Predawn

I like those hours when it's still darkish
I like to watch the day come on. Once the sun's up an important part of the show shifts to something less dramatic.
And there's all that silence, emptiness. allows room for the questions and the empty handed listening.

Take Me Out Or Leave Me Alone

I tell her ‘Take me out or leave me alone!’ but she won't. She thinks its good to f**k with me . She’s never been wrong so far, I guess.

"Oh no" she says, "you got MORE work to do here! We're gonna stuff you in the stew pot and turn it on high, then throw you in the icy sea, then turn it back on, then run you through the food processor then back into the sea for awhile and then...”

And after all this time, I still don't got it all figured out, so see? 'Nice guy, needs work'
“How long?” I say. “How much longer?”

“Hah!” is the response. “Telling you would shortcut the process and you’d goof off most likely! Just shut up and simmer or swim…or whatever I have you doing in the moment.”

I'm trying to feel the patterns going forward, just sort of get a whiff, a scent,
the thread thing that's pulling me forward toward this godlight. Be aware of it and the directions it wants to tug me in. Meanwhile meditate, 'be', do the inquiry.

This am at 3, i went out and put my hands on the dirt and sensed again how the planet has loved and supported me and how much i love this little dirt ball and its wild critters and trees and rocks and things and how much it loves me.

And I try to figure out a way to show up for the physical part of my life, the doing part, because that's real and important too, even if it's ultimately meaningless. Maybe Something a bit more than writing emails to friends. don't know what yet.

Full moon setting with cows and old school

Coleville Point, Lopez Island

Hmmm, title. How about more random musings?

I wake up in the morning and immediately want to grasp for something that gives me meaning or makes me feel accepted and appreciated. Check my email, see who’s written me, check the news. It feels like ‘grab onto something quick! Grab onto something outside of myself to make me ok, feel loved, worthwhile’.

How hard is it to just drop into awareness and stay there? Experience this without the mind’s interpretation? The mind wants to ponder things that are fantasies, how I would build a house with straw bales, for instance, something that’s clearly NOT going to happen, but it gives the mind something to chew on, some kind of meaning. Or drop into a novel, someone else’s version of reality to avoid my own.

First I have to catch myself avoiding MY experience and then stay in it. There are the experiences we call ‘good’. I feel pretty good, the sun is out, I’m eating something I like and then there are the experiences we call ‘bad’. Rain, cold, pain, dizziness, loneliness. But we don’t show up for either. While I’m eating, I’ll be surfing the news instead of savoring the experience. The sun is out and I’ll notice it, go out in it, but stay busy within my mind rather than enjoy the feeling on my body.

God been poking at my heart today. I was given enough energy to go to the water, that was nice. Lovely places, beautiful. Could see Rainier and the Olympics and White Horse and Mt.Baker and to the East, the mainland and Whidbey and other islands.

I've been having a bit of sadness. Some tears. Not big, just noticing. I am missing the old danny who made plans and did them, the one who showed up for this dirtworld experience. Ok I have some plans, going to the mainland and the heli trip and Richard coming and stuff, but its not what I’m talking about. It’s the place where I say, ‘I’m going to fix Scott’s truck tomorrow’ or ‘maybe I’ll go to Blank in the fall or next summer. Or the one who learned all the birds and plants cuz he wanted to know and investing the energy into that was worth it; someone who had a future beyond next month or maybe the one after or maybe just the one after that. I'm just noticing. I'm not a part of what other people are doing to a large degree. Not morbid, not angst, just noticing and accepting, but it's a process. I don’t know how to be with it sometimes.

Even if i'm on earth for awhile yet, i'm still not part of most of this experience. i can be friendly with cashiers and listen while people talk about 'next year'.
and i love to play with Huggins and all of that.
That makes some sense to me. It's just new and different ground i guess.

It was an awesome day today. I just went out and there were a million little puffball clouds lit underneath by the rising moon through the trees, almost full which means I might get some rain on the mainland. Sometimes just after a full moon the weather here will do that.

Its a weird hand to be holding. If it had gone on for a year or two, it would have been one thing, but wow. and how much longer?
My muscles are a little sore from walking today. What an odd feeling. I used to get a little out of shape and then look forward to getting back in shape and I could. And I could push myself up a trail or on a bike and it might hurt a bit for a few days, but it would feel so awesome. As it is my ability to be physical is so limited that 'getting back in shape' or the experience of sore muscles is just an aberration, a discomfort, probably not leading anywhere.

My neck has actually been hurting for a good week or more, maybe just pinching some nerves or something.

It seems like the priority is this stuff I'm working about my 'way' of being in this world. I’m detached from two perspectives. One is the knowing that there is no egoic meaning to any of this, the other is my short timer status. I’m finding the balance between expressing myself and still just 'being' without the ‘me’go-mind.
What do i 'do'? How do I express the hours and days that are left to me?
How do I function in this physical realm for this period of time?
How do I respond?

There IS a plan. There is an invisible thread going out from me and my experience forward. I can't see very far where it leads but I am being pulled forward along it. It's important that I show up for it fully. More important than ever. Once I have a handle on that, the relationship with certain others will become more clear, but there are some things I have to uncover first and be able to hold in the palms of my outstretched hands, gingerly, softly like a tender baby animal, with presence, making sure it is not frightened or alarmed. And that nascent animal is my experience, my life.
It is the only work i have to do, show up for it I will. Everything else comes from that place. It is relentless.

Day 6 of some low energy stuff

The first 3 days were pretty much in bed. On the fourth day, I was given a couple of hours of energy so I hurried up and did the dishes and cleaned the place and took a shower before the 'ick' came back. Yesterday I had enough energy to entertain a friend for awhile, pet some cows :-) and made lunch in between laying on the bed kinda trying not to pass out. Today hasn't been a lot better. Wonder if this is the new plateau or not. I'm aware at times that this bare minimum maintenance mode is kind of a boring life and not terribly interesting. We'll see what happens next.

Carly comes tomorrow to help with taxes and paperwork. I want to get things 'settled' so I can let it go.

On Thursday, I'm taking the bus to Bellingham for a few days to hang with Carly and Hugs and Jim and then Rockport to Mike and Ann's and then Marblemount to see the tribe up there. God willing, of course. Looking forward to the bit of adventure, change, whatever.

Farther

Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovel’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

Messed up again

Intensely dizzy and exhausted this past 3 days. At times, unable to be out of bed. Of course the mind wants to plan around it, fix it, figure it out, but there's really nothing much for it to do.

There is the realization that at some point this whole game comes to an end and is 'rounded with a sleep'. Poof. Gone.

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

Lopez Island

And if I remove myself from the experience
There is just the pink and blue sky
The cry of the gull
The pleasant sound of the waves gently lapping
The shellfish and seaweed smell of the sea
Gratitude
And a gentle, sweet sadness
That my heart isn’t big enough to hold it all.

And if I didn't get up in the morning and go down to the sea to light a candle for the sun, how would it know where to come?