Polyphony

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Deborah

Simple illness, the kinds we all succumb to from time to time and from which we emerge in a few days, those simple illnesses give gifts. This cold, for me, gifts me with a day of time and solitude. I’ve cancelled my plans, maybe will have to cancel ones for tomorrow. My friend, Jaems, emails me this morning and says, “ If you’re reading this, you shouldn’t be. Go back to bed. Use this time for inner reflection.”

He doesn’t know I now have a laptop!

I do head for bed, without my laptop, and I do fall asleep, perchance to dream, but nothing much unfolds in that inner world. I wake and pick up the book that’s been resting without complaint on my bedside table for the last month. I ordered it when I ordered Abram’s Becoming Animal, partly because I knew Abram started his book with a poem by Robert Bringhurst and partly because Amazon claimed I would like it…You know how they do that! Gets me everytime I swear. Robert Bringhurst’s book, Everywhere Being Is Dancing, has been waiting without rancor for a month, but yesterday, with no warning, it began yelling, “ Look at me, pick me up, choose me, try me, you purchased me for god’s sake!”

“That I did! I hate to admit it but I had forgotten you.  Sorry, I am, really.”

I pick the book up after grabbing Abram and rereading the poem that captured my attention in the first place.

Voice: the breath’s tooth.
Thought: the brain’s bone.
Birdsong: an extension of the beak. Speech:
the antler of the mind. ( RB )

I had to draw what I think of as a polyphonic response to that poem.

The book’s black and red cover intrigues me. On the bottom there’s a black…

ooops. I smell cookies. I can’t believe they’re baked already. Ooops the buzzer just went off. Gotta go… I believe in the old adage my mother taught me: starve a fever, feed a cold . . .with chocolate chip oatmeal walnut cookies.

…there’s a black square with a riveting image – a swan I think maybe, whirring its wings so fast you can barely see spokes of individual feathers in a blurring semi-circle of shades of white with maybe a black beak peaking to the right, wings wheeling so fast I feel their downdraft, their power. Moving stasis …What a photo! It, too, is polyphonic! By now you may be scratching your head, if you, like I, have not yet added that
polyphonic word to your vocabulary.

Yesterday, I was traveling beyond words. Today I’m immersed in a world of multiple words, tracking multiple layers of reality, the way the forest reveals its deeper message in a chorus of sounds, each soundstory a particular thread of uniqueness gathering together in a gestalt that the wise ones can “read.” Bringhurst describes this as polyphony. I learn the word’s origin is Greek and recent, the early 19th century. “Polu”means “many” and “phōnē” means “sound.”

This word, polyphony, matters to me. It provides a context to understand how I live, think and know – a big word, this polyphony. It describes the gift brought by BodySinging when a group of us stalwart BodySingers gather to sing our individual storysongs simultaneously…People have labeled that kind of BodySinging as jazz, but I know it is more than that. It is the symphony that holds our world together.

Bringhurst describes polyphony as…”singing more than one song, playing more than one tune, telling more than one story, at once. It is music that insists on multiplicity – instead of uniformity on the one side or chaos on the other…(It creates) a statement that none of these statements makes on its own…they retain their independence …(and )…their relation is that of coequals.” ( p33 )

“The world is a polyphonic place. The polyphonic music, polyphonic poetry, and polyphonic fiction humans make are answers to that world. They are mimicry of what-is, as much as they are statements of what might be.”( p37 )

Finally, Bringhurst comments that polyphony is not meant to be a “skilled procedure or technique” but rather reflects the way things are. “Multiplicity of voice is not some new and nifty trick. In poetry as in reality, it is the ancient, normal mode.”

I want to chew on that and enjoy my cookies at the same time.

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Words or No Words

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Deborah

Time for that story I’ve been promising in pursuit of replenishing the practice of wonder.

We crawl back into the sweat lodge for the third round. Dripping with my own sweat and feeling a bit melty/crusty with a coating of the firepit’s hot-rock-water-sprinkled steam-now-drying-on-my-body, I settle into the earth. Men sit on one side of the fire pit and women on the other in this traditional native ceremony. More rocks, grandfathers alive with heat, come in, herbs sprinkled, scent released along with smoke. Chatting quiets.

Bantering ceases when the door closes.

Hush deepens as the dark blankets us.

The sweat lodge leader has called this particular lodge of family and friends for a specific purpose – healing from cancer. His cancer. He’d also invited an old bush medicine man from far north in Alberta to doctor him in support of his chemotherapy. He clears his throat, splashes more water on the rocks, remains silent as we all listen to the hiss of steam and the crackle of sparks.

I sense something momentous is coming but I don’t know what. He clears his throat again and instead of beginning a prayer song, starts to speak. He shares the experience of last night, the journey that the medicine man’s eagle feathering inspired. He describes flying out of his body and traveling through layer after layer of cosmos…blue upon blue upon blue…He flew so far beyond blue that he entered black, so far beyond black he entered more blue, then the black beyond the black of our galaxy, so far beyond that he encountered a feminine presence there who somehow, someway drew him back into living.

Overcome by weeping, overwhelmed with wonder, cradled by the black blanket of gratitude, my puny brain ignites with the colors of magic.

I finished painting that feminine presence only the day before! I know the image belongs to him, not me.

A few days later, I meet him on the sidewalk in front of the hospital. I unwrap the painting and he says simply, “Yup. That’s where I was.”

My question to you, dear reader, is not so much how or why these events happen but what makes them so rare. I bet opportunities for telepathy or intuitive communication abound but in our modern day we’ve turned off those channels, turned away from those senses. I think it’s time to reanimate them. Telepathy, communicating beyond words, singing instead of speaking, so many sources of communicating we’ve eschewed as not worthy of attention by modern urban civilized – but handicapped – humans.

How can we remember common ground when we think we can’t communicate without words?

This conversation merits continuing. I hope you’ll help me!  Words or no words.

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Walking Toward the Garden

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Deborah

Yesterday, during a window of respite from the terrible onslaught of what appeared to be fluey-headcoldy-sinuspainy-sleep inducing illness, I met a few friends for a Matinee that Matters, a wonder-filled opportunity to see thought provoking films at an historic movie theatre. This simple concept could be implemented in any town which wants to educate and inspire its citizenry about our planetary culture. In many cases, the films are accompanied by the filmmakers who host lively Q & A afterward.

Yesterday’s wonder was Back to the Garden. Kevin Tomlinson, the filmmaker, remembered the hippies of the 1960’s and in 1988 became curious about what had happened to them. By chance, – or was it serendipity, synchronicity, Eairth doing her work, – he spotted a poster for a healing gathering in rural Washington. Camera in hand, he arrived on the scene and interviewed numerous men and women and filmed the love-in, circle dancing/drumming/chanting scene. But he shelved the film, thinking it was a cliche and would not serve the message of love, simplicity and back to earth honoring ethics during the conservative era of the late ‘80’s.

Now twenty years later, he realizes that the planetary perils we’re facing have made green a popular brand and sustainability a buzz word. He wondered what had happened to those hippies as they’d aged. He found most of them and their poignant stories captivated me as the film unfolded. One of the things I observed was their vibrancy – strong bodies and bright eyes, one mum looking like the older sister of her daughter – and without make-up! Integrity and grit shone. I admired them and their commitment to a lifestyle of simplicity and embeddedness with the earth where they lived.

Tomlinson says, “. . .I wanted to broaden the definition ( of hippie ) and show the reality of strong, responsible, dedicated, human beings who are giving back to their communities as teachers, farmers, political activists, and stewards of the earth.

“There’s a thread about money and the notion that having wealth doesn’t really mean just material wealth. Given our economic struggles, I think having the conversation about living on less and still finding fulfillment while providing for our families will find an audience.”

Thanks to the internet and blogging, I’m discovering lots of cohorts out there who are recognizing the joy of living simply. You don’t need to live “on the land” to change priorities. My friend, Alisa’s blog, AugustLake, for instance has just been featured on another writer’s blog who lives in England in the heart of an urban village.  Click right here to access Miss Minimalist. Look for post September 29 to read about Alisa.

Ironically, what used to be an iconoclastic movement may now become mainstream as more of us turn around at the cliff’s edge of over-consumption and corporatocracy to discover new paths to walk toward life more richly lived.

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Another Story

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Deborah

The story seems endless. In that way maybe the plotline replicates life. We keep thinking we’ve solved a problem, reached a conclusion, turned a corner only for another something to show up. The story is so long that it helps me imagine my ancestors sitting around a fire for days listening to a zigzagging ramble of a tale. What really impresses me, though, is the storyteller’s ability to remember. His drumming hands don’t miss a beat and his narrative never falters, even when he interrupts himself to make an observation, “ Sonia, a spark just landed on your drum.” He models skill, polish and embodied intelligence. His name is Danny Deardorff.

The story, like life, reveals over and over that nothing is as it seems at first glance. I would think the characters had learned a lesson, that transformation and redemption were close at hand, and then, smack, the men charge off after the same old hag who was up to the same old devious, nasty tricks.

Mice on the wheel.

The story troubles me – a litany of horrors, women treating men badly, men treating women badly, deceit, burdens, outrageous yucky tasks and overall mayhem. And image of all images, a white deerskin cloak covered in eyeballs.

A lad spends seven years sacrificing much to become a deep listener. His senses are honed by his years of sitting under a tree to absorb all the sounds around him. Maturing, he overcomes all kinds of obstacles, shows kindness and wisdom and STILL loses his eyeballs and works as a scarecrow.  His senses are so keen that even blind he can hunt but he’s given only a smokey bow ( who knows what that is???) and a crooked arrow.  These two items are no pot of gold but occasionally he snags meat.

Toward the end, he gets to wear the eyes of a variety of animals, but each pair eventually grows dim. I love the portraits this conjures in me of a man with doe eyes, alligator eyes, dragonfly eyes, dolphin eyes. . . Easy for me to imagine how much I’d learn if I could look at the world through others’ eyes like that. Near the very end, our hero, The Listener, finally gets his own eyes back and finds a wife, who seems like a good woman. AND yet, they birth twin sons who are strangely beyond normal. They grow up within days to become men who leave home to vanquish everything and anything that could harm humans, vowing not to return until they accomplish the task.

Now I ask you, isn’t that what the axis of evil is all about in our day and time? Who and what would keep us company on this tiny planet if all sources of potential harm were obliterated? What a sorry tale this long, long story is. Aren’t two-leggeds, and I don’t mean birds, susceptible to the same catastrophes as everything else? How can we be immune to harm if we want to participate in the web of life?

I’d like to see us turn away from that cliff edge of hubris and illusion of safety and walk toward the ebbs and flows of being engaged with risky living.

What a wonder to recognize how much this distasteful story inspired me!

What does this post trigger for you? AND do any of you know old, old folktales or myths which reveal more of the solar/lunar balance, yin/yang dance, intertwined male and female energies? I would appreciate references.

And I haven’t forgotten the OTHER story waiting to be told. Maybe tomorrow.

And apologies for misinterpreting, re-interpreting, mis-remembering, inaccurate hearing, da duh da duh da duh, all in service of making the point that every good story stirs up the listener. Hurray for stories and thank you Danny. I’m glad to have been present for this one.

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Turning Around

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Deborah

I know the story I want to examine next as I explore “replenishing the practice of wonder,” but that story will have to wait. Serendipity strikes. A different story needs to be written today. And it’s about wonder, too.

Befuddlement with my species.

Sunday night, I watched a documentary 180◦ South, retracing the travels forty years ago by two mighty adventurers and now ecologists, Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins. The film explores the visceral beauty and risky ballet of humans dancing intimately with the rhythms of mountains and seas. As our modern day explorer, Jeff Johnson, travels deeper into his experience, he begins to recognize the power of progress to destroy what is essential to being human. The demise of an entire civilization on Easter Island affects him deeply, so by the time he gets to Chile and Patagonia, he is primed. In those countries, damning rivers for power and building more pulp mills threaten ancient life sustaining cultures and beauty integral to the landscape.

In the U.S. we are beginning to dismantle dams, so I would think other governments would think twice about building new ones. And maybe they have thought a kazillion times about the pros and cons, but they’re building new ones anyway.

One of Jeff’s voiceovers reports that playing video games in the U.S. uses as much power in a year as the entire city of San Diego. I hope I’m reporting that statistic accurately, but even if I’m not, you get the idea. Life style changes are a way of releasing more energy to supply our needs.

(By the way, I discovered Miss Minimalist today, another blog with oodles of ideas about the richness of living minimally. Check it out…)

Toward the end of the film, Chouinard and Tompkins, who have devoted their lives to land conservation, reflect on dealing with people in power. I’m paraphrasing here but these two wisdom keepers say something like this:

They keep telling us that we want to go backwards. That’s not what we’re talking about. If you’re standing at the edge of a cliff and you don’t want to commit suicide, you turn around 180◦ and start walking forward. If you’re standing at the edge of an abyss, and you don’t want to fall off, you turn around and start walking forward. THAT’s what we’re talking about. Turning around and walking forward.

I had to rewind the DVD twice to make sure I’d heard them accurately.

This morning, my friend Patty tells me that she’s just learned of a potentially toxic decision being made in her hometown on the northwest coast – burning masses of bio-fuel at a pulp mill to power places far, far away.  Facts frequently bully each other. Hard to discern truth with the brain, but the belly knows. Patty’s entire town, maybe the region, have reached the cliff’s edge.

I’m hoping that like lemmings, when one person turns 180◦ and walks forward, the masses will follow.

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Pursuing Wonder

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Deborah

Twenty-one years old, my Webster’s Dictionary pleads with me to replace it. In this electronic age, new words grow like surburban dandelions and northwest coastal blackberries. I purchase a fat New Oxford American Dictionary. It’s more like an abbreviated encyclopedia with photos of Obama, Gore and Oprah and drawings of wombats, butterflies and derailleurs. Though I’m a pretty good “googler,” a word which is NOT in my new dictionary though its verb variation IS, there is something about a hefty book on my lap which I like.. . sensory stimulation, a palpable presence. I can feel the flimsy paper and appreciate its high tensile strength, like silk threads. I smell the ink and enjoy how one page hands me off to another. My muscles have to work searching for the right section of the alphabet as the slippery pages sometimes slide too quickly past each other or cling too tightly.

As I pursue my story about the fire that almost ate my house, I wonder about wonder. Here are a few of the definitions that fit this particular story.

noun: a remarkable person or event.
having remarkable properties or abilities.

verb: to feel admiration or amazement, to marvel.

Back to the fire: My four legged family and I return home after an easy five days spent at a friend’s. Officials claim the fire is contained. The city calms down. The fire no longer headlines in the news. City dwellers assume the danger is over. But it isn’t where I live. The fire continues to creep toward our neighborhood, national guard still monitor the people coming and going from our street, and large orange “wading” pools of water are stategically placed along our road.

In an attempt to stop the fire’s relentless northward march, officials decide to start back fires – fighting fire with fire. I’ve always been a bit skeptical of that tactic, but it must work often enough that they continue to do it. This time, an unexpected ferocious wind plays mayhem with their plan. Spot fires, forty spot fires, erupt in all directions. One of them burns in a backyard at the top of the hill in my neighborhood. Already that fire has claimed a quarter acre.

Out of the blue, literally, I’m deafened by the clattering roar of engines and the thump- thump of helicopter blades. Not one, not two, but three helicopters line up over the pond where I live.

Forty years ago the pond had been dug for two primary reasons – wildlife habitat and fire protection. I’d known when I moved here that this emptying was a possibility but I’d been reassured only a few days before that there was no way my particular pond would be used. “Too dangerous,” the fellow said. “The circumference of the opening is way too constricted by the large conifers to maneuver helicopters.”

But desperate situations require desperate measures and the helicopters come, one after the other, non stop for two full hours. The dogs and I sit out there and watch the water level go down.

The pilots maneuver by sight and feel, the co-pilot hanging out of the cockpit. No instrumentation but good old hands on savvy, edge over there, nudge over here, gentle, gentle on the throttle, threading the proverbial eye of the needle with handeye coordination and intuitive intelligence.

Blown away with wonder and gratitude for this communion with strangers, I make chocolate chip cookies to thank them – such a meager gift to express my reverence for humanity.

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Wonder-ous

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Deborah

Unexpectedly busy day, cleaning house deeply because of  FLEAS ON THE DOGS – something that would never happen if I still lived in Montana. Errands to run before picking the dogs up from the flea dippers. I take myself to a local farm to market restaurant for a bowl of creamy broccoli soup and notice a young woman in a vivid green dress typing on her mini laptop. As I’m slurping soup, she strides to my table with clear intent. She looks me in the eye and asks, “What interesting things are there to do here?” I ask what kinds of interesting things interest her and quickly, miraculously, we discover we’re “family.” She even lives in my old hometown, Missoula. What serendipity.

This morning, as I wrote, I was reliving the Missoula area forest fire which nearly gobbled my home…

A wispy ribbon of smoke rises from the heavily treed hillside where smoke shouldn’t be. I see it as I barrel down the hwy from my country home on the way to work in town. A sultry August day. We haven’t had lightning storms, wet or dry, in several weeks, for which I’m grateful in this summer of drought. But there shouldn’t be a plume of smoke in that densely forested area – no camps, no logging, no homes, just wild trees. Apprehension niggles.

I forget it in the hubbub of my workplace. Three hours later a colleague flings open a door to a meeting room, interrupts the group and says, breathlessly, “Deborah, Deborah I just heard on the radio they’ve closed Hwy  93 because of a fire on Evaro hill. Isn’t that where you live?”

Yikes.

People quickly offer support and suggest I spend the night in town, but I have two dogs and a cat at home. I must get back. I must.

I could take the long way home, about five times longer, so I decide to risk trying the usual route. The traffic inches forward, many cars make “U-eeees” and head back. I smell smoke, feel edginess all around me. I stick it out and finally arrive next to a man in charge. “Sir, I live up that hill. I have to get home.” He checks my driver’s license.

“Are you sure you want to go up there?”

“Yes, absolutely,” and he motions me to wait by the side of the road for the guide car to return.

As I reach the top of the hill, serenity and quiet prevail, partly because there is no traffic. Dogs greet me with wagging tails. Because the forest world seems normal, I decide to sleep out on the porch with the dogs so that I have a better chance of being aware if something changes. I think of it as a vigil. Vigil or not, I give up half way through the night because the dogs won’t settle down. They may know something I do not, but I still see/feel no cause for alarm.

Day dawns. The fire is still two miles to the south but it’s rapacious. It’s reached the highway itself, but traffic controllers have figured out how to keep cars moving – and fight the fire at the same time. This is the only road north and south in our region, so it’s imperative that it remain passable. The road up my hill becomes the line the fire must not cross, so for the next week I learn to live in the presence of fire and smoke and dangerous possibilities. Evacuation  eventually becomes a probable possibility.

Fire officials visit, handing me a list of how to prepare. Close windows, pull shades, fill tubs and basins, gather garbage cans and fill with water, connect hoses, clean up debris, cut the grass, restack the firewood uphill from the house.

I am on pre-alert evacuation notice. This means it could happen in a day or a week or not at all.

While friends labor with me, a fire marshall drives down the drive. Now I’m on first alert evacuation notice. This means evacuation could happen anytime  soon.

The forest hunkers down. The sky darkly descends.

Sally has labored all day so I invite her out to dinner at the only local restaurant. As we sit at our table, neighbors rush in. “Thank god we found you. You have to get out.” We race back to my house. Suzie helps me carry out the boxes of irreplaceable heirloom photos and tax documents, the computer and my suitcase, packed ahead of time like an expectant Mom preparing for birth.

Sally flees back to the safety of town.

I feel the enormity of being alone, perhaps for the last time in the presence of my home/land as it currently lives. My dogs are in the car. But Mishka, the cat. Where is he? I walk up the driveway, calling his name even though he rarely responds to such a tactic. I also send out a non-verbal bellow. MISHKA, THIS IS SERIOUS. I WANT YOU WITH ME. I turn and head back down to the car but I’m stopped in my tracks…GRIEF hits me with a wail and a punch…Oh my, god, I may never live in this house again. This all may disappear in a flash of cinder and smoke. Oh my precious…and then…WISDOM…Who am I to assume I know what is going to happen? Grief is premature. Be here now this moment. What am I feeling? Love, gratitude, wonder, blessings, awe.

As I reach the car, there is Mishka, strolling out of the forest and ambling up to me.

To be continued. . .

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Wonder-fied

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Deborah

Wind rips through the screen mesh of the open window. The zzzzzzzzz wakes me. Oh, a thunderstorm. The first one since my big move out of the city. Lying in bed, I enjoy drifting in and out of sleep in sync with the glare of lightening strikes. I hazily think I should get up and close the windows but I don’t. It’s warm and comfy here under the covers.

The wind gusts. A melodic burst…the tinkling of a glass waterfall, shattering shards cascading with the most delightful melody of stream burbling. Suddenly very awake, I wonder, “ What WAS that?” My dogs quietly sleep in their accustomed places. Their somniferous breathing settles me back down. I conclude I’ll deal with whatever it was by the light of day.

Day dawns and I feel as if I’m dreaming. The Irish crystal from Sligo, so important to me that I had hung it immediately in my new home, the Irish crystal is gone. The fisherman’s line and thumbtack lie on the sill, directly below where the crystal used to catch the sun’s rising light. I look on the floor. Not there. There is a heating grate below the window and I lift that out and take it apart. Nope, not there either. I look through the hole in the floor left by removing the grate which covers an air vent to the room below. Book case is down there so I run downstairs and comb through my already dusty books…No crystal.

No shards.

No glass dust.

No nothing nada.

Running back upstairs, I remember my bureau to the left of the window. The gust had been very powerful. Maybe it flung the crystal off to the side, maybe it fell into a bureau drawer since I rarely push hard enough to close them completely. I empty every drawer of its contents. No crystal.

Now, glancing at the bureau top, I gasp. No crystal, but wonder of wonders, my etched, blue glass barrette, a treasure bought in Galway, is split cleanly in two.

Over the next few weeks, I invite friends to help me search, to puzzle out an answer. Nothing. One friend suggests that the crystal had served its purpose and gone back home to Ireland. That makes mythopoetic sense to me. I purchased it as a talisman while on pilgrimage to Ireland and England. About two days after finding it, I knew when I returned to Montana, I had to find my country retreat center. I had to. That momentous decision came on Spring equinox. Almost exactly six months later, having found the place and made the move, the crystal disappeared.

Ten years later, I’m moving away. As I empty rooms, I remember the crystal. I think it might be found but I hope it won’t be…The mystery inspires me to remember the invisible forces shaping my life.

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The Wonder of Jumping Feet First

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Deborah

I suddenly remembered an image I painted a number of years ago after watching my granddaughter plunge into the muddy, murky, wild water spring fed pond at my Montana home. She had no idea what lay below the surface, but she jumped in anyway. My underwater story yesterday reminds me today that everything is connected. I knew in my bones, though not in my conscious awareness, that I loved those underwater grasses and mysterious things that floated by me all those years earlier. No wonder I paid equal attention to painting the underwater. Actually the surface water is kind of tame, isn’t it?

Be sure to read the poem that follows the image.

What is your MO –
your modus operandi for living your life?

Are you one of the risk taking ones, plunging in with gusto like the adventurous child?

Still feeling safe in her world, she models courage,
leaping over cliffs, knowing she’ll learn to fly on the way down.

May you trust enough to jump into your life without knowing where your feet will land.

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Wonder Bound

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Deborah

My arms ripple like the underwater river grasses all around me. My right hand holds the wooden paddle which vibrates like a twanged guitar string. Muscles quiver under fibrillating skin. I’m jelly compared to the rapid’s turbulence.

“Trust.”

“Give myself over to the water.”

Those thoughts flash through my brain. Hyper alert and unexpectedly calm, almost detached, noticing the seconds feel like days and weeks of my life unfolding. Focused, relevant thoughts suggest I may be drowning. Oh, yeah that’s a possibility isn’t it? So I might as well trust my helplessness and use it. Be as compliant as possible so the wood paddle can rise to the surface pulling me behind it, so the life jacket can do its flotation work, so the fluid rollercoaster can toss me up just as well as it thumps me down.

My egobrain records everything; my bodymind offers sage advice. And I follow those dictates.

Eyes, nose surface – quick breath – back under – remember don’t fight the current – pop up, higher and longer this time, aware of my son crying and screaming in the raft upstream from me, a cacaphony of other voices yelling,

“Head for the shore” . . .Do they think I’m stupid or something?

“Hang on, hang on “ . . .What do they think I’m doing with that paddle?

“Are you Ok?” . . . How can I answer that one? I have no breath to shout and the incident isn’t even over.

Back under I go, but I know I’m coming up again and when I do, I know I’ll stay up because I noticed on the last peek above waterline that I was almost through the rapid.

As I do head to shore, kicking with all my strength and heading at a diagonal to the downstream current, still hanging on to that paddle, I’m aware that I’ve never been so alive. Joining forces with the elements around me humbled my ego and lifted a veil between me and life…what a shift. I experienced being present and immersed, literally, in living my dying. Unencumbered by thoughts of the past and future, free of judgment and second guessing, questioning nothing, I respond millisecond by millisecond to the endless river of experience. Such ecstasy!

My twelve year old son is traumatized by witnessing his Mum drowning. Even though I don’t drown, and emerge exhilarated, he won’t float a river again until he’s in his twenties. I am sorry about that but grateful that we shared the experience.

I am changed permanently.  Bound by wonder, truth is seared in my bones. Ego is not in charge.

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