People on A Well-Lit-Path

Visitation

Sun, 21 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When I first planned this trip to visit my kids in the States, I thought of dropping by to see my “spiritual brother” Bruce Davidson. Together with his partner Linda Reimer, and the gathered companions at Sirius Community, he had been carrying an inner light for decades, even through the past few years of declining physical health, after a fall from a tree had physically broken him.

He passed in November, and my desire to meet him again in this lifetime were ended as well. Since Sirius is not far from the Pioneer Valley, where both of my adult children are in residence, I took an evening to drive up into the hills, to add my presence to his lingering presence.

Warm welcome away

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The rustle of the river over the hill and behind the trees is constant, time’s current, and fills the emptying vessel of the day with sound. I am walking barefoot up the road from friend Bruce’s hilltown home toward the community of dancers, whose annual retreat here is part exploration, part homecoming: everyone arrives ready to listen, ready to speak, the conversations made of movement and trajectory, and geometry and the (morphing) architectures of bone and sinew, intention and opportunity, lift and release.

days that frame an age

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Four-and-one-half years ago I sat on a hill in southern Vermont with my daughter Bela. I had a check in my hand to the Phillips Exeter Academy, where she had been accepted with nearly a full-ride scholarship into their “Leader-Maker” high school program. A gateway to the best schools, PEA promised amazing education, discussion-based study, and intense, laser-focused learning.

She had pretty much decided, though there were some misgivings. Then she had a meeting with her favorite Montessori teacher, who heard “Philips Exeter”, and said “Have you ever thought of the Putney School? The environment there might fit you better.”

Els jardins del Poblenou

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Gardens of Poblenou

I’ll tell you how I discovered them.

In September of last year, when Catalina was making her tour of European research groups, I was similarly engaged, researching the cities surrounding those research groups on foot, by bus, by tram and by train. The focus of her search started large and ended in pinpoints on the map; my search began in the pinpoint where we landed and slept, and spread out from there, a personal Big Bang, encompassing as much and as varied a landscape as possible.

0 – Every Unknown Is the Same Unknown

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

– The decision is hard enough, she said, without my friends telling me I am making a mistake, that a woman shouldn’t give up her dreams for a man.

There are the words that we speak, that make sound from thought; and there is the timbre of the voice that carries other, deeper truth.

– And it’s not just him. There is so much I would be missing, the last months here. This has been a home to me. I’d miss my little cabin, my friends preparing for graduation, springtime on the hill…

8 – Westward ho!

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

We brought her from the shelter at 1 month of age, and she has followed me from farmhouse to rented barn to mountainside home and back to the seaport where she began. Now, three months with a friendly caretaker; next, flight to a new home in Hilo, Hawaii. She loves people, and responds well to new environments – she seems to like to move around.

Travel well, fortunate Minstrel the Cat! See you in the Spring!

9 - When I met you I met me

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Those funhouse mirrors and glass alleys were gentle amusement. It only cost a ticket or two, and I didn’t have to sprint through, I could pause when one of those distorted images was particularly entertaining. I liked the one that made me look like a pinhead pyramid, or was I a pear? It was just weird enough I wanted to figure out how they did it. It was physics, of course, so I can blame the state fair midway for leading me straight to Northwestern University’s Integrated Sciences Program, similar to a funhouse mirror, full of twisted expressions and personal compressions and an enlightening attempt to force myself into a shape my spirit simply could not acquire.

14 - Tracks

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My shoulder leans against the wall of the commuter car, my head rests on the window; below my seat as we pass I see the brown rushes of the salt marsh blur by, and lazy fingers of the coastal rivers reaching inland and taking what they find seaward. A hawk on a pin-oak branch, both bird and bough wearing winter dress, and equally impassive and we clatter past. Salt marsh, wood lot, salt marsh, wood lot. These are my favorite scenes.

15 - River Run

Sun, 11 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

With fifteen days remaining before I travel. the pressure both increases and is released: as there is only so much one person can do, it becomes abundantly clear that the list of tasks not only will not be completed (oh no!) but truly cannot be completed (ahh, ok).

It is a superficial drama. It affects this little constellation of cells that is Me, and maybe a couple of nearby galaxies of other “Me"s, but in the grand orchestration of sun and planets, and other suns and other planets, there’s nothing much to see here. Move along.

habitation

Tue, 27 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The wind blew through new leaves, now completely unfurled, southwest to northeast. That is the direction of the sun. I sat with my daughter and thought: “How I will miss my mountainside, riverside seat.” And then I thought, better: “How much I have enjoyed my mountainside, riverside seat.” One thought closed the heart, the next opened it.

When the night had fully fallen, I cooked myself a meal: I was contented with the vegetable flavors and the tiny torch of habanero. I poured the last of that bottle of wine. With glass at eye level (dramatically, for an audience of none) I turned and saluted my rooms. They were as they had always been: Buddha in the corner and Bible in the bookcase; a banner for the Earth in the window, while a guitar dreamed against the sill; the successful house plantings overflowing their containers; and chairs set casually away from the table where visitors, late for their homes, had pushed them. What I have watered, I have been.

Simple Mitt

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I was reminded of a man who brought me firewood last week. My neighbor had rented to him previously, and told me the wood he cut was good, seasoned, and at a good price. Still, not knowing him directly, and knowing how much green wood is cut and sold – how unregulated the market for firewood is: buyer beware, like in crazy Brazil, or like in America’s Banker’s Haven – I had this uneasiness as I waited for delivery. “I’m going to have to stack and measure the cord, to be sure I wasn’t slighted.” “I’ll need to see the checking on all the pieces to make sure they’ve been drying”… in short, I didn’t trust the guy.

Rijsttafel

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

That was many years ago.

One of my last meals on the island of Java was on a side-street of Yogyakarta. It was near the warung where stayed the first two months of our journey, before being sponsored by the owner of the research center and his wife; before borrowing their bicycle for trips into the surrounding desa; before climbing the volcano in the night; before the relationship had ended.

another loss

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last night the wind picked up and, as I gently dropped into sleep, it not so gently opened its mouth and blew and blew and blew through the branches-spread-wide summer forest dark.

This morning, the alarm woke me. Wait: was it the alarm? Dream-dazed. It sounded like an alarm. No, it wasn’t the alarm. It was further away, it was down the stairs, it was the phone ringing.

Sign; groan; whispered curse; first thoughts. Who calls at – what time was it – 7 a.m. on a Saturday? The phone stops ringing. The body relaxes. Long, slow breath, like a yawn but not a yawn. Imagine an hour’s more sleep.

how they reached for one another

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Were I to write an historical novel, I would begin with the letters they wrote one another. Begin with their words of the daily, with a thread of love woven around them, then find the works of art that survived the bullets and the winds of time until today: here is a cross, there a mosque. I would look broader, and look wider, by reading academic works, listening for those that by some miracle of honesty escaped retouching by a political pen, escaped the fundamentalist desire that humanity be excluded fro the story.

Crows

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Between the hills and the channel, the crows flew into cornfields as they had two hundred years before; the crows were chased from the nests of sparrows and starlings as they had been a thousand years before; the crows made their raucous calls as they had as long as earth could remember.

"Crows" by chrissymllr @ DeviantArt.com

On the shore, the channel waves pushed and pulled grains of sand as they had under the same sun, time forgotten. The salty water, warmed by the same rays, made little lives from its brine, time undefined. The breeze rose from one direction and flew to another, mixing sun and sea, making fog and rain, until no one and nothing remembered when it began, until the habit of creation was no longer noticed.

Earth to earth

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the hardest physical work in recent memory is 72 hours on the Improv dance floor.

Also, the most rewarding. I haven’t built a house, or surveyed for a map, or planted a garden. But by listening listening listening I’ve followed the sprite of movement, and on her scent traced the outline of home; through repetition memorized (in the body’s threads and cords) the navigation lines I might follow to get there; and inadvertently collected in these outstretched arms so many wild foods along the way – fruit of this adventure – that I am fed.

Choro Bandido

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

What was the greatest gift I received, through my years living in Brazil? Was it perspective on our own nation, and my place in it? Was it the sights and sounds and flavors of the Other, of another portion of our planet, one physically quite as large as the continental United States? Was it the friendships, the loves, my children born there (as if to two mothers), the great efforts, the greater successes, the greatness of the failures?

Follow the Leader

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The following re-post is a piece I wrote for our intentional community’s web journal. With a few years of painstaking research and trial-and-error, we assembled egalitarian tools for decision-making, legal forms for sharing land as partners instead of landlords, and some open-hearted yet strong ways of maintaining harmony within our Circle – even with a variety of personalities bumping into one another as we worked to sort this all out.

echo

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“Switch it off!”

“What?” (Not ‘what do I switch off’; rather: ‘what are you talking about’.)

“Shhh!” All five fingers of the right hand spread wide, the first touching the lips, the hand a stop sign, the fingers stretched rigid, the hand surprised, the fingers an echo of surprise. Meanwhile, with the left, she reached over and unplugged the radio.

“What th…”

“SH!”

As there was no wind, there was no sound. It was night. The stovetop light from the kitchen was a warm glow that filtered onto the porch, where they sat side by side, on the top step. She was looking for something in the darkness, but couldn’t see. She was listening: her face said “What?”

my reflection in the photograph

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Several years ago I was “improving” my photo collection, which had become a wobbling tower of Kodachrome, balanced precariously and in no particular order in a hidden corner of my closet. Every time I saw it, I felt a vague intolerance; and each time I saw it, I felt that intolerance grow, until finally the intolerance was itself intolerable, and I furiously shoveled the concealing junk out of the way, and hooked those boxes and stacks out into the middle of my bedroom floor.

Windows - 3

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Lonny was the product of big energy and tiny town, where the limitations imposed by three square blocks of homes – an Alcatraz adrift on an ocean of unswimmable wheat – fueled the kind of incendiary pressure that could only come out wrong. Even back then, when I was eight and Lonny was nine, his combustion resulted in trouble; so years later, when I heard that he was in the pen for grand theft auto and some litany of other offenses, it was disappointingly no surprise: the wide world never succeeded in changing Lonny’s first impressions, nor would he be able to see it as anything but an endless, confining small town. A twitch in his heart was too large for his skin, a cruel itch, an irritation for which he found no balm. Maybe he didn’t look hard enough. Maybe he took off in the wrong direction, followed the wrong leader, and never got righted.

Jazz

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Recently someone asked me about the form of dance I practice – the form I aspire to, really; and like all good forms it is small enough for me to wrap my arms around, large enough to contain my curiosity, lean enough that an evening costs a few dollars and yields a fortune, full enough that I think I will never find the end of it.

I talked about the improvisational “jam”, the coalescence of a couple of dozen movement artists, with no talking, no music, only the sound of sliding or shuffling, running or slowing feet, deep breath… sometimes spontaneous laughter, sometimes spontaneous stillness, deeper because it is shared. My friend tried to imagine that space for a moment, as much as one can really imagine it, foreign as it is, and asked “How can you dance without music?”

Enceladus, one of many

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

When I was close to my daughter’s age, I would often stop in at the school library at lunch time, to take out books. There were a few favorites. One was Red Planet, by Robert A. Heinlein: the story of a boy (very close to my age, so I imagined) living in the colonies on Mars, with his pet, unlike any pet found on Earth. It was an adventure that could have, but did not, take place on Earth, and I was able to read and reread that tale without losing either my sense of wonder or my ability to live the story as I sat comfortably on our living room couch. If you were to find the card from the back of that book (we filled out our names and checkout date on cards, no computers in libraries back then), you would see my name scratched in ever improving cursive, over and over again, with few readers able to get their moniker in edgewise.

Innocence

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My daughter Isabela – less formally, more naturally Bela; though she is capable of carrying her more regal name, when called upon by the drama of the moment to do so – has traveled to Florida with her mother and brother, to be with her Brazilian grandparents and uncle and aunt for a few days. Ah, yes, and to meet the newest cousin, little Lucas, Luquinho perhaps, born a year ago in a country far from the familial home.

Prayer flags on the winds of thought

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I received a gift from a student, Brian, who recently concluded our Moving Into Balance health and awareness program. Every participant brings such gifts to the group – each brings the gift of him or her Self, all the challenges they face, and all the victories they achieve; but here was a special gift, a book about the Prayer Flags of Tibet.

One passage struck me, that I wished to share: with a gentle pen it draws the line between structure and freedom, where the flow of grace is all-important, while the form through which we are accustomed to meeting that grace is perhaps less so:

A respite

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

On our last morning with the Tibetan family Mark and I tried to express our appreciation for all their warmth and hospitality given to us. Deep emotion and tears came to Sonam’s eyes as she wanted to express thru us the gratitude she has to the “American people” who have helped them so much…. There was so much love and gratitude for the Nobel Prize received by their “God” the Dalai Lama. For the temples and settlements supported by the many donations coming from America…. The three of us were holding tears back….. I get upset at our country’s foreign policy and by the rampant capitalization we create but it was so beautiful to also see how much good has been done in helping this nation of individuals create a new life on a foreign country.

A day of rest

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Dressed in her hospital uniform, Sonam insisted on calling in an autorickshaw for us, arguing with the driver (who wanted to keep his price open – to anything, apparently), riding us all the way to the bus station, and seeing us safely onto the Mangalore bus before bidding us farewell… we were not outside of anyone’s arms for our whole stay in Bylakuppe.

The road west climbed up into the mountains, where the ruts and curves increased in step with the altitude; beautiful heights, wild and wide vistas high above the local eagle’s lofts, and cool temperatures were payment for our travel. We began among coffee plantation on the eastern slopes, where drier weather presumably makes for better flavor and yield. Small villages and houses tucked along the roadside doubtless fed the labor required for these expanses of cultivated land, and estate villas swelled where the best lands were found.

Tibet in India

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Now I know how ginger grows.

When we lived on our little farm in Brazil, we had something called gangibre falsa, “false ginger”, which was apparently a relative of the real thing. The root, when I dug it up, had neither the appearance or the smell I was looking for, and somehow during our seven-plus years there, I never did run into a ginger plant. Here in the rolling fields of Bylakuppe, some miles off the Mysore road and Kushalnagar, acres of hand-fanning leaves, slightly lower than knee height and fading green to yellow, are the ginger fields. We pass by in our autorickshaw (the three-wheeled, covered motorcycle, with a bench and a smoky 2-stroke engine – the kind where you mix in the oil, and it runs forever, like a lawnmower motor) and there is a load of the harvested root by the roadside, being spray-washed and readied for market. The scent is strong and welcome, a little spice and memory of good meals.

Monks and Families

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday we began our ride from Mysore with a driver who spoke good English, but he traded out with another (who spoke no English whatsoever) when it became clear that we would be driving through the other’s home town of Honsur. Manny and I entertained ourselves during the three hour trip, over very rough roads which were under construction most of the way; we occasionally attempted a question, but the results were invariably unsuccessful, and we sank into silence. We even missed a few of the stops we had planned with the earlier driver, able only to communicate “Kushalnagar”… so off we flew, the driver turning his music higher and higher, on a high-decibel beeline west into the Karnataka countryside.

Aspiration

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Most of the communities that exist in Auroville – as semi-autonomous communities, that is, with their own social structure and goals, texture and color – were founded by a few energetic people who wished to manifest the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother in a particular and personal way. Some are recent, some have existed since the beginning (in 1968). Some are small (Sadhana Forest is run by a family of three from Israel – with a lot of interns running about), and others larger (Aspiration currently has upwards of 50 participating members, and a number of other long-term “guests”). They all share a common goal, and that is unity of human spirit and human endeavor in a single, intentional city.

Travel, revisited

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I feel a real sadness welling up inside of me as we leave Sri Ramanasramam. It was quite short, just a few days, but the spirit of the place and of the people was remarkable. And as is often the case when you are travelling (as opposed to tourism, where one often carries the bubble of home around them), we met a number of fascinating people, local Indians and visitors from abroad, who made the space and time here incredibly rich and amazingly warm. You never know if these instant connections will grow, should grow, or if they will simply fade into nice memories; still I hope to have the opportunity some day to visit Rama and Adelaida in their Costa Rican retreat, of host them, should they pass through New York and fancy a short side-trip to the north…

The Bhagavan

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Rama, an Italian friend we have made, lived at the ashram for five years. He now lives in and runs a retreat center in Costa Rica, Montana Azul, the blue mountain, with his wife and partner Adelaida.

Rama related this story of the Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi: the young man came to the mountain in 1900, at the age of sixteen, after a near-death experience. The near-death was not a physical death, but the sudden and complete realization that his body would perish – a complete understanding which left him immobilized for some time. He understood the central question of his existence – perhaps of all of our existence – and left home to study it deeply, left the noise and intrusions of the mundane life to dedicate himself to meditation, to insight into this life.