Day 45: Arrival and a sign?

the front door to my studio/cabin... stuck between the screens 


Day 1 at Hambidge

Day 44: Melancholy contentment

For breakfast–– A ringing of the Sunday bells.  An ease in the morning after good rest.  A trust in what is…  The cardinal visited again while Billie Holiday was singing her song. 

Day 43: Madness

a leaving of self?


behind, yet coming to...


Day 6: leaving Lama

Day 42: Approaching departure

the withdrawal home.

sugar, respirator, and
whole salted blossom


Day 5 at Lama

Day 41: Deep Venus space

A line calls forth in the ground.  After ants swarm.  And until ants swarm again.  A subtle gesture, unearthing food.  


Day 4 at Lama

Day 40: Coming into being

Stillness steeping.  A merge into sky, stars, vapor.  The distanced view of rain provides a new perception, a deeper understanding of my spiritual agoraphobia.  An observation anyway. In the old growth, largeness.  A reinforcement of self-importance, of ego.  Here, vastness, smallness, inconsequentiality.  And therein lies the discomfort. 

But a concert mounts.  Between myself, and the lightning, and the itinerant rains…between the pines, the Sufi spirits, and even the hard ground.


Day 3 at Lama

Day 39: In the desert

A serene view of limitless ground.  Of canyons, buttes, mountain plains.  I sip coffee while shrouded in a cloud and the sun touches down ahead, onto the rolling green river.  An intense ocular sensation.

I come to understand my preference for the old growth rainforest.  Cutting out vision heightens other senses.  Here, it is impossible not to gaze upon the immense earth with winded veneration.  Though a separation exists within the distanced view.  Here, there.  Me, mountain.  And I too much feel my selfness when walking on firm ground and when such immense blue swarms overhead.  Exposed to sky, and not sinking into land. 

when my vision is masked,
an openness.  With vastness,
an uncertainty.

Of my place.  But all of it.  An illusion.

Clearly there is an elegant energy here.  The legacy of Ram Dass and other spiritual teachers who have inhabited this land over the years…their presence passes through the morning vow of silence and other rituals.

Day 2 at Lama

Interlude

A doorway. Tomorrow I may glimpse where it goes.

Day 38: Beginning

vacant swings, a vast
rolling river of ground, and
a missing of parts


Day 1 at Lama

Day 37: Liminality and anticipation

rain wakens currents.
navigating erosion
to a homecoming?

About to embark on a retreat into the New Mexico mountains.  A retreat from all daily things...to forest, to clouds.  To a “consecrated” Sangha, where Ram Dass wrote his first book.  Sleeping on the land, though downpours expected.  I have little indication of what the week will bring, except a revealing.  And wetness.  Given the "off-the-gridness" of the center, blog postings will be short.  Haikus, images….perhaps of little "art projects" should I be so lucky.

Perhaps I will be so saturated in Sangha, I will be full, inside and out.  Or, perhaps I will just be cold.  Perhaps everything will change.  Perhaps nothing at all.

Day 36: Always, tension in the inbetween sun and moon

in the interval
meanwhile, wearing away

Day 35: Desire

A pathway to Sangha through the pores of the mouth?  Deep tongue kisses.  And chocolate lavender wedded in ground almonds.  Though, an idealization.  That only breeds longing and a pain in the bowels.  


a moment of joy 
essentially divulges 
a lock in deep trance

Day 34: Spontaneous iPhone haiku #3

been waiting to be seen...

Day 33: Calm before the storm

a time of movement
draws near dehydrated ground
away from fever

Day 32: Homecoming

Cogitation.  Weight.  The anticipation of flight.  Many different homes mingling.  Oldness. Newness.  And the fury of preparation.  

Day 31: Mourning

a voiceless lament

for edges, for lines,  for those
close by and long gone

The souls of Aunt Saretta and Grandpa are possibly skipping together in the ether at this moment.  Lillian, my grandmother, her sister, his wife, grieves, contemplates, reflects, makes peace.  She is good at that these days.  Markers of change, so many lately.  Infusing my being.  Soon, nothing will be as it was.
  

Day 30: Satiated

Like limbs indulging in long deep stretches, the creeping jenny creeps away, into muddy spaces.  Proliferating into wholeness.  They are fond of the home I’ve offered them.  Acceptance.  

Day 29: Watering

A bird escaped from a fern this evening.  I inadvertently watered its house.

I understand this bird's nature. The desire for forest.


Likely it is the same bird that made a home in this sweet potato vine, 
until it too was watered. 





Though a genuine birdhouse sits empty next door...

I think I too would prefer soil over pre-fab.

Day 28: Wu wei

Acquiescing, while gently asserting.  Gently asserting, while acquiescing.  

Moving fluidly. Upright, poised, limber, malleable.  Strong.  A beautiful thing, a surprise. Moments emerge here and there like little fish.  Flecks of gold swimming around me.  

A memory from Costa Rica... of white herons:
tributaries, green
buttressing ghosts that hover
amid light shadows

Day 27: Wetness

a tomato seed
stuck under neck, and winds that
assume, bearing rain

Day 26: Dancing with the boogymen

a call out, tender

a voice out of the blueness
but not, ire hushed

Day 25: Swimming

Swaddled in blue.  The paint found its way home.  Each day I will swim while I eat.  (The paint color name, incidentally, is Chartered Voyage).

With plunger in hand
I unleash steady waters.
Sustenance for heart

Day 24: Swimming

Floating in imaginary waters.  The lagoon in Akumal.  The pools from my childhood.  A bath?  No....  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is feeling space beyond head, beyond fingers, toes.  And being held by warm atoms. 

Outside thunder crashes and the rains surge.  It is a nestling.  A forest of water.  My feet swim in the air.

The full day of rain leaves such a lushness in its wake.  Reminiscent of Costa Rica in summer–bird calls and yellow.  Behind a wash of grey, colors pop.  I swim in a cool quiet and inhale soothing wetness.  Though the tree in the corner of the yard remains dead. Naked branches among full green.

Day 23: more hokkuing

a divine abode
awaits beyond white spacesuits
distance lessening

Day 22: Spontaneous iPhone haiku #2

Day 21: Having flown away

remembrances swarm

fractures in time not mending

home sinks into sand

Day 20: Spontaneous iPhone haiku

Day 19: Trying my hand

A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand becoming, 
a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean.  It is a way of returning

to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our 

falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature.  It is a way in

which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very

day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly 

alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent 

and expressive language.

 - Reginald H. Blyth

***

sipping salt water

mind contracts body tenses

narrow wants rule life

Still contemplating that article, this island.

Day 18: Hokkuing

storm water current

casts shadows in waterways

blemishing island

Newsday article link:  Long Island's Environmental Concerns

Day 17: The Great South Bay

Sylvia and I fill buckets with wet sand.  Past and present communing.

This morning water carried abandoned seaweed, clear plastic, and assorted opalescent jewels onto the shore.  I rescued two crab claws and a hot pink balloon.

Walking through sand today felt different than my memory of it.  I invited the inevitable slowness in process, preventing me from getting ahead of myself.  The earth was merely pulling me closer in after all, so I let it.  

I left this place behind over ten years ago.  Traded it in for ferns and tall trees and rivers where I could disappear. Despite the hurt of discarded cigarette butts and other refuse dotting the sandscape, I think I could inhabit this place again.  Today my bones were not unsettled at all by the exposure, by the absence of bark.  The sea calms.

East to West, West to East.