Nature
The reality has shifted. I discovered it yesterday.
There is a story I was working on since last year, since the day I wandered over the mountain trails at twilight and a story came to me, whole and complete. It was a story about the end of the world.
There was something in the story, something that grabbed me. It was a variation on the apocalypse theme, with Earth shifting and changing rapidly to regain it’s balance, and human world being destroyed in the process. Cities were burned, leveled, flooded by tsunamis, wild fires, volcano eruptions, earthquakes. It was an epic story about reality changing. [click to continue…]
I read a story today, written by a woman who found out that, due to her genetic code, she has about 80% chance of contracting breast and ovarian cancer. She chose, therefore, to have both her breasts and her ovaries removed. As a preventive measure.
I sat with this article all day today, rolling it this way and that. It seemed such a drastic reaction, such a heavy handed, barbaric reaction. “If your hand offends you, cut it off” sort of reaction. To mutilate oneself to prevent something that might not even happen.
But then it might happen. [click to continue…]
The cedar grove is very quiet. Not silent – there are birds singing their songs, there is wind playing in the branches, little furry creatures scurrying through dry pine needles and pieces of bark, but all those sounds do not disturb the quiet stillness. Old trees, trees that stood there for hundreds of years, with their massive trunks scarred by burns and cuts – they are quiet, they communicate, they relate in the quiet, still space. They hold it and create it. This is how they are.
And when you sit under those trees the quiet sips into you and enfolds you, and you become part of it. You become the holder of the quiet space, though not a silent space. There are sounds, but there is no noise anymore, not inside. Trees speak to you, and you become like trees. Quiet. [click to continue…]
My husband and I had dinner last night in a little restaurant, right on the beach. It was a late evening, the sun was setting and the ocean glowed, blue and green with golden highlights. There were misty cliffs at the far end of the beach, there were little children playing in the sand, there were seagulls and pelicans swooping over the weaves and diving for fish, there were dolphins jumping in and out of the water – it was absolutely, beautifully perfect.
We sat at the table and looked, and watched, and I thought: “it is not true that we need pain to appreciate happiness. It is not true that we need hardships to really feel bliss. I feel blissful now, I enjoy the beauty around me, and the happiness, so much more because it is always there, because it is ordinary, because it’s there every day.”
I said to my husband: “isn’t being here so much more wonderful because now we live here? Now this is what we can experience every day. Doesn’t it become so much more splendid an experience because it isn’t something we only get to enjoy once in a while?” [click to continue…]
