A sunny day after snow, snow, snow. As I was walking into the library, a mother with two little girls, maybe four and six years old, were having a conversation, while walking through deep slush in the parking lot, that its about time time to get the bikes out and prepare for the Spring. The smallest of the girls brought up the fact that she did not have a bike. Ahhhh! Spring!

I was reading Malachy McCourt’s lovely memoir “A Monk Swimming”; stories and memories of being an immigrant teen in New York and growing up in a millieu of artists, con-men, drinkers, dreamers, producers, writers, cadgers of the crumbs, future movers and shakers, plus a fair contingent of mopes and gapes. I loved encountering his story on Brendan Behan’s dying at the age of 41, from alcoholism, in a hospital in Ireland. As a nun/nurse was attending and wiping his face gently, Behan says to her, in thanks, “May all your sons be Bishops.”

Typical alcoholic, wants to get at the heart of the matter but is always pulled aside by glibness and cynicism. I’ve been sober now for more than half my life and I still have problems with the caustic remark that has no purpose and no future, just disrupts the moment. Poor fucking Brendan. Then again, he made the world richer, because his heart was in the right place, but his kidney’s and liver and pancreas died before his heart, and it had to follow. And then there’s Spring.

And, it turns out, our heart’s always in the right place, just sometimes needs a Spring, or several, to melt some snow.

The Earth has a sickness. Some of its cells are attacking the host and there’s nothing going wrong.

It is what it is.

There’s the Earth. There’s the cancer. The Earth may get sick for a while as its natural healing powers come into play, or it may get really sick over a long period of time and die sooner than the average Earth. Then again, it may just be going through a flu sort of infestation and just be miserable for a period of time, feeling sick and having digestive issues, high fevers, chills, generally feeling puny and then slowly bounce back and go back to work. I think it has the flu.

Similarly,

I think humans wouldn’t have the flu if we didn’t eat other creatures. My understanding is that the flu virus’ vector of swine, fowl and humans is necessary in order to thrive and become problematic, at times reaching  pandemic distribution. It seems that interaction would not occur commonly if we didn’t raise pigs and fowl to eat, because without the set- up of humans, birds and pigs living in very close proximity; the table wouldn’t be set (so to speak), for a Planetary-Flu-Virus-Graduation Party.   I’m just saying.

Frankly I don’t know how things would or could be different than they are. We are the Virus and our vectors are greed, hate, delusion and the Earth needs to rest and naturally sweat and purge for a while. I bet we won’t be comfortable with the medicines or the healing process.

So, what’s the point of it all? I’m sure lots of folks have opinions as to cause, effect and possible outcome of this illness.

On a slightly separate note;

I’ve cherished an opinion for some time that in a Student/Teacher relationship the only one that really matters is the student, because a good student will learn from a bad teacher, but an indifferent student won’t learn much from a great teacher. Unless, that great teacher can use a variety of skillful and sometimes vivid ways of motivating the poor student.

So.

Earth, great teacher.

Humans, indifferent students.

Motivation. Coming up!

It’s been a few months or so since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been drifting in a pool of awareness, re-arrangement and getting ready to settle into the late Fall, my favorite time. There is gathering, storing, canning, preserving, curing and labeling the harvest of this years activities and efforts. In my case not grain, fruit or vegetable, root or otherwise; rather seeds gathered for consideration, contemplation, restoration during the cold months to replenish this little being, future time.

What came to mind yesterday was that I no longer choose to run away. Oh sure, there is edging away, looking away, yearning away, dreaming away; and there is awareness of a type of resolve that is based on being satisfied 92.3% of the time. The remaining 7.7% still need tending for harvest and storing. (Those percentages are for demonstration purposes only, reality, day to day, may reflect considerable variation in those numbers. They exist solely to provide a sense of movement, much like a distant mountain or island can give perspective or point of triangulation.)

Life is good. Some tell me there is a lot of change afoot (at hand?) in the world and that it may not be so. Generally my experience is that all change at some point doesn’t feel good and I suspect the reason it doesn’t feel good, is the intuitive sense that we really have no idea what will eventuate as the result of any change. For example. Spare change?

Not running, wanting too   and

Holding still within   confusion,

Deep fear, or joyful apprehension;   brings 

To mind elementary school   teachers’

Helmut pay   attention.

Warm, hot, Summertime and

Eating a peach over the sink.

Earth dying and, for the moment,

Everything is wonder full.

How do we, be?

In the last few weeks of my ongoing general-non-differentiated-aimless, yet all-encompassing, discontent; I seem to be encountering persistence of the word “being”, appearing, “fraught”* with meaning.

I am seeing that I have been captured all these years in the habit of “doing”, and like all habits I didn’t see it as one. The sense of doing, or at the very least planning some doing, was habitual, in that habits are often (part of), the various cores of that ceaseless story by me, told to me, about me. Twenty-four/seven, for however many years I can manage to to tell it, hear it, and nod in agreement. I suspect that is a common human experience and we don’t notice it for the most part. After all, “that’s just Me”.

I had become a little worried that I wasn’t “doing” anything. Not in the fascist “productive member of society” formulation, but more in the continuous validation that I am “active”, and that proves some sort of worth, as if I had to keep updating a worthiness for existence. My coming into existence established my worthiness, but I had never fully begun to realize that. I thought I had to establish that to others. You know, so they would approve and I could bask.

I’m beginning to see that “being” takes just as much effort as “doing”, yet has more long range “potential” for good, because in “being” I cultivate my “human” side and that is not an accomplishment, it is real-“izing.”

So, as I become more entrenched in my Old “Cootage” (French pronunciation please), I feel less pressured to do something, anything; and just try to let things be. Including me.

Lost and found is not

A department it is

How we all are in

This here life now.

*Fraught” is not on my list of “Words I Like” which is my next topic.”Soonish.”