Woolgathering

I keep thinking of getting back to writing, getting past thinking I have too little talent so why bother. I can just write for the sake of it, have my say because I like to share my stories. I am not in charge of my writing anyway. What comes out is what the "writer within" has to say. It is not an ego project. I have to show up and whatever gift there is will emerge. As Lis said recently the one thing she knows about creative work is that you have to do it.

From standing in the intense fear yesterday I have a sense of fragility, of deep vulnerability, like a hollowed-out reed. I felt the way I used to feel after a long sesshin (Zen retreat). There is deep pain for the suffering of the world, a momentary sense of being undefended, open, bowed. I am appreciating it as my pattern is to go so quickly into fear and use it to protect myself. There is such a longing for all of us to be free - for the lost to be found.

I watched the last of the Masterpiece Theater show Any Human Heart yesterday and was moved to tears when it ended. I had found myself critical at times of the protagonist's behavior and character but at the end as he reviewed his life and loves, his work and interests I had only an embracing compassion for this one human heart which indeed could have been "any human heart." I felt our transience, our vulnerability, how much we matter as frail, flawed expressions of LOVE.

I find myself considering doing a long retreat, like a three month stay at Christ-in-the-Desert. Being silent and solitary under the New Mexico skies has real appeal. The time is not now. Perhaps next year.

Phil said an interesting thing today to which I could relate i.e. how much value there can be especially for people who don't connect emotionally, in simply sharing space. I can just see him in his taciturn way out on the great expanse of their ranch just doing chores at his dad's side. I understood because one of my favorite things is to sit by a fire with a companion, both of us reading and being silent. I also recall working in the garden with my dad or playing a piece of his favorite music on the piano. No conversation, yet a sense of being connected.
Because I am so emotionally centered and more likely to be expressive I have not valued the just being together in silence enough. I do think that love is doing the connecting in the silence. It is the emotion present though not expressed.

I so enjoyed having Danny and Joy on Saturday and Sunday. He is a good companion and we are very harmonious. He is very intelligent, sensitive and emotionally available. We spent our afternoon and evening watching the golf and the Super Bowl. Got in some visiting. He took all of the frost cloth off and folded it up for me which I so appreciated. He said as he was leaving that he is happier than at any time in his life. He has so aptly named his dog Joy. When I closed the door on him and Joy and turned to my empty house I felt a strong sadness at being alone.I am a coper and adjust to most anything but I think I mind living alone more than I let myself feel. I grew up in the midst of our large Irish clan and I raised an outsized family. It sometimes stuns me that I of all people - such a people person, valuing community so much - am spending my end days alone!

In her blog "Forrest Gump was onto Something" Mary wrote about how chocolate is tempered. It is a perfect image for Roshi's koan "not too much - not too little". In my comment to her I retold the story of his giving us that koan at sesshin in Tucson years ago. How at first it made LIFE sound beige and how I knew it was not beige. I asked him "How about great sex?" and "How about fireworks?" And suddenly I got it. Everything is just as it is - not too much and not too little. And so too the making of chocolate - tempering being a technique whereby like the practice of Ikebana we can appreciate the "is-ness" of chocolate.

Finishing up with a sort of "woolgathering" poem:

Emptiness

I have nothing to say-
words all burned out of me.
I am empty
as the shouted silence
of the ancient tea bowl.

There is nothing to do-
but sit quietly,
unmoving as the sere
red mesas
whose silence speaks of
sacred space.

There is no one to be-
but the tea bowl,
the red mesas
and ten thousand, thousand
other things.

Thanks for reading!