A very long walk on the beach this morning brought the feeling of stepping into poem-space -- where everything is in sharp focus and poignant, where all the senses are alive. Hard to quite capture in poem language, though, for there's a kind of lulling that comes with the sound of the surf, the entrainment to it, and the always shifting sensations.  Something particular happens with the alternation of the closely-focused looking down (as the inveterate beachcomber, I am always scanning the detritus on the sand) and then looking out to the vastness of the sea, the endless turquoise meeting the sky, where it's not possible to hone in on one detail at all. And the constantly changing feelings under the feet: walking over tiny shell mounds, or sinking down sometimes as the sand gives way, and the pushing off for the next step -- the hard packed surface changing into mushiness. The coolness and liquidity of the water pouring over the toes. Sometimes the surprise of a more powerful wave, splashing up over the legs.  All this, and seabirds.  And then, after a few miles, hot, and jumping in, (at this time of the year the water temperature is perfect) and the ever-amazing experience of the deep salinity and the waves that lift you up, and the feeling of the ridges of sand on the sea floor. Sticky salt skin. Something almost soporific in the journey, even wile the senses are so awake.

     Vastness may indeed provide a kind of quieting, a rocking motion. Not just the vastness of the sea (and this Gulf of mine is, in the scale of things, just a small ocean), but the vastness of the beach itself. Unfathomable numbers: the millions of creatures that inhabited the myriad scallop, clam or jingle shells that are still recognizable here, just on my few miles of sand, and the many, many more that once lived in the shells that are, after hundreds or even thousands of years of tossing in the surf, just tiny fragments now. And even further back, the creatures that lived millions of years ago--the ones that left their teeth and bones that have hardened into the fossils we are walking on. (The beach here has a greyish cast because so much of the sand is made of fossil bits). Unfathomable numbers, just of one type: the fossilized shark's teeth, 25 million years old. How many, many, many sharks; how many, many many teeth. And the even more unfathomable numbers of creatures that live between the sand grains (meiofauna--I've written about this before  [Feb. 25, 2019], but it is still so awesome, and  just because I know about it, it's more less possible to comprehend the numbers beneath my feet, even just this morning). The sand itself, made up of particles of abraded mountains, crystals, and these shells and fossils. Numbers that could only be written as a superscript power which lies far beyond my understanding.



      Vastness too in the immediate dramas: the number of sea turtles that have found their way up the beach in the last few weeks to lay and bury their eggs--a most laborious process of lumbering out of the water and digging a seemingly safe hole. (Some females even drop two loads in the nesting season). Very few of the little ones make it, but there is so much effort for those that do. There are thousands of buried turtle eggs on my walk. Thousands just in this stretch of sand, and that's even when the sea turtle population is struggling. Abundance and vastness in so much else around me: the number of leaves in a single live oak, for example, or the way the chaya plant puts out a rash of new leaves in every place it  has been cut.

    


      But I digress. This post is focusing on the beach and the morning's walk. The word beatitude came to me, even though I only had a vague sense of what it means. I knew Jesus gave blessings called beatitudes, but I was feeling the energy of the word without any particular association, and it wouldn't let go. The definition, it turns out, is "a state of great joy" --being happy and blessed. Yes, that's it: blessed with a sense of vastness, abundance, the unending quality of the natural world, the whole astonishment of it. Blessed are we all, living here, witnessing, tasting the salt, feeling the sand grains, holding the remains of beings from so long ago and glimpsing the depth of time.  Blessed are we all, for we are parts of God and the whole is always  in the parts.

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I am writing this sitting in my hammock "office," under the papaya, oak and palm. (The photo shows the view I see when looking up). I am also in reaching distance  of the pigeon pea tree, its nearest branch with one pod ready to pick and others still ripening. Here I am, in deep bounty and grace.

This is such an intense time where we are stopped short, having left (the illusion of) normal, having gone through all the energetic portals to this other world, the one not yet formed or clarified. So many in fear, discomfort, untethered. Heart open to the seismic changes, the earth seemingly breaking apart at people’s feet.  Without a long treatise about any of it, and with the caveat that I am hardly Pollyanna—I know just how much disruption lies ahead, how huge this shift really is—I remind us to never lose sight of joy. In the midst of it all, remember it. Help others remember it. Proclaim it. 

“Stay joyous”  is what I plan to use as my new signature (a stronger phrase than “stay well.”) Turn your attention to the energies of connection; firmly put your energy in dreaming and embodying the reality you want to live in. Be firm about it. Acknowledge the fear, but don’t stay there; turn to the trees or the breeze or flowing water, even in the kitchen sink (and right there is a miracle: clean water coming out of a pipe at the turn of a wrist!). Am I preaching? It must seem so. There are people dying (as there always are) and there are so many now out of work and so forth. Yes. And. There are also countless people living, in their hearts, helping one another. There are new ways of connecting. And there is all the powerful energy of the earth, and there are the spring flowers and the taste of raspberries and so much more. Yes. And.

My own inner guidance is unequivocally clear right now: turn to joy. Put your focus there, even if you are making or sanitizing masks or feeling the collective fear at the grocery store, even if you’re seeing the literal barriers that keep people apart. Help others remember joy, brightness, not-suffering. There's always a spark of that, and we can fan its flames. That’s where I stand; that's my post. Lift the spirits, keep lifting, and then lift again.  I know some will turn away from this message, dismiss it, looking back to their worries, their pain. I know some will think I’m cold-hearted or foolish or even sadly duped. But that’s my post. The herald, the town crier, who says it:  Remember joy. Choose joy. Be joy. Be joyous, inside it all. I invite you to drink a cup of joy with me (as Allaudin’s Sufi song says, “fill your cup, drink it up…”). If you can’t handle the whole cup, take a taste, a drop on the tongue—like a homeopathic flower essence, it will affect you.

I offer joyous things today--things that I am blessedly able to fill my cup with. May you catch the wave!

First some images of scenes on my land--my sequester delights.

Look what's growing here! I planted the cut-off top of a pineapple in the ground, and here it is! This is fairly sandy soil and far from the garden hoses; even though I try to build the soil up, most things I've planted in this area don't get watered often enough and don't thrive. I know that pineapple plantations are everyday ho-hum in some parts of the world, but this is a magical part of reconfiguring my kitchen waste and my discovering this semi-tropical environment.

And here below, the pigs are flying!  (we never thought pigs would fly, but the impossible becomes possible...)  This is a detail of a giant purple flying pig that is a sculpture in my front yard. It was part of the property when we bought it.

     (Remember you can click on the small images for the full view).

 
And next, some images that come from my recent art play (it isn't really art work..) The first two capture something of the feel of this odd corona virus time we are living through. To the right here is an altered or enhanced view of something very ordinary--can you guess?  (It's actually a view of looking down at my pants legs) I like the image for its colors and textures, but also because it holds the feeling of rupture, of the kind of seismic parting I alluded to above. Our societies and realities have been so bifurcated, so two-camped. We may hope  that will change now, but the bifurcation and pulling apart of the earth feels very real.

The second captures the jaggedness and burning quality many are feeling now--the on-edge terror that underlies the experience of fear. At the same time, it seems to hold the enormous sense of aliveness that is in the energy around us, the great sense of waking up or awake-ness. The image is taken from a photograph of tufts of a low-growing grass, taken on a walk in a nearby preserve.





And finally, a few images from what I think of as my "Crossing Over" series. I had this theme in my mind for quite some time now--people on boats, in transition, crossing from one place to another. In the passage, on the way, moving across. It makes even more sense with the energetic shift I and so many others are attuning to now; we are in the collapse stage, when the caterpillar has to essentially melt and re-emerge in its new form. We're on the journey.

..At 2:00 this afternoon (EDT) we felt the peak of the super "full worm moon"-- an extra bright March moon named for the worms that are beginning to stir under the soil with the coming of spring (although what this really means is that they're beginning to stir upwards, since they dig down deep enough to where the earth has a constant temperature and they never actually stop moving. In any case that characteristic is certainly not true everywhere--there are many places, including the one where I am, where the ground has never frozen).  But the worm moon is a fun mental image, and I found an illustration from the Farmer's Almanac that illustrates it delightfully. I'm including it here.  

This image feels inviting to me: I want to follow that worm wherever it's going, since it seems so strong and determined and forward-looking.  And the look of the moon (is it yellow cheese?) is quite jaunty too.

I used associations and energies around the moon as prompts in my "Writing From the Inside" workshop today, and the group went in a very different direction; our writing led us to a peaceful place of bathing in mystery and magical moonlight. There were wonderful phrases/word pictures like "Yes, says the moon;" "the facets of your face;" and "I ate the moon" (which led me to a discovery of Aousha, the beloved "Arab girl" from the UAR who was known as "the poet who ate the moon"--she dreamed in her youth that the moon came down from the sky and she swallowed it).  I'm always in awe when I see what comes through as we explore through the words this way, much as I am when we see what comes through the images in SoulCollage.  It's this kind of discovery I seek to share in this blog.

Thus, I'm presenting another olio or miscellany today--some images of artwork, some poetry--no single theme, but examples of continued creative expression and hopefully, fodder for others.


First, some pieces I made for participants in the Inner Guidance by the Gulf workshop I led last week. Each started with one of my photographs, which was altered and enlivened, and then used as the basis of a dimensional collage--there are pieces of flora and fauna added to each one. Do click on the images for the full view, and see if you can determine what the added bits are. They are identified in the captions.

Creative energy explodes as I generate ideas for my writing workshops—as I come up with different kinds of prompts that lead to a panoply of possibility: Handing each participant a bison tooth that had been excavated by the Missouri River, of unknown age but maybe very very old, and asking them to take it in—to feel the bony layers, the wear patterns, the echoes of the long-ago grasslands and hundreds of hooves kicking up dust. Finding evocative images to stimulate moods and stories: a running lion, seen through the mist, or a shot of well-balanced cairns (stacks of rocks) in an unknown landscape, or a painting of a deep red forest . Reading “Fluency,” a poem about a river surprised by its own unfolding, out loud.

The creative energy is always there  as I play with my art materials—printed images, papers, bones, shells-- and see them come together in two and three dimensions; it comes as I see the works-in progress spread out around me, each waiting to be completed. I feel joy with the ones that feel finished, but even when the pieces aren’t resolved, they are the gold mine, the veins of gold, ready, waiting to be discovered and fully seen.