"'This is the largest eye ever recorded in history and studied,' said Swedish Professor Eric Warrant of the University of Lund, who specializes in vision in invertebrates. 'It has a huge lens the size of an orange and captures an awful lot of light in the dark depths in which it hunts.'"

"Marine scientists studying the carcass of a rare colossal squid said Wednesday they had measured its eye at about 11 inches across — bigger than a dinner plate — making it the largest animal eye on Earth."

from "Study: Giant squid has biggest animal eyes in world"
By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer
30 April 2008

I’ve been teaching my left hand to get along better with my right. Usually, they are so on their own paths. The right does most of the work and decision making, the left pitches in when necessary.

My fingers found a little bit of familiar classical ditty on the piano. It was much easier to just let my right hand handle the whole melody. Instead, I divided it up, made my hands work together. Much harder, and initially less smooth a rendition, but perhaps more potential for developing new skills and greater range when the two hands work seamlessly together.

I really don’t play piano well; I play guitar. One might argue the left hand's role on a guitar is actually more complex and demanding than that for the right. The roles of the two hands are so distinctly different, though, that it’s not so much integration as collaboration.

I've been wanting to be more focused, have the halves of my brain better integrated, feelings in better agreement with actions. With this particular exercise on the piano, my two hands must really be one.

I was writing about rodents:

Dream rats.

Gerbils on wheels and our gerbil who singed her tail and whiskers running into fire.

The dwarf cloud rat who has resurfaced in the Philippines, the lab rat who bit me.

I wrote about my fictional rat blogger who had a rodent who danced on a sensor pad, communicating live thru the internet.

There was a rat who showed me the way out of a small enclosure, the frozen rat in a box who defrosted back to life.

There were the live rats who showed up after the dream rat, and the three dead/dying rats who showed up this year, two in my shoes and one on my path.

I could have written about my friend, the Emporer of Rats, who once upon a time had the job of euthanizing all the has-been lab rats and acted very professional about it at school, and also gave away and secreted home as many as he could.

I thought, why am I writing this? Where am I going? I started to fall asleep, but no, I would post a blog entry first. Did I have a photo? Something I already wrote, but hadn't posted? A poem, a quote? Gosh, I'm losing my juice. I got up, walked to the living room. Dad was watching the LSU Tigers play softball.

It's a good-humored world. I was falling asleep in the chair when there she came on the screen, the catcher in purple, white and gold, her name printed on the back of her jersey, half-hidden under a blonde pony-tail.

MOUSE.

Oh!

Kumite
Tuesday morning's partner practice

Honeysuckle at dawn
spills sweet scent,
tenderness,
into the new day.

Spring breeze stirs pine needles;
A spray of rain
from cloudless sky
cools the brow.

"There is no doubt about the great strength of post-hypnotic suggestion and its capacity to produce action. An illustration may serve to make this clear. The subject of the experiment was a well-known psychologist, deeply interested in the phenomena of hypnosis, and himself an experimentalist of considerable standing in this field. His personality was very stable and strong, with no traces of neurotic weakness. He expressed a desire to experience the phenomena of hypnosis at first hand, and was accordingly hypnotized, falling into a reasonably deep trance. In the trance it was suggested to him that upon a prearranged signal he would get up from his chair, walk across the room, and sit down in another chair. He was awakened from the hypnosis, and after half-an-hour or so the prearranged signal was given. He became a little agitated, began to look across the room at the other chair, and finally said, ‘I feel a strong tendency to go across the room and sit on that chair. I am sure you have given me a post-hypnotic suggestion to this effect. Well, I’m damned if I’ll do it!’

"He continued taking part in the conversation, but became more and more distracted and monosyllabic, until finally he jumped out of his chair, crossed over, sat down in the designated chair, and exclaimed, ‘I couldn’t stand it any longer!’

"What apparently happens is that the post-hypnotic suggestion sets up an encapsulated action tendency in the mind which is relatively independent of voluntary control, and powerfully demands action before it can be reintegrated with the remainder of the subject’s mind. In this it very much resembles in miniature the kind of complex so often found in neurotic and otherwise emotionally unstable patients. The cause of this action tendency is unknown to the subject, and even where it is guessed, as in the case of the psychologist just mentioned, this knowledge does not seem capable of counteracting the determining influence of this small ‘complex’. When it is remembered that in the particular case just mentioned this single suggestion triumphed over the strength and will-power of a well-integrated, strong-willed, competent person, who, in fact, had guessed what was happening, it will be realized that hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions are no playthings, but carry with them an almost frightening degree of strength and importance."

Sense and Nonsense in Psychology
H. J. Eysenck
1957

How did it survive the lawnmower? How did I not see it the days before?

There under the oaks where I do warm-ups in the morning was a very thin blade of grass. Attached to it was a bright white fuzzy cocoon, and even at first glance, I could tell it was in motion. Over an hour later, it was in more vigorous motion, the butterfly struggling to get out. I was sorry to leave—I'd never witnessed this in the wild before. I thought I might see a birth.

Meanwhile, a big fuzzy caterpillar fell onto my bare arm. I reflexively shook it off before examining it up close. Wow! Bright red head, like a cherry lifesaver, with these amazing fronds coming out of it like a couple of peacock feathers. Its back had tufts shaped like little cushions—and then there was a flared tail of some sort. It looked like a miniature dragon float in a Chinese parade.

Then there was the more standard style caterpillar, very handsome with blue and grey markings like tracks down its back. I almost stepped on it. The odd thing was, it followed me. It was insistent about aiming for my shoe, so I moved. It changed direction and followed. So I tested it. Each time I’d change sides, the caterpillar would continue a few seconds in the old direction, pause, then turn around directly for my foot.

Keeping track of the caterpillars and cocoon made it hard to continue warmups. I didn’t want to crush anybody, so I took off. But I forgot my hoody and had to return, and there next to the jacket was another of the Chinese floats parading along the top of the fence.

Before leaving town, I checked on the progress of the budding butterfly. The cocoon was empty, with a great hole where the butterfly had found release...

Five dancers dangled, suspended by rock climbing equipment, off a sheer stone face adjacent to a magnificent waterfall. They lept and slowly cartwheeled as though the vertical wall were their dance floor. It was Yosemite, the aerial dancers in pale orange and white. Their movement was both powerful and graceful, small compared to such expanses of sky, water and rock, very large in the openness of their bodies. The dance was called Luminescent Flights.


(PBS Great Performances
DANCE IN AMERICA: WOLF TRAP'S FACE OF AMERICA
Project Bandaloop)

It’s probably been 15 years now; one day, I'll return to Plain of the Six Glaciers, situated in the Canadian Rockies in Alberta behind the pristine jewel Lake Louise. There’s a marvelous and varied hike there. You start at the very civilized Chateau Lake Louise, one of the those wondrous British facilities built with the railroad that traverses Canada. You're in a castle-like place with all these tables and cozy chairs along windows where you could read or write while gazing upon the glowing beauty of the lake and Victoria Glacier behind it. I never stayed at the chateau, but we often walked through the lobby before or after a hike. That’s where I first had Lindt chocolate—the kind with the raspberry filling. It tastes very good after having hiked all day.

If I’m not getting to Plain of the Six Glaciers it’s because it’s so hard to describe without the words diminishing its loveliness. All powdery and white and light-aired and open.

Back to the hike itself. The initial trail is on the right side, the forested side. (To the left, a scree slope.) At first you’re looking at glacier and the volcanic slopes mirrored into the teal-blue lake. It's a very flat beginning where you’re likely to run into chateau guests strolling with a dog or baby. Then you come to a great wall of igneous rock, shades of black and burnt oranges and blues if my memory is connecting to the right page. The trail narrows as you curve behind the lake and then away, outside of view of the chateau. You start to gain altitude now, and come to rocky slopes partly covered with snow. You might see or hear a pika, and as the afternoon wears on, you may hear the thunder of distant avalanches, see snow on high crashing and exploding in the sunlight.

Everything so far has been a high, the chateau, the beds of petunias and pots of fuschia, the beautiful mirroring lake. Near the tea house, a pipe drips melting glacier. It is perfect water.

But approaching that first glacier is like approaching God.

And then you come upon the white bowl, with six glaciers arrayed about you.

There is something about a glacier that is startling and fundamentally pleasing. Is it the immenseness? The whiteness? The thick layerly look to it? I don’t know. You gasp and fall back.

Once your eyes fix upon a glacier, you are forever owned. Might as well surrender.

http://www.flickr.mud.yahoo.com/photos/aliceinw/194845155/

then one morning
there it is
light falls like rain

What if instead of ignoring your body, you paid close attention? What areas are warm, which are cold? Which parts are relaxed, which are tight? When and where does your body clench, get injured? When does your body sing?

The contemplative crow walks the field, head focused on the ground, black black bird against the green green grass.

All the other crows this year have clustered in social groups. They seem to have an affinity for perching high in the pines, looking down, squawking and cawing to each other, and at any movement below. Their softest conversations are at the volume of a fan at a baseball park witnessing a bad call.

This crow, for the second day this week, is on its own, silent. Most at such a close distance to a human would be keeping a cautious eye out, if they stuck around at all. This bird is on task, meditative; it pays no attention to me.

Just one foot after the other, searching, searching.

My words are locked up tonight...

What if chaos exists only in the mind of the observer?

(Photo credit:
yellow morph female
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
April M. King aka Marumari
copyright 2004-2006)

among parked cars
in the grassy lot
hope rises
on yellow-blue wings

Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, and Gary Trudeau’s current story in his cartoon series Doonesbury both illustrate the blindness that characterize the wars in which their works are set, the horrendous folly. Each of them illuminates the lives of the combatants, conveys in moving ways the possibility of intense connection of brotherhood within the militia, the loyalty, the resounding sorrow that comes with the injury or death of a comrade.

In the naval ROTC hall, I kept staring at the photos of the chain of command, and at the photos of the recruits, young men and women, in their dress whites. I stared at the flags and the rifles. I looked at the photos and the plaques of the men who were in ROTC during WWII and were ordered out to war with just a couple days notice. I sat with some of the present-day recruits in the lounge as they did homework and watched cartoons.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers..."
Shakespeare, Henry V

*
from answers.com
koan-'A puzzling, often paradoxical statement or story, used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining spiritual awakening.'

from zenflyfishing.com
'Zen koans are riddles used by masters to confuse and disorient students as a means of awakening. Example, what is the sound of one hand clapping?'

from dictionary.net
koan 'a paradoxical annecdote or a riddle that has no solution; used in Zen Buddhism to show the inadequacy of logical reasoning'

I walked until it grew dark. One memory per era emerged:

-Peeling, rinsing and handing out carrots for the boys and their neighbor buds after school.

-Collecting data and writing up the research about why our impossible unit had been so effective.

-Making hot cinnamon milk with the most violent patient to celebrate a good day.

-A little boy building a precarious tower to find a framework for a terrible enigma in his life.

-A silent teenager sees light in a dream of bees.

-Just sitting with a young former teacher whose head injury took away her ability to speak.

-Preparing Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange Spice tea for my mom in her illness.

Work plus love. That seems to be the sum of it. (Well, maybe cleaning 13 rooms in one day as a hotel maid doesn't quite fit the formula--but most of my jobs do!)

Just itchy to figure out how to apply the formula this next chapter.

French Quarter

Yesterday there was the drive to New Orleans. There was the drive back.

There were people in cars, in bars, on bikes, on banquettes. There was a home that had not been tended to since the death of a wife nine years ago.

There was the French Quarter. An electric violin. An oak-lined street with median called 'the neutral zone'.

There was a Naval ROTC training building, like an old gym with its pine floors and 29layers of white paint.

There was a lonesome man. There were musicians. The smell of pralines slow cooking. Chain of command photos.

Katrina’s name was spoken over and over. There was fish and mirleton and greens to eat. There were weapons, and knots, and a ship’s bell. There was a gentle breeze off of the river. Buildings of many colors. The smell of beignets. Feelings light and heavy, light and heavy. The arrival of a train parallel to the water. There were feather masks, sculpture, beads and skeletons. People with too much and people with too little.

There was a fortuneteller near The Cabildo. She told me her talent, to read the palm, learn what's to come. I told her no thank you. I like surprises.

“Attitude adjustment?”
She smiled.
She offered wild berries and honeysuckle and sent me on my way.

I'm going down the road tomorrow for some maintenance. I need an attitude adjustment.

I've grown more confident these last couple years, and the cheek is a part of the package deal. If only all it took was a turn of the wrench to get in alignment.

But it's so nice not to be a depressed dog in a small cage. You'd forgive a puppy, wouldn't you, for bounding out and knocking you off balance in her enthusiasm?

I know. Cute the first time, tolerated the second, then it gets old fast. I won't be a puppy forever.

But getting some attitude is sort of an interesting development at 55.

I Googled ‘prayer’ and went to the first find: Wiki.

Just seeing an outline of various forms of prayer around the world was rather marvelous and freeing. (I've copied it below.) Interesting that such varied practices connect humans across time. I really liked reading about Tibetan prayer flags, and seeing the colorful photos. Prayer flags are not addressed to a deity, but instead are intended to impart grace to all whenever the wind blows. No dogma. You can be who you are, or no one at all.

A pillar of Shintaido practice called tenshingoso is a spiritual form. There are no words, sometimes just the vowel sounds, and movement that creates opening, receiving and offering between the individual, others, heaven and earth. It’s both simple and complex. Brief. I feel that humble, surprised feeling you get, touched by something larger than self.

From Wikipedia on prayer:
The great spiritual traditions offer a wide variety of devotional acts. There are morning and evening prayers, graces said over meals, and reverent physical gestures. Some Christians bow their heads and fold their hands. Native Americans dance. Some Sufis whirl. Hindus chant. Orthodox Jews sway their bodies back and forth and Muslims kneel as seen on the right. Quakers keep silent. Some pray according to standardized rituals and liturgies, while others prefer extemporaneous prayers. Still others, combine the two. Among these methodologies are a variety of approaches to understanding prayer:

The belief that the finite can actually communicate with the infinite;
The belief that the infinite is interested in communicating with the finite;
The belief that prayer is intended to inculcate certain attitudes in the one who prays, rather than to influence the recipient;
The belief that prayer is intended to train a person to focus on the recipient through philosophy and intellectual contemplation;
The belief that prayer is intended to enable a person to gain a direct experience of the recipient;
The belief that prayer is intended to affect the very fabric of reality as we perceive it;
The belief that prayer is a catalyst for change in one's self and/or one's circumstances, or likewise those of third party beneficiaries.
The belief that the recipient desires and appreciates prayer.

The act of prayer is attested in written sources as early as 5000 years ago. Some anthropologists believe that the earliest intelligent modern humans practiced something that we would recognize today as prayer.

Dear Abby has a letter today from someone whose 20-year-old nephew keeps showing up, and helping himself to milk from the fridge. The letter-writer complains that milk costs money. That other people drink milk, too.

Abby seems to commiserate. Yes. Nephews should not sneak milk from the fridge.

What if I welcome the thirsty nephew to my house. What if I buy an extra carton of milk and have it in the fridge at all times. What if I laugh with him, and with a big red marker I write his name on the carton, and draw blue and yellow stars and tell him that milk’s for him. And what if every time he wants milk from the fridge, I say, go right ahead, love, drink all you want. And what if before he leaves, I stick a two-dollar bill in his pocket so he can buy a glass of milk wherever he goes…

What if I go to his aunt’s place, and bring her a carton of cold milk and pour her a glass?

What if we withhold the wrong things?

What will be the difference ten years from now between an adult who was nourished, and one who was turned away from the milk in the fridge?

Maybe Dear Abby could use a glass, too.

I washed my gi yesterday
and heard the downsliding crying
the loneliness of an only kite
high in the pines in the rain.
This morning, the sky unclouding.
I walk and walk
cleaning the field of sticks
and crushed cigarette boxes.
I walk and walk.
Brown leaves carpeting the ground
turn lustrous and bright.
I walk and walk,
the field now blooms beneath my feet
little yellow flowers and clover
burgeoning upward.
Dewberries along the fence
grow full and black
not ripe until they fall into the hand.
A speckled hawk pauses in the pecan tree
and then it is gone.
My knees tremble.
I come to the porch.
A bright green lizard flashes his
red neck my way as though I were
a holy sight to behold,
the world exploding in
the warmth and afterbath
of yesterday's rain.
I walk inside,
two kites now
crying, crying,
call, response,
their insistent wanting
too loud, too private to bear.

Golden Gate Park is an interesting place. As a man from Vermont told two confused women from the Netherlands, "The park is designed with few signs because it encourages interactions among visitors." Then he laughed.

A man approached me from behind just as I bent with my point-and-shoot in video mode to record a pond's surface shimmering in the breeze. He asked what I was photographing, and I responded with a question, deferring to him, as though he might know better than I what I was doing.

“The movement of the water?”

“Ahhh, with the shadow against light…”

What's left of the meeting with the man from Calcutta is 8 seconds of video of water and the sound of the intersection of strangers.

Unlike trees, we can walk.
We are mobile.