Zen Master Caterpillar

I am so excited about this. The other day D & I spotted a large yellow with black spots caterpillar, all legs stuck to the underside of a branch on our lovely cassia. I thought he looked very like he was ready to start his transformation. The next day we saw that, indeed, he was beginning his morph. He hung upside-down, tail touching the skinny branch, and head suspended by his silky thread making. This pic if from today, and we’re so sorry we missed taking a before pic. But here he is now- all wrapped up in a cocoon so like the leaves of the cassia, I can hardly believe it. Oh! The Universe it its mad array of wonder and delight! Surely this is just the sort of thing that inspired stories of a Creator who ever so carefully and gently crafts each and every detail of Maya in Its cosmic workshop. The Creator who dabbed with Its brush just that last little brown spot on the tip of my cat’s nose before It sent her down from the celestial expanses to me. And easily, perhaps even more so overflowing with awe, and filled with wonder, is the cold and desolate vacuum of both All and Nothingness.- the random beauty and terror of everything evolving, alone, interdependent and One.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
I had a dream I was writing or listening to a great poem I was working on…wanted to capture it in the dream, but could not.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” – Martha Graham

Bats Rock

Bats rock. D took this cool pic today on our adventure. We went down to the Waugh St Bridge today for the first time to watch the sunset Emergence. Wow! There were, well, gazillions! Beautiful! Ok, so they were a little smelly. When we got there, we walked down and under the bridge accompanied by the sweet chirpy music of thousands of bat voices. Just a few minutes later they started emerging in, well, droves. Delight! And to think this is just minutes from my house! We also noted the presence of several very happy birds of prey who’d come to eat their dinner-time fill.

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Wednesday, March 08, 2006
One little glass of wine last nite and I go to bed with, and wake up with a headache. Ugh. Windy, warm, gray day today.

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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

I seem to continue to feel burned out. It is also my mooncycle which simply amplifies all my anxieties, tiredness, etceteras.

I find myself playing the same worn-out old tape over and over in m head: what am I doing? What should I be doing? Is what I do worth anything? Yadda, yadda, yadda. I generally do not feel this way, but over the last couple of weeks, with the ever so slow onset of my Moon, I seem to have ground to a halt and everywhere I look I see dead ends (not dead people!).

Or is this what is not so affectionately known as a wall?

Must allow this pass….Have returned to daily zazen. Curious, that the onset of these depleted feelings coincided with the lapse in my daily sittings, and the trail-off of my workouts.
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A little garden lesson
Our garden actually looks quite lovely this spring, considering we’ve put far less work into this year than last. D, of course, fusses over watering (gosh knows, I don’t!), and I did plant bunches of bulbs too early. The bulbs are actually now coming up, some are even blooming, and it is all looking rather lush. D, K (and sometimes I) did gobs of work over the last year and a half on the garden and now, lo-and-behold, that is all taking root (ha, ha), in a luxurious greengreen garden…funny, when you actuall plant something and tend to it, it grows! Imagine that!

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Just yet and another and another
Glorious Texas winterwinter day
Sun and skysky forever and everso
The loop at the park
3 miles of umber trail
Crunching and passing easily under my feet
I even notice the biggest of the pines
How did I miss that?
On so many runs
Like our very own Redwood sister in the South
And
Everyone checking everyone out
Mostly unwittingly
Some on purpose
Lots of shirtless muscley-ness
And magazine perfect women bobbing
In their stylish shorts and bra tippy-tops
The crème de la crème
There daily to train to compete
But I am here to keep
My pasta habit from
Causing me to have to buy
A bigger pair of blue jeans
Vanity is a task master

Then I see him walking, determined
Toward the water fountain
Inching toward the bubbler
In ordinary gray shorts and a shirt
{His grown son (I guess)
Walking easily behind him
Earphones tuning out the traffic and I don’t know what all else}
His arms are frozen
Bent at the elbows
Trembling hands
Touching crooked fingers brushing
Each foot shuffling
Forwardforward
Step step step inch step step inch step
Nearer the water
He is not old
But aging faster even as this day passes
Into late sapphire Houston afternoon
Faster under the merciless tutelage
The strict disciplinarian
That is the illness he carries
But he is even more relentless
On this maybe daily walk
Surely not heedless of his trembling chin
Surely not heedless of what I imagine is the pain in his body
Surely not heedless of his locking knees
The paralysis slowly
Slowly everso so slow and slower still still
Still
Freezes his legs
His arms
His hands
His face
But not his heart
Or does it?
But he does walk
Himself
In the sun today

My throat is terribly dry from the cool blue air
I so want a drink
But I pass
Afraid
And wonder what his name is