her old dresses, and those of my mom, to make a quilt. She called it her agony quilt. It was a pre-depression era distraction. When complete, she shipped off the face of the quilt to her sister-in-law Wilhemina who, with her quilting bee in Marine City, Michigan, quilted it for her. It now hangs in the hallway downstairs here in this very house. The hand stitched border reminds me there are historical boundaries also; that our ancestral imprints, when understood, acknowledged, and healed in ourselves do not have to repeat in our own lifetime. I believe healing happens not only for ourselves but for future generations, and retroactively - back into history for the spirits of those who came before us.

Whenever I hear my ring singing along the wood bannister, I also think of my Grammy's thin gold band. A wonder it was, that it never got so thin that it actually broke. She was still wearing it when she died on October 16, 1991. We, her closest family, were there.  I heard my Gramps' voice come into the room, a few minutes before she took her last breath, to ask, "Florence, would you like to dance?" Her last breath came out as a resounding, "YES."  Nice ring to it, I think.

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May your Holly Daze be Joy-filled and cozy. 

May you ring in your New Fangled Year of 2020 with Delight, and may the next twelve months be bright with visions of peace dancing in your heart.

Hike At Golden Hour

Chevron shaped deer tracks mark the brown path

Sun has gone gold, gives green hills a bath

Stiff cold breeze blows my hair wild

Steel gray clouds mean business, child

Up with umbrellas, up with the collar

Lean into the wind climb higher and holler

Golden hour’s when pure magic’s about

Makes me walk faster and want to shout

The beauty around us, if only we grock it

Must be seen, smelled and felt, can’t go into a pocket

The beauty of light is fleeting and changing

Look NOW, in a minute, it’ll be rearranging

Gold to steel blue, without sun becomes purple

Crow riding currents caws hoping her chirp will

Bring to attention her stunning silhouette

We grock it and note our feet getting wet 

From skyline of city to bird flight so pretty

To miss this adventure would be such a pity

So, here we are with too thin a jacket

Still wouldn’t trade these clouds now all backlit

With crimson and silver, and eye squinting gold

Is our heavy breathing due to steepness or cold?

Climbing with you, my own dearest love

Washes me, cleansing with grace from above

Lifted my spirits, expanded my thanks

For this sweetest interlude ‘tween everyday tasks

Nature is sure to press "pause and refresh"

Internal computers note reduction in stress

Turn off the news, let the hills beckon

Climb us, sublime trust calls you to trek on

No matter the length of your walk/hike, go UP

Natural wonder will top off your cup

The One

In meditation this morning, I had the thought that at the moment of conception, the human conceptus is the embodiment of unity: Two cells become one. And the body and soul are one with the entire cosmos. 

Aaaah, would that we could simply savor that unity for a languid, luxurious length of time. 

However... next, comes a cleaving.

With the very first bifurcation or splitting of the one cell into two, there is the forgetting: The not remembering the truth that there is only ONE. WE ARE PART of everything... but we forget that. Our purpose as humans seems to be to re-member the truth, that ONE is all there is. We are but drops in an ocean of consciousness. We occupy an individual vessel for an eye blink of time in the grand scheme of things, but always, we are still part of the vast ocean of bliss. Pure consciousness.

Therein is the whole journey of human existence. Knowing, forgetting, and remembering again (with any luck!) that we are all pure consciousness. That's all, folks.

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The ovum sits there in her vastness waiting for something. She's not sure what. When the ONE comes knocking and banging his head, the zona pellucid (a translucent membrane that surrounds her) allows in the one chosen sperm. She opens to be penetrated by the ONE. She is calm and centered within her entire and whole self.

When the sperm is released and begins his grand journey of exploration to the site, his destination, his destiny, he is filled with motion, the opposite of sitting in quietude. Sperm behavior: "I don't know where I'm going I only know I've got to get there fast and beat out all these fellow flagellates to get there FIRST! I'm gonna elbow outa the way any one who gets in my way." (Do sperm have elbows?) 

She waits. She is expansive, passive, patient. He runs all out toward the finish line. 

It happens in a flash. One head of one sperm breaks through or is allowed through the zona pellucida into the interior of the ovum. Suddenly his head is absorbed into the ONE CELL. The two become ONE. His tail falls by the wayside. His mode of transportation no longer needed. Sperm’s job is transformed from going as fast as he can to being completely absorbed, dissolved, to become part of something entirely different from what he was. Poor sperm. 

For her part, the ovum is blasted, penetrated, shattered, poor egg, or willingly opened to the concept of LIFE flowing through into her heart of hearts. "YOU are the ONE. You are my reason for being. YOU make me complete. Together we will start something beautiful and new in the cosmos - a singularly unique new being."

The state of ONENESS lasts for a brief time. Then the ONE divides into TWO. Two cells as yet undifferentiated into any specific organs, bones, system parts, or nerves. Two cells, alike as they can be. And then THEY divide and begin the doubling of the doubling at a terrific rate, but seen in every corner of the world, simply because Nature is generous. 

The doubling and doubling again proliferates into the most amazing differentiation of cell tasks and shapes and purposes. It's a higher calling to be sure - to build and become a single part of a new human floating in his mother's dark and quiet. Long before the new mother is aware she is pregnant, the cells have already been imbued by the Breath of Life with a SOUL. A new incarnation of some soul who needed to come back to Earth School for new lessons in the grab bag of lessons all humans must learn to become free at last of incarnations on the planet. 

My belief is that nothing is lost forever. Veteran Recycler that I am, I firmly believe that what makes us alive, and vibrantly so to one another, is an essence, a unique soul that carries with it the sum total of all we've done on this planet for lifetime after lifetime. That essence is wise to some extent, for experiences understood become wisdom. Our aim is perfection; our condition is human. We are perfectly imperfect beings.  We ARE divinity incarnate and we make mistakes so we can learn from them. To greater or lesser degrees, we attain perfection with each lifetime spent on earth and perhaps on other planets as well. 

Reader's Digest Version:

Once upon a time, there was a little egg whose beloved was rushing toward her at the speed of light. When he finally bumped into his chosen beloved, he lost his head and was swallowed whole by her plump round body. The two became one. The one split and became many cells rubbing and bumping up against one another with such ferocious friction that they warmed the space in which they were growing and soon the host womb experienced such JOY that she, (yes, she; the only gender to grow and give birth to new life even at this current state of technology on the third planet from the Sun, in this solar system that is part of a galaxy we call the Milky Way, in a corner of the Uni-verse that sang us all), SHE rejoiced and grew contemplative about all the possibilities this new life - this new lover of life could bring to the planet.  

For father's part, he went along for the ride. The giver of life went elsewhere, leaving her to complete the project on her own. Perhaps he stuck around for the winter, bringing her foods and roots and berries to help sustain the life inside. Perhaps he abandoned her. Perhaps he stayed the course and became an active part in the raising and nurturing of new life. In any case, the child usually survives and brings to the world gifts the world is sorely in need of. Perhaps the gifts are misunderstood and criticized and made fun of because they are too radically new for a world so steeped in xenophobia it cannot open itself to new and different kinds of life flowing into and through it. 

Kindness is all. Loving kindness and compassion are the missing links in our long historical line of perceiving new life askance and with distrust rather than welcoming it with wide open arms as if our lives depended upon it. We are in great need of New Ideas. New approaches to husbanding the planet and her resources. In fact, our ives do depend entirely on a paradigm shift. 

If we continue the metaphor of conception... Man on earth has penetrated Earth with such force that she has been shattered to the degree that she can no longer cope; cannot absorb that which has penetrated her, but has passed right through, shattering her core, devastating perhaps forever the harmony and beauty she once held for all. She now lies in between life and death - spinning out of control in the solar system in a corner of the galaxy and we're the only species with brains enough to save her. Let us hope our hubris gets reined in and that the tide is turned toward LIFE. 

Woe to him who regards not the divinity of nature, of Gaia, of our earth Mother. Woe to him whose hubris is larger than the Uni-verse that sang him into existence. Woe to him who has forgotten his origins lie in the One Ultimate Source. Remembering our unity is all that can save us. Remembering and LOVING the WHOLE will set us free. Unity wins. Divisiveness? Well, it divides us from ourselves, one another and from Source.

May 2020 bring us the capacity to see with clearer vision what our role must be going forward. May we come to see whether our daily actions contribute to Earth's demise or support our life boat Earth to turn back, to keep from tumbling into the abyss.

Good Bye Friendy Wendy

I shall miss the laugh, the smile, the ease you had with kidlettes of every age wherever you met them. The cooking feasts. The whole salmon you brought fresh from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco to three young mamas with muddy kids in the Redwoods of Big Basin Park circa 1978. You wrapped it in foil with onions and lemon slices. You put it on the campfire grill, and when its fragrance reached the stars, you served us on real china plates, poured wine into crystal stemware, treated us like queens and we three mamas got down to kiss your feet in gratitude while young Mosa, Devon, and Corbin slept in the tent.

I have missed the you I knew from tenth grade until eight years ago when dementia  began to eat you, nibble by nibble, into an unrecognizable human. Who's to know what you could understand inside there? Who's to know what you wanted to have happen? Your beloved made some difficult and right-on decisions regarding your care, dear. I'm so glad I got to come down and care for you just after moving to Oakland, while Anne was leading a tour in Europe. I'm so glad your sister Barrie showed me the ropes. Queenie was a rock.

Queenie sings to you in a video posted on your beloved Anne's Face Book page. Angelic voice pouring out of the two dimensional screen gives me a wee bit of the flavor of your last days. I did not come see you at Silverado. I regret that even though Anne and Barrie said you wouldn't recognize me. You seem trapped inside yourself in the video, but loved-up right to the last moment of life. 

Your radiant soul has lifted off and the dust of your corporeal house is just that: dust. But the mind that created such wonder in the worlds of film and friendship, gallantry and gardening, fun and foolery was eaten away over these past years - tragically. 

What causes dementia? What initiates the voracious appetite of whatever IT is that has hunger for human brain tissue, memory, language?

I protest. I HATE dementia. I hate Alzheimer's. I hate Cancer. I hate losing friends, old and young to voracious appetites of evil. (Notice the handy dandy palindrome of Live and Evil. Hah! They are not truly one and the same with the letters simply rearranged. Nor are they opposites. Just a chance quirkitude of the English language.)

What are we to learn from death? What do we need to know? 

One: It is an equal opportunity destroyer.

Two: Life is terminal. We just don't know which terminal and when.

Three: Death is a release... somewhat like taking off a pair of very tight shoes, if we are to believe Emmanuel as channeled by Pat Rodegast. Or like stepping out of an overly hot, stuffy room where people have been smoking, and into a sparkling clear, cool, bright night. 

Four: For those left behind bereft and grieving the loss of a dear one, Death Sucks!

But we knew all that. Gee, Mr. Wizard, what else is there to learn from Death? 

Watch De Düva, a brilliant and hilarious send up of Ingmar Bergman's best films, the Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. De Düva was written by Sidney Davis, directed by George Coe and Anthony Lover. Madeline Kahn is one of the stars. Maybe you can find it on YouTube... Worth a look. 

You have to be able to LAUGH at death sometimes. It's just so random. The play Steam Bath highlights just how random it is in a funny, slow-dawning way. 

Thanksgiving time seems to open a window to the end of the year. Many choose to fly through this window. The dark of winter? Do folks choose to take the exit ramp marked "Holidays Ahead" to avoid another season of hyper-cheer, Xmas muzak, and garish lights? To avoid commercialism and the worst of human greed? Or do the shorter days simply beckon, "Come, there's more dark where this came from... come join me in the sweet dark forever..."

Maybe I'm cynical.  Maybe I'm pissed off. Maybe I'm just tired of people dying in droves. Three in one week is too many... well, four if I count my neighbor's rabbit Inkspot. And I do. I count critters. People love their catkins and puppies and bunnies and birdies. When a friend of any stripe dies, it's a loss. And a new loss triggers all the other losses that come up and try to squeeze out our tear ducts all at the same time. It's good for Kleenex stock prices, but hard on the eyeballs and nose. 

Happy Ho Hos and let's hold onto and enjoy our loved ones... for as long as ever we can!

Good December... full of light... inner light.