I have been growing my love for myself for decades now, for so long a skinny, timid weed of a thing. And in recent years feeling it grow more, recent weeks, even, thinking my not-so-skinny-anymore weed is even growing fruit and seeds, and I begin to see how birds and maybe squirrels and even lizards might come to nibble, or to sit in its shade, or breathe in the sharp green scent of its leaves.
Hi everyone. Iām sorry for the late announcement pasted below but just now received this. Wishing you all so much well in these scary and disturbing times! And sending love and hope. May we change our world š for the good of all beings everywhere. :)
Riba
Please consider this initiative & share with your networks: https://www.cbsnews.com/…/economic-blackout-feb-24…/
(Posted by Jon Stewart, initiated by John Clemens, I received this from James Baraz):
WHEN:
Friday February 28th from
Midnight tonight to 11:59 P.M. tomorrow night
WHAT NOT TO DO:
Do not make any purchases
Do not shop online, or in-store
No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy
Nowhere!
Do not spend money on Food & Gas
Do not use Credit or Debit Cards
Do not hire anyone to do work around your house, etc.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Only buy essentials if absolutely necessary
(Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)
If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.
SPREAD THE MESSAGE
Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!
WHY THIS MATTERS?
Those in power only care about their pocketbooks.
Corporations, banks only care about their bottom line.
Financial markets rely on consumers to spend.
February 28th
The 24 Hour Economic Black Out Begins.
Happy Samhain! Happy Halloween! Happy New Year’s Eve day! Happy beginning of these handful of holy days and the honoring of the waning of the light, our midpoint here in this moon-dominated portion of the year, our moving toward the most dark, the depth of innerness and reflection. Happy thinning of the veils between the worlds, between our side here and the other side where our loved ones who died reside. Happy magic time, ears and hearts open. May sweet or needed messages pass back and forth between us. And the love. Oh, yes. All that love.
I eat my Jumbo Jack cheeseburger in the driver’s seat of my mother’s red Kia. I am in the Descanso Gardens parking lot in the shade of a small big-leafead tree. I have no real illusions about going for a walk (much less a hike), but later I will be very glad I chose to park here. There are three glossy ravens poking around. I wonder if they are hoping for leftovers. I toss french fries out the open window. They surprise meātimid, wary. As I watch a braver gray squirrel shows them up, makes off with the first few fries, her warm brown eyes on me the whole time. When I finish eating, I read the latest book by my favorite author, All the Seas of the World. My exhaustion settles on me like a blanket, but there is ease in being used up, too, a kind of quiet by default inside me. The ravens grow a little bolder, make away with the rest of the french fries, one of them taking five of them at once in sharp, dramatic thrusts of his strong, curved beak. (I think greed in the moment, but later I wonder if it was really a desperate hunger.) I toss more fries, look up from my book now and then to watch them, see the squirrel bury hers a time or two (off in the distance). I do this for hours. There is a peace in me now I have been missing (desperate, too?). My book transports and feeds me, lulls me. There is a deep comfort in my connection to these wild creatures. And there is a deep sweetness in me and a surprising sorrow when I have to drive away and leave them behind.
Dear Readers,
Well, I’d hoped (planned?) to have posted my first post while being 64 about three weeks before today. And, of course, to have already posted at least three posts by now, to become marvelously consistent throughout this coming year of mine. (Sigh. Grin.) I told myself, per the About page here, that I would not “hold myself” to needing each post to be a postcard, but I love this idea so much, and I think I stalled myself because of this, because I didn’t want to let go of my first post being a postcard.
So today I decided I needed to say hello to you even though I don’t have my first postcard ready to go yet. And yes, I know, it would have been fairly easy to use one of the postcards I’ve bought in the past. I have a nice one from San Francisco and a couple from my desert home. But I began a sketch for a postcard I plan to send to my (dear) friends Marylou and Richard. I used the new watercolor pencils my (dear) friend Moses gave me for Christmas. I have started on a roadrunner, though he is a bit goofy and his tail is too short. (I looked up the maximum size for a postcard online, then cut a sheet of the watercolor paper Moses gave me, too. But then it was hard to fit him properly and proportionately onto the little rectangle. I may have to rethink my methods!)
Still, even just beginning to draw the bird was a big delight. It was one of the first clear impulses I’ve had toward hands-on art in ages, and a good sign, I think, that my “plan” of not making myself do anything I don’t have to do may be beginning to bear fruit. I hope so. I want to tell you, too, that in recent weeks I have not been stuck in anger for days at a time. I’ve noticed this with gratitude and relief and a little bit of gentle pride in the last couple of days, so of course this morning I found myself stuck in self-hatred and anger, and was afraid I had jinxed it, this long-running streak. But somehow I have found my way back to softness again, so maybe not stuck. (Oh please oh please.) I have been truly kind at least three times since my second tantrum this morning. Toco madera.
I hope whatever you are being challenged by softens for you, too, even as you read this. (If you are like me, it is the turning toward myself with a more tender heart that can do the trick. May you each have an ease in this turning toward that I am not always able to find!) Thank you for reading my blog and for waiting for me. I believe I still owe you a song, too. :)
Wishing you all good things, my dear readers. Happy Beltane. Happy May Day. Happy turning of our world.
Tonight my eyes are getting heavy and my heart lighter. It’s the first day of my month, the eve of my birthday, the ending of my year of blogging and this last week or so of crazed posting before I turn sixty-four. Like other important eves of the year, this one has me looking back. My last birthday was hard. It was harder to be connected to myself than it is now. And I was completely cut off from my own home, but now I am tethered to it again, and the song of my white-crowned sparrows and the young mama hummingbird taking a bath and the new generation of lizards there in my courtyard are all part of the fabric of me again even though I am still living away from them. Now I get to visit. I get to know they don’t all think I’ve abandoned them anymore. And now I have lizard friends here, too, and my red-tailed hawk family, my two ravens and the Cooper’s hawk. I even have my mother’s white-crowned sparrows here, though they never serenade in the same way. Tonight I feel a little silly for not being able to let go of it but so glad, too, that I did not abandon my blog after all. And I feel hopeful for the year to come. And grateful, always, for each of you, coming by to read my workāand caring.
I listen to my white-crowned sparrows singing for a long time. And I let some of the tension seep out of me. I remember I learned how to stay in bed here in the mornings because of my much-loved boy cat when he was dying, and I made small beds for him beside me on this bed, complete with heating pads that cold December. I think about his gift to me (best view of all) and about all I have weighing on me now. I think of my closest friends and all they have undergone, all they are holding now. I think about the people in Ukraine and all they carry. I think about how we all hold all these hard things and all this love and even joy in the midst of it all. I cry with the bigness of it all, good, clean tears, the white-crowned sparrows singing for me on the cinderblock wall across my little road this morning, all this tenderness for what dear creatures we all are, with our fleeting lives in this always changing world.
No Holds Barred 