The Ending of Tulips–and the Beginning

Posted on May 26, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

This is where I need to be right now, not perfect and remarked upon- instead of Oh my isn’t SHE marvelous!, but blown open, curled back, the wind on me, the rain on me, feeling it all and not being afraid of it.

This is where I need to be right now, not perfect and remarked upon–not hearing Oh my isn’t SHE marvelously whole!; instead: blown open, curled back, the wind and rain on me, feeling everything full-on, letting the fear go.

I never saw the tulips this year–not in their full form, anyway.

My monthly book club rotates houses, and traditionally in spring one particular member hosts whose home and spectacular gardens overlook the Hudson River. Masses of sunset colored, black, and pink-with-white tulips usually quiver in the water-side breezes along with flowering Japanese plum, bleeding heart, and rhododendrons.

After discussion of racism and The Warmth of Other Suns; after mimosas, white asparagus, quiche, and lemon cake, I wandered outside.

Rain splashed these purple rhododendron flowers to the gravel path. Upside down, they glow pretty on the ground.

Though eyeful after eyeful of azaleas still sparkled in this Mother’s Day-morning rain, the tulips were finished.

Something unexpected revealed itself in the decaying blooms.

From shimmering swaths of bright colors, the tulips had individuated, dying back in distinctive ways: petals twisted here, leaves dropped there, a broken stem over yonder.

They were beautiful. They reminded me of–myself.

Exposed and fragile. Roots deeply set months before, underground, unobserved.

Dying in the present, shifting to new forms of being.

As no-longer-useful parts wither and fall, the hidden bulb is beginning to prepare for next season’s growth spurt.

discolored, browning areas showing inevitable desiccation, but even as they slump ground-ward, the petals flow twisted like a woman’s pashmina wrapping around her in a windstorm, sections resting in a different balance from the original.

Discolored, browning areas preview inevitable desiccation, but even as they slump ground-ward, the petals flow, twisted like a woman’s pashmina wrapping around her in a windstorm, petal sections balancing differently from the original cup-shape.

collapsing lopsided like a blimp or balloon, taking up more width, deflating and yet expanding, a large fabric sheet caught by the wind on one side, taking a bow. free to curl and twist now, as moisture escapes. is the color more or less intense?

Collapsing lopsided like a blimp or balloon, taking up more width, deflating and yet expanding. Free to curl and twirl now, as moisture escapes. Is the color more or less intense?

Like a child hiding under a floppy hat, peek a boo with three anthers a-tumble.

the petals wilted into a swirling skirt, rolled frills made of the edges, the ANTHERS ON THEIR FILAMENTS resting on top of the skirt, if the bottom of the green stalk-shaped style were a waist. Dance, movement, now rest.

The petals have wilted into a swirling skirt with rolled frilly edges. If the bottom of the green stalk-shaped style were a waist, the yellow anthers on their filaments are multiple arms in repose, between dances. Movement, now rest.

After five weeks recovering from and growing into the immensity of Part One, quietly studying and practice-teaching and building my skills, very soon I return for Yoga Teacher Training Part Two.

Exposed and fragile. Roots deeply set months before now, unobserved by most.

Dying in the present, shifting to new forms of being.

As no-longer-useful parts shrivel and fall away, my inner self begins to prepare for this next period of growth.

Yes.

the fully exposed center style with a yellow stigma topping it, with two perfectly formed black anthers hanging: the anthers resemble two useless paddle-hands, or two clown feet hanging. Perfectly formed above the anthers, the pistil (the stigma and the style together) that now is bravely unprotected in the garden. /vulnerable/ uncovered/ exposed

The center style is topped by a pale yellow stigma, and two perfectly formed black anthers hang from withered filaments below. Vulnerable, and yet confidently humorous–if I may anthropomorphize a bit more–they resemble two paddle-hands, or clown feet hanging. What sly comment does this former-flower want to share about the next round of colored tulip-cups?

The Value of Small Things

Posted on March 21, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

A droplet frozen as it traveled down the branch tip, bubbles of air and all.

Melting snow refrozen to droplet as it traveled down the branch tip–bubbles of air and all.

Exhausted in my illness, I half-dreamed–swirling textures, miniature scenes: small things.

I woke at strange hours, blinking in the semi-dark, and dragged myself into consciousness. A few times I flipped on the computer and reviewed my personal visual library of the outdoors.

Photographically, it must be admitted, I often fail to capture The Big Scene. Views to the horizon should encompass not just a grand vista but also multiple items of interest–framing trees, layers of color, initially unnoticed figures–which the eye can move between while simultaneously absorbing the grandness. I usually hazard an attempt or two at digital reproduction, while shrugging at the results.

But when it comes to the diminutive, somehow the camera’s lens recreates what I see, and then some. These photos lull me out of what otherwise would be a fast hike through the Big Scene of tree-tree-tree, sky and green, sky and brown, up the icy path, down the slippery path, tree-tree-tree.

Lichens galore at Dyken Pond; they loved the damp and cool of December there.

Concentrating on the little buds or branches trains me to not just look at what is on the trail ahead–the overall effect–but also the detail that goes into the effect, or surprises hidden within the effect.

More shapes reminiscent of Dr. Seuss: a vehicle, a hairstyle, something from down in Who-ville?

Flashes of my hiking partner’s cadmium red coat pop up on the computer screen–she and I openly acknowledge that pulling out a camera also acts as an excuse to catch our breath. Look at the little fern! Pant, pant. Oh no, I’m fine, just taking some photos. Wink, wink.

Sometimes I don’t realize I’m tired or in need of a snack of apple-and-cheese or Carrot-Nut Bread until I am enthralled by a leaf’s angle or juxtaposition of shapes in the lichens. Visions of the teensy help me to stop and take care of myself.

No wonder while I was sick I dreamed of the small.

Hints of pussywillows to come, Landis Arboretum, Esperance NY.

Hints of pussywillows to come, in the winter sun of Landis Arboretum, Esperance NY.

like a moth emerging under crystals, velvety/downy leaves like bat ears pressing snow between them, and more leaves unfurling, uncurling, not quite identifiable. Out of a hard stem, hardly able to see that it could create a delicate quivering leaflet

Velvety beech leaves like bat ears or a moth emerge under crystalline snow, Dyken Pond.

In yoga, we do adjustments called “micro-movements”, that make a pose our own, responding to the muscles’ and joints’ needs at the very moment we are holding the body in the defined way that creates the asana. We are in the pose and we are adjusting the pose, all at once–simultaneously ancient/universal and modern/mine.

As part of the adjustments, I am learning to giggle once in a while when I become too serious–How silly to think perfection is required or desired!; to note then let go of worry about the loudness of a knee pop, to feel relief at relaxing a jaw that, unbeknownst to me, became clenched. Micro-movements are responses to the small that call from inside the body, in order to properly choreograph the Big Scene, the vista of Warrior Two or Mountain Pose.

Perhaps my larger views will improve, eventually.

Early crocuses, Landis Arboretum.

I saw my first crocus cups of gold this week, two days before the Spring Equinox and one day before a huge snowstorm.

Two seconds after the crocuses, snowdrops. Those squiggles of green, puffs of white, baby plants so clearly claiming their place in the world, popped up out of the snow and mud.

It’s the rhythm of the natural world that’s always there–the natural world that we separate ourselves from too easily, and the rhythm of growth and seasons working like breath; we forget they all continue twenty-four hours a day: in, out, in, out, winter, spring, summer, fall.

What did I take from my middle of the night studies? Exquisite tiny worlds can be seen, if I look. Micro-movements, the small responses in my body, teach me to own my yoga. And I would do well to practice “micro-movements” in other parts of my life.

Back in the yoga room, the intake and exhale wash away distractions. Small expands to huge. Grains of snow outside the window glisten me into the Now.

Snowdrops, Landis Arboretum.

Carrot-Nut Bread in the Woods: Yoga and Intention

Posted on March 7, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

The Long Path, John Boyd Thacher Park

When I first committed to creating a personal daily yoga practice, I quickly became frustrated. I want to do the asanas and breathing, but it seems so overwhelming to go into the room and practice for an hour every single day–even though I know it feels good, I am very happy at the end, and I WANT to do it.

“Life” kept getting in the way. My mind and body fought me.

Luckily a friend who’s been doing yoga many more years than I suggested:
Every day, just stand at the yoga room door and bow. If you are capable of additional effort, go in and do thirty seconds on the mat. Once in the space, if you feel drawn further, then follow that inclination.

It worked. Some days I bowed at the door, physically acknowledging the desire and the simultaneous inability or lack of time to do more than bow. Other days I went in and sat and breathed and moved, not paying attention to the clock, just following my body’s needs and desires. Now once in a while, I take the computer in and stream a class.

I am developing a practice, not a routine.

And I admit–I’ve still had a hard time overcoming that initial inertia; sometimes my disinclination to move wins the argument. Then I remind myself: you don’t need an argument, just set the expectation and do your best to fulfill it. Even if you just bow at the door.

Candles in the yoga room; snowy street outside.

So–I’ve been sick for several weeks with what is usually called “a nasty cold.” It has been especially disheartening since before I was felled by the virus, I’d just experienced a wonderful streak of physical strength building in anticipation of Yoga School–hikes and walks and weight lifting and yoga classes–which dribbled down to nothing as my sinuses did the opposite.

All the ongoing projects–writing of every kind along with the apartment clearing–lumbered to a stop, and are just now rumbling back to life.

Coughing hard while tucked under covers and unable to do anything physical, I comforted myself with memories of Carrot-Nut Bread in the Woods.

Snow storm on the Escarpment; Thacher Park.

My hiking companion and I have been venturing to remote parts of well-known local nature areas; one week she brought sticky home-made baklava, which we ate in a snowstorm while peering over unguarded ledges of the Helderberg Escarpment. The next week I unpacked Carrot-Nut Bread (my absolute-favorite-quick-bread-on-the-planet) to munch along the sunny aqua-blazed Long Path.

To have such fancy food–What an indulgence! we giggled. We keep turning our human requirement for exercise into photo safari adventures and seasonal meditations, and now even our snacks have become more than just nutrition: they are flavorful, exotic even. And delightful!

Baklava in the snowy wilderness.

The first day I could stir from my sickbed, I turned on the lights in the apartment, in case I felt like washing the loaf pan from the Carrot-Nut Bread or organizing papers.

Pretty soon I switched the lights off, but did stand at the yoga room door for a moment.

Then I heated some chicken soup and, dizzy, sat on the futon for a while before heading back to bed.

I had to trust that this illness-induced inertia would pass, even if it was difficult to imagine; that there would be experiences again that felt like Carrot-Nut Bread in the Woods, Baklava in the Wilderness. That I would eventually speak without hacking uncontrollably, get back to the yoga mat and the kitchen.

All the empty time in bed gave me time to realize: I intend to do these activities, intend to do them thoughtfully and gloriously, and then they will became part of my Life, not just another thing to add, or schedule into a routine.

And so it happened. Vinyasa class and gentle machine workouts in a colleague’s gym became realities. Buttermilk Banana Bread with Currants as well as Home-Fried Hushpuppies ventured to the beaver lodge at Dyken Pond. I did more than just bow at the door, most days.

My yoga practice is blossoming, in spite of everything.

Actually, my practice is blossoming because of the setbacks. And continuing intentions, yes, to bow at the door every day.

Carrot-Nut Bread on the Long Path.

Carrot Nut Bread from The Joy of Cooking

This recipe is nice because you don’t need butter; the hardest part is grating the carrots and grinding the nuts. I use a hand nut-chopper to grind the nuts. Produces a crunchy surface and moist interior.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and sift together:

1 1/2 cups flour (half white, half whole wheat). Sometimes I substitute 1/4 cup almond flour or mix in other tasty flours.
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (I often put in a little more).

Add 3/4 cup sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 1/2 cup canola oil (or other vegetable oil), 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Blend in with a few swift strokes:
1 1/2 cups grated carrots and 1 1/2 cups ground walnuts or pecans.

Bake in a greased 5 X 9 loaf pan about 1 hour. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack for further cooling.

I used mini loaf pans and baked about 30 minutes. Can also be baked as muffins. Exquisite with a little cream cheese spread on top.

Little creatures skip along the bumps on their created path, as we can do also.

Little creatures skip along and over bumps on their created path–as we can, also.

To Plan a Garden, And a Life

Posted on February 1, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

Finger Lakes vineyard, with Seneca Lake steaming on a 5 degree below zero morning.

It flew in through my postal slot this week, a stiff green mailer I’ve received twice before: Continuing Gardener Sign-ups. It means that in February, I’ll toddle down to the public library, pay my small fee, re-read the rules, and confirm my plot. Ok, so I knew the mailer was coming since I am a Garden Coordinator, but it’s satisfying to jot the date on the calendar anyway, marking the beginning of my fourth growing season with the Capital District Community Gardens.

We are in the midst of deep winter here in upstate New York; when it is absolutely necessary to wear gloves the minute you step out of doors or else risk wind-burned and skin-split fingers; when billowing road salt coats our cars and our street and our pants when we lean over those cars, even flies into our mouths if we are thoughtless enough to open them before tossing ourselves shivering back into our homes.

The standard picture of Gardener Dreaming About Spring is someone escaping that salty, snowy weather, cardigan-wrapped and hugged by an overstuffed recliner. The silhouetted figure, plush-slippered, pores over seed catalogs by a roaring fire, sipping hot chocolate or spiked cider as the wind screams outdoors.

I’m not exactly like that. Don’t own a recliner, fireplace, or seed catalogs, and slippers make my feet sweat. I clomp around the apartment in old socks and clogs and mostly I’ve used the seeds that are donated to the Community Gardens office or buy plants when the mood strikes me or they are on sale during the growing season.

However, this year I’ve been thinking hard about my planting choices. For example, cherry tomatoes dominated my rows in the past–round red, little snips of yellow, some shaped like mini-butternut squash. I kept them because they volunteered from the first summer my garden was planted for me while I was recovering from surgery.

Now I think I want plum tomatoes instead.

The carrots were such a roaring success last summer, those tasty sweet morsels; if started early enough, multiple harvests would be possible.

I desire green beans, but don’t want to mess with the strings. Maybe I’ll grow lacinato kale along with my rainbow chard. And broccoli-one of my fellow gardeners shared broccoli with me, I could do that! I love broccoli. Perhaps I’ll plant the whole damn plot in flowers to cut for my dining table–then again, zucchini are not only traditional but useful.

I am practicing making choices, not just doing what I did before, not doing what is merely expected.

Last summer’s zucchini shredded…

…to make chocolate zucchini cake!

Another envelope arrived this week, not through the mail slot but in my email queue (the way of so much these days), announcing my acceptance to a yoga teacher training program. Another spring planting to look forward to, drowse with by the metaphorical fire–though a more active drowsing, as my challenge now is not only to plan but to become physically stronger and more disciplined in my yoga, before I arrive mid-April. I also must battle my demons of self-doubt, in order for the A+ student to go back to school in a new and different way.

Like the garden, what do I plant? What do I discard because it doesn’t work for me? How can I be publicly not-perfect, in a setting (learning) where I was so driven before? The plan: to be relaxed like I am about my garden plot: not the best and not neglectful, something in-between.

I’m going in as probably the worst student in Sanskrit names for poses, as well as a mediocre memorizer of everything else, with a life-battered body that hasn’t been doing yoga for very long. But my true subject matter will be one of the themes of Kripalu yoga: compassion. I will learn compassion toward myself.

When I am “not successful” at a particular physical or mental task, I will attempt to be successful at compassion for myself, and gentle even in discovering my lack of compassion. This I can do, and it is all I need to bring.

I vow to break out of my old gardener habits and make new ones, different ones, not sure what the harvest will be, but trusting it will be–something–something wonderful. Storms will come, and drought, and interruptions by the personal and political and societal–and the skills I’ve acquired in the garden will get me through what I’m calling “sleep-away camp” at Kripalu.

Here at the end of January I open the seed catalog of my life, once again dreaming the future into being.

Seneca Lake warmed by the sun, readying for the end of winter, and then spring!

Seneca Lake warmed by the sun, readying for the rest of winter, and then spring! Who knows what transformed things will come out of this ground?

Structure: the Old Year, in Pictures

Posted on December 30, 2012 by of-the-essence blog

Reflections that create balance. (Bridge over the Mississippi, Minneapolis MN)

Like monthly bills and seasonal equipment, 2012 will soon be put away.

Annually I take the week between Christmas and New Year’s and look back. Not that I don’t regularly return to carefully saved artifacts and reflect on my journey at other times, but it’s an interesting practice to hold the twelve months in hand all at once.

Because I am still coming to the words–how can you encapsulate a year, a month, a day?and should you?–this week’s blog is almost purely visual: an admittedly incomplete retrospective of what has fed me, gifts given and received over the year.

The theme that emerged in my almost-random selection from the 6,000 digital photos? Structure. Structure in general, and the structures I am building. Of what underlies my daily life, how to not split time into dreaded work and distracting play, but to find joy in all of it.

Once again, I wish I’d hatched a fully grown, spectacularly stunning concept that would bring surprising insight, followed by deep understanding–and aw heck, while I’m at it, world peace!–but laughing, I repeat the mantra: I accept being in-process in my thoughts and in my life.

Oh, and thank you, Gentle Readers, for joining me (however briefly or steadily) during the past six months.

The whimsical turnip.

The whimsical turnip: its graceful arms reminded me of Shiva, whose cosmic Dance of Bliss simultaneously brings destruction and creation. How appropriate in studying days gone by, the wave pattern of the past, present, and future. On the culinary side, it became part of a potato-turnip-leek au gratin dish for Christmas Day.

Watermelon radish in a salad of green leaf, cucumber, green and orange sweet pepper, carrots.

That shocking pink, what a surprise! Yes, I was ready to laugh at surprises, and open to new foods and sensations and thoughts and concepts.

Adirondack Park creek, near Jockeybush and Good Luck Lake

Stillness in the water allows reflections. Same with my life.

Snowy tree early 2012

Snow on tree. Just looking outside my window, I found meditation objects, beauty.

Votives, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC

I took them where I found them, those meditation objects and rituals, and adapted them to my own house: candles, incense, writing, yoga, walks, cooking, talking, time with friends and family.

Mohawk River: beauty in browns and blues.

Yeah, just some grasses along the Mohawk River, nothin’ special. But no–eminently special, subtle color and stillness again. Just look, that’s all. So I did.

Food is fun! A study in red, brown, and white.

The daily is worth attending to, including the daily food. Vegetarian chili with Community Garden tomatoes, those familiar basil-garlic cheese curds and black beans, followed by strawberries with chocolate sauce and slivered almonds. (Yes, technically the tomatoes are more orange than red, but in other light they matched quite closely.)

Ice at Dyken Pond

Like a modern art painting of skyscrapers, just the beginning of the freezing process–I spend a lot of time “at the beginning,” but those moments are striking, too.

Mountain beyond Hildene (Battenkill Valley), Manchester VT

Mountain beyond Robert Todd Lincoln’s home Hildene, in the Battenkill Valley, Manchester VT

A classic wind battered evergreen with snow topped mountain behind. What does it evoke? Back to the idea of stillness. But more: active stillness, strength from within, a yoga thing. Responding to the wind, relaxing into holding the snow, moving with circumstances as they arrive.

Tomatoes and pears: early morning still life.

My life is art, my food is art: more meditation objects.

Sunset over the Helderbergs: note the teeny electric pole on the right, which helps you realize the distance you are viewing

Beginnings and endings and the in-between. A huge sky sweeps toward me, over me, I am immense and minuscule all at once.

Pea sprouting in late spring

Back to the garden.

A pea plant breaks through hard ground, living into its defined structure, but how it grows, the rhythm and size and potential production, are all to come yet. How fragile it looks there, and yet it is so strong.

That’s me, that’s the new year. Delicate, to be nurtured, but hardy and riotously ecstatic and full of surprises. To be attended to every day, carefully but not with anxiety, just responding to changes as they come.

Along the Long Path at John Boyd Thacher Park: fall leaves color streams that are just above freezing mark.

Detritus of the old is beautiful, and will feed the new life to come, after the quiet time, the enforced rest, of winter. Welcome, winter; Welcome, new year!

A wonder-ful 2013 to all.

Confidence That I Know Nothing–The Labyrinth

Posted on November 2, 2012 by of-the-essence blog

One of several trees that greet you at the entrance to the labyrinth.

A meditation labyrinth is a winding path, but unlike a maze, the traveler knows she will follow the course to the center and traverse the same path out with no fear of becoming lost. People have walked labyrinths of various forms for millennia; as they amble, they seek answers to particular questions, or to touch their G/god or Spirit or inner being.

When I began my weekend retreat at Kripalu Yoga Center last Friday with a walk in the outdoor labyrinth, I thought about self-definition, and work.

Winding the curves, tears dripped down my cheeks: I don’t want to get to the center— because then I will have to come back out, and I’m not sure what I will discover about myself in the process, specifically, my options for future paid work. Recently, before I even claim any idea as a “possible next career,” I’ve gotten scared, run away from thinking, watched too much TV, over-filled the schedule or just done nothing.

Achy and stiff, I haven’t participated in my usual yoga classes at home and have avoided extended concentration on breath and difficult positions. Yoga has merely served as a stretching regimen a couple times a week. Last year in the autumn my body was so much more mobile, technically and muscularly strong in the postures, and confident. Lighter, too.

Old habits of anxiety haunt me, a drive to squeeze everything I can out of this time away, to find answers to my questions. But at what expense? I ask as I wander. To feel the drivenness more than the experience?

I notice that there are more reds in the trees here than in New York; the weeping trees quiver with neon orange, yellow and green in their seasonal change; shadowy evergreens cover the Berkshire mountains behind the labyrinth. Exiting, the view stretches wide, with a broad grassy hill up to buildings where the first session, and then dinner, then more yoga, await me.

A community of grasses accompanies you.

I wish I’d been conveniently struck by some slam-bang inspiration about work while in the labyrinth, but then in yoga class the falsehood is revealed that when you discover something, you are then finished or complete–an impossibility, because we are constantly changing, and the world is constantly changing. The instructor reminded: take your time, make your own choices, move how you want to, experiment!

The intense physical activity scrubs me clean and pares me down, open to see daily life as simultaneously not that important and amazingly huge, miraculous, splendid. The sixth sense, we are told, is Awareness. Yoga calls me to the corporeal plane, and the spiritual plane, and beyond that, even–but by 10 pm I am so tired and roiling in self-judgment, it hurts.

Washing up before bed, I remember: when my best friend visited a few weeks ago, she commented, You believe you are not moving fast enough with this puzzle. But for the first time in your life you are looking at each piece and not trying to press it in the form right away, instead asking does it fit? does it even belong in this puzzle?

I want to trust that the picture will emerge. Mostly I believe it will, but I’ve been sidelined and undermining myself, avoiding “the work thing” because I have been afraid–of failing, or finding a big nothingness at the center of myself and my search.

The next day, during the Kundalini yoga, in the repeating pose of punches-through-an obstacle, I strike through the negative messages, through self-doubt into compassion for myself, thus revealing a glorious version of Me. It is repeated: Revelation will come and there will always be more to understand and grow into.

As we tell our life stories during lunch, my roommate remarks on my tenacity, and offers unexpected observations about my skills.

In a Kripalu Yoga session, frank acknowledgment that everyone suffers heart break leads to a vision of the body as energetic river, where damage from that pain has an impact, but can be repaired.

Words from the Prana Flow teacher: Move with courage into whatever life brings. Practicing yoga can give you confidence that we know nothing. Spending time with yoga itself will give us “nothing”–but through breathing, doing asanas (poses), and other practices, we can tap into the teacher we have within us. A bit theoretical, hopeful, maybe even too far-out. But I like it.

After fourteen hours of yoga in two-and-a-half-days, hours of breathing and meditation and strengthening of the body and compassion toward myself, listening to the body and listening to the body some more, having my value reflected back to me by others and myself–I approach the labyrinth once again, to close the weekend.

I stop at each planting on the way in: sets of willows, vanilla-cupcake-colored, Seuss-ian tufts of grasses flopping in the wind, and some unidentified saplings; I reach out to touch each one in turn, and step to the next pair, like a slow procession up a church aisle, until I come to the labyrinth entrance, stroke the wood of the arch and walk through.

Seuss-ian soft grass-tops.

I deliberately slow my gait, returning to the meditative walking that I’ve read about: sense the heel touch the ground, roll through the middle, and let the toes make contact. Then don’t do the expected forward movement, just rest there; then, pick up the other foot, shift weight and move. One step. Pause. One step. Pause. One step.

I brush against a bushy bottomed evergreen, and it felt like I was joshing a friend, approaching a teenage boy uncomfortable with hugs, him pushing his shoulder against mine, Hey, dude, whuzzup?, a camaraderie with the trees, like we were buddies, old pals, kidding around with each other, glad to see each other, relieved actually. So I stop to give each head-high evergreen a gentle shoulder bump and a half-smile of recognition.

Following that, I tromp, wide-hipped, swinging my legs with energy. Clomp-clomp-clomp. Then stand, smelling the musty grasses dry in their rustling, slipping their feathery lengths through my fingers. Next, glide forward slowly again, with few tears, in fact triumphant, bubbling over some with alternative ideas and ways of looking at Work. Think to myself with a sigh: god knows I will run into obstacles and I may be completely wrong about the possibilities, but I’ll use the yoga practice–no, I’ll just DO it, and through that, trust I will get to know how I feel about things; motivate myself by being in touch with my body–no, I’ll NOTICE motivation and excitement from within, seeing and leaving behind the berating messages, the patterns of avoidance–cleansing with breath, clearing, opening; like the trees are changing and opening to the heavy gray fall sky over lake and mountain here in the Berkshires.

I resolve to create a new Practice in my life, instead of the old Routine: new ways of walking through my days and taking care of myself. Cup of hot tea with honey in hand, I drive back home.

Of course next day I am exhausted by the weekend, and then overstimulated by classes at the computer store: required to be intellectual before I am ready, blasted by the fluorescent lights, too-loud Muzak, and super-saturated color. The coming rainstorm from Sandy pushes me to watch old episodes of Glee “while I can” and then the darned electricity never goes out! and I worry I have fallen right back into all my old habits.

But–every day I’ve eaten well, gone into my yoga room and felt the muscles loosen along with my busy mind, remembered what my community of yoga teachers taught me, heard their laughing voices, and breathed compassion toward myself. Started again with the next moment.

Yes, life is a series of beginnings, to be taken puzzle piece by puzzle piece, step by step, breath by breath. Perhaps life is also a series of puzzles, where the fun, the point, is putting it together, not the final image.

I am confident I know nothing. I have entered the labyrinth, journeyed to the center, and come back out. I’m holding the puzzle pieces, thinking.

A far-away view of the labyrinth, after you re-enter the world.

The Golden Tamaracks

Posted on October 25, 2012 by of-the-essence blog

From the bridge on Route 30, facing Simon Pond, across from Raquette Pond and Tupper River.

It was a mustard-and-rust-colored couple of fall days through the northern Adirondacks, driving Keene Valley and Lake Placid, returning via Blue Mountain Lake and Speculator. The white trunks of broken-topped birches climbed up the side of Route 73/9N along the rocky AuSable River. Rain had been heavy the previous week, so High Falls Gorge rushed amber with hemlock tannin’d water, reminding me of Tahquamenon Falls in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, colored also by swamp trees. I piloted my car next to flowing mountain ridges covered with smoky smears, indicating trees whose leaves had already fallen; but then there were these spires of gold, stands of trees matted in green by the pines and balsam firs around and behind them.

The instant these particular trees sparkled at me from a distance, I was entranced; they seemed like perfect Christmas trees, but colored flaxen and lit from within. What were they?

Tamaracks, I was told. What a poetic name for a tree, an Algonquian name I learned later, the only deciduous conifer–a tree that seasonally loses its needles, with a color change first from bright green to yellow.

Tamarack. Here was a plant I’d heard mentioned as part of the name of a place–Tamarack Lodge, Tamarack Inn–but never observed live. Didn’t know they were the source of turpentine, or another moniker for a Larch. I’d even seen the outlines of them on wood signs, just thought it was Plain Ol’ Woods, or Evergreens. And here they aren’t ever-green at all.

Ecstatic with their discovery, I spent my day searching for a wonderful picture to take of the Golden Tamaracks. My travel companion told me they show up in patches here and there, but warned they would not be seen when we headed south, out of the spruce flats of the Adirondack Park. I spied them here and there, but the roadside shoulder was too narrow to park on, or shadows marred their brilliance. Some half-way passable photos were taken at a quick muddy pullover, but electric lines disfigured the oh-so-unforgettable vista I craved in my viewfinder. I comforted myself with more common rust colored beech leaves and the sparse quaking aspen foliage.

Beech leaves, which will stay on the trees all winter, dabbing the snowy landscape with splashes of brown.

Finally, at the end of the day, heading back to the main road from a side trip up Route 8 in Wells, we came upon a single glorious glowing larch, lit by the sunset beyond it, a calendar-perfect shot backed by the curves of the mountains. And yet…I was tired from the fresh air of the day, the five hundred snaps already taken, watching river otters and walking out to Oxbow Marsh at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake. I didn’t want to stop the car and get out yet another time.

So in my lethargy I sat back and watched the tamarack approach, growing taller then taller still, rising like the trunk and down-thrust arms of a giant slender woman, until I was finally staring from below, a child gawping up at the enormity of its towering parent.

The sun behind revealed the black bumpy outlines of the very top shoots, and I twisted my head around to see the back of it, as my auto moved on into the setting sunlight of Route 30 south.

Then the golden tamarack was past, gone, somehow irretrievable even though I could have stopped the car and turned around. As soon as the moment was over, I regretted not photographing it. It became a lost moment, like other lost moments, not seized fully, followed by wondering if I would try to recapture it ever after.

But–I wanted to live it, see it, feel my mouth widen into an O as we advanced on the tree, let the light of the west-falling sun hit the back of my eyeballs, fully; hold that–and let it go. I decided to make do with the other, less impressive photos, to remind me of the one that got away, my own catch and release program for that single vision–only with a mental catch, then mental release. Of course now I attempt to relive it in words, amorphous dances around the reality, redrawing the picture in my head from many angles.

Even this morning, I see the yellow elm leaves outside my kitchen window carried off by the insistent wind, my red ivy leaves thumping the window hard as they fall, the ivy opposite now deepening its blush and splashing Neapolitan against the brick. I feel the urge to take pictures of the shift, but don’t; I can’t stop the change, can’t hold every second, have to let some of them go, and allow the memory to mellow into blurred edges, warm thoughts, awareness of having had an experience without clutching desperately at specificity of the details.

Autumn has come. Autumn will go. In the winter, spring and summer–indeed, until I can search them out again next fall–I will remember (not through a spectacular photo) that I have discovered Golden Tamaracks.

Golden Tamaracks in the Adirondack Park

Living in the Moment: Friendship

Posted on September 14, 2012 by of-the-essence blog

Fire tower at Goodnow Mountain

My garden is end-of-season-neglected, but not because all the vegetables have been harvested.

I am not sure what I will find when I return to it, much like I was not sure what I would find when I sat last week in the front room of my friend J, who entered hospice three weeks ago.

Before that visit, she called me.

Hi, it’s Me. I’m really, really sick you know.

J, my dear–sick in the mind or sick in the body? Or sicker in both? Tee hee! Is there a prosecutable offense involved? Or lots of juicy drama?–

–Actually, the pulmonary fibrosis has progressed. A lot.

Oh. Well, you and I knew that would happen eventually.

At 74, I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be intubated again. I don’t want to be poked or prodded or in pain.

Your DNR orders and advance directives—we’ve made sure that won’t happen.

Oh, enough about me! What have you been up to?

J, I hiked a little mountain this weekend, Goodnow, near Santanoni. It took about three hours; the trail was full of tree roots and rocks. And then I went up the fire tower.

I don’t think I could do it, climb that mountain.

Not with your oxygen tank, no. But perhaps we could get one of those things you sit on, a litter, with the four guys, to carry you up.

Only if they are hunky.

Ok. And fancy tassels will hang off this, waddya call it, palanquin, that’s it! With soft pillows for you to recline on.

And a scarf! I want to wear a white scarf, flowing in the breeze. But wait, what about that dancer, who got strangled by her scarf? What was her name?

Isadora Duncan! Hmm. I will plan for a fifth guy, who will be there just to make sure the scarf swirls around artistically but doesn’t choke you.

How was it, the mountain?

You could see peaks all around for 360 degrees. The Adirondack lakes below were so cold and clear and blue. My knees were shaking while I climbed and then I was so scared of the heights I was growling like a wild animal to keep myself moving on the stairs! Hanging off the metal fire tower, that was perched on the rock, over those fall colored trees, up on the mountaintop–I was on the edge of the world.

Thanks for taking me there with you. But I’m going to lie down now.

Well, all right….I miss you. I love you.

I love and miss you too.

J, do you want me to come out to see you again?

Yes, please!….It’s been really good talking to you, but my memory is so bad, what if I forget what we said?

Well, are you enjoying yourself right now?

My side hurts from laughing.

All that matters is that we are talking. If you forget, I will remind you what we said. Or if I forget, we’ll do it all over again next time, and just laugh some more. Wow–I guess that’s what they mean by living in the moment. See you Tuesday.

Tuesday came, and I went for a week and lived in that space some call Kairos-Time, Meditation-Time, outside of our normal lives, in a place that is exhausting and sad, long and short. I was glad to be there to say good-bye.

For now, J is at home, and comfortable, resting in her palanquin of quilts. Her bearers, the many friends and family, come by to visit, waiting in her front room for the moments here and there when she is awake, to share their own memories of the hard climb, glimpses of silk scarves and long views of lakes.

***

While performing final blog-edits, I received word J passed away early this Friday morning.

So my dear friend has finished her own end-of-season harvest. It may have looked spare and imperfect to outsiders–that’s just the messy way fall in the garden is–but whatever was there had matured and grown somehow perfectly ripe, sweetened even, by the inevitable change of season. I’m grateful that, for eighteen years, we got to hang out together in this part of the garden.

View from Goodnow Mountain fire tower

Of-the-Essence

Building a life, moment by moment. Including yummy food.

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