A Band Of Fireflies

I'm still thinking about Betty and the picture of her as a young woman and how she said, "Want to see how I used to look?"

She wasn't being overly wistful about it. 
Unlike me, Wistful Winnie. 


Whenever I see a picture of myself, even from a year ago,  I'm startled by how I used to look, then -


what the hell happened to my neck? 


Oh vanity!


My friend Ann, a woodland sprite at fifty-two is a dancer, actor, artist, magical mother of two boys, parading as an Instructional Aide in a kindergarten class. She has a great take on the neck thing.


"What's the big deal about skin anyway?" she said one day after yoga. She took a hold of the skin on her arm and tugged.
"It's just skin," she said, "I don't get it. Who cares if it's wrinkled."


This may have come on the heels of me wistfully recalling a time in college when a woman touched my arm and said, You have the most beautiful skin. 


I, an olive-skinned, smooth-faced nineteen year old, blushed with specialness from a stranger's comment and the touch of her hand on my skin. 


oh vanity!


I remember that summer day very well. At my college tucked in the Green Mountain State, it was the fashion for me to wear overalls and nothing else. I was young skin in overalls, glorious air everywhere.


I am not my skin. 


oh vanity!


Dad says, the body is an overcoat for this life.


In response to every magazine with an air-brushed, botoxed, bikini-clad woman on the cover, I must constantly remind myself that this body is a container for light and love and life. 


It's just skin. I don't get it. 


When we die, we'll slip out of our overcoats and float gently up into the sky, a band of shimmering fireflies.


Read: Betty's Still Beautiful/ May 10, 2011

Very Quiet

Your breath should be light, even and flowing, like a stream of water running through the sand. Your breath should be very quiet, so quiet that a person sitting next to you cannot hear it. Your breathing should flow gracefully, like a river, like a water snake crossing the water, and not like a chain of rugged mountains or the gallop of a horse. To master our breath is to be in control of our bodies and minds. Each time we find ourselves depressed and find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.


- Thich Nhat Hanh

While Growing

I don't know what to write about today. The wind is crazy cold, temps dropping...

How about that feeling of walking around restless, circling like a dog in search of her spot? What to do? Where to turn?

Towards the light?

Some days it's hard to hang out in the not knowing.

Note to self: Practice growing while not knowing.

Turning On The Light

...spiritual practice is not about locking up all the unruly aspects of myself, in the hope they will never get free. Spiritual practice is about turning on the light - and the light is love.

- Rolf Gates

[Meditations From the Mat]

The Coming Of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.


- Mark Strand

Cloud Of Feathers

Yesterday, after posting the lovely quote about Mother Nature, quiet mind, & roping in the restlessness, I sat down to write and this spilled onto the page:

I am restless. Worried. But more restless. Home in the quiet. Everyone is somewhere. Michael/work. Claire/school. Dad/a class. Me/home. Thinking I “should be somewhere else” doing “something great, productive, making money, teaching people things that I know.” This is like a plague, this nagging thing that rides me all the time. I wake in the morning to a fluttering chest. I get a fluttering chest while resting on a massage table being gently rubbed with oils. I get fluttering chest walking around the neighborhood.

I am fluttering chest. Anxious, restless, waiting for a door to open, for the big break. Break-out? How about break-in?

Just now, as I type this, something dark pulls my eyes to look up & out the window. I see them, my turkeys, as the rain pours down, a quick cloud of feathers, a nod, a wink, a pause. A moment of gratitude.

I am thinking of Claire getting ready for school this morning. She is a ten year old girl; light, energetic, singing a funny song, then telling the story of waiting for the bus yesterday. Eight hundred kids packed into the gym and the assistant principal is on her microphone screaming,"Shut your mouth!"

I will not shut my mouth.