24.4.06

Caterpillar on a Hot tin Roof

I managed an absurd amount of practice today as well as time for zazen, an hour of yoga, and a lovely M Park workout.

The garden is beautifully out of control, though the sunflowers now have a discouraging itsy-bitsy worm blight that is causing the blooms to barely open. Nature.

We’ve spotted another chrysalis on the cassia and are waiting for the emergence. Yesterday we spotted a big fat cassia caterpillar on a nearby firecracker fern. He was up-side-down and ready to do his chrysalis spinning. This morning, I saw him in lovely form- up-side-down, tail affixed to a fern stem, and head dangling by a silken thread- all systems, go! Well, lo-and-behold, by this afternoon his chrysalis was complete and I’d missed the whole thing! Some awareness!

Creative meetings an much practice ahead this week. All wonderment.
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Saturday, April 15, 2006
I am tired of giving my power over to others. I am tired of having words coming out of other people’s mouths influence how I feel about myself. It is an exhausting, defeating rollercoaster. Words are all well and dandy when they are strung together to create encouragement and praise, but when they are laced with negativity, either couched toward me or others, they bring me down, man. Can words be de-powerized? I don’t know. My instinctive answer is, ‘No’. Words are simply too powerful. They are the raw material for prayer, incantation, vows, poetry, literature and song, as well as the tools for deceit, lies, betrayal.

I am becoming more aware to hear others’ agenda for me in their words (both good intentions and otherwise), or others’ own weight, drama, baggage, failures and shortcomings, that they may want to project onto me, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not. I cannot accept this. I think I have strongly relied on the praise and affirmation of others and I have sought that (who doesn’t?). If I am to reject negative projections that are created to saddle me with somebody else’s issues, I must also not be fed by the praise, resisting the lure of how praise makes me feel ‘good’. There must be a middle ground where I can accept affirmation, and not seek it out, where I can be impervious (is anyone?) to the negativity that drains my energy and depresses my spirit.

10.4.06

Bayou Bend

Yesterday D and I went to Bayou Bend to stroll through the lovely gardens there. He took a number of amazing pics, including this one to the right, and the one below, of these enormous and astounding sycamores. There is a glorious bridge that serves as the entrance to the gardens and house, both of which are easily missed at the end of a nearly hidden road, secreted away from busy Memorial Drive. The bridge traverses the chocolaty and tree shaded bayou, and is an undulating, wooden suspension bridge, that I adore. Beautiful unidentified trees spring from the muddy banks and wrap their shade across the slowly flowing water.

A zen moment overheard in passing, upon our exit across the bridge:
Mum: Isn’t this a cool bridge? Do you like it?
Baby Girl: Why?


It doesn’t get better than that, yes?
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Today we potted a cassia from M’s yard next door since he’s sold the house and it will be demolished soon. We’ll be getting more plants from over there…
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Mistakes are at the centre of learning. – Guitar Craft

9.4.06

Discipline is a vehicle for joy



I admit to being quiet here for sometime, having suspended a daily diary discipline, though I have been writing nearly daily and continue to work on a larger as yet unidentifiable work based on poetry/lyrics- suspending my desire to define what it may become, and keeping some of that creative meat out of the blog.

As evidenced by these stellar pics, our garden is rockin’. When these Moon pains have passed I plan to launch a bee photo vigil. We have a particularly enormous bumble bee who visits the front garden in the late afternoon. I like to think he is the same bee, and even the same bee from last year- our five o’clock bumblebee. Yesterday I attempted to photo the many honey bees, but the breezes kept the fuzzy purple salvia blooms waving, and it was truly impossible to capture the bees’ delicious and gentle roostings.





"All the universe is one bright pearl," said the Zen Master Dogen. "Even in the black mountain cave of demons, complete freedom is working."