Presence is most intimate, closer than close, all-inclusive, limitless, unbound. It is the no-thing-ness, the aliveness, the non-substantiality, the radiance of everything. We discover this by simply giving open attention to whatever is showing up — present experiencing, the sensory-energetic immediacy of this very moment. Hearing sounds, seeing colors and shapes, feeling sensations in the body.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Direct Experiencing, The Pathless Path I Recommend, January 6, 2024)
My dear sister-in-law, Fran, and I attended a Dar Williams concert on Tuesday, February 10, at the A. J. Fletcher Opera Theater, in Raleigh, with Seth Glier opening. We had such a great time listening to her wonderful story-telling melodies. The little anecdotes she shared between songs were very amusing and heartwarming.
The words to one tune in particular, from her new Hummingbird Highway album, resonated with me deeply, especially at this time in my life:
In the parking lot the dark becomes two panes of light
There’s a charcoal slash of ocean and a smoky plank of sky
Now they’re changing colors
Laurel green with alabaster,
Agate blue with snowy aster.
And as the blues are brightening and the cars are coming in,
You see a seagull weave a path upon the wind,
Like a thread that can begin and then begin
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In this time when there’s no time, there is no place to be,
What bird did you see?
You think a goldfinch is enchanting and you know you told her,
Now a goldfinch lands above you like it’s on your shoulder,
Yesterday you saw a red-tailed hawk
Around a corner proud and still
Out of place, a sentinel.
And at the window when sparrows flew away,
A single cardinal seemed to know he had to stay,
He had to be the bright vermillion in the gray,
While the world just goes about its day
As the ground beneath you falls away
In the presence of this absence, was there one bright flash, a simple song, a revery
What bird did you see?
And You will feel the summer sun and autumn rays,
You will return to busy friends and busy days but now,
In this time between the here and the hereafter there’s a feather at your door,
Love will find its way,
In the very life you have today,
You’ll go back to what you understand,
Maybe unbelieve
But tell me now, what bird did you see?
It’s okay to know it’s me.
~ Dar Williams
♫ (What Bird Did You See) ♫
Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.
~ John O’Donohue
(To Bless the Space Between Us)
Groundhog Day was one of our favorite holidays. We had a tradition of taking our groundhog stuffy outside to see (or to not see) his shadow. We named him Basil (Wasyl) after my grandfather, who was born in Ukraine on February 2, 1882. By 2014 Basil had a companion, who was at first named Basil, Jr. At some point Tim, with his endless sense of humor, started calling the little one Oregano, and it stuck.
I cannot bear to continue this tradition without my beloved. So I decided to dig up some of the pictures I took of it over the years, in memory of Tim. I am definitely within the grip of winter, the one outside and a winter of grief. I still can’t imagine how a future without him will ever feel like spring.
Basil, Oregano and I will stay inside and light a candle this year.
July went down as the hottest month ever recorded in North Carolina history, but what a surprise, August turned out to be the coolest August in over thirty years. With all the recent medical appointments we didn’t get out much to enjoy the fresh air, but on Labor Day we did get a chance to walk out in the woods.
We kept thinking we were hearing a creek’s water running but finally figured out it was a breeze stirring the leaves above our heads. The first autumn we were here we learned to look up if we wanted to see any leaf colors, and we applied that lesson this day, looking up to see the leaves, still in their lovely summer greens.
It was slow going and there were many stops for Tim to catch his breath, but we managed to walk three quarters of a mile and he seemed none the worse for wear after we got home. The rests gave us time to notice all sorts of little treasures on the forest floor, too.
A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.
~ Linda Hogan
(Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World)
My respiration and inspiration….the beating of my heart….the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves.
~ Walt Whitman
(Leaves of Grass)
In lands I never saw — they say
Immortal Alps look down —
Whose Bonnets touch the firmament —
Whose sandals touch the town;
Meek at whose everlasting feet
A myriad Daisy play —
Which, Sir, are you, and which am I —
Opon an August day?
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #108)
Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt — A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth — a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears — all thy best attributes — all that takes cognizance of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill.
Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs — the flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
~ Walt Whitman
(Sands at Seventy)
It has been a difficult couple of weeks dealing with the side effects of vaccinations and an unwelcome osteoporosis diagnosis but we finally got out to enjoy some pleasant weather and a walk in the woods. We returned to Cedar Falls park to take a different trail and see if we could find a waterfall mentioned on a website. I think we heard the waterfall but could not see it from the path. The foliage was pretty dense and the terrain very steep so we didn’t dare go off-trail.
To pay close attention to the natural world is to exist in medias res. Life is an unfolding that responds to the cues of seasonal change, but for our purposes it is also suspended in an everlasting present. We can see some of the creatures we share our world with, or at least some evidence of their nearness, but we cannot know the full arc of their story. Every encounter in the outdoors is an episode with a cliffhanger ending.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
We definitely share our world with the squirrels and crows we saw and heard, and there was plenty of evidence of other creatures nearby, including deer scat deposited on the trail and countless cobwebs clinging to twigs and branches. I had to smile when I noticed once again, it’s that time of year when Tim is still in shorts and I needed my sweatshirt. Not quite time to pull out my gloves, though.
It felt so good getting out into the woods again!
A winged spark doth soar about —
I never met it near
For Lightning it is oft mistook
When nights are hot and sere —
It’s twinkling Travels it pursues
Above the Haunts of men —
A speck of Rapture — first perceived
By feeling it is gone —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1502)
On this visit to the botanical garden there wasn’t much change in the American columbo’s flowering stalk, but we’ll keep checking back. In the meantime there were more new blooms to appreciate as spring continues along its way.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
~ Alan Watts
(The Way of Zen)
Back in Connecticut we had eastern blue-eyed grass.
I heard a towhee singing “drink your tea” and was determined to locate him somewhere in a nearby tree. At last I spotted him and did my best to get a picture of the elusive bird. My last attempt was in 2020, when we heard one rummaging around in the brush on the ground. If you’re interested see this post, eastern towhee. What a treat to get a picture of him singing!
It is only when singing that the Towhee is fully at rest. Then a change comes over him; he is in love, and mounting a low branch, he repeatedly utters his sweet bird s-i-n-n-g with convincing earnestness.
~ Frank Michler Chapman
(Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds)
As for the wild spontaneous Flowers of this Country, Nature has been so liberal, that I cannot name one tenth part of the valuable ones.
~ John Lawson
(A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709)
The finches seemed to be a pair. He kept coming down from the tree to the feeder but she wouldn’t follow him. Wish I could have gotten a picture of them together. And so ended another lovely morning in the garden.