Daily Archives: May 20, 2008

Art and Culture, Travel

A Muse Fiction

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50  bar rises 29.74  1mph NNW  dew-point 29  Beltane

                          Full Hare Moon

A lot of people considered my piece in the Muse a non-fiction account of a real tour.  Hmmm.  Wonder what I could have done to have made it a bit more obvious as fiction?  It’s nice to get reactions to it anyhow.  Allison did a creative job with the Muse this year, a lot of new and different, including the many mini-robes for a Weber send-off.   Thanks to her for publishing Inspired.

Jon doesn’t need help with the garden.  By the time the bris happens it will be all planted, but I will go out and help him level the yard for sod.

The trip down to Alabama will happen in mid-June, so June stacks up as a heavy travel month.  All of it in my little red Celica with 240,000 miles, if it holds together.  The last long trip in it required a day and a night in Pueblo, Colorado to fix an electrical hiccup that knocked out power while I drove along on the freeway toward Denver.  That was fun.

I can only guess, but the full hare moon probably got its name from visible bunnies in gardens, illuminated by a full late May, early June moon. 

Haven’t heard from Mark and Mary in a while.  They both have busy lives at this particular point in time.

Faith and Spirituality

Finding My Place among the 10,000 Things

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59  bar steady  29.77  4mph NW  dew-point 37  Beltane  Sunny and cool

                                  Full Hare Moon

Want to say a bit more about mastery (or, as Stephan said, maybe it’s anti-mastery) as living into the Self.  It has become clearer and clearer to me that I offer more impediments to the Movement of Heaven through me than I do channels.  I’m not being modest here, only stating a not too  unusual fact.  This opening and emptying of the ego so that my Self can flow through me out into the world is the big task ahead for me.  Yet, it is an ironic task, a task that only be realized in the negation of tasks.  It is a goal that has as its objective, an empty vessel and, to compound the irony, an empty vessel that will be filled, but this time not by the culture’s values, but by the values of the movement of heaven.  I believe a Taoist might call this finding my place among the 10,000 things.

I prefer this approach because it negates the notion of mastery as an over and above phenomenon, something that effort can achieve, and opens the way to mastery of the ego by the Self, the larger you that participates in the archetypal realm.  Let go and let Self, perhaps.  I envision this as a congested field filled with objects of desire and presumed needs suddenly cleared so that the plants natural to the immediate ecosphere can flourish.  It is the garden filled with native plants who require no artifice to grow; rather, they rely on the soil that the past has created, the rain a season brings and the sunlight that can reach the soil.  Native plants do not care if it is hot or wet or cold and dry, they have developed a lifeway that follows the rhythms of the seasons where they bloom. 

How much simpler our life would be if we could open ourselves to the rhythms native  to our Self; then we would not have to worry about dignity, accomplishment, status or desire.   We, too, would not care whether it was hot or dry, cold or wet, yet we would act, and act effectively because our actions would shape themselves to the  movement of the Tao. 

That’s how I see right now.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Seeking Mastery Within

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54  bar steady 29.78  1mph NW  dew-point 44  Beltane, sunny and cool

                                       Full Hare Moon

The weather remains cool.  This is not a long spring; it’s a long late March or early April.  The gardening upside has been longer lasting blooms on the tulips and the daffodils and the scylla.  This weather has also proved excellent for transplanting, reducing transplant shock to a minimum and resulting in little wilting after a move.  The downside has been slow germination (no germination?) for some vegetable seeds planted and slow growth for the ones that have sprouted.  From the humans who live here in Andover perspective it’s been a great season.  Cool weather to work outside and to further many landscaping projects.

Last night’s conversation about mastery at Tom’s lingers today.  At one point we asked each person to claim what mastery they found in themselves, then we offered evidence of mastery we found in them, too, from an outsider’s perspective.  Various Woolly’s were masters of soulfullness, love, living, listening, communicating, design, the big picture, and drawing others out to see the best in themselves. 

Tom and I were wrong in our assumption that individual Woollys would find it difficult to claim a sense of mastery.  And delighted to be wrong, too.  We affirmed what each Woolly saw as their area of mastery and added ones they hadn’t seen or chose to ignore, e.g. mastery of forensic engineering, computer skills and sheepshead, making the complex accessible, letting go, the body in motion.

In my case, for example, I admitted I couldn’t find anything to claim since I’ve lead such a curiousity driven life, often running full speed down divergent paths at the same time.  Then, I said, “Well, I guess I could claim being a master student.”  That got modified in the eyes of the group to seeker after essential, radical truth.  OK, I can see that.  “You’re a master teacher, too.”  Hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s become a theme in various areas of my life of late, so it must be there in spite of my opacity to it.     

Tom initiated a get together for designing the evening and having me as a co-facilitator, rather than a servant lackey.  He made the food simple, sandwiches and soup followed by a big, really big, cookie.  Others seemed to appreciate the act of co-operation in design of the evening.  Tom and I wanted to introduce better time managment, and we did; but, that was not appreciate by everyone.  “Felt forced.”  Well, yes.  But every time together has its limits and therefore its limits on contribution.

As we closed, Tom observed that the Woolly’s as a group are a master that each of us can turn to for guidance in life.  I nuanced that a bit by suggesting that as a group, over 20+ years together, we have mastered groupness.  We are a living community, best evidenced, as someone said, by the fact that we show up.

I have signed out for the summer at the Art Institute.  I need the break.  I’ll use the time for writing, family and our land.