For the record: going solo

Summer's last gasp, a sunny day and a solo kayak trip to a place of prayer. Shine Tidelands State park. This time I took my camera, a picnic lunch of (vegan) banana bread, organic energy bar (raw food and good!), almonds, water and a blanket. The same seagrass shore awaited me. Herons and eagles soared overhead. I slept in the gentle warmth until the tide had beached my kayak well and truly on ankle sucking sticky mud.Somehow the wind and tide were both against me on the Hood canal part of this trip, but the workout was good. I got to load and unload my kayak by myself, tie it down by myself and take a lot of photographs to prove to the FTE that it IS possible for me to safely and successfully load and tie down my own kayak on my own truck, and actually go kayaking solo. Not that I don't really enjoy our joint explorations. Don't get me wrong. The FTE has extended my range way beyond my imagining in geography, the farther shore and total paddling experience. I mean without him I would never have learned how to assist a capsized paddler, now would I?

But every now and then I need to remind both myself and him that I am entire unto myself too. In one of my aspects.

The best part, perhaps, was to arrive home to an unexpected gift of vegan vanilla muffins from a blessed ministering angel. For which I was truly grateful. Kayaking can be hungry work, even gentle kayaks like this one.

Renewal, however, knows no better context.

Obedience: dog yoga

To whose mastery is my binding loyal?

Why, the highest bidder. Naturally.

No mortal has that office.

Storing radiance

Sunrises, when we have them, are coming so much later these days. Every piece of light is so precious. My eyes collect luminance hungrily, body wrapped about in velvet now, against the autumn chill.

Storing up radiance against the growing dark.

Porpoises arced into the reflected cloud maps this morning .

Urging direction on me?

Perspective on the vanishing point:

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
...
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Keep me searching in the heart of darkness: the hollow men

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

     A penny for the Old Guy
  
          I
      
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
      
             II
      
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

       III      

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
     
             IV
      
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
     
             V
      
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                 For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                 Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Immersion tour: geometry of abandonment

We have no friends. We have no enemies. Only teachers.
(Anonymous proverb)

Building wings

Go to the edge of a cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down. Ray Bradbury

So yesterday turned into a play day and a completely off the record prayer paddle to a place of exquisite calm and beauty.

Off the record because I forgot to take the camera.

Day didn't start too good. Had to do the next step in the paperwork of life thing and appear in person for my US passport. The usual small bureaucrat nonsense and officiousness. It seems that it doesn't matter where you are in the world, the little person behind a counter in a government office will so easily slip into the identical hostile model.

Enter the Fav Tribal Eler and the day is saved. We decide on a small paddle so as not to tire him for the big paddle he is (maybe) doing Saturday. Of course everything is then a rush and a scramble to catch the tide. Isn't that always the way with salt water?

Shine Tidelands State Park, the Jefferson County side of Hood Canal bridge, 5 000 feet of tidleand along Bywater Bay. A little mentioned park which warrants only one meagre sentence on the State Park website about there being little beach available at high tide. Like: don't come here, mate, there's nothing.

For us it was a day of calm water and perfect sunlight glinting . Paddling towards Indian Head island, if the tide is right, one finds a sheltered lagoon and cove. Herons and gulls. Hawks and eagles and no hint even of human habitation. Wispy blown cirrus clouds scribbled kanji in the blue. We lay on soft sea grass, our heads cushioned on a fallen trunk while the hawks circled and soared in the hunt above us, listening to the woodland creatures squeak, chrip and chatter, sun warm on bare skin.

One of those times and one of those places where one feels vows have been made.

Sacramental. Calm. We slipped through the crack into the other dimension, into pre-lapsarian times before any knowledge of good and evil split the world asunder.

Yes. We built wings on the way down.

Living aloha

Spent the day yesterday at the Live Aloha Hawaiian cultural festival at the Seattle Centre where I heard a lot of ukulele and slack key music, saw a lot of hula dancing and much bold floral patterned gear on men and women alike. Weather imported from Hawaii for the occasion couldn't have been better.

One of my fav Tshirt slogans of the day: "I am not fat. I am Hawaiian." No. I restrained myself from buying one of those.
Perhaps the best part of the day was the kapa cloth printing workshop in which I learned a little bit of the history and cultural significance of the cloth, cut a bamboo stamp (without cutting myself and having to go to First Aid station etc) and got to print a small piece of paper. Unfortunately we didn't have time or the materials to pound out some genuine kapa cloth to print on.

During the course of the festival I somehow also signed up for some online course in Hawaiian language and another on Malama 'Aina which seems to be about traditional Hawaiian ways of caring for the land. This course intrigued me with it's introduction: "The land is a chief: the man is its servant. He ali'i ka 'aina, he kauwa ke kanaka. Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning branch offer these online courses.

Seemed to me this was really good value for the festival discount of $10 (normally $25). The Tshirt and mesh backpack they gave to me for signing up were surely worth more than that AND I get to learn something and Fav Tribal Elder gets a new Tshirt and backpack from me.

I also managed to miss a Hawaiian quilting workshop because I couldn't find the venue and was distracted by the music.

The facilitators for the workshops flew out from Hawaii especially for the Live Aloha festival. They were knowledgeable, authentic and superb advocates for their people and traditional ways. In some ways I am still processing the day. So much aloha spirit.

The whole event, being native, began, at a reasonable hour and reasonably on time 11:30ish with prayers and the local Hawaiian community asking permission, in song, chant and hula, from the Duwamish people, to hold the festival. There was some handing over of gifts and punding of a drum - which activities have become part of my daily life since the Suquamish hosting of the annual Tribal Canoe Journey. The Live Aloha! festival ended not too late last night with everyone in the Centre Hall holding hands for the singing of the Hawaiian anthem.

Then of course we still had the bus, ferry, car ride home. Fav Tribal Elder was pretty exhausted. I had to remind him to take the right turn at the casino to drop me off at Haleikeokekai. I think his automatic pilot had kicked in about the time he fell asleep on the ferry. He was heading straight for that off-rez life of his in Little Norway.

Mending nets

When fishermen can't go to sea, they mend nets. And did I mend nets yesterday!

Remodelled a section of the front blooming flower bed to accommodate the Acer Palmatum Dissectum Viridis aka Japanese laceleaf maple aka the citizenship tree, gift of some of my colleagues (Karen I am looking at YOU). Thankyou! friends for helping me put down roots in this strange land.

The beautiful new Acer etc has about as much chance as me for survival: her roots are now firmly planted in somewhat rocky rez soil, helping to reclaim what was once an abused piece of earth and a former driveway/parking lot now transforming into a blooming food and beauty producing blessing.

She has a waterview east toward sunrise, a grand 100 year old beeg ol' cedar as companion and prayer flags fluttering at her back. That's a lot of support for tough times. Don't need a crystal ball to know that there are some of those in a life like mine. Just hope sweet pretty Acer etc is ready for it. The babe isn't going to make it if she can't take tough.

Yeah. I know. The picture is bad, but it is the best I could do to commemorate HER day. This pretty little exotic which has become as American as apple pie: let her flourish!

Next net to be mended: Amazing what one can do in a kitchen: printed 12 yards of fabric. 6 of the embryo crow:To hatch a crow/a black rainbow/bent in emptiness/over emptiness but flying.
And three 2 yard pieces of the hadedah and snake. Inspired by Steve OC who mentioned to me recently that his totem is the snake. He also explained his people's belief that the snake is the wisest of all creatures because it spends its whole life belly against the earth absorbing all THAT energy and wisdom.

Set me thinking about snakes and birds and so, whilst the cat is kept away from the pigeons, the cloth might well be my words.
Good day. Good strong nets. Now gonna go fish! Catch me a productive life. Isis is alive and well and livin on the rez amidst flourishing pumpkins.

9/11/01 In Memoriam

Yoga on a sundappled, handloomed, made-in-Guatemala carpet, in a tiny cabin redolent of cinnamon spiced banana bread baking in the oven with a view east over water framed by prayer flags fluttering.

So began my day yesterday. The eight anniversary of the attack on New York. Eight years since that train journey to Johannesburg and the night spent looking for news as stations slipped in the past.

It has become customary in this country for people to speak of where they were whn they heard The News. And what they did that day. So I add my still small voice to the cacophony of the multitude.

In a recent conversation with the Fav Tribal Elder he sugested man invented time. I have been rolling that pebble around in my mind ever since. No, I would say, no, seasons and the sun's arc have always existed.

Man might have invented the measurement of time but there's much has grown and changed, in spite of hubris and interventions from the human side, in the span of those eight years. We do not control only submit, with varying degrees of grace attendant.

With autumn chill in the mornings and the thinning sun lukewarm as it retreats southward on this, my first anniversary of That Day as a United States citizen, I look at the seed heads bobbing in my garden: no man invented the cycles which measure my days.

But he (and she) sure can mess with my equinamity in the theft of the same unmeasured days.

For now I have the gift of prayer long days. And I am grateful.

Contemplations in the backyard lockup

In an early autumn brilliant sunbreak between the rain squalls, I discover that the backyard lockup has been colonized by rampant pumpkins and is all bound about with the gossamer silk of spiders.

Scounting the Hood canal

Labour day weekend has just passed. The other bookend on the far side of summer.

The Fav Tribal Elder and myself spent the Monday holiday scouting out kayaking launch sites along the Hood Canal. It seems that, living with so much water and coastline around, it should be easy to find places to launch. Trouble is there is some strange notion of private ownership of land in these parts.

I have quoted it before and I will quote it again: "How can you sell the sky..?"

In Washington State this private ownership thing stretches to shoreline. Thus we have to find places we can both park a vehicle and launch a kayak, or two, since we paddle singles. A further requirement is that we not be trespassing too overtly.

Today's investigations had us looking at possible paddles of the southernmost hook part of the Hood Canal fjord - the FTE for a 150 mile challenge he has taken up, me just for the wing and the prayer of it.

In the pictures: Anderson's Cove (above) and Dewatto with a few perspective shots and dreaminess thrown in for the telling of my day. Always, the Olympics define the horizon with swirling cloud under today's sometimes squally low rainy skies..Purple clover, Queen Ann lace/crimson hair across your face/you're gonna make me lonesome when you go...
Looking up and looking down.Looking out.
Dewatto launch site - the old creosote plant.

These matters that I with myself too much discuss

Have had a great opportunity recently to do some tidying and clearing. With autumn in the air, it feels good to clean the house.

Amongst the detritus washed up on the shores of my kitchen table I found a mock sheriff's silver star badge brought home from a training put on by some expensive consulting company. Gave me pause.

i·ron·ic adj. Poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended: madness, an ironic fate for such a clear thinker.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Corn moon rising full: let's have a revival

I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

I hear hurricanes ablowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

All right!
Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.