what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
rumbles, marking work and action.
Here, hummingbird darts at the red feeder,
chases the giant sparrow away (chuckling, of course).
Squirrel hordes nuts and things for winter.
The small creatures of earth move as if there is no train in the distance, as if this moment is all there is, which is truly true, busy, bursting bodies, breath.
A siren roars , cuts through silence in which the creatures thrive, part of the mystery, also.
meb/10/2015
***
Reflections, autumn morning, city
My little friends,
yellow and brown and purple and green,
I treasure you,
my hands among your leaves,
my fingers at your roots.
My little friends,
there is so little I am good at in this world:
my children want for what they cannot have –
I have only these hands among your leaves
and a few places of sunlight in the house.
My little friends,
my eyes drop tear-less on your stalks;
I protect you from the cold in this place.
I touch you with these worthless hands
and you flourish.
+++
I wrote “Houseplants” as part of a series of poems that belong to my grandmother, Feodosia. For these poems are the story of her life, told through me over the course of a year or two in the late 1980’s. Surely our connection to the ancestors goes deeper than we know – or than we are taught to cherish, in our culture. The magic my Grandma – a bent-over babushka in a long black coat walking through the slush of Milwaukee’s narrow alleys – must surely have come through me, the magic of our connection told through the words I recorded.
Enjoy.
In the past, I could be in a funk for days. My thinking was off, everything was going wrong (especially in my thinking!), I was crabby, nothing suited me, the cat was a pill… you get the picture. If you’re honest, you can contribute your own list.
This morning, I awoke with that kind of thinking. Yuk. I am not a pleasure to be around, particularly for myself. Today, though, a gift arrived.
I spent time with a friend in her yard and garden. First, we cleaned the koi pond. Then, we cut off lilies past their bloom in the bushes. Finally, we took a tour of the vegetables in her suburban garden, dragging huge zucchini squash from their hiding places onto the lawn. Bees and dogs followed us around the yard, interested, of course, in every move.
Afterward, my friend and I parted for our separate days.
I feel better now. For a “city girl,” for one who has lived most of her life in her thinking and feelings – as if they are the center of the Universe! – the small tour of yard and garden was a gift. My friend apologized for all I would have to do when she leaves and I tend her garden for a couple of days. I don’t see it that way.
A day. A gift. Grounding. Something simple. Something profound. Memories of the ancestors, people of the earth. Songs.
Small pleasures. Gifts of God.
Beauty is there, in every moment.
When our lives are busy, we miss the moment. That is a loss in our lives, that we do not see the beauty, the iridescent beauty in each moment.
When I sit in the morning, cup of coffee – a little bit of milk, thank you – in hand, if I am awake and aware, I see the beauty of the day as it arrives, moment by moment, moment by precious moment. I gaze, I don’t stare, but I gaze with a soft gaze at the tree and the sky beyond, just outside my front window.
There, there – I catch for a moment a certain shade of light, the light of that day, that moment, that morning, that season.
Ahhh… as I gazed a few mornings ago, a rainbow drifted across the sky, the air filled with some drops of moisture that day. The rainbow gleamed. I stepped out onto the porch to see it arc across the sky, end to end, that ephemeral, transient beauty. From one moment to the next, it dissolved into nothing. Now, it is only a memory, a memory of a deep and rich and passing moment.
Moments are attached to feelings, feelings, that great gift and burden, of being human. In the moment, in the feeling, there is the hint – always the hint – that this is passing, that this is brief, that this, like everything else, will die. This moment will be gone. This moment of beauty, of the fulness of life, of great feeling, will be gone… is gone.
One day, I sat at my wooden desk. On one corner of the desk I have framed a greeting card, an imaginary, art nouveau woman with a flowing robe and flowing red hair. She is surrounded by architectural design rather than an ordinary room or place. The image is a myriad of colors, representative of that time and place, that form of art. But that is not what the image brought to mind. As I sat that day, I was touched, to my core, with the beauty of that image, that imaginary image of a life, of a moment, filled with color, beauty.
And then, I was sad, or filled with longing, or fear, or loss. I was filled with deep feeling, a sort of melancholy. One day – today? tomorrow? the next? when? – I would not be able to know such beauty in this particular form, in my being, in my body, in this place, in these surroundings. This moment of beauty, of absolute beauty, was passing, and as I reflected, had already passed.
***
These mornings, I watch the passing of the moments as the days break. I watch, also, the passing of seasons, of time as each day becomes longer than the last. There is something so human, so sentient, in each moment. In all the days and years that have passed, how often have I rushed from one important meeting, event, gathering, to the next – and been completely unaware, at the same time, of the beauty of this particular moment, this light, this being-ness, this breath, this sound, this color?
If the gift of being human is to be cast into these bodies, these feeling bodies, then the gift is to receive the pain, the absolute pain and power and beauty of each moment. When we miss it, it is gone – forever. Forever gone, and missed, completely eradicated from existence without one knowing, one awareness, one breath caught, one feeling, one deep emotion.
Like you, I have missed so many of these moments of my life. They are all around us, I am sure, ready to be seen, not grasped, but simply experienced, known, loved, accepted. Words fail me. Experience passes. Life continues – with all its importance, its business, its agenda.
Gaze. Gaze at the world around you, your world. See. See what is. Now. Live it, now.
This past week, I hiked with two other folks to Chimney Rock, from Ghost Ranch, NM in the desert north of Santa Fe. It was late afternoon, and as we walked, we moved from sun-sparked paths to shadowy places where the ground was covered with a layer of snow and ice, the dark side of the mountain that does not see the sun.
From time to time, we stopped to drink water at this altitude – over 6,000 feet – to stay hydrated and to chat about our rising view. It’s funny how close things look, and how far you have to hike to make it to the top. I didn’t know my companions well; we told stories about our lives as we walked. It’s good to have good companions on the journey.
Near the top, I stopped to take the picture that accompanies this post. I have an eye for seeing things that don’t seem to go together, but do go together. I suppose that’s also useful in life, because sometimes the strangest things actually work together! Still, when I stopped to take this photo, I couldn’t see what I was trying to capture, with the sun reflecting on the lens.
Even so, here it is!
In the background, you see Chimney Rock, the object of our afternoon hike. In the foreground, you see the tree that has suffered from several years of drought in these Western States.
These days, I often reflect on how a long journey has led to this place in life, and how, as often as life has seemed a struggle, the journey has led me back to the place where I began: my true self, my true being, me being myself, all the while struggling to be myself.
It’s true for all of us. What we present to the world is often such a brittle piece of ourselves, a dried-out self, trying too hard to be good, to be nice, to fit in, to be what we think is expected of us. Or we present a fearful self, exposed to the elements from the time we were young, pushed into a shape that does not suit us, a shape that is in the minds of others, but isn’t who we really are. We think we are our accomplishments, or our goodness, or our strongly held beliefs or preoccupations.
We are so much more. We are so much more real. We are so much bigger and stronger and full of beauty and strength and glory. We’re made of so much more, more power and light.
All the while we are offering our smaller selves, our larger self – our True Self – is there, all the time, shaped by larger things, by wind and rain and experience and light, the goal that is not the goal, the One, the Only One, the one we are seeking and cannot seek, the One who shapes us, the One we have always been.
