Friday, February 29, 2008



ping!

like a gold star
pressed to the back of your hand
by a Greater Teacher...

Thursday, February 28, 2008







The moment of ‘ping!’

Like a single chime. A flash of light. A breakthrough.

In Shintaido practice, there are movements where no physical contact is made. Perhaps you bring your wood sword down and forward toward a partner. Perhaps you even run toward each other, and past each other. Or there is eiko dai where you run through your own personal breakthrough.

Any of these might bring on 'ping!' (my own label for what happens). Yes, it's a subjective event, where you feel stunned, as though something's happened within. I've experienced various phenomena involving light: slashes, explosions that I can't quite see through, or general heightening of light. I say 'I' because I don't really know what others experience within.

But there are also behavioral markers of that moment that are observable. There can be the buckling of the knees, or a dazed look on the face. There's a little giggle that sometimes happens, not a nervous giggle or a seductive giggle but more like water bubbling upward. Happy or surprised. However, these markers could be intentionally produced, copied as a part of the experience, and so even though I’ve observed that they don’t seem intentional, they aren't the most objective evidence of some internal physiological event.

The best evidence to me is wet eyes. Again and again, you bring your sword down in a simple no-contact movement that is repetitive and practiced, not frightening nor upsetting. You bring it down, and maybe the third time, or the eighth, you see your partner’s face, dazed. Eyes misted.

You run and run, and you experience light, feel that little squirt, that experience of release in your own eyes.

There’s a medical column carried in The Daily Advertiser, the local paper. Today, Dr. Gott mentioned ‘reflex tears’—something different from weeping tears and tears that wash and lubricate the eyes. It got me thinking.

I’d been calling it mist. The eyes sharply moisten and the person pauses, as though they've been touched in some way, opened, made vulnerable via something flowing from their partner or through pushing themselves past their limits.

The tearing is interesting because it's a marker that's not subjective, an external marker of something that's experienced within. It's an objective, measureable event, not easily faked or initiated by volition. I've observed it in others. I've experienced it in contexts where greater distance is involved, or people aren't involved at all. I've never heard it discussed.

So. From a short distance away, we can get someone's legs to crumple, their eyes to abruptly mist, not to mention whatever goes on in the mind since that's harder to isolate.

In eastern and holistic approaches to the body, it's accepted that there is a flow of energy through the body. And I suppose there's some explanation involving unblocking that flow. But I've still got my feet in the western tradition and scientific method. To me, something small but observable like reflexive tears is a measureable phenomenon, and thus is a building block for further knowledge.

It would help if there were a specific question. Something like, are people interconnected without body contact? (As some insects, fish, mammals and birds appear to be.) What is that mechanism and how does it work?

Of course, I do have hypotheses, and good reasons for wanting to look at and document this, not just experience it.

Meanwhile, this morning, I squeezed a grapefruit and the very last three oranges from the tree in the yard. I poured some of the juice into a glass for my dad for when he’d awaken, and poured the rest for me.

I took a sip.

ping!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008




“One stressful event can affect many traits and allow previously unseen genetic variation to be expressed,” says [Todd] Sangster. “We don’t know yet what is going on at the molecular level—why the HSP90-dependent traits are expressed when the [mustard] plants are mildly stressed.”

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (2008, February 27)
"Protein 'Shocks' Evolution Into Action"
ScienceDaily
Retrieved February 27, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com¬/releases/2008/02/080223123054.htm

Tuesday, February 26, 2008




from an article by Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press:

…Charles W. Whitfield, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied the genes of bees in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas, focusing on regions where several bee invasions have occurred, such as Brazil and South America.

Whitfield's team found that when invading bees were interbreeding with those already present, the combined genes were not just joined randomly.

"We asked the question: Is hybridization an essentially random process?" co-author Amro Zayed said in a statement.

When the African honey bees mated with the western European honey bees that had been in South America for centuries, one might expect that the hybrid offspring would randomly pick up both the functional and non-functional parts of the genome, he said.

"But actually what we found was there was a preference for picking up functional parts of the western European genome over the non-functional parts."

This combination seemed to give the newcomers an advantage over their predecessors, though the researchers were not able to determine exactly how the new bees benefited…

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2008-02-25-killer-bees-genes_N.htm

Monday, February 25, 2008



No litter was caught among the crawfish holes in the ditch, no sticks to stumble on; it was as though someone had come before me and prepared the yard.

There’s one tree beyond the fence that produces the big pecans. For over a month there have been none in sight, but this morning, here were two on the path. One was too lightweight to be any good. Still, I put the pecans in my left fist and squeezed them against each other, expecting the rotten one would shatter. But no, the shell of the good one broke perfectly in two and the whole meat of the nut slid out, unbroken, the two halves still attached to each other, like both hemispheres of an intact brain. Effortless.(Do you know how unusual that is?) I stood still and quietly chewed it under the oak, then started warm-ups for bokotoh.

A breeze stirred, oak leaves fell and glittered in the sunlight as they floated. Birds and squirrels crossed the trajectory of my wood sword. It was good practice. A good clearing of the mind. It was a good way to begin a Monday.

Sunday, February 24, 2008







Saturday, February 23, 2008






My Name is Asher Lev, a novel by Chaim Potok, follows the growth of an artist from childhood through adulthood. Potok took on the eyes of an artist to create his protagonist and it’s through Asher Lev’s eyes that I learned to attend to light—and to dark.

If I read My Name is Asher Lev six times, I probably read The Chosen twelve times. The Chosen taught me to examine the gift of silence and the suffering silence can bring. The use of silence to teach. The use of intermediaries to soften the suffering.

It's also an historical novel, educating the reader about the mores of a very contained culture and about the slow, devastating impact of the discovery of the breadth and depth of the holocaust as the details poured in to the U.S. at the end of WWII.

The book is an exquisite portrait of a friendship.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Wednesday, February 20, 2008









The dojo teaches.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008







Monday, February 18, 2008

rabbit's eye-view:




One lemur tribe is about to encounter another lemur tribe on a trail in Madagascar. The narrator of the tv show talks about it's ‘war!’ and the ‘fighting’ and who will win 'the battle'. But if you watch the lemurs in action, it looks more like an athletic event: flying leaps, a little light-contact sparring, a couple of nips that may not even connect, and that's it. Striped tails waving. No harm done. Brief and invigorating. One tribe retreats and lets the ‘winning’ tribe have the trail for now. Less like war, more like a neighborhood game of touch football.

The skirmish seems to be a sharp-edged communication about respecting boundaries, temporary control of turf. Nothing personal. No pouting, no escalation, few hard feelings. No self-flagellation by the biters for possibly hurting fellow lemurs. No holding onto tension, letting resentment build. Good sports.

Sunday, February 17, 2008



At 5:15 AM, the doorbell rang.

I trudged up to the front room. Who would be calling at this time of day? There was no one at the door. Could it be a prank?

I stood gazing out the pane of glass bordering the door, and a small brown rabbit hopped across the walkway in front of the house. It seemed unlikely there were people with mischief on their minds anywhere near.

Maybe I’d hallucinated the sound of the chime. I returned to my bedroom but before I got back in bed, there it went again. A single note, clear and loud, the first note of what had once been the traditional eight-note doorbell melody.

I returned to the front door, turned on the outdoor lights and waited. No hand appeared at the doorbell. I heard no shuffling of feet. Nothing.

And then the bell rang again.

I woke up my dad, thinking this might be a smoke detector or other alarm I didn’t know about. No. It was the doorbell. He slid the apparatus off its bracket on the door jamb. The chime inside still rang, and he took the batteries out.

It was damp out after a storm earlier in the night. The button was wet. There must have been a short.

Still, I went to bed wondering who was calling.

Saturday, February 16, 2008




'Every other jewelry maker seemed to be concentrating on using the fleur de lis, a stylized lily that is a symbol of the Kings of France and the city of New Orleans. [Chris] Des Jardins found another south Louisiana plant that caught her fancy--the lotus. The fragrant water flower grows wild in the swamps. "It was perfect," Des Jardins says. "The flower and seed pod rise high out of the muck, representing the spirit's ability to bloom in any circumstance." She particularly loved the Cajun name for lotus, graine a voler, "seeds that fly." (The oval shaped seedpod shoots its seeds into the air.) "That was what I was looking for, the organic shape combined with symbol of hope."'

'Swamp Bloom'
by Mary Tutwiler
The Independent Weekly
February 6, 2008

Friday, February 15, 2008




A friend found a discarded book of poetry on a sidewalk in San Francisco and gave it to me. It was an anthology of poems by women. One poem was by a Chinese poet some centuries back. It's night, the moon gazing from behind branches of a tree. A mother's voice describes her son’s leaving home that morning to forge his adult life. She hoped that those where he landed that night would keep an eye out for him—as she would for the young adult children of others who crossed her path.

Thursday, February 14, 2008




So your detour is not over, and you're still on the side of the road, healing or taking care of children, watching TV or worrying about which laundry detergent to choose, or going to the same restaurant the 1001st time, or waiting for your hearing to be set, or your discharge papers or looking out your window, all wistful. Maybe your detour IS over, and you're stuck in your routine. The road has become intimidating and you're attached to your chair at the kitchen table.

The trick is to place complete focus on your responsibility at hand and all its nuances and gifts while at the same time holding in mind your deep direction.

You're living life fully, in touch with your healing needs or your caring for elderly parents or your job taking the toll at the bridge or keeping the company accounts balanced. But the music of your calling is whispering in the background, your unique song, reminding you of the road, what you're here for.

And perhaps you plant some seeds that might bud next week or next year, to wake you up, make you restless, tug you forward at a future date when the timing may be better or when it is no better, but you are more ready.

Maybe you can't follow your truth just yet.

But you can plant some seeds.

You can hum its melody.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008







It's the nature of travel on the great road. We truck along and truck along and oops, something waylays our adventure: a flat, a virus, an unexpected baby, a hurricane approaching, a broken collarbone. And we're frustrated, so frustrated, because our plans are interrupted.

It's injury time, down time, caretaking time, repair time, kick-the-wall and break-a-toe time, the weeks turned into months or years of unplanned redestination.

What is the destination of the great road?

When we're driving the truck, we clock the miles faster. Look! Look how far I'm going! But at such speeds, we don't see the striped caterpillar under the leaves of the milkweed, the mystery of the chrysalis, the metamorphosis to monarch butterfly.

When we're forced out of our vehicles, we're given the opportunity to really see strange wonders of life if we so choose.

We can fight the detour onto the side of the road, but gifts are hidden there that deepen our journeys.
I woke up this morning wrestling with myself.
On all fronts. Full tilt.
So I took it outside.
I left a lot of blood and guts in the cold cold grass out there.

What would it be like
to make a body double for yourself
a perfect even match
you versus you
rolling in the grass
all out

Monday, February 11, 2008




And then, we let go of armour;
I let the wind
massage my shoulders.

Sunday, February 10, 2008







Sometimes we need to amp up our feisty factor...

Friday, February 8, 2008




Luis Campos offered these quotes in his 'Celebrity Cipher' newspaper feature yesterday:

'To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.'
Confucius

'From caring comes courage.'
Lao Tzu

Thursday, February 7, 2008





Wednesday, February 6, 2008











Tuesday, February 5, 2008







People wait for parade.
Girl skateboards gently.
Along street, the wind blows-

Girl's face is contained,
body proud in knowledge.
She's stillness in motion-

Weaving in, in and out,
alone among many,
she's her own parade-

Girl-in-pink woos camera;
frank smile blooms like sun.
Wheels hum against pavement-

Monday, February 4, 2008








One foggy morning I was lost in Golden Gate Park walking to a class, and there before the de Young museum was a group of people in the slow motion beauty of tai chi. Though part of me was anxious and frustrated, the calm synchrony of their movement filled me with peace.

Though I was apart, I felt connection.

‘What if
confusion is spirit's way of telling us to stop thinking’
(From a blog poem signed Ho, Baby, Ho!)

We stop thinking, and sometimes, in flows love.

Sunday, February 3, 2008



This photo was taken in San Francisco at a monument for those in the service who died at sea. The sculpture seems to represent the two constellations, Pegasus and Pisces. I'm uncertain of their significance.

It's a little late to be passing this on, but in the east about 45 minutes before sunrise this morning, you'll be able to see a brilliant conjunction of Jupiter and Venus with the waning crescent moon.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/080125-ns-moon-planets.html

Saturday, February 2, 2008




Sending you love, honey. Sending you love-

Helen

Friday, February 1, 2008







Because of light, nothing is ordinary. No one is ordinary.