Writing 108 mala

She sits at the kitchen table, in front of her computer, tapping her pen, pencil, mouse buttons, keyboard keys. What will she write about today? It is the first mala, bead, word, document. The first of 108, more or less. Um..um..um…um…um, what to write? Shhh… breathe… let all be as it is.

Her fingers begin the rhythmic, non-rhythmic tapping. She has typed since she was a small child, her father bringing home the aged Remington (surely one of god’s earlier creations) when he replaced it in his business with a newer version of same. He needed one to type up the bills he sent the customers who may or not pay them on time, if ever. But it’s a business, and the bills must be typed for the work that he performs, painstakingly, in his shop, repairing electric motors that people bring to him or that he collects when he makes emergency housecalls to extract motors of big old washing machines, refrigerators, or other machines that you can’t easily load into the car or truck and drop off at the small shop that is her dad’s. Lucky her, she got to learn to type before they started teaching those things in school, and importantly, when it was still fun. The Remington came to her with a how-to book, her dad was big into how-to books, everything he knew he had learned that way. Well, and he was big into practice too, of course. Which explains why he was such a whiz at playing the old steel-string guitar (he let her borrow it and the how-to books for that as well, he had long outgrown them) and the fiddle which he no longer owned one of. But you should have heard him play “Turkey in the Straw,” even years after he had last touched a fiddle, and long after his fingers had thickened up.

Yeah, so maybe with a little practice, she could actually do this 108 thing. Or at least 1.108 begins with 1, which is more than 0 (not to mention what else it is in today’s digital age, or the tight relationship those two, the one, the nothing, carry on). 8 is her current personal year in numerology. It is also the sum of the numbers in her date of birth reduced to a single digit. 1 + 0 + 8 adds up to 9, which is what the letters of the name on her birth certificate add up to, in the way numerology tallies things. It all sounds good, promising, to her. Yes, she likes the new old focus on 1. 1 is everything, in a manner of speaking. You can add anything to it: 0, 2, 13, 59, 108, -ness. But in the end, or at least where it counts, it is still just itself. What it is. One.

Re: Writing 108 mala

I really liked this Rudyan - the last line is just perfect, full of power and truth. I love the reflection on the past, the relationship that she has with typing, writing, her father, the how-to-books, music… I found that I was just grinning by the end and nodding, and then thinking, yes, yes more more! lovely beginning lovely One :-)

xo
la

Re: Writing 108 mala

Rudyan,

I am there with your “I” character on this one, remembering my grandmother's ancient typewriter that I spent hours pecking at, and remembering my parents' system of billing that rarely brought timely payment, but was ever-necessary. I truly can relate to this. Great details.

Yes indeed, one has a unique presence and power, and it is stated so well here. I love the -ness.
I am scrolling down now to see what the next beads bring.

Andrea

Re: Writing 108 mala

Ruth - I really like the way this started out, and how it immediately changes directions, even though it's telling the same story.  The unspoken reference that writing is much like prayer, or meditation.   ”let all be as it is”

Then the glimpses we are given, as readers, to a past that is rich with details.  We forget for a moment that we are talking about the writer that we met in the first paragraph, and instead, are transported to a time when there was a small girl pecking away in the shadow of her father, warming up the keys of the old workhorse Remington that generated those necessary-but-sometimes-ignored bills that kept a roof over her head.  All very tight, and quickly drawing a picture of someone we can relate to, and want to encourage.

Then the numerical references, that tie back to the title (and perhaps to more of the story).  And that delicious ending: 

“Yes, she likes the new old focus on 1. 1 is everything, in a manner of speaking. You can add anything to it: 0, 2, 13, 59, 108, -ness. But in the end, or at least where it counts, it is still just itself. What it is. One.”

I already was planning to read whatever might come after, but after the above excerpt, it became mandatory that I bookmark this and come back when I had more time.  Today, I have a little more time.  I'm headed back into it to read what comes next.  Enjoyed getting lost in this one. 

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Two

Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one… (Three Dog Night)

Nah, it can be one helluva lot worse, and two to the power of x (use your imagination to fill in the x = ? part) times lonelier. Hey, I didn’t say has to be, I said can be. Two united is heaven, two divided is… duality, with all that's come to mean.

She’s back at the table, having cleared the supper dishes and washed them, and having noticed how easily she can change the table’s function now that she’s one again, or more or less one again, at least not two with a totally separate human being body hanging around, wondering why she’s so obsessed with the computer, with writing, not so much with editing because that’s after all how she makes her living if you can call it that, but with words and lately with this DD thing, what kind of good can possibly come out of that? and for that matter, whoever invented the computer ought to be shot.

Ok, so she’s back, alone, staring at the blank page straight ahead, or would be if she hadn’t just dropped her eyes for writing meditation. Counting the beads that appear in the shape of keys under her lowered eyelids, under her curved fingers, counting the fingers and the finger taps as they press in seeming random fashion on the keys that astonishingly translate into real words on the screen that she sneaks a peak at every now and then to satisfy the little editor self that sits beside her, inside her, well, inside her mind. NOT to be confused with who she really is.

The mind, or at least matter in the mind is not reliable, it changes from minute to minute like white fluffies chasing each other across a blue sky on the windiest of windy days. A shapeshifter, trickster, that’s what it is, the mind. It tells you one thing, then without warning changes it to something else entirely. Shows you a split-second shot of a small mogul and before you know it, it’s convinced you you’re facing Mt. Everest. Without the Olympic torch. And either you’re at the bottom with an unbelievably arduous, really impossible (except you know it’s been done) climb, or you’re at the top with no conceivable way to get down (that you can think of, and don’t forget it’s the mind that thinks you).

Or, it makes you forget why you left the x, er, ex, ok, let stand. The unknown quantity. Out of sight, out of mind. No, that’s not it, if it were I expect that devious coyote-mind would be much less of a problem in this case. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Ah, yes.

The 20-minute alarm goes.

Her mind goes: What is this drivel? This is supposed to be a spiritual exercise, for posting on the spiritual board!

Without thinking she goes: Everything is spiritual.

Her god-self goes: Yes! She’s learning!

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Two

I don't want to lose the flow, and will try to keep reading from this point forward, but couldn't help laughing at the  “and for that matter, whoever invented the computer ought to be shot”

Interested to see where we go from here ….

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Three

I walked yesterday afternoon in Ross Bay Cemetery. I hadn’t planned to, but I was going downtown and taking the long way round — I like to take different routes, not because I get bored but just because. So I was strolling along Fairfield, a long curvy road that eventually leads to town, when I noticed the cemetery across the road on my left. I kept walking and walking and the cemetery just seemed to keep pace with me — it’s huge and old and open, I think nobody’s been buried there since about the 1950's, and when you look across through the trees, past monuments of all sizes and shapes and shades of grey, and crypts too, you can see the cars speeding along Dallas Road and beyond that the wide expanse of the Juan de Fuca Strait. As I was walking along admiring the view, every so often another wrought-iron-gated entrance beckoned me in an open invitation. Why not, I thought, I’m in no hurry to get anywhere.

Now, me and cemeteries — well, maybe I’ll just keep it short and say, hey, been there, done that, repeat ad nauseam. And yet, I felt a pull to enter. When I did I felt nothing but peace, a great sense of peace. I don’t mean just personal peace, peace within myself. I mean a surrounding atmosphere of peace and welcome and hey, it’s been a while, where ya been, nice to see ya. Can’t say I’ve ever felt that in a cemetery before, at least not since I was a kid and we used to go tobogganing in the cemetery of our small town because it was the only place that had a hill. Not sure I felt peace or any of those things then, but I certainly didn’t feel its lack, I didn’t even know anyone who had died yet. And we didn’t worry too much about ghosts either, in broad daylight and when we were having a blast racing each other down the slopes.

Maybe I felt peace now, here at Ross Bay, because I have finally been able to lay the ghosts to rest that I had insisted on carrying around with me for so many years — decades, some of them.

I was heading for the exit gates when I heard, “Excuse me!”

I stopped and looked around to see two women coming toward me.

“Sorry to bother you,” the younger one said. “Do you happen to know where Emily Carr is buried?”

“Oh,” I replied, “I guess she would be, wouldn’t she? I’ve no idea, it’s my first time here.”

“Us too, we were just walking past and came in on a whim.”

It probably happens all the time. And I’m thinking this fall I’ll sign up for one of those tours they offer every Hallowe’en at midnight. It’ll be nice to hear about other people’s ghosts for a change.

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Three

Rudyan,

This one brings up so many possibilities for me, inspires me to do some writing of my own. There is a lot here that is unsaid, and that makes what is said even stronger. The pull toward the cemetery is strong, and I like the way this is demonstrated in the dialogue. I especially enjoyed the image of tobagganing on the cemetery slopes as a child. The last line is just wonderful.


Andrea

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Three

Dear Ruth,
I started to read this today. I have never been here before and I see that I have been missing much. I have read down to seven and want to finish, but wanted to interject here because this struck a chord with me.
I love all of it anyway. Your words speak the truth so artfully.
I am drawn in so effortlessly.
I recently found myself in a cemetery. I was alone with time to kill before I had catch a ferry.  
There is something about being there. reading those stones and feeling the presence of the dead. 
I used to ride my bike and play in cemeteries as well as a child.
I love the Ash. Why can't I be like that tree. Just stand there and take it and be okay.
I love your words.

Re: Writing 108 mala --- Four

And who by fire, who by water, …
                                —Leonard Cohen


Emotions pulse through the ages of my life
like a sea overrunning its shore,

in waves of periodicity
carefully calibrated by tides
answering to the moon’s timing,

each wave new, the pattern old as life, or time itself.

This particular anger against M feels so familiar,
I rail against what I take to be his injustice,
rant about my seeming lack of power,
lash out at who I see as the guard
holding the key to the cage
that keeps me captive.

I weep
with the frustration
of not getting why I can’t just be done
with it, once and for all,
this dark night…


The crack of dawn:
I am the keeper and the cage,
What’s this???—I’m self-imprisoned!


A wave-surge clears away the dregs
of anger I’ve let go. Receding
wavelets worry up a corner
of some other thing,
still clung to

Re: Writing 108 mala

Rudyan,

This poem is so powerful. There is such a truth to the self-imprisonment idea presented here. So many of us fall into our own traps of inability to let go of anger, outdated ideologies and such that we truly do wall ourselves in, figuratively speaking. People cling to what they know rather than openly accept change as a possibility opening up. Sorry for the generalizations about the human race, but I think you hit on an archetypal truth with this poem. At least it seems that way for me.

Andrea

Re: Writing 108 mala --- Five

Where am I going?

I have no idea.

Can I move forward without knowing? To avoid this feeling of being stuck, rooted in my positions, in aspects of the past, in … ?

Rootedness is not groundedness. Or is it? (Or is everything, everything else? — no separation.)

I might be the ash that lives outside my window, firmly rooted but spreading its branches, reaching out.

How many lives has it touched, without ever becoming uprooted, ungrounded? — Essentially without moving from where it stands. Except as it bows to or bends under the outpourings of clouds, in gentle tears of healing or deep-cleansing torrents. Except as it dances, lover-like or in wild abandon, with winds on shore leave playing man-about-town. Except as it scratches ghostly fingertips against my window pane at dead of night, saying hi from the eye of some storm, or during the day offers an invitation to frolic, hold a picnic or tête-à-tête under its branches.

The ash’s failure to move from its spot is not the same as me sitting on my ass, wanting to know more than “open up” before moving a muscle. It doesn’t ask, Why? It doesn’t say, Tell me what to do. It just opens itself every day to what comes. To wind and rain. To birds, nesting, testing their wings, serenading the world and each other from its arms. To children, climbing, squirrels playing hide-and-seek among the leaf-clustered tendrils that dot its branches. To anyone or anything seeking shelter from the elements, refuge from predators, shade after too much sun.

To me, staring longingly through its fluttering aliveness into its heart, or where I imagine its heart might be, and mouthing my mantra, Tell me what it is I need to know. I already know the answer, Open up. It’s not that secret I’m after, it’s the one that would, but won’t, tell me the answer to the question I’m ashamed to ask: How?

The ash, standing still, grows, flows. It accepts without question, moves forward, a conduit for life. It knows no other way of being.

So, where am I going?

Yeah, moving forward. Growing. Reaching out.

Inevitably, standing still is also moving forward. I read that somewhere, somewhen. At least I think I did. 

Re: Writing 108 mala

I'm really enjoying reading these pieces and the echoes they have for me … love number 3 and the Ash tree … you've written about this tree before and I'm familiar with it, but this piece has created a relationship with it for me.

 I no longer just see it. I can feel it.

Jim x

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Six

What if I were to write as if my life depended on it? I wrote in a small notebook I keep on my night stand.

Writing as if my life depended on it. Not only writing, but submitting as if my life depended on it. This is about flow, really, isn’t it?


A day or two ago I was in a store waiting to pay for a few items I had picked up. As always I had joined what I thought would be the shortest line. This time the shortest line happened to be at the only till that also sold lottery tickets. The woman being served was in fact buying lottery tickets. She started by cashing in a few old tickets on which she had won a free ticket in the same lottery. No problem there, but then she couldn’t decide which of the many lotteries available she should spend her money on. So there was a lot of humming and hawing as to which lotteries she wanted to focus on, how many tickets to buy, and so on.

Five minutes later she was still at it, and I was still first in line, after her. Other shoppers had joined me in this shortest line and quickly abandoned it for the one other till that was open, which had a longer lineup but was moving. I was stuck in this one because, well, I was next in line. But, I was in no particular hurry and besides, I was fascinated by this very serious middle-aged woman buying lottery tickets as if her life depended on it. When she finally finished, her wallet was $89 lighter.

After she left I handed my purchases to the clerk, who had remained good-humoured throughout.

“Just this,” I remarked, “or wait, hmm, I don’t know, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket or two…”

She could see I was joking and smiled, but gave me the pitch anyway. “Well, Super Lotto has the biggest payout right now, $27 million,” she said, adding that she usually buys a ticket when there’s a really big payout.

“Do you win?” I asked.

She laughed. “No, but you never know, somebody has to.”

Behind me, a male customer waiting his turn at the till chuckled. He had obviously overheard our conversation. “I used to pray and pray that I would win the lottery,” he twinkled, “but I never did. One day I heard a big voice. 'James,' it boomed, 'listen to me. You’ve been praying for many years that you would win the lottery. Lately I’ve heard you grumbling about me not listening to your prayers and how maybe it’s true that I’m dead, or at least deaf. But hey, I’ve heard you all along, James. I’ve been trying to accommodate you and I’ve figured out what the problem is. So help me out a bit here, ok? Buy a damn ticket!'”


I think about that. Yes, I wanna be a writer, I wanna be a published writer, I wanna be a well-known and money-making writer. God says, “Help me out here, write something and don’t shelve it, don’t say, 'It’s not good enough,' don’t say, 'What if I fail, what if I get rejected?' Send it out. Give me a hand, I can't do it without your help.”

God is powerless without my help?! Looks like I had it the wrong way round.

And boy, does that put me squarely in the driver’s seat!

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Six

:)

Wonderful read, Ruth,

and not only that. I know that you know that I know exactly what you're talking about here!
Thanks for the inspiration.

Gotta go now and give God a hand in making me a successful writer…
(successfull spelling ppp: productive, published and payed!)

:)

Re: Writing 108 mala

What a beautiful and ordinary metaphor that prods me also … I never pray for money but I do use an affirmation from Florence Scovell Shin.

I'm ready and willing
to receive more money
than I need
from sources known and unknown
at once.

It always works for me and she recommends that the affirmation is said as a demand of the universe (because I deserve it) and that the demand is felt within the body and not just the voice.

You really inspired me with this piece Ruth and I think I might rework this affirmation toward writing :–)

Jim x

PS

 I find if I embody an image of myself as a Gandalph character (and adopt an appropriate pose) with the sort of power he has, and then make the affirming demand of the universe it works :–)

Re: Writing 108 mala -- Seven

Yesterday was my eldest sister’s birthday. Or would have been. When she died she was younger than I am now. It was a Saturday night. She had washed her hair and put it up in rollers so it would be nice for church the next day. She was sitting in her chair, enjoying a cup of tea and a read before bed, when the in-breath that we come to expect will follow each exhale, didn’t. For the second time in her life, her lungs failed her. And this time her heart did also.

She was not quite a teenager when she was struck down by poliomyelitis. It was 1952, shortly before the first polio vaccine came out. There is a black-and-white photo of her that must have been taken the previous summer, probably at my grandparents’ farm—she is standing in the yard, tall, free and very much alive, wearing a white blouse and dark skirt. I don’t remember that. I have a single memory of her walking. She had been told to set the table and having no choice she did so, her resistance to the task shown only in the force with which she slammed dishes and flatware in place. My father gave her a good wallop on the butt as a way of reminding her who was boss.

When the polio hit and took hold of her, it paralysed her from the waist down and rendered obsolete her breathing apparatus. She was whisked to the local hospital, and quickly transferred to the children’s hospital in Winnipeg. There she was settled into an iron lung, which would remain her home for much of her teenage years. There is another photo of her in this humongous machine, only her head visible, and she’s smiling at a young girl visitor. The girl was also a patient at the children’s hospital, but a short-term one—she had broken an arm.

For a long time we thought that my sister would die there in that hospital, but she showed us all. She began to breathe on her own, to spend less time in the machine. She underwent intensive physiotherapy to recondition her muscles, the muscles for which it would make a difference—she had retained use of her upper body. After a while, she was allowed to spend the occasional weekend at home. A high hospital bed was moved into the room that would become hers—it would be her first time in this house we had moved to shortly after she was taken away. Eventually, her ability to breathe unaided returned and she came home to stay. By this time she had been fitted with a wheelchair.

Her body may have failed her, but her mind remained active. Most of the long-term patients in the children’s hospital went to school or were tutored, their education furthered as much as permitted by the patient’s illness. When she came home for good she enrolled in our local high school and finished her education. She moved back to the city then, completed a secretarial course and started supporting herself, even living by herself for the rest of her life. Self-sufficient. A miracle, really, even if not a walking one.

Happy birthday, Mary!
The machine is empty.
The chair is empty.
I feel your presence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iron_lung_CDC.jpg

Of Ashes and Writing Bones

The ash that I had come to rely on as friend, teacher, symbol of groundedness; that watched over me for all the years I’ve lived in this house; that ash is gone, its physical manifestation now confined to a stump topping roots that still hold firm deep in the earth. It is true that somewhere an elderly couple breathe a little easier for the extra money they will make from selling the fire-logs the tree-fellers cut for them. And somewhere some folk will enjoy a little extra warmth from burning those logs in their fireplace this winter. But for me, I look out and see space where the ash’s luxurious summer foliage and more drab winter greyness were a constant comfort: I am here.

True, it is still here in my remembering, the ash, but its branches no longer reach out to me at my high window, no longer beckon me to come and play, or warn me to close my windows against the coming storm. No longer do squirrels peep curious side glances at me while chattering the latest gossip with their neighbours. And no crows gawk while warning me off the blushing pears in the next tree over: “Mine! Mine!”

Like the ash, I too am being uprooted—trying to stay grounded while uprooting myself from this beautiful city I’ve lived in for 15 years today, while preparing to move back to my home town to look after my mother.

Yes, I have put down roots here, but older, stronger roots pull me back to the place of my growing up, of my entrance into the world. Not the same house, but back home, role reversal notwithstanding.

Uprooting myself to go back to my roots.

Here’s an interesting thing. It is only in the last year that I have permitted myself to write again freely, as I did before I came to consider it unsafe for me to write in the only way I knew how to—by putting my soul on the page. All those in-between years of ungroundedness, of trying to figure out what life was about, what I was about.

Over the past half decade I have uncovered many forgotten facets of who I am, and finally, the writing. Not writing academically, not writing journals that can be kept under lock and key. Those were ways of writing I discovered I was good at along the way, and I liked that their relative safety allowed me to write while remaining in hiding. In contrast, the past year has been a show-and-tell of giving others a glimpse of where I live, as the expression goes. And a coming full circle back to what the child gave up in order to be accepted, to feel safe, all those years ago.

Here then the 3am epiphany:

i am writing is me

Yes, it is the writing that grounds me, again and again. And the knowing that as long as I stay true to my self by continuing to write from the inside out, nothing can hold me back.

Turns out life isn’t about safety at all, it’s about, well, living, changing,  and yes, periodic uprootings and putting roots down again. “Writing the bones,” as Natalie Goldberg puts it, opens me to risks I might not otherwise incur, but on the other hand, it also doubles as a safety net, grounding me while I fly.

Re: Of Ashes and Writing Bones

So sad about the ash, Ruth. How come they cut it down?

Your musings are lovely, and inspirational, a good groundedness, after the ash tree has gone.

Thanks for continuing your 108, dear.

Love,

Tom

Writing 108 mala: Here and Now

(Note: This is a repost of my Sep 10th response to the Here & Now exercise. I'm including it here because it feels very much a part of my mala thread.)

Here and now I hear a mournful howling from downstairs. To their collection of rats, my neighbours have added the cutest and cuddliest puppy imaginable, part shiatsu, tan-flecked white thick curly hair you can warm your hands in. I am seeing him in my mind because he is howling and he is howling because they have shut him up in their apartment yet again while they go for their daily constitutional, fetching DVD’s from the library that they will spend the afternoon and evening watching. (Do you detect a smidgin of judgment in my words? Perhaps they leave him as company for the rats, just as people sometimes keep a goat as company for their horses. Or is it donkeys?) O Be Joyful—that’s the puppy’s name—thinks he is the centre of their world. They think he is spoiled. Is that why they leave him behind, tie him up, deprive him of exercise? At the moment he sounds anything but joyful. But what do I know? Maybe to him mournful howling is a way of being joyful, of anticipating togetherness once again, of calling out: I miss you, hurry back!
Here and now I hear the whoosh of traffic and catch the reflected lightning flashes of the noon sun glancing off cars whizzing down Foul Bay Road. And now, a momentary concentration of white light on my wall as a chorus of idling motors line up behind the red light I can see only in my mind’s eye. A whiff of gasoline fumes grabs the moment, briefly erasing from my mind the anticipated pleasure of a pot of freshly-brewed coffee. When the machine’s burbling pulls me back I get up to pour the golden contents of the pot into my waiting cup. Light fills the kitchen. This room is so much brighter now, I think, it’s because fall’s coming, the sun is moving back round to this south-facing window. But no, it’s brighter than I’ve ever seen it, and it comes to me why and, remembering, I’m filled with longing for the ash that is gone, that used to muffle the noise, filter the light, absorb the carbon dioxide. But who am I, calling the traffic noise, even if I much prefer silence? Who am I to complain about light flashes and greater-than-before access to light here in my ivory tower? Who am I to think I need protection from anything manmade or natural?

Here and now I look out my window and see so much more of the world than I used to see. The street lined with maples, oaks, elms as noble and wise as the ash that used to send squirrels up to pass the time of day with me as I worked. The huge parking lot the new owners built below. A succession of green lawns. Sidewalks lined with colourful peonies, nasturtium, and who knows what else. Pedestrians in multi-hued garb strolling, running, some to catch a bus at the stop I can now see just where the street curves off, others walking their dogs.

Here and now I hear my neighbours returning and O Be’s joyful: Welcome home!

Here and Now Again

It is a rainy day in Victoria. Light grey clouds float low against the higher expanse of white that temporarily hides the cerulean heavens, keeping the star that lights our days from blessing us with our shadows. They are out there though, the blue and gold. Just give them half a chance and they will find their way through the smallest sliver of a break in clouds.

Even now, it is obvious the sun is just biding its time. I can tell by the sharp glare of light that has me squinting at the white page of my computer screen. I half-think about getting up to alter the slant of the mini-blind that covers the upper part of this tall window that frames my view, but resist the temptation. I don’t want to miss one minute of the way it is right now.

I think of sun-ignited raindrops waltzing on branches before they let go, before their moisture evaporates in the sun’s warmth. They’ll have to dance on the pear tree though, now that the ash is gone; and I’ll have to move my chair back a bit to watch them.

I roll my chair back to test how far, and sit, mouth agape, drinking in the thousand suns of the tall maple that stands just behind the fence line that marks the edge of the vast parking lot that uncounted trees gave up their lives for. A year ago the maple’s crest was just barely visible to me through the leafy branches of the ash. A year ago the maple was obscured behind other trees, now gone, and behind the ramshackle green garages that used to line the back of the property.

Just a few months ago I felt sad to see so many trees, and especially my beloved ash, taken. Now I am grateful, not that trees had to go, but that my world has opened up to the extent that it has, affording me this broader, more distant horizon, permitting me this almost unobstructed view of the maple’s splendour, with only the pear now standing in its way.

It’s more than my view that has opened up in these past months. In ways that I’m not quite sure how to talk about yet, I feel so much more expansive now than I did then. My world, my universe has broadened measurably.

I am blessed.

Re: Writing 108 mala

Rudyan,

It is so hard to do a descriptive piece and keep the reader mesmerized the whole time. I felt you had me from the first sentence, just from the mood of the piece. It was a mood I wanted to share. The observations of shadow and light, the sun wanting to peek through at any given opportunity, the connection to the maple's strength and endurance, and the fruit-bearing presence of the pear tree. There is a melding here of writer into setting, a presence in a world this character seems to have come more to terms with. I like the adjustment, and the liberation that is felt but cannot yet be explained.

Lovely.

xo
Andrea

Not What You'd Expect

—It’s not what you’d expect.

She looked over at the prayer plant, most of its leaves perching at attention atop stiffly upright stems. The prayer plant’s members always assumed this stance at a certain time of evening. She looked at her computer clock. Roughly 9 pm. Summer, winter, fall, spring. It didn’t matter that the hours of daylight differed widely between the seasons, that right now, a month away from winter solstice, the sun set at 4:30. Waning daylight was obviously not their clue, they did not take their call to prayer from visual signs. Must be something internal, circadian rhythms, she supposed, wasn’t that what was supposed to govern such things? In any case, she had given up trying to figure out how the plant told time. Perhaps it existed in a timeless state, like one that she herself aspired to. Or aspired to aspiring to.

It was always the stalks in the centre of the ceramic pot that started the process, that led the outlying stalks gently prayerward. Some of the outliers took their time, some never really quite attained to the prayer posture. She thought she herself would likely be an outlier if she were a member of a plant that prayed, like this one. But still, a prayer plant outlier was nevertheless a member of the group, outlier or not. Didn’t all groups have their leaders, their avid followers, and their stragglers? Strugglers?

Earlier, she had just sat down to write, wondering what would appear on the page, worrying that no words might appear at all, when out of the corner of her eye she had seen movement, the tallest stalk, the one right in the middle, clearly the leader, had jerked suddenly upright. Call to prayer. Boy, that was one dude that lived in the now. That’s when she thought she had heard those words: It’s not what you think.

—It’s not what you’d expect, the tall green one corrected her now, —those were my exact words.

—What isn’t what I’d expect? she asked, round-eyed.

—This prayer thing. It’s not what you’d expect. It’s not as if some god-presence is calling me, saying it’s time to pray. My life is about prayer. Bowing, reaching leaves out to the light, stretching upright at night, it’s all prayer. Drinking, assuming you remember to water me, is praying. Not drinking too. Breathing is praying. New shoots and leaves unfurling  is praying. So is old ones shrivelling up and falling to the earth.

—Prayer is such a misleading word really. You humans go to church, you kneel or stand up, fold your hands in a certain way, bow your heads or lift them up, raise your eyes or close them, sit cross-legged on a mat watching your breath, all depending on how you were taught or what you think you need to do to be heard by some mystic or mythical deity. It’s not like that. Praying is eating, it’s moving, growing, drinking, eliminating, having an orgasm. Prayer is not something you do, it’s something you are.

—And by the way, me jerking up like that? That was orgasm, pure and simple. Whatever it takes, eh?

What It Sounds Like

—Hop to it! What are you waiting for???

The words came clear as a bell. In fact, clearer. And darker. They sounded more like the strident voice of a gong. Like doom.

My head shot up, startled out of my reading of fellow-gaian's posts. I don't really know why I looked up, because I knew I was alone in my apartment. I am mostly alone when I'm in my apartment. I like it that way. It's my space, and I'm a pretty private person. PPP.

—So what's up? I answered the voice, perhaps a trifle rudely. —And who are you anyway?

It didn't occur to me it might be my higher self, it sounded too much like the old blustering, fear-filled ego self I thought I'd buried way back in my morning-pages days. Hadn't heard that one for a while.

—Why, your higher self, of course, doughhead. I knew you hadn't been listening. You haven't heard a word I've said in ages, the voice accused.

I turned back to my computer, closed my internet connection and patted the keyboard. —Time for a little nap, I murmured. This would need my full attention.

—Ok, I said to the voice. —Explain yourself. Why are you masquerading as my HS?

—I was bored, the voice pouted. —Who do you think you are, sticking me inside those stupid morning pages of yours? And in effect gluing my lips together so it takes me forever to unpry them, never mind get any words out?

—Now you know how I felt all those years, listening to you grouching and complaining and can't-you-do-anything-right-ing at me from morning till night. I just got powered up one day and said: Enough. That's all. And started journaling as if my life depended on it. I smiled. —And so it did.

—Not real-ly. The voice spoke in a cheeky singsong now. —Not real-ly. 'Cause
I'm here, don't-cha know. I'm speakin' atcha. I'm a-dancin' with words right now, right here beside your right ear.

I thought I heard the swoosh of a half pirouette, followed by a muffled thump! and a mumbled Ouch! that sounded a lot like a swearword I know.

I smiled again as I turned to the filing cabinet beside my desk, slid open a drawer and pulled out my current journal.

—See this? I lifted the book and waved it at nothing in the air.

Poof!


Oh, the higher self? It sounds a lot like love. It sounds like the breeze whispering through weeping willow branches, like a partially ripe pear plopping into the garden, like children's laughter or the crunch of footsteps through last year's leaves in the park, like raindrops tapping against my window or plip-bouncing off my umbrella, like gentle waves kissing fine sand or wild surf whooshing onto the shore, like my fingers at this keyboard…

And when it has something to say, it speaks straight to my heart in a language my heart understands. And my heart obeys, as love answers love.

Re: What It Sounds Like

Hi Ruth… I loved this. maybe it is in part because of how much what you have written here feels like walking outside on a sunny, warm early spring day… I have reread this a couple of times trying to pin point exactly what I feel as I read it… but doesn't matter - I just loved it. I loved the voice and the dialogue with the I-character. The questioning I thought was very good and the expectations of the I-character about what/ how their higher self should sound like, be like… the closing line made a little part of me jump in delight.

And my heart obeys, as love answers love.

My very favorite line (and then I would copy everything else)

so good to 'hear' you tonight.

xo
la

Here-Now Moments: The Pear Tree

The pear tree, old and proudly rugged in her natural, unpruned state, cares not in this moment whether her fruit, if any, will be sweet or hard, soft or bitter. She does not concern herself with what she has no way of knowing, like “will be,” like whether there is time past this here-now moment. What she understands, and could write volumes about—has written volumes about for those who know how to read her—is simply this: a lifetime of now moments.

There was a now last summer when she experienced the loss of her dearest, longtime friend and neighbour, the ash, to the chainsaw that felled her. In the next now she saw that she herself was being spared, for some reason, a similar fate. She did not see either event as fate or as a bad thing, she simply registered it as event—event, as isness, as yes—yes. I see her nodding her head even now.

Now is when the pear tree holds out for all to see her long arms overflowing with
clusters of soft cream blossoms nestled in among their birth-green leaf siblings. For an eternity of now-moments leading up to this one the pear had held the flower- and leaf-buds a little closer to her breast—they were new and tender still. They wore protective husks. Their tongues of pink flame teased at the tips and edges of their swaddling clothes. (Now, in their maturity, there is no hint of that pink, and I wonder if perhaps I hadn't imagined it. A glance at the photo shows me I did not.) And now that the pear is in full blossom, I see her gracefully nod and wave to some of her children, already floating to earth. Goodbye, goodbye, they flutter as they give themselves to the lazy breeze. Thank you, thank you, she breathes, and giggles when they tickle her exposed roots on landing. She feels the plushness of the rich cream blanket they tuck around her roots, and hears the bluebells tinkle their gratitude for warmth shared.

A few months ago, alone, she lifted bare branches in praise to earth, to life, to
whatever made her what she is. Before that she permitted crows to test the ripeness of her fruit, humans to lean their ladders against her trunk to pluck what remained before it fell and splattered, all plump flesh and sweet juice, for mother earth to soak up the nutrients that would spread to the roots, ensuring the continued health of the tree. Around the same time the pear allowed the crispness of autumn and its strong winds to turn her leaf children golden or greenish yellow (not unlike the colours of the fruit), to wrench them from her unprotesting arms, to swirl and blow and waft and hurl them to earth, where humans of all sizes and shapes swept them up into neat piles and jumped and played in them, and squirrels rustled through them, until eventually they all disappeared from view.

The pear does not wonder now why, at this time of year, people stop longer to gaze into her branches. In every moment she simply offers what shows up for her to offer. In this moment perhaps she feels the weight of new leaves and blossoms. But I am certain she does not feel they weigh her down. She accepts what is there for her to accept, and as willingly lets go anything that is ready to leave.

All Beautiful

Dear god, dear Ruth, what’s next? Mind barely gets the words out of its mouth before spirit's breath rephrases the question: What’s now? And swiftly on its heels: Love.

The sky, just missing the mark of bluer than blue, seems to hold that odd mixture of greater maturity and less certainty with which early September likes to herald changes in the air. The sun too is mellower than it has been, and oak leaves with just a hint of yellow are beginning to loosen their clasp on branches that carried them through the summer. I myself am carrying two bags of groceries, somehow balancing them at the ends of my arms even though one bag is probably three times as heavy as the other. I trade them off from time to time, aware of what feels like an uneven distribution of weight. And yet there is an underlying sense that all is in balance, all is as it should be.

I think about the uncertainty that prompted my earlier question, and about the simplest and most profound of answers: Love. Is love not the answer to everything? Life itself has no guarantees, and many unknowns. No guarantee that any particular unknown will become known. How then to stay afloat? How to carry on? How to keep from scrabbling for the abandoned shell, to pull it safe around me again?

With letting go, with acceptance, with trust. Yes, with love.

In love, all is beautiful.


And again it knocks on my heart's door, Maxie's poem:

No Escape

Up close, you must admit,
and from any distance you might choose,
it is all beautiful - almost distractingly so.

that's how it fits for me,
even the blood and brains in the street,
or the tearful diagnosis

all fits, all beautiful,
all spiralling endlessly forward like the rose
from the roots through the stem to the bud and bloom,
straightforward to the sound of OM.

—Michael Sheppard

Right Before Your Eyes

Maybe it's a September thing, but I got into a truckload of nostalgia yesterday, thinking about two who had died far too young, on top of being my most favourite (and closest) people in the world. Even went so far as to wander through YouTube looking for songs that had helped me “make it through the night” during those difficult, difficult times. And yes, Kris Kristofferson was a biggie then. Something about him, his lyrics speaking straight to my heart. Roberta Flack. James Taylor. Oh god, Donny Hathaway! It was a long time ago.

The nostalgia this time round carried none of the sadness, had none of the “why's” I'd asked for so long around those deaths. Just a sweet, sweet remembering with none of the bitterness that sometimes attaches itself to sad memories. People die physically, and yet they're not gone, not if they were important in your life, not if their passing, as well as their living, impacted your present and future way of being in the world. And they did. They did.

It was supposed to rain yesterday and I guess it did, though minimally, in the morning. In the afternoon I went for a long walk, carrying an umbrella against still threatening clouds but not needing it at all—patches of blue appeared here and there only to be gobbled up by more clouds. By the time I got home, sun had won out.

And I was still humming the song that had started shortly after I set out and refused to let go. It was a street name that invoked the song: something about “lalalalala… Madison Av'nue” and “just like Greta Garbo” and “…fell in love with you”—I knew the tune but couldn't quite place it in terms of who wrote it or made it popular.

Turning the corner from Charles onto Fairfield, with the blocks-long Ross Bay Cemetery lying across the street to my left, I came up behind a man lightly carrying a few grocery items over his left shoulder. He was a good ten man-strides in front of me but looked over his right shoulder back at me. So much for my thinking I hum so quietly no one could possibly hear me unless they're within a few feet of me.

“Just singin',” I smiled at him. “Just hummin'. Got this tune in my head a while back and it won't let go.”

He laughed. “I know just what you mean.”

He turned off at the next corner and I continued on my way, turning left past the cemetery and down to Clover Point on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the strait with its complex layers of almost indescribable colours so closely reflecting the strata of clouds above, Trial Island and its lighthouse clearly visible in the near distance, and the Olympic Mountains of Washington State mostly shrouded, with just a hint of deep blue differentiating their lower slopes from the waters of the strait.

Beautiful scenery, beautiful encounters, beautiful memories.

And yes, with a little help from Google, I managed to locate the tune (and lyrics) that had been running through my mind: it was Ian Thomas's “Right Before Your Eyes.”

Re: Writing 108 mala

I'm reluctant to leave a footprint in the sand here.  It would be like drawing stickfigures with my toe in a zen garden.  

I'll just admire quietly, then go-

phil 

Re: Writing 108 mala

Toed stickfigures are welcome in this zen garden. :) Thanks.

Re: Writing 108 mala: A Day and a Day

This has been a day and it’s been a day. A relatively good day. A mostly quiet day, with spot fires of activity running through. Not the kind of fire that plays havoc with peace or serenity, but the kind that fuels creativity, connectivity, and just general wellbeing.

I look out at the faded blue of the late afternoon autumn sky—it was the pear tree bashing its arms against my window that made me look—and I can’t see a single cloud, not anywhere. This after a day of almost notstop rain, not really a hard rain, not a drizzle of a rain either, but a… I know what we would have called it on the prairies but this isn’t the prairies and what I see when I look at the ground outside my window is nothing at all like farmland, like wheat or barley, flax, corn, sunflowers, or that other word that is also a grain and that I can never bring myself to say or write because I can’t imagine why they would have called it that but it’s there all right, growing in fields not that far from where I grew up, and they make oil out of it and it’s a four-letter word and I don’t want to go there, don’t want to go there, don’t want to go there…

(Calm yourself, sweetheart, you are far from that place, that time.)

Okay, so what I see from my window is a large gravel parking lot and beyond that a winding road with some apartment buildings and houses (that I can’t actually see from here) and lots of trees, elm, maple, oak, all in glorious reds and yellows and faded greens, and different kinds of conifers that will still be green in winter. I lost my train of thought… oh, the rain. The rain that on the prairies we had a name for but the name was not in English and it’s one of those words (or phrases) that aren’t really translatable into English or even into non-prairie speak. And I go on and on as I do and still don’t get to the point (“Will she ever get to the point?” I hear a not unkind but critical voice rise up out of my past, only she wasn’t talking about me because in those days I barely opened my mouth. She wished her husband’s daughter could be more like me.)

So all day there was rain. Like somebody said, it was one of those days that never seem to make it past dawn. And it was that kind of rain in particular, the kind that practically makes grain grow even where it was never planted. And I was totally cool with the rain for some reason but just in case (I can hear the Universe say), just in case all that rain is depressing her, let’s do this... And so every couple of hours I’d glance up from what I was doing because suddenly the room seemed brighter, and I’d look out the window and see the sun peeking out from behind clouds just for a moment—no longer—and I’d move my head back just a little and look at the pear tree that is right there and sure enough—this gets me every, every time—there were rainbows all over the branches of that tree, raindrops turned into crystals that held all the colours of the rainbow. Then I would go back to my work and the rain would start again…

But it’s my mother’s birthday and I called her first thing this morning my time though it was getting on toward her lunch time, and was the first to wish her a happy birthday. I asked her if there was a party planned for her in the place she’s in and she said she didn’t know, but a week ago they’d asked her if she prefers white cake or dark. “White,” she told them. “Altogether too much chocolate here,” she said, “white will be nice for a change.” I hope they had a party.

(And by the way, that 4-letter word when used to refer to a type of grain, comes from a 5-letter Latin word rapum, meaning ‘turnip.’ Oh…)

Re: Writing 108 mala: A Day and a Day

what kind of grain I am wondering. I like that there is so much not said here and I have to wonder. 
I enjoyed the feeling of the looking out her landscape, the changes in her landscape the relentless rain.
I found it peaceful but also there was angst there and maybe something unresolved.
I love faded blue.