The Sturdy Square That Was

I awoke a short time ago, before the dawn, and as I lay there
just thinking, not yet totally ready to leave the trail end of dreaming,
these words came to me:

……………………. The Sturdy Square That Was. …………………….

Without expectation of any kind, these words scrambled up a series of pictures, each more full of ‘juice‘ as ideas produced a world of countries,
surrounding this simple square country that had no pompous generals, no
imperial rulers, no show-offs of any kind.

I imagined that their greatest product was a fibre made up of all the natural
plants and ores, a green gold silvery tan cloth that was simple and sustainable,
soft yet strong. All the surrounding countrys had wavy borders, long lines of mountains and shores, and yet this one central country was happy with it’s straight and stable shape.

That’s pretty much what held me lying there for about an hour.

I will probably leave it there.

The dawn came, and with it my usual room, familiar walls, sounds from I-95 traffic. Yet, I am sharing this with you for the fun that the imagination can bring to our already-always-thinking.

Maybe one of you has already written this story!
If so, please share it with me. ❤

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

20130907-213952.jpg

A PEN IN HAND

We dream, awake, and almost instantly, the thread of
that dreaming vanishes. I reach – it’s just beyond touch.
It’s still evening of January 12, and my Rumi Daybook
on page 12, has an apt musing:

“Though a thousand snares catch our feet,
when You are with us there is no difficulty.
Every night you free our spirits from the body’s snare,
and clear the tablets of the mind.
Every night spirits are set free from this cage.
no longer ruled by rules or long stories.

At night prisoners have no sense of imprisonment,
at night governors are unconscious of their power.
There is no sorrow, no thought of gain or loss,
no tales of this person or another.
Even without sleep this how the gnostic is.
As God said, ‘you would think they were awake,
while they slept’.

Have no doubt : there are those who are asleep,
day and night, to the affairs of this world,
yet moving like a pen in the hand of God.”

…….. as translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski

There seems to be another sense of interdimensional
experience in dreaming. I am freed from the limitation
of age and roam the halls without effort. Yet there is
present much confrontation, and mountains to scale,
as well.

I am grateful for the cleared tablets of the mind. What a
delightful concept: moving like a pen in the hand of God.
To be so moved is to know there is only the dance and
the freedom to feel, and so feeling, to be the dancing.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Photo by Dylan Strazar

‘RELATIONS’

POSTMISTRESS EARTH 04421

“From broken dreams, we wake to every day’s
brave history, the gravity of every moment.
We wake to let our lives
inhabit: now, here, again,
this very day,
passionate as all
Yeats woke in old age to hope for,
the sun turns up, under an off-shore cloudbank
spun at 700 and some mph to meet it,
rosy as the cheeks of a Chios woman
Homer may have been
touched by,

just as Janet is touching, climbing
familiar steps, granite locally quarried,
to work at 04421, a peninsular village
spun just as Janet is spun,
into light, light appearing

to resurrect not simply its own
life but the whole
improbable
system, tugging
the planet
around to look precisely
as Janet looks,

alight with the gravity of her office,
before turning the key that opens up
its full
radiance:
the familiar arrivals,
departures,
and even predictable orbits in which,
with excited constancy, by how
to each other
we’re held, we keep
from spinning out
by how to each other
we hold.”

(oop’s! I edited the title, it seemed so long —
it started with: OLD LIGHT/NEW SUN and then
the rest)

……………..PHILIP BOOTH, from the Day’s Work
section of Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems.

I also edited the arrangement of the lines, often
combining two lines in one, then going back to his
original break-ups which would have made this
morning’s ‘Daily’ stretch out and look too long
to even begin.

The day looks good from here on.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

WHAT DO YOU SEE AT DAWN?

The shades at my windows are down right now before the dawn,
all except those over my air conditioning unit where I can see
the trees outside, with glimpses of sky.

I have three schoolroom windows starting at three and a half feet
off the floor all the way to the high ceiling, wonderful, clear space
each day to welcome the sun and the rain, sometimes fog, ice,
snow, all the ways the world greets us when we pull up the shades.

I love the dawn, have loved it for so many years, years in which, at
the first show of light, I would throw on some clothes, step outside
in the coolness and walk lightly for miles. MIne is a safe, residential
neighborhood. However, I have this old, old superstition that will
not permit me to allow leg or arm to hang over my bedside. I do know
that what’s under my bed is whatever I’ve put there, no room for
monsters of dark imagination. Nontheless, this atavistic fear is a real
hang-up!

In like vein, I pull down the shades of these magnificent windows the
minute it gets dark. My apartment is at ground floor. I can stand and
look outside, a comfortable view as I stand head and shoulders above
the sill. That also means that often my family can show up to see me
and all they have to do is stand on tiptoe to knock on my window to
let me know they’re here. At least, that’s the way it’s been for sixteen
years until last week when safety railings were added along the side-
walk just beyond the low bush planting.

My fear has been that anyone can walk right up to my window and
almost look in. If that were to happen, and I suddenly saw ‘them’,
I would be scared out of my wits, to tell the truth, and run to pull down
the shades. If you recall, I began this story with the intention of
pulling up the shades to greet the dawn, that soft, gradual return to
our everyday reality, that has such a timeless beauty of its own.

Thank you, fear, for showing up. Once I see you, the jig is up.

I walked over to the windows just now, and pulled up the shades.
There, right there at 6:36 a.m., is the dawn, it’s real, it’s there, it’s
soft and changing as I stand and take it in. The night is over, and
a new day is here, a pause at the threshold.

As I sat down here at the computer, I heard a noise outside, and
lo and behold, the garbage truck has arrived, it’s lights matching
the glow in the sky, and the day has begun. Such an everyday,
ungainly way to look at the dawn, isn’t it? I promise you another
day to answer your question about dawn, beautiful in all its promise
and assurance of eternal newness.

You asked such a lovely question, and where have I taken us?
I have diverged to that place where the poets say, “It’s the darkest
before the dawn.” Let’s let that contrast speak for itself, and just
enjoy the fact that, yes, it’s dawn, and the day is ours.
………………………………………………………………
POST SCRIPT TO DAWN
On this beautiful beginning of day, here’s a thought:

“Take earth for your large room
and the floor of earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place.”

…….MAY SWENSON, courtesy of Panhala this morning.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

BLUE SKIES

“Blue skies,
… smilin’ at me,
Nothing but
Blue skies
do I see.

Blue days,
all of them gone,
nothin’ but blue skies
from now on.”
………………………….
Back in my college days on the Penn campus, you’d find
me striding along, that refrain ringing in my head. To be
an art student in my teens and twenty’s was the best.

I was brought back to that memory of blue skies recently.

Story: I am part of a small group of persons committed to
self-search, with the intention of self-responsibility. We had
had a talk of some depth, and I had left the room and sat,
idly looking at a photograph on a wall near me.

I was sorting out feelings that the work had stirred up, and
as I sat, looking at this art photo of a western canyon, I saw
a triangle of blue sky in the upper right corner that was
blazing and amazing.

The intense beauty of that blue sky lifted me, figuratively,
out of my personal preoccupation and into a place of such
eagerness for the experience of just being alive that I
started to laugh out loud. Talk about a shift in perspective!
I shared that when I went back to our group.

We met again last weekend, and my friend, the photographer
who had taken that picture, surprised me with a print of that
canyon photo.
His words were, “Here is your piece of blue sky, Toni .”

Do you hear that? Can you imagine anything more loving
and hopeful than that spontaneous reminder of “blue skies,
smiling at me, nothing but blue skies, do I see.”
……………………..

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Four Forty-four-cent Stamps

Yesterday I went to find a stamp for a letter to my granddaughter for
her birthday (today). I am a very orderly person and keep my stamps
in a certain place, where I can reach in, pull one out as I need it.

Not there! Where I live the mailman, Tom, comes late morning, and
picks up mail as well as delivers it. I had an hour to find a stamp.

After a futile search of everyplace near my desk, I gathered up
four envelopes containing bill payments ( written out nine days ago)
also out of place, and said to myself, well, at least THESE will get
mailed. I took them out to the lobby, dropped them into the OUT
slot, and then thought to knock on a neighbor, Bobbi’s, door, to ask
for a stamp.

Done! She sold me four forty-four-cent stamps, I retrieved my note
to my granddaughter, applied a stamp and put it in the OUT slot.

Relaxed and happy, I returned to my apartment and surveyed the
disorder I’d created trying to find a stamp. In less than the time it
takes to tell you this, I had a hunch, moved my small stack of in-
boxes, and lo, there was the envelope with my stock of stamps.
The envelope had simply fallen behind at the back corner of my
desk.

The reason I have even shared this is to notice how discomfort
moved me to ask for help, found it given easily, and then the
resultant relief was so warm and wonderful, that it reminded
me of a part of a poem by Mary Oliver:

“for it’s true, isn’t it,

in our world

that the petals pooled with nectar, and the polished thorns

are a single thing —

that even the purest light, lacking the robe of darkness,

would be without expression —–

that love itself, without its pain, would be

no more than a shruggable comfort.

Lately, I have noticed, when the skunk’s temper has tilted

in the distance,

and the acids are floating everywhere,

and I am touched, it is all, even in my nostrils and my throat,

as the brushing of thorns;

and I stand there

thinking of the old, wild life of the fields, when, as I remember it,

I was shaggy, and beautiful,

like the rose.”

……………………MARY OLIVER, from the poem, A Certain
Sharpness in the Morning Air.

You may wonder how a forty-four-cent stamp can lead to feeling
shaggy and beautiful. I suppose it goes further back, to “the old,
wild life of the fields”, doesn’t it? How wonderful that the memory
of poetry can transform a simple moment of upset and retrieval
into the larger perspective of a life lived.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

SUMMER BOOK

One morning in July, just passed, I found a “summer book” which became
a practice. It didn’t start out to BE a practice, it moved in. It’s a hard back,
almost 8 ” x 9-3/4″, called True Nature by Barbara Bash.

Here is part of today’s practice:

“Morning walk. I head down the hill
and into the open fields. Sitting in the
sun, I draw the great rolls of hay —
heavy and weighed down. I am
weighed down, too, and so is my
drawing.
I consider tearing it out of my sketch
book. I am utterly worn out and
I feel I can’t produce anything good.
What to do but accept this as well?
I am wearing something down,
wearing something out —
the expectation of who I think
I should be.

I paint the rolls of hay again,
feeling their massive forms
with my brush.”
…………………………….BARBARA BASH

I REALLY GOT THAT.

One does not have to be an artist to experience this ennui of effort.
So, she picked up her brush and moved into the next moment.
I can do that.

Can I expect the same result of sudden simple accomplishment?
I can.

— ‘wearing something down, wearing something out — the
expectation of who I think I should be’ —

My summer practice book is jettisoning my unnecessary clothing,
leaving a sleeveless top to feel the summer breezes. Could be
a metaphor for the way to go.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

TRANSITIONS

I am sure we are in transition. Daily, awaking to gray skies,
it’s hard to think any season is present. So, I look ahead
to the remembered time of summer, a summons perhaps,
to warm breezes and sunny days:

“What is the change in summer
of which one expects nothing?
Nature is not reborn,
nor does she perish except
in the streaks of a rare elm
that has outlived itself.
The weather conceals nothing:
the months are temperate,
even in the hardest rains
one may walk without a coat.
The gardens flourish, and bear
without a gardener’s help.

Sitting in windows at night
black cats and their masters
look out on summer; the moon
feeds their yellow visions,
the opened windows cool them.
One learns to smoke a pipe
and is pleased for solitude.
One wants nothing to happen
forever, and thinks of those
who perhaps are ready to die,
except that it is summer
and they are putting it off.”

………………….ROBLEY WILSON,
from the book, A Dream of Summer,
Poems for the Sensuous Season,
selected by Robert Atwan.

Putting it off! What a lovely thought. Time takes on
another way of being that suggests a sense of
‘living like a river flows, carried by the surprise of
its own unfolding’.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

GARDENS

As a child, I grew up reading “A Child’s Garden of Verses”,
familiar and wonderful. Now grown up considerably, I read
“A Mystic Garden, Working with Soil, Attending to Soul” by
Gunilla Norris. The familiar words never fail to become
new each year at this time. Just look:

“Daylight comes earlier now that it’s spring. Birds sing
even in the dark. Dormant life stirs in the garden. Inside,
I am stirring, too, waking up from something sleepy and
inert, something that’s held me quiet in the cold.

After a long winter we may feel a new permission.
Isn’t this when the gardening begins to begin? It’s time to
raise the blinds and open the windows as well, to let air in,
even if it’s cold. It’s time for new life to touch our faces
and our inward being.

The light is there. We can ask now to really be awakened.”

……………….. GUNILLA NORRIS, 2006

The tree outside my window has loved these few days of
mist and rain, and the first greenish leaves are pushing
through!

We have new “green” windows that bring in such light,
and frame each morning magically. Will I remember,
next year, that this year the leaves opened on April
Sixteenth? Will I remember that that’s when I really
got myself outside and walked for blocks? Will I be
the new person I long to be, from this spring, beginning
now?

Not a question, just a note.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

FOR TIM

I opened a familiar book just now, and had to laugh.
There is a page on “January Thaw”!
Gives me hope with still another week of January 2011 ahead.

In this book I found a conversation on gardens;
something to dream about, at least:

“My garden is a place of commitment and neglect, of arrogance
and humility. It is a place of taking stock and of deep silence —
a place of contemplation. And so for me over time it has
become a place of grace.

I experience as the particular human being I am. I have no
choice about that, but I trust that I am more like other people
than not, and that what I find working the soil might also be
what others find working theirs. I want to trust that with reverence
for place and awareness of my foibles, I can grow to be more
present and a better steward of my small corner of earth.”

…and on another page, the voice within said,

“Any love that has been experienced
is not lost.
It returns to Love itself.

How full of invisible life
is the garden you’ve been given.

At this very moment,
you are in company with everything.
Trust does not need visible signs.”

……………GUNILLA NORRIS, from her book,
A Mystic Garden, Working with Soil, Attending with Soul.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette