9.17.16 The sweet four-year-old smile

     When my oldest was four, he fell at daycare, and got a badly broken leg. I was thirty-one. He was in hospital in traction for two weeks, in lots of pain, and I ran roughshod over the nurses, not leaving his side. 
     In the wee hours of the night, we'd watch women on tv in these weird suits, doing aerobics. It sustained us both, because we had no tv at home.
     Kevin suggested we teach him Lamaze breathing for the pain, and my little one would tell me that in between breathing in and breathing out, in that tiny moment, there was no pain.
     Eventually he got a bodycast , from chest to toe, and learned how to walk. Kevin and I had little money, so we'd been seeing this lined linen suit for him, for a family wedding .
     He got out of hospital just in time, to his delight.
     We just slit the whole side of the pants , and then pinned them up. Good as new. 

     What a sweet four-year-old smile.

9.17.16 Fed and watered and loved

     Around 1996, there was a farm in a town a bit over from us with many hungry infected feral cats. So I'd cook up food and out herbs for infection and strength in it, bring some fresh water, and over we'd go to see them every other day.
     I learned that we could grab the kittens at around 5 weeks, that 6 weeks ( or the preferred 8) was too late. So when the tinier ones would toddle out to us, I'd grab them, raise them and find them homes. 
     There were these three we grabbed. When we brought them home, my daughter's cat Sasha ( fixed) took each one by the scruff of the neck upstairs , mrrowing, to a sleeping baton the floor, where she tunneled in with them, nursed them ( no milk) and hissed when we went near.
    So she raised them and we fed and watered them and found them homes. So beautiful.

9.14.16 The song of the Fall garden

9.14.16 Spilling itself

Evening comes and spills itself all across
the conservation fields.

 

9.14.16 The intricacy of the small wild fall Aster

And yet another spherical  spider web. Amazing.


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9.14.16 Never was

     It's like we have all these facets, and if we move about with flexibility, we encounter one after another surfaces of ourselves, each reflecting an entirely different perspective of life. 
     No wonder we become confused when shifting from one perception to another, by having our settled-upon Opinion on something stood up next to another possibility altogether. 
     I think this is why, as we become aware, we also shift toward equanimity. 
     Because equanimity is not thoughtlessness
or callous disregard. Rather, it is learning to unreactively BE with how things seem right now.
     So much of our time, we reflexively react to encounters with an unthinking try-to-solve-it-fix-it-make-it-go-away dynamic. For ourselves or others. We lose track of reality. We forget to watch and wait and actually determine when reaction or defense or swooping in to fix is even appropriate.
     We run the risk of living our entire lives, swept away within a paradigm of deflection, that robs us of actual ease.
     Life is inherently full of very real difficulties of all sorts of magnitude .
     That doesn't mean it's worth it to spend our days and nights suspecting , and always looking out.
     It's like living day after day swatting the bee away from your face, ducking the errant flyball .
     Only most of the time there is no bee and there never was a flyball.

9.14.16 Soaking it up

I stand in the forest, take a breath, listen. For nothing in particular. 

Just drinking in the forestness. 

I walk without thinking, just watching the trees and the path underfoot

 and the canopy and the sky and the sun's light and the wildlife patterns. Just the essence of life, here in the woods. 

Dante does this too. While I'm walking or stopped and soaking. 

He stands there, looking and listening and smelling. Quiet. At peace. 

On a visit, soaking up the sights sounds smells feel tastes of this land.