A Whole New World

In the north, when winter comes the world is made new in a way that the other seasons must envy.  The summer here seems ancient, or all together devoid of time, with the earth's bones all exposed - poking out of mountain tops, turning to dust underfoot.  A land where time has slowed and the lazy sun can't even be bothered with a nightly trip to the netherworld, summer unwinds itself like a rusty music box.  The spring's arrival is a carnival of green.  A social event where the hibernators come out of their holes and seek mates, food, and summer employment.  The spring in the north is a loud and festive event.  The autumn is the summer's super-nova.  A brief and brilliant time of colourful, intense and all-encompassing light before the darkness settles in, and the summer fades to memory.  This period of time between the colours and the first snow is stark indeed, and sets the stage for something more, something huge and entirely novel.  When it arrives, winter seems to me to be a season of genesis.

Nothing speaks of potential like a blank canvas, and when the first snow gently covers the world in white, a new spirit of creation is born into it.  All traces of yesterday's mistakes vanish.  The very thought of having lost anything is forgotten.  The land is asleep, but it is a rich sleep of vivid dreams.  Every step on every trail is one's own discovery of a new way to a new and mysterious place.  The quiet of the long night is full of whispers.  Trees tell their secrets to each other in tongues of ice.  Paws and boots chant their way through the unknown, gently.  The moon rules this kingdom with her silver omnipresence.  This is the fertile void, the flooded plain, the blank canvass of imagination where ideas swirl and drift, never settling long enough to take real shape.  The air too is as new as it will be all year.  All scents that floated through the summer and into the fall are captured, each into it's own snowflake, and locked up until the world awakes.  Only the cold remains, reducing all smells to one common purity.

I was born in the north in the winter, and I feel deeply connected to it.  I was new in the snow, and feel as though I am again tonight.  This newness that I now revel in is not only a product of three days of the blessed white genesis falling, but a response to the newness in my life.  I have become a father and behind me sleeps a beautiful mother and her dream of the future - our daughter.  A new beginning, as fresh as the snow falling outside, and as pure, and as full of mystery and potential.

Smiling Down on Us

Sometimes there is no doubt about whether a decision is the right one or not. Sometimes there are signs that confirm that yes, we are on the path that we were meant to travel.  I made a life choice last week that will shape my future dramatically: I asked my partner to marry me.  The idea's been brewing for a while now and Friday was the right time.  We were on a picnic by the sea and the sun had been shining all day.  We were both feeling an immense and powerful happiness and were talking about it, when I suggested a way to ensure a lifetime of such happiness and popped the question.  The answer was the one I was hoping for and there was much rejoicing.  The sunny day had developed a sort of soft glow as the afternoon waned and, looking to the west, we saw two well formed sundogs; one on either side of the powdered sun.  There was a ring that followed around at the radius of the sundogs only much fainter.  I've seen thousands of skies, no two alike and none remotely like the one I saw last Friday.  It was as though the whole world was fuzzy, kind of like fog, but fog made of sleepy sunshine.  As we rolled in the meadow, laughed, hugged and wiped a few tears of joy from our eyes we beheld a rainbow inverted, as a smile, high in the sky.  The colours were crisp and bright and as we watched, it only became more defined.  I felt as though I had lost my footing in reality and stumbled into some kind of magical world.  There was a crescent moon right next to this arc, smiling too as smiles are contagious.  The other folks at the park were preoccupied with picking daffodils, gazing out to sea, or just soaking up the delicious flavor of that rare early spring sun softened by high altitude ice and did not notice the miracle happening overhead.  It was a sight which seemed to be happening exclusively for my girl and I.  A private moment where the Great Spirit was smiling approval at our agreement to join our lives to each other.  I felt honored and blessed by this sign and was sure that what was happening high above us was a direct result of the power of our Love.  And we laughed and wept a little more.

All the treasures that can be held in safes, written as secrets, or sunk in lagoons do not come close to the rarity and clarity of the gifts that Nature offers.

Liquid Sky

It was a rainy week, as is often the case here.  I found myself listening to soft music and drinking a lot of tea.  The volume of rain that falls here is minimal compared with monsoon countries. The power of the rain on this quiet island is revealed slowly through opening blooms and rising rivers.  Places that feel the might of a monsoon storm must fear the rain to some extent.  I read that hurricanes in Central America can dump a meter of water.  The power of that rush is enough to scour holes into the earth and pull the sides of mountains down onto valley bottoms.  The rain that some would lament here, in this pampered part of the world, is such a peaceful blessing to me.  Washing the streets and sidewalks, swelling the buds and leaves, giving us the water that flows from our taps.  I welcome and rejoice in the arrival of April showers and thank the One Mom for delivering our water in small doses.

I mentioned the magic of fluid dynamics in my last post and feel compelled to do so again here, as we seem to be  on a bit of a liquid theme.  The rings that are generated by falling drops onto still puddles and ponds are another example of the perfect nature of Nature.  Each one following it's destiny of singular circularity while crossing and enveloping all the other rings.  The raindrop that becomes the puddle is celebrated with circles, as is every transformation that happens naturally.  The circle, spiral, and sphere are the visible and tangible expressions of spiritual matters beyond our understanding.  Transformation and formation, destruction and reconstruction.  All jobs that water can do with ease and grace, if given time and space to do them.  Let it rain!  Pour Life down on me!

Hanami's in the Air

I recently read a book that outlined some of the ways in which ancient and indigenous cultures describe the spirit.  The roots of words like psyche and spirit have common ancestors with the roots of wind and breath and air.  This idea seems so evident and yet, so sublime.  The invisible force that sustains all life - air.  The spirit that unifies us and moves through us - breath.  That which is everywhere, and yet can't be held or seen.  When this sacred force chooses to reveal itself to us, the holy nature of its presence is felt when we are open to sense it.  A breeze or wind can bring to us the scents of distant hills full of flowers, cause our hairs to stand on end, bring tears to our eyes, and even cause us to fall to our knees.  One of my favorite manifestations of the divine is fluid dynamics (pardon the scientific terminology).  An ordered dance of  a liquid, always obeying the laws of physics, and yet, so complex that a measurement or prediction is impossible in all but the most basic of scenarios.


This is a very sweet time of year in Japan as the Hanami celebrations are in full swing.  The tradition originated with members of the imperial court viewing and walking under the cherry blossoms at their peak.  Of coarse, there's sake and feasting and poetry and general merriment, but the reason the emperor enjoyed the flowers is because they are a metaphor for life: luminous and beautiful yet fleeting and ephemeral.  


Today I witnessed the wind taking some of these beautiful flowers up into the arms of eternity in the most amazing vortex of pink.  When I walk among the tiny flung fragments of spring, I see the forming of another summer take the life of another spring and make it's passing into something wonderful.  The blossom's brief time has ended and the transformation is attended by a sacred force that I can not only see, but feel and smell too.  I feel the spirit kiss my skin, and as I inhale the sweet delicate perfume, all the little hairs on my neck stand to get a better look at God.

Retreating

This is a generous word if ever there was one.  It not only allows us the possibility of escaping some affront but, if dissected, becomes a special gift, given repeatedly.  Today I snuck off of the asphalt for a moment in the woods as a way to recharge my batteries and give myself a little gift of presence.  I did it twice, it felt so good.  A retreat to the mossy woods in the morning gave me a furry green outcrop of rock on which to offer my worries to the sparkling water that festooned the tiny leaves and branches of the alter.  The afternoon offered me the most excited dog to inspire another retreat; this time to the top of a rocky hill covered with Garry Oaks and their friendly meadows beneath them.  It's the early spring and the wildflowers are just beginning to show.  The grass was juicy and the soil beneath black and soaked.  The wind was up, but somehow we seemed to find some protected spots that remained still.  The branches above swung and danced, singing with the wind's words in the earth's throat.  We both left feeling calmed and cleansed.

The construct of the city will attack your senses because it is designed to do so.  "Watch OUT!" holler the traffic signs.  "It's TIME o'clock" boasts the circle on the tower.  "YOU BUY NOW!"  screeches every poster and billboard.  As I consciously awaken my senses, it becomes more important that I ditch the city for much needed retreats.  Giving a gift to my soul that will come in very handy when the frenzied Army of Noise is mustering for another rush hour.                    
                                                            Escape.
                                                                          Reward.
                                                                                          Repeat.

The Little Book I Never Wrote

As I sought the titles for these empty fields in my blog sign up, I looked to Robert Service and found all I needed.  He speaks of "the little book I never wrote" in "My Masterpiece" and my gut bubbles a bit as I realize that, as I approach the end of my fourth decade, I've never written for the masses anything more than a few short verses.  And the masses I shared them with were the few friends who also felt the passion for poetry.  I feel life shifting again as I prepare to move to that land that R. Service distilled into the pages of his notebooks. The fact that the two poems I looked at spoke both of the undocumented inspiration and of the well from which all inspiration flows, "What Nature Offered", leads me to believe that I'm onto something necessary and timely.

Though it's always a challenge for us to see that we can do things at all, let alone not suck entirely at them, I have been learning that worrying I can't do something (like all types of worrying) is in vain and will soon be proven an utter waste of time.  It is this that has kept me from jotting down my thoughts and stories.  My fears do not serve the readership that is waiting to be born.  My inhibitions will not be appreciated by the characters who's lives, until now have been confined to the echoing rooms of my mind.  The music that plays in the bar rooms of books will not draw that sigh from your lungs, dear reader, unless I tell you that it's playing, and that the chords are so lonesome in the way they end entirely before being reluctantly followed by more. And how each one carries it's heavy, smoke filled sound to the few who find their jaded ears in such a dreary establishment; hiding their beauty in sadness and their sadness in brown bottles.

Nature has offered me so much.  So many moments of total perfection in so many days of rapture; it will be interesting to see which fragments end up here.  And although I find the placement of sunsets and laughter here in cyberspace more than a bit disconcerting,  it's just English anyways.  It can't even come close.  I will tell you of what I see in the words that I have.   Today I watched from the window of the hospital the grey day pass over the sea, and the mountains beyond.  The wind would excite the trees for a few minutes and the tops of the mountains would come into view for a while.  Then a long white worm would crawl in from the Pacific and snuggle into the straight.  Mist would still the land again and the mountains would fade back into my imagination.  The rain would start and the world would enter into another level of mystery as the drops rolling down the glass pulled the truth of the light even farther into the depths of my interpreting.  Beauty persisted out there in the green wet afternoon. And in the hospital room, compassion shone light through the grey-est of times onto beauty's persistence.