Category Archives: Beloved

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rebirth

I take joy in the birth of the sun each morning and the winter promise of light and warmth and spring.

Joy to you and yours today!

I took this in late September, 2022. In the winter the sun does not rise above the bluff on North Beach.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: birth.

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Winter bless us

Winter bless us year end dark and freezing
winter turn us inwards prayer for joy
prayer for joy for young ones all are seizing
others mourn loved deaths, eschewing toys
darkness let us settle loving all
silence let us turn our thoughts to peace
walk in wind and birds, iced trees so tall
few are out to gently walk the streets
the frozen ground holds lives that lie in wait
in freezing seeds hear the call and know
let every human drop their arms and hate
while seeds lie in wait to grow
let winter’s silence fill our hearts with joy
let peace descend, war melt to children’s toys

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A poem for Christine Goodenough after reading her Winter Delights.

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Heart meditation for the Solstice

It snowed last night. Covid is making me fall asleep at 4 or 5 pm which means I am very awake at midnight. The cats and I checked out the snow at 1 am.

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Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He is enlightened, yet chooses to return to earth over and over, until everyone is enlightened.

In China, he changes gender and names into Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

In college I date a lapsed Jewish Zen Buddhist and I learn to meditate. At the group meetings there are 6 or 7 of us. The Heart Sutra is recited and we meditate facing the wall, sitting on our zafus, for 40 minutes. It is easier to meditate in a group, though I have no idea why. Pride? Some connection to other’s breathing? The breathing will serve me very very well later, when I keep getting pneumonia. The ability to slow my breathing will help me survive.

When we had a group meditation, the Heart Sutra was read slowly and clearly. It has it’s own rhythm. I had lost it and finally found the translation we used. Here it is:

There is more than one translation, here: https://dharmanet.org/HeartSutra.html. I have tapes and books by Jon Kabat Zinn, who has studied mindful meditation for 30 years. He gets better results in his mindful meditation pain classes than opioids, with an average decrease in pain of 50%. His tapes have the same slow gentle speech as our Heart Sutra readers. It is hypnotic and I can relax. Though my oppositional defiance kicks in when he says firmly that I am to fall more awake, not asleep. I listened to that CD every night for a year after my father died. When he would tell me to fall awake, I would smile and slide into sleep, a happy rebel. I was comforted that I did not have to do what he said.

Where is the Avalokitesvara, the Kwan Yin of the West? What examples in the largest religions are there? Someone who stays even after they have achieved enlightenment/heaven because they want everyone there. Not only that, but they believe everyone can be there. And they will not give up until everyone is there.

I was surprised when a Unitarian Minister stated that Unitarians do not believe in Hell, because a loving creator would not consign anyone to Hell. I didn’t really want to give Hell up, but I also agree that a loving creator would not consign anyone to hell. It’s a bit easier for me to think of people as continuing on a wheel of life until they achieve enlightenment than to think of some people going to Heaven, but after all, I don’t know the whole story. No one knows another person’s whole story. I wrote DMV to figure out the Hell/Heaven thing. And the lead character wants to go back, because her work is not done yet.

I am thankful for paxlovid at the moment. I am thankful that I found this translation of the Heart Sutra.

Happy Solstice.

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The first photograph is Elwha looking very meditative after going out in the snow. Here they both are in the snow:

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: solstice.

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winter bloom 2

WordPress keeps asking daily questions. Today I will answer: my life today IS what I expected a year ago. Which is darkly funny when it involves feeling cynical about someone who claims we’ll be friends forever. Developmentally stuck, I guess. Though I do think people can change and heal some things. Sometimes they don’t, though.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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Paths

I am reinventing myself now. After my fourth pneumonia, oxygen continuously for a year and now my fifth pulmonologist since 2012. He did not have much to offer. An inhaler but “We can’t be sure that it will keep you from getting pneumonia.”

Well. So with ME-CFS, myalgic encephalopathy chronic fatigue syndrome, now what?

I am at a fork in the path. At least three forks.

  1. Try to do a micropractice, working with Long Covid people. Who either wear masks or I do not see them. I would have to convince the hospital district that it needs me.
  2. Write. I am doing that, but really focus on it and work on publishing. I have so much art from my mother. She did not really enjoy selling it though she loved having shows and would dress up.
  3. I could focus on publicizing and selling my mother’s art.
  4. There is a trunk from my grandfather. I could focus on that. He states that he wants it published. Grandfather, you were a piece of work.
  5. I could just lie around and travel and play with the cats and make music.
  6. Focus on music. I have written a number of songs. Apparently being hypoxic makes me write songs. I think they are peculiar and wonderful too. Flute, voice, guitar, piano, bass. Hmmmm.
  7. Something else. Who knows what will appear? I am doing art too, the two large sculptural pieces in my yard. A fellow doctor scolded me about one. It’s the one with a logging chain and an oxygen tank, attached to a tree. The title is “Tethered”. Now, why would a local doctor object to that? I have some small pieces too that involve found objects and especially feathers and small stemmed glassware.

Many forks! Now I just need more spoons of energy!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: reinvent.

The photograph was taken in September 2021. Where is the path? I got to hear Jonathan Doyle last night, with George Radabaugh on piano. FABULOUS!

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Query tale

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is question. Those cat tail question marks come to mind. When I am having tea in the morning, Elwha guards me, facing the doors of the kitchen. There are three doors, so he has to triangulate the angle just right.

I think the question here is clear: “WHY aren’t you rubbing my belly? WHAT do you have to do that is better than that?”

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: question.

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excrescence evolution

I’ve shown a photograph of these fungi from my yard a few weeks ago. They are changing. They still look like mushroom flowers but more mature. The fungal network still has not dragged me or the cats underground. Hopefully the network will be patient during winter break.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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Thaw

This is Tiktok. In 2019 he overwintered at my house. We had snow and it got very cold at night and I worried. But every morning, he’d appear near the feeder when it got light. Then he would throw a mild conniption at me when I went outside with a hot towel to try to thaw the feeder. “Hurry up, hurry up, I am hungry!” He certainly figured out that I was the person who dealt with the feeder. He would buzz me if the feeder was empty, too. He makes a ticking sound, so that’s where the name is from. One of those old things called clocks, with hands, that ticked.

Right now I have two feeders up. I am seeing a female Anna’s hummingbird in the front, chasing others away, and a male at the kitchen feeder. It may be Tiktok still! I have named the female Emerald. I have seen them together in the top of the plum tree, but this is after Emerald chased Tiktok away from her feeder. It’s a bit unclear if they are friends or not.

Meanwhile, Elwha has the opposite of a conniption.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: conniption.