Jumping into the Fray

Right before winter solstice, time/space becomes extremely busy and crowded. So many things to do, wow! And it stays densely packed until after the New Year.

As usual I am giving small token gifts and sending cards and as usual I am not worrying too much about making sure Every Single Person I Care About receives something. To my mind, gift giving at this time of year represents a contemporary form of making offerings to Brother Sun, so as to coax him into renewing himself on solstice.

It's important to me to give gifts and send cards, but not so important to whom I distribute these offerings. Does that seem random? Honestly it makes sense to me.

So if you don't receive something from me, it doesn't mean I don't care about you. Oh no! Quite the opposite.

Onwards now to a big day of work and a very busy weekend. It's supposed to snow - but I'll believe that one when I see it. Happy Friday to all!!

Da neigt sich die Stunde and ruhrt mich an

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

--R.M. Rilke from A Book of the Monastic Life

Chronic Curiosity

That's the White House in the background, the Washington Monument looming behind it. And yes I added speckles because the composition looks vaguely Seurat-ish to me.

How and when do you know when you've had too much of a good thing? Sometimes it's easy to understand, as after a too-big dessert when your stomach hurts, after a too-ambitious workout when your body aches (in a bad way). Not to get into details here but I have definitely had too much sex, a happy excess that left me disoriented, shaky, heachachey and flaky. Too much reading causes eyestrain and too much work of any kind locks the shoulder muscles or lower back so tightly that the overworker can barely move. You get what I mean, right?

Wanting too much of anything carries with it a kind of grasping energy; it's a form of greed, no matter how noble the object of desire might be. In the old Norse myths, Odin trades his eyeball for wisdom. For heaven's sake! Talk about grasping. No offense to Father Odin, by the way. He's a God after all, but still sets a bad example if you ask me.

Lately I've been thinking that even wonderful qualities, like curiosity, can come up too strongly. The inquisitive mind that ideally shapes itself as a wondrous openness, can become a grasping. For example, I think of moms reading their kids' journals - spying of all kinds, in fact. Archeologists pillaging (and therefore desecrating) ancient tombs have perhaps overstepped what is healthy in terms of wanting to unravel the mysteries of history.

Yesterday I was wondering about Amma, the hugging saint. I know lots of people who wait all night, when she's in DC, for a chance to hug her. They all say that the hugs are completely genuine. OK. I believe it, I do, and yeah she must be a saint, because if I had to hug 10,000 people all in one sitting, YIKES. Just shoot me! Seriously that would be so awful. Maybe for Amma, 10,000 hugs is OK, but if she had to do 100,000 hugs in one sitting, that would be too much.

Who knows? I wonder about these things, though over time I've realized I don't need to try to understand or figure out everything, oh no. I am an essentially curious person, but I no longer want to be curious about everything all the time, 24/7, because that's too much. It's not healthy, not satisfying. Really it is not. Curiosity killed the cat! Oh yeah.

Flurries

Uh oh. It's December 15th. Once again, as always, I have done virtually nothing in terms of getting ready for the big celebration of solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah. I actually love to send out cards, give gifts but somehow I can't engage with the holiday until it's so close that I feel I have to panic. So from now until Christmas Eve, I imagine I will engage in a flurry of seasonal activity.

flur·ries
1. A brief, light snowfall.
2.a. A sudden gust of wind. b. A stirring mass, as of leaves or dust; a shower.
3. A sudden burst or commotion; a stir: a flurry of interest in the new product; a flurry of activity when the plane landed.
4. A short period of active trading, as on a stock exchange.

Speaking of flurries, I've been asked out on dates lately - twice - by two different men. I have not been asked out on a date literally in years, so this is a pretty exciting development. Sadly I'm not interested in dating either one, but I'm flabbergasted to be approached twice in the space of a couple of weeks. A flurry of date invitations. Hmmmm.

Flurries of remembered dreams are a part of this moment in time as well. Two nights ago I dreamed I had a flurry of dogs - 2 dachshunds named Jet and Jetta, and a Boston terrier named Roxie. When I woke up I was kind of sad to realize I didn't have a flurry of sweet little dogs. Oh well.

Right now I need to get into a serious flurry of housecleaning, then hurry into a flurry of Christmas card writing. Tonight? A flurry of latkes. It's a theme, isn't it? Oh yeah.

Shhhhhhh

The season of the leaves is almost done. There are still a few trees with leaves hanging on for dear life, but mostly the sky has opened, even on streets that have the densest leaf canopy during the summer.

Now the land land will quiet down, settle into itself for the winter.

I know it's strange, but I think the colorless landscape of winter is every bit as beautiful as the lushness of summer. Sometimes it's kind of a relief not to have to encounter the powerful life force that infuses this swamp in spring and summer, and even into late fall. Winter is a modest season in the midatlantic, modest and beautiful.

From now until March, the bugs are gone, the flowers are gone, the leaves have fallen. All is quiet and subtle, except Brother Wind, of course. It's not winter solstice, but winter is here. Nice!!

Belonging

The poem at the bottom of the post is one I recited so often while doing initiations into Reclaiming that I finally memorized it. It is, in so many ways, a perfect poem, at least I think so.

Homo sapiens, as a species, is a social animal. We join forces more often than not. One of my great teachers used to talk about how adept we humans are at collecting ourselves into groups, communities, collectives, teams, crowds, and clubs.

There are so many forms of adoption among humans and other species, too. When we are feeling generous, we realize that we all do, in some way or another, belong to each other. Certainly here in the blog world we adopt each other, yes? I say yes.

I went to a party Friday night at which I realized just how much a part of the Capitol Hill community I have become over the years. Looking around I saw neighbors, clients and friends, and their kids, too, now grown up, who I knew when they were in junior high school. Wow. It was quite moving, feeling in my heart - knowing in my heart - that I don't have to always be the weirdo, the outsider, unless that's what I want. Indeed I used to play the outcast in my family, but the second I decided to abandon that role, I was welcomed in with warmth and enthusiasm.

Because I don't have kids or a partner or a nice house, I have assumed that here on the Hill I am somehow "other." According to the folks at the party, I'm one of them. That story I told myself for years, that I didn't belong? JUST A STORY.

Sweet, isn't it? I think so.

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


If you've got a bit of the holiday blues, I recommend walking the gauntlet of a big double row of Christmas trees. That clean smell and the beautiful bluish green needles will clean all the gloom out of your aura. It's like an aura carwash.

Remedial Socialization

It was clay day yesterday. One thing I can report is that the unfortunate moment has arrived when American women begin wearing Christmas sweaters in public. Oh man. Those things are so completely ugly, every one of them. Lumpy, garish, overdecorated in every hideous way you can imagine, I can't for the life of me figure out why they are so popular. They are not flattering to ANY figure, and since most of the people who wear them are middle aged, they are especially bad.

I talk as if I had one single atom of fashion sense. I don't! Apologies to those who love Christmas sweaters. I saw a lot of them yesterday.

And as usual, I had fascinating interactions with perfect strangers all day long. The adults are very interested in the exhibit and ask lots of great questions. I love being a "content expert." Suits my ego just fine, thank you! The school kids could mostly care less, so I try to get them curious. Sometimes I ask the really little ones, "If that guy could talk, what would he say?" Or, "What does it look like he's thinking?" My favorite answers yesterday included, "He says, 'You will die forever!'" and "He's thinking, 'It itches underneath my armor.'" Good one. Both of those came from second graders. Cool.

After all these years of living my life mostly on my own and relating to people one at a time, the docent gig is proving to be socially rehabilitative. I'm re-learning how to talk to people I don't know, a Very Good Thing. Tonight I'm going to a Christmas party here on the Hill where I'll be able to practice my newly rediscovered social skills. I am actually looking forward to it! Yeah!! Happy Friday to all!

Yes the warriors had plenty to teach me yesterday. I'll include that information in the comments section since the body of this post wanted to be about exchanges with the living.