Smelling the Roses

It's December 31... but the multiflora roses are still blooming.  I passed a couple of bushes on the walk home and stopped to smell the roses.  Even with my head cold, I got a nice hit of rose scent.

Traffic was very light on this holiday eve afternoon, and I walked on down the street into the residential neighborhood.  There's a block alongside a park, well out of any main traffic route, and I decided to cross and walk down the 'wrong' side of the street.  All the streets have a slope from center out to the gutters, and it helps my right hip to walk some in the direction with my right leg is on the long side.

I walked just a few steps down the street and saw a Greg's Driving School car come around the corner in my direction, turning right from a side street.  They like this street too, because there's rarely any other traffic.  Proving that is a good choice, the car failed to make the turn (even at very low speed) and careened up onto the parkside curb with one wheel before coming to a stop.  Now I was questioning my choice to walk down the street.  I chuckled at what the instructor and student might be thinking right then, and walked out several yards into the park - seemed like a safe distance - as the car backed up and then advanced sslloowwllyy up the street.

I crossed "driving instructor" off my list of possible retirement pastimes.  Smelling roses is still on the list.

Where Have You Been in the Last Hour?

You might have thought you'd sat on the couch in one place for the past hour.  Or perhaps you were sitting at the dinner table, or walking a few blocks or driving a few miles.  But even if you've spent the past hour on a plane, the distance you've traveled is insignificant in the grand scheme.

In the past hour, you've moved several hundred miles, riding the spinning Earth.  Here at 39 degrees north latitude in Silver Spring, it's about 806 miles.  At the equator, it's over 1,000.  But that's a small fraction of the distance you've traveled along the big ellipse of the Earth's orbit around the sun - about 66,600 miles since one hour ago.  How fast are you moving?  Well, Superman (woman), faster than a speeding bullet.  A speedy bullet might go 1,700 miles per hour - of course it would only go that speed for a few seconds.  You, and the Earth, are moving 39 times faster than that - and it feels like standing still!

Well, it pretty much is standing still compared to the 370 miles per second you're moving through space, along with Earth, Sun and the rest of the vicinity.  1,332,000 miles per hour, or 32 million miles per day.

Feeling the head rush yet?

The Walk Home

Yesterday I left work a little before 5 to walk home.  There are a couple of different routes I take, one of which goes past the bank.  I went that way so I could stop at the ATM.  When I got there, it was in use, and then I realized the person was having some difficulty.  Okay, this will take longer than I expected.  I turned my attention to what was going on around the intersection of Georgia and Cameron Streets.  The bus stopped, not quite in the right lane.  A car easing from a right hand lane over in front of other cars at the stoplight - apparently wanting to turn left instead.  A blind woman, talking on a cell phone, crossing the street with her guide dog, and then milling around a bit - up and down the sidewalk.  The dog seemed confused - but turns out she was meeting someone at the corner and they hadn't arrived yet.

Then a van pulled up and stopped.  A woman got out and walked up toward the bank.  She saw me and asked if I was in line.  I said "yes, but go ahead."  The first person was finishing up, and I figured waiting a little longer was fine, since the van was stopped in a busy street.  I then realized this ATM transaction wasn't going well either.  After quite a while, a man got out of the van and came up to help, and after a few more minutes I finally made it to the ATM.

The rest of the walk home went as usual, until I turned onto Harvey Road, a block from the house.  A truck was stopped ahead, hazard lights on, and a woman was standing by the curb on the other side of the street.  As I approached she crossed over and began to speak - in Spanish mostly, but a few words of English.  She seemed to be saying she had lost her phone, and was gesturing - but I really didn't know what she was asking.  After a bit, I thought that she probably wants to make a call, so I asked if she wanted to make a call on my phone.  Yes, that was it.  So she called for whatever help she was after, I didn't understand the details, but could tell by the tone and flow of her side of the conversation that the situation was being resolved.  She handed back the phone, got in the truck to drive off, and I walked home, about 30 minutes later than expected.

Letting Go

I've written before about not carrying tension from one thing to another - whether physical tension or emotional tension - the same idea applies.  Tension, in a way, is unresolved or unrelieved stress or effort.  

Sometimes events of the past are integrated into our experience - we accept what has happened, perhaps learn a useful lesson, and let go of the rest.  Just another piece in the growing mosaic of our experience, the event has no undue hold.  Wait - that's a telling point of view, because in fact no other person or event has any way to hold on to us - the holding is all our own.   

Nearly all of us have some capacity to accept and let go of things, and also have aspects of life that we cling to dearly and won't or can't let go of, even when the effect is entirely to our detriment.  That's certainly true for me, although through practice my capacity for letting go has increased. 

Without holding on, life's experience flows by in a deep, rich river.  Attachments are like snags that catch onto us - though it is always really us holding on to them - and they interrupt and disrupt the flow - preventing us from full present experience. Without holding on, the future is limitless possibility, but everything we cling to limits us.  We feel that external forces are running our life - we feel that we don't have a choice - that we are boxed in.  In truth - we have made the box - we are not making the choice - and it is our internal attachments and holdings - not some external force, that is running our life.

Friday, December 18

The morning air had a bite to it, and the bare tree branches stood under a gray sky.  It felt like December.  How different from the recent springlike days with golden sun streaming in to light the landscape.  Still, a refreshing morning for a walk.  I smiled at a squirrel that, after running across the street in front of me carrying a nut or some other morsel in its mouth, suddenly leapt up from the ground about thirty inches, landing on a swooping maple tree branch and, without a bobble, sitting to eat breakfast.

Later in the day, standing on the Metro platform, the wind seemed even colder.  Clouds drifted over from west to east.  Then the sun broke through, and I turned to the south to soak up the warmth for a few moments before the train arrived.

Sunset came, gray and red in the southwest sky, lingering for a while before fading slowly.  Four days until the winter solstice and the end to the shortening days.

When Stress Feels Normal

This afternoon I cleared out space to work - just one thing to do.  Calm, nothing competing for attention, nothing lurking in the wings.  This should feel great, and it does, in a way.  But it doesn't feel normal.  It doesn't feel quite like work.  I know it's an important project.  But shouldn't important feel urgent?  Shouldn't I be anxious about finishing the review before something interrupts me?  Why do I feel urges to turn away while this is still unfinished to check and see if there are new emails with more tasks?

Over many years, starting long ago, I learned to deal with the stress of multiple tasks, expectations and deadlines.  First school - books to read, papers to write, tests to study for.  Then work - problems to solve, bosses' expectations, deadlines, meetings, new tasks appearing faster than old ones get completed, growing to-do lists.

This leads to a perpetual sense of urgency and anxiety.  Instead of attention and effort being applied to productive work, much of it is sidetracked thinking about other things that are incomplete,
or not even begun.  Should I even be working on this?  Or is there something more important?
What if I'm forgetting something?  Check the email.  Check the to-do list. Not sure what to do.  Perhaps it's time for more coffee - walking around feels good.

I realize much of this environment, now, is self-created.  I have a lot of choice about being in a state of hurried anxiety, or one of calm focus.  And I realize how often I have chosen to make my environment more stressful, because that seemed normal - it was the conditions and state of mind I was used to operating in, succeeding in.  It will take effort to turn away from that, and make calm focus feel normal, as well as good.

The Wonder of it All

On Wednesday mornings I leave early to walk 20 minutes or so for a 6:30 am yoga class before going on to work.  I look forward to the chance to see the sky if the weather is cooperating.  This past Wednesday the morning sky was cloud free, the air clear and crisp.  As I walked away from the house, I looked up and saw Ursa Major right overhead, upside down.  I turned to walk up the street, looking for the planets that I expected to see - Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

They have been visible for many weeks now.  First, close together, and then as time passed, gradually spreading away from each other along the elliptic, the dimmer, reddish Mars bracketed between bright Jupiter and even brighter Venus.  The planets were there, as expected.  But that morning held an even more special sight. The moon, waning to just a bright crescent, hung in the sky, right in line with the planets, below and to the left.

From near the horizon, and then rising up across the sky in a line, Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.  My mind tried to digest the geometry of the relationships - the Moon orbiting the Earth, Venus closer than Earth to the Sun, Mars and Jupiter farther away, but all appearing in a line from my viewpoint. I'm glad to be alive, just to see this sight one Wednesday morning.

Making Space

Space is an important thing.  Space of all kinds - physical space, emotional space, mental space - in all facets of being, having space to move, to breathe, to make choices, is powerful.

I want more space in my life - but how to create it?  Interestingly, I've found that by intentionally creating more space for others, I find more space for myself.  It can be in any setting.  It might be easing off in traffic to let another car merge.  It might be taking a break from talking to make room for someone else to speak.  It might be pausing to take a breath in a crowded grocery store to allow the crowd ahead to move on.  Opportunities are endless.

I assume that most of the time the others aren't consciously aware I have done anything.  I'm not looking for any recognition or thanks.  It's enough that the act of making, or allowing, more space for others also makes me feel more spacious, more gracious.  It's consciously moving away from stress to a calmer, deeper, more present way of being.

Finding Clarity Through the Physical Body

The afternoon began with me undecided and inert, aware of the list of things I thought I needed to do this weekend, but not motivated to do any of them.   As I began to look up information on a winter yoga training that I'm thinking about taking, it took me to YouTube where I saw a link about hamstrings.  Ahh, that's another thread, as I'm teaching a new class this spring with an emphasis on hamstrings, and I'm always on the lookout for new techniques to weave in.

I watched the video, taking some notes as it went, as it looked interesting and consistent with my ideas on practice and teaching.  I'd been thinking that after the video was over, I'd move on to another project, but instead I wanted to go try out the practice for myself.

I've been teaching an unusual amount lately, and I haven't had as much time for my own practice.  Perhaps that is what was behind my inertia.  I worked through the exercises, and as soon as I finished, I knew very clearly that I was ready to move on to the waiting project.  No doubt, no hesitation - not as a result of will power or analysis - but from some deeper place unlocked by a half hour of conscious movement.

Teaching Yoga

I greatly enjoy teaching yoga.  It energizes me and makes me feel good.  I meet many nice people whom I'd never meet otherwise, and I feel that I'm helpful to them.

Tonight I taught as a substitute in a large class.  The regular teacher is a mentor and contacted me just a few hours before class to say she wasn't feeling well.  So instead of walking right home after work, I stopped off at the studio, which is about a third of the way home, to teach.

Yoga brings to me a sense of satisfaction and joy that is far beyond what I experience at work, even on the best days.  The more I teach, the more comfortable I get and the more tools I have to work with the students.  I'm on a pace to reach 500 hours of teaching in my first year and a half, which is far more than I could have hoped when I taught my first class.

Teaching that much has squeezed out some other things in my life, like composing music and having time to read, but I think it has been valuable to have the focus and concentration, and simply get a lot of teaching experience.

Hurrying

Hurrying is a sure sign to me that I'm not fully present, that I am out of the flow.  Hurrying doesn't have to do with how quickly your moving.  It is about the desire to be somewhere else, sooner than you perceive will happen.  So you hurry.  Your awareness closes down to see things around you from the simple perspective of how they affect your progress.  Are they slowing you down, in your way? Annoyance, frustration.  More hurrying.

If  you’re hurrying, you're out of the flow.  Hurrying won't speed your progress, but it will certainly make you feel stressed and unhappy. 

On the other hand, if you’re present to what’s around you, go with the flow, and make space for others, you’ll slip through and around with ease.

I've convinced that everything truly important about being a human has been known for a long time.  Here's a quote from Zhuang Zhou, who lived in China from around 369 BC to 286 BC:

Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

We each have to learn it for ourselves, though.  It's only be experiencing it in our own lives that the thought becomes meaning, and can change how we live.

A Well-Spent Hour

The Friday after Thanksgiving was a beautiful day, warm in the sun, leaves piled up, trees mostly bare.  I walked down to the creek to sit for a while.  It had been several months since I'd done that.  There was sun on the rock by the creek.  I brushed the dry leaves off and they floated down over the little waterfall.  There's a shimmer on the creekside rocks from sun reflecting off the rippled water, and the musty scent of autumn.

Downstream, there's a gravel bar where robins are flying in to drink and bathe.  Sunlit droplets fly as the birds shake in the water, bringing a smile to my face, a joyous little bit of grace.  A breeze riffles through the leaves and feels cool on my face and ankles.

The water flows.  It has been months since I sat here, watching the water flow by, and the water has been there, as it will be the next time I go.

Crows caw high up in the bare poplar branches.  Most leaves are down, but there are still some - green, golden, and russet, along with the ever green needles of some tall pines.  I toss a leaf in the water and watch it float down, over the little falls, into the foam below.  Little rafts of bubbles float by.  As bubbles pop, the raft reforms, closing the space, growing smaller.   If two rafts get close enough, they seem to attract each other and then touch and merge, rearranging into a circular shape.

Clouds drift in, hiding the sun.  The spinning Earth, like the flowing water, in constant motion.  Because I'm spinning with the Earth, the Sun appears to move across the sky.  After awhile, the sun reappears, farther west and lower down, and the shimmer on the rocks reappears.

I drift off a little.  When I wake it is the burble of the falls and the call of a bird that center in my attention. Many people are out today, walking, running, playing at the playground.  I feel the coolness of the boulder I'm sitting on. It's time to move on.

I Feel Light

When I arrived at the yoga studio this evening, I saw a man who had come for the first time last week.  He said, "When I left last week to walk to the car, I felt lighter... my body had energy."

After class, another man said, "I feel light after class... there's a lightness..."

There's great power in simple, conscious movement - bringing energy, buoyancy, lightness - and perhaps most of all, awakening awareness to the body and the joy of movement that has been gradually drained away by years of sedentary life.  How interesting that both men identified the change they noticed as lightness.  To me, that speaks of a sense of ease and more gracefulness in movement.

A Fall Morning

With the change to standard time on November 1 dawn come earlier.  In early fall, it's dark at 6 am, and on clear days I can see the stars and planets on my walk to yoga or work.  Then the time change comes, and by 6 am it's beginning to get light.

Even so, this morning I had a good view of the three planets that are lined up in the eastern sky.  Brightest, and closest to the horizon, is Venus.  Above and to the right, is the dimmer, redder Mars.  Almost in line with them, still farther up to the right, is Jupiter - by far the largest, and farthest away.
I stopped and watched for a bit, thinking about the geometry involved - Venus closer to the sun than Earth, and Mars and Saturn farther away - but aligned in orbit so the three appeared in the same small patch of the sky.  I thought of the marvelous sensitivity of sight - that I can see the faint reflection of light that has travelled half a billion miles from the Sun to Jupiter and reflected back another half billion or so miles to the tiny patch of receptor cells in my eyes.

Soon the Earth will turn into the Sun's streaming field of light, and the planets and stars will fade into the morning sky.  But the stars are still bright enough that I spot Orion rotating off to the west, not hanging right overhead as it does this time of morning early in the fall.

A crisp breeze blew as I walked on, vibrating leaves free from the trees to twirl and flutter down to the ground, where my feet made swishing, crunching sounds in the growing piles.

Energy.  It's all energy - the light, the sound, the movement of the wind, the downward pull of gravity, that keeps my feet on the ground, draws the fluttering leaves down, and keeps the planets in their orbits - and my awareness of it all.

Conscious of Gravity

Gravity, that attractive force between matter/energy, is a constant presence in yoga practice.  No matter what shape I move my body into, some part of it is touching the ground, and all my weight - weight simply being the force by which the mass of my body is pulled toward the mass of the Earth - is pulled through that point in the direction of the center of the Earth.

If I am not centered above that base of support, I lose my balance.  There is no lead time, no warning.  Gravity is always on, it's not as if you lose your balance, and then gravity pulls you down.  It's a single event.

To exist and function in gravity, my body has built in systems that keep me aligned, keep my weight over my base of support, without conscious thought.  Conscious thought is too slow to successfully maintain balance under the relentless, constant pull of gravity.

The body knows how to balance. Yoga begins to connect my conscious mind to those processes, so I am aware of gravity acting on my body, and how my body stays in balance as it moves from one position to another.  When balance is lost, conscious awareness can look at the experience and suggest changes.

Today, leading a class, I lost my balance to the outside edge of my foot, something that hasn't happened for months.  Interesting.  I don't know the cause, but I know what we were doing right before - a deep Warrior I backbend.  I'm going to explore that more, to see if something is carrying over in my alignment or muscular actions that could lead to imbalance.  I may also find that it was just something that happened, in that moment, and no cause or pattern will be revealed.

Creating New Patterns

Last spring, after an end of winter attempt to start running again, I had tightness and discomfort - even pain - in my right hip.  I stopped running, but the discomfort persisted, affecting my walks to work, yoga practice, and most movement, though cycling seemed not to aggravate it.

As the months went by, the problem didn't go away.  In fact, it seemed to be getting even worse, and I found the sensation moving around.  Sometimes the front of the hip would feel tight, sometimes the side, back, or down by the sitting bones.  I thought of seeing a physical therapist, or having an MRI done.  

A couple of weeks ago, in mid-October, I'd been emphasizing relaxing and releasing tension in my classes, and I was reading Vanda Scaravelli's wonderful little book on yoga, "Awakening the Spine."  In it, she emphasizes the release of tension, and of grounding the lower body in order to allow lightness in the upper body.

One morning, I'd reviewed the anatomy of the hip, getting a visual image of the bones and muscles and how they related.  The thought occurred to me that perhaps a lot of what I was experiencing (discomfort and tightness that moved around in the hip) was muscles gripping - contracting in spasms, and holding tension.  That morning as I walked to work, a little more slowly then usual, I focused with each step on relaxing into the step, feeling myself very heavy, and consciously relaxing around my hip.  I also thought about space in the hip - the pelvis to the inside of the femur.  I've had a longstanding issue with my right hip feeling that it was 'hiked up,' or a little bit jammed.  

The walk felt fine, though I didn't know how to interpret what I was feeling.  I taught my lunchtime yoga class, continuing the theme of strong grounding and releasing tension. Sometime in the afternoon, standing at my workstation, I realized the hip felt different - more balanced with the left - and not stuck or hiked up.  I walked home slowly, relaxing the hip all the time, thinking of what the left hip felt like when it moved, and trying to match that in the right. 

Almost all of the hip unhappiness I'd been dealing with for seven months was gone by the end of the day. That was very welcome, but also quite amazing to me.  To think that all I needed to do was to pay very close attention to my movement patterns and consciously redirect them.  Since then I've continued to work on it - watching for any tension creeping back - and my hip feels great.  

This experience taught me a lot about the importance of directed attention and consciously letting go.  I'd done a lot of general relaxing, guided meditations to put the body in a deeply relaxed state, but that clearly wasn't focused enough to break the pattern.  The key was being very deliberate about releasing tension as the hip was in motion.

Crossword Clue

I've been doing crossword puzzles for several years.  Most work days I pick up a copy of the Express - a commuter oriented paper from the Washington Post.  At some point during the day I'll do the puzzle - usually finishing - but sometimes bringing it home to finish later.

These puzzles are the right level of difficulty for me.  Often I have to work around a word or phrase, but can usually figure them out.  I have several different approaches.  Sometimes I go through all the horizontal clues, writing down any answers I'm confident of.  Then I go back and work through the vertical clues.  If needed, I'll go back to the horizontal clues and fill in the last ones.  Another approach is to fill in the first answer I know, then build off that word in all directions - seeing, for example, if I can get all the way from the top left corner down to the bottom right before being stumped.  Sometimes I don't use any system at all.

A couple of weeks ago, I realized why I like to do the crosswords.  In a job that has lots of loose ends and interruptions, projects that can go on for a long time, and depend on the work of other people, it's hard for me to bring anything to completion on any given day.  The crossword is something I can spend a little time with, and finish.  It's a small accomplishment - trivial really - but it's concrete and definite.

Awareness that I needed a sense of completion and accomplishment that I wasn't finding at work has made me rethink how I approach work.  I've focused more on organizing and defining work so that I can complete more things, even if they are just a part of, or a step in, a bigger project.  

Early Earthling

I woke this morning before the alarm, and got up happy for an extra 15 minutes before leaving for work.  On Mondays I walk in to arrive soon after the fitness center opens at 6:30, so I can take a shower and be ready for my 7 o'clock yoga class.

I headed out the door about 5 minutes after the hour, braced for the chill.  30 degrees, the iPhone weather said, and it felt like it.  But the sky was dark and clear, and gave me a beautiful of Orion, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, Venus and Saturn.  At the darkest spot, away from streetlights, I stopped to watch Orion for a couple of minutes.  Thinking of the vast distance, the energy streaming through space, and feeling very connected to this planet, knowing that every molecule in me is from here.  This planet, that holds me close to it, and also holds the atmosphere I need to breath, Earth.  I am most definitely an Earthling.

I arrived to find the gym dark.  Sometimes they're a few minutes late to open, but there are usually a few people waiting.  I was all alone.  I looked at my watch.  5:33, it said.  33... yes, they're a bit late.  Wait..... 5?

5:33 am?!!

It slowly dawned on me that from the moment I woke up and looked at the clock, I had gone through my early morning preparations an hour early.  I'd looked at several clocks, my watch, my phone, and never registered the hour.  I suddenly felt a little sleep deprived, and turned to what I would do for the hour I had to wait.

Getting a Different Perspective

I've been practicing wheel pose, or urdhva dhanurasana, a full back bend with hands and feet on the floor.  This is a difficult pose for me, that has improved a lot with persistent practice.

I had an image in my head of what my pose looked like, based on how it felt, but it's not possible to see in this upside down position where the eyes are looking away from the rest of the body.

Yesterday, I warmed up for a while, and then had Pam take a photo of me in the pose.

Whoa!  I looked little like the image in my head.  My feet were too close to my hands, keeping my knees bent at an acute angle, rather than pushing towards straight, and my shoulders were not nearly as much over my hands as I thought.

Having the different perspective entirely changed my mind about how I should set up for the pose and work on it.  I lengthened my feet out quite a bit.  The pose felt less cramped, and another photo revealed that it was just barely enough to get good alignment of knees over ankles, though to me the pose felt like my feet were extended much farther away.

Though how a pose feels is ultimately more important than how it looks, I needed this outside perspective to point me in a different direction.  Otherwise, I would be continuing to fight too much to make an overly tight pose feel spacious.

New Arrival!

Today's post has to be about the arrival of another grandson - Eric Joseph Tromble.

Though he's been with us for a few months, out of sight, identity hidden, the day of birth is an astonishing transition - in a moment, air enters lungs for the first time and a whole chain of changes is set in motion as baby begins its independent life.  It's as if one set of machinery is suddenly switched off and another turned on - too complicated to possibly work - but it does.

Welcome!

Each Day is Important - a Reminder

An email this afternoon told that a coworker and fellow musician had died suddenly of a heart attack over the weekend.  I'd seen him just last week at the gym - his locker is next to mine.  He seemed fit, exercised at the gym, swam at the Y.  Suddenly gone.

I stopped by the gym on the way home from work.  His name, and lock, still on the locker.  Someone will have to deal with that - clearly a low priority - and many in the community still don't know the news.

It's a reminder that as important as it may be to plan for the future, life is lived in the present.  None of us knows how many more days we have.  It is folly to forego living fully in the present thinking that enjoyment or fulfillment are for some future day.

Live now!

Leaf Watching Season

Leaf watching season is here! Leaves were coming down throughout the beautiful, temperate fall day.  Mostly gold and brown from the tulip poplars, but I ran through one patch of red maple leaves on the path.  Later, out for a little walk to investigate some day-long construction noise, I watched a leaf fall.  It drifted toward me, and I reached out and caught it. It was crisp and crackly.

In the afternoon, I went to sit on the back deck and read.  The deck is off of the 2nd story, so it looks out over the trees that line the yard, about 10 feet up in the branches.  I had just sat down when a black squirrel appeared, moving along an improvised highway of tree branches - running out to the top of a branch and then climbing or jumping to the tip of a branch on the next tree.  When it came near a large oak tree, it leapt off a tiny hemlock branch onto the trunk, climbed up the tree a few feet and around to the other side, then leapt off into another hemlock branch and continued on.

Soon, another squirrel came by, following a similar path, though different in detail.  At the oak, it climbed higher up the trunk and sat for a while on the stub of a dead branch.  The black squirrel came back through the branches, this time with a nut in its mouth.  It once again used the large oak trunk to move past, and then vanished out of sight in the tree-filled corner of the yard.

Sunlight is streaming through the oaks and tulip poplars, whose leaves seem to glow with the light.  Some rays get through to light the spotted acuba leaves that surround the base of the large trees.

Another practically perfect autumn day!

Birthday!

Friday, October 9 2015, was my 59th birthday.  I took the day off from work, and spent it well.

I checked the indoor garden after breakfast, then watched some YouTube videos about gardening things - when and how to transplant seedlings and how to top pepper  and tomato plants.  Then I moved some peppers up to a larger size container, and planted four grape tomato seeds.

After finishing with the garden, I took a chair out on the back deck to read.  On the way, I stopped to watch the shadows playing on the window shades - a favorite thing for me. The morning was perfect, just the right temperature, sunlight filtering through the trees, and just a hint of breeze.  Occasionally, a leaf would tumble down from the tall tulip poplars.  I watch them all the way down, as a mindfulness exercise.  Some tumble, some spin, some flutter - every leaf a unique shape - and that uniqueness expresses itself in a few seconds of motion - leaf pulled down through air by gravity.

My reading was about the yoga concept of vairagya, or letting go.  Letting go may mean not dwelling on past events, playing unproductive mental games of "if only.." or "I should have.."  It could also mean letting go of a future result, realizing that whether or not my actions lead to the desired result, I will be OK.  Anxiety about results is wasted time, energy, life.

Then it was time to hop on my bike and ride to Takoma Park for Francesca's noon yoga class.  I often go there from work, often after a bit of a hurry, and I was much more settled and calm, arriving after a morning spent doing just a few things that I really wanted to.

After lunch, I rested a while, then read some more before dinner.   Dinner was a bit of an adventure.  We drove to Takoma Park to eat at Busboys and Poets, parking a few blocks away on the street.  It was a little cool in the shade, but we sat outside for dinner.  Just as we were talking about dessert, the sky became ominously black, a dark, gray-fronted cloud moving in quickly from the west.  Lightning began to flash up in the cloud, and the diners along the street began moving inside.  Then the rain began - a full downpour.  We stood with a crowd inside, while we waited for our dessert to arrive - to go - and then waited 20 minutes more until the storm passed, the sky grew lighter, and the rain slowed to a light shower.  We were a little wet by the time we got to the car, and then drove home to eat the chocolate cake.

Sticking With It

This afternoon I got a report to review.  I'd seen an earlier draft, and it had been reviewed by several other people.  I thought about giving it a cursory look, but decided instead to read it more closely.
Page after page, I found one or more problems - typos, grammatical problems, style inconsistencies, and a couple of more substantive issues.

It's hard work to stick to.  After a while I tire and start to lose concentration.  That's time to get up, take a little walk to clear the mind, and then return to the task.  I thought about leaving it to finish tomorrow, but chose instead to keep coming back to it until it was finished.  Now, rather than a partly finished review competing for my attention tomorrow, I have a finished review I can discuss with the author.

It's easier to find space between things when I stick with a project until it's done.  It can be a challenge to fend off the distractions, and choose to turn back to the task when tempted to leave it unfinished, but it's well worth the effort.

Dogwood Harvest

Last spring, the dogwood tree outside our kitchen window sprang to life, greened, and flowered. The flowers are small, but around each cluster of flowers are 4 large bracts, either white or pink, depending on the tree, that I identify as the dogwood flower.  They're very pretty, and persist for quite a long time, unlike some other early blooms, like the cherries.

Eventually the bracts wither and drop, and the tree stands in the full summer sun, gathering energy.  Toward the end of summer small green fruits begin to grow.  They get larger day by day, and then ripen into bright red berries, perhaps a quarter to 3/8 of an inch in diameter.

 Today was harvest day.  I had seen a flock of robins in the yard, and a little later Pam came in and said "You might be interested in what's going on outside the kitchen window."  Indeed.

There was a frenzy of activity.  Birds fluttered into the outer clusters of leaves and berries, scrambling for purchase on the thin, flexible vegetation.  Once stable, they would eat a berry, or perhaps two, then fly away into a nearby tree.  Sometimes they'd grab a berry, and then it would drop.  I couldn't tell if they just weren't good at getting the berries into the gullet, or if they had judged it not ripe enough.

Mostly robins, there were also cardinals, a northern flicker, and a wood pecker with a bright red head.  Then a few starlings appeared.  Unlike the others, they flew first up to a window ledge on the house before coasting down into the foliage.  I watched one gulp down four berries in quick succession before flying off.  The most I saw a robin take in one visit was two.

There was a lull in the action, and we went to the farmers market.  Perhaps half the berries were still on the tree.  By the time we got home, there was one left that we could see, and a few scattered on the ground.

In a few hours, the birds had harvested the dogwood's full production for the year.

Breath

Breath connects us to the world around.  We breathe in the air, and we breathe it out, but it is changed.  Like every part of the system of life, we exchange what we don't need for what we do.  One part feeds another.

Breath connects our conscious and unconscious minds.  It flows, usually out of view, thousands of times a day.  But in an instant - breathe in..... NOW! - it responds to conscious direction.

Breath reflects how we feel, and how we breathe can change how we feel.  So, conscious control of breath is a tool to change our physical and emotional state.

I walked home from teaching yoga on a cool, damp night.  I felt the cool air entering my lungs, and held a hand before my face to feel the warmth of the breath spreading back out into the world outside.

Rain

steady patter
rain on leaves

gently shifting pattern
blending sounds

far and close
wet, drippy

moisture pulled from the sky
down to earth

watering the world

Seeing More

I know my brain ignores most of what I could see.  Incapable of processing everything, it has deep patterns of what to notice, and what to ignore.

How can I see more?  Walk more slowly.  Even better, stop.  Let the first wave pass, and keep looking.  Soften, let the gaze become wider, more peripheral, more three-dimensional.  Observe in different ways - colors, shapes, textures, movement, light, shadow, edges and boundaries.

Eventually mind wants to move on, tires of this view, begins to shut down, to assume all is seen.  Make it stay, recommit awareness, and find a deeper layer of perception.

Gardener

A few weeks ago I began an indoor garden, intending to grow herbs over the winter.  I've tried this before, but failed to pay enough attention to the most important thing - the amount and quality of light.  Plants would sprout, show promise, then wither away, along with my motivation.

This time I have a bright light, recommended for the purpose.  I have basil and spinach sprouts, and one pepper.

Tending the little garden in the furnace room doesn't take much time, but it does take regular attention.  I'm still learning how well the pots hold moisture - how much and how often to water.  I check twice a day - always misting - sometimes watering - sometimes repotting.

Planting the seeds, seeing them sprout, and watching the plants develop day by day, is a joy.  It also teaches me the limits of what I can do.  I have to provide soil, water, and light.  Beyond that, it just takes time.  Time for the program of the plant to run, and the biochemistry to occur, as the plant builds itself from air, soil, water, and sunlight.  

A Little Deeper Into the Present

I've been pursuing a couple of different things.  One is being tuned in to my perception of conflict and my habit of avoiding it.  Somehow, a long time ago, I learned to invent conflict - to imagine what other people were thinking and how they would react - and then to imagine how I would deal with the situation.  Using up energy avoiding imaginary crises - but creating real stress for myself in the process.

The other is the idea of creating space between things - finishing one thing before turning to another - or, if not finishing, at least setting it aside for the moment, knowing why it is unfinished and that it is OK to leave until the time is right to come back to it again.

It occurred to me today, that the value I found in the space between things was really about not carrying stress, anxiety or disappointment forward from one thing to another.  It wasn't the specific action or even the amount of time that mattered, but rather arriving at a feeling of resolution, of not carrying any baggage into the next moment.  This is important, because I now know how to tell if the space is enough.  Sometimes it will be quick and easy to find, other times it may be quite difficult.  But it is worth staying in the space-creating process until the weight lifts, the fog clears, the baggage is left behind.

So obvious to me now how useless, indeed harmful, is my pattern of creating baggage out of nothing to carry forward into my interactions.  Why not take each situation with an open heart, free from imagined stories, and resolve any real conflicts that arise so that the next moment can be enjoyed with clarity and freedom?

Bright Venus

I was up early this morning to take in a 6:30 yoga class before going to work.  The sky was pretty clear, and the stars in their early fall positions - Orion prominent, the Pleiades a bit higher in the sky.  Venus was exceptionally bright, due to it's position in orbit.  This is, it turns out, it's brightest week.

It's this time of year, four years ago, that I started going to the early morning class on Wednesday and began to notice Orion and the other fall stars in the sky.  I hope we get some good sky viewing weather this year.  Some star gazing will be good for me.

Another Season

Fall has arrived - on the calendar, in the heavens, and in a turn to decidedly cooler weather.

"It feels like fall."  I'm sure everyone has their own sense of what that means.  It may be hard to describe, but there's a lightness in the air and the morning sun angles in a bit more.  There's a fresh smell, but much different than that of spring.  There's a little less daylight each day.  Like many things that change slowly, the change each day is barely noticeable, but over the course of a week or more is quite apparent.

Just before the cold front moved in, the yard and woods were busy with flocks of robins and other birds, moving through ahead of the weather.  It's a transitory time of year.  Soon we'll have a warm spell, and the robins will move back with it - following the pulses as fall moves toward winter - edging further south until the cold season truly sets in, and the flocks of robins disappear until spring.

Observing Mind

I'm talking with my yoga classes about observing mind versus thinking mind.  Cultivating observing mind is a key yoga practice.

The observing mind is the mind that takes in the continuous stream of present reality.  It's the mind that sees, hears, smells, touches, and generally delights in the world, without analysis or judgement.

In contrast, thinking mind is the judge, the analyst, the story teller, the mind that makes a narrative to try to make sense of the world, but which so often runs amok, ruminating on the past, spinning in anxiety about the future, creating suffering out of thin air.

We need the thinking mind.  It isn't inherently bad.  Yet, bringing more balance between the two, by cultivating observing mind and spending more time in the stream of the present moment, is a very worthwhile endeavor.

Perhaps an early step on the path is to recognize that thinking mind is not the only mind, and that the observing mind is real, and different.  At the end of one class today, a student said it was a new concept to her, and relayed that as I spoke about it she felt as if the right side of her brain became active, as it began to think about what she was hearing.  I don't know about the perception of thinking in one side of the brain - but it seems as if, in being aware that she was beginning to think, she was also aware that her mind had just been occupied in a different, non-thinking way.

A Little Rain

Rain came today, after a stretch of more than two weeks of dry, end of summer weather.  After some intermittent showers, one of which caught me at the farmer's market, umbrella warm and dry back in the car, the peak of the storm came in early afternoon.

Not a cloudburst, but steady rain, pelting down onto the street, rooftops and yards.  I opened a couple of windows to let in the cool, fresh air, and more of the sound of raindrops splashing to earth.  It's a calming sound, especially when the whole landscape - all the flora and fauna - are welcoming the much needed moisture.

It was a perfect setting for an after lunch nap, so I lay down on the floor, closed my eyes, and listened to the patter of the rain until I fell asleep.  When I woke, the rain was over; the sky a little brighter, and I was a little more refreshed.

Not In a Hurry

I left work and walked to the Metro station for the ride down to Takoma Park and yoga class.  I walked up to the gate, held my wallet up to the sensor as I always do, and .... nothing.  I tried again.  I took the SmartTrip card about half way out of my wallet, and then heard an expression of impatience behind me.

OK, someone's in a hurry.  I stepped out of the way and a woman rushed up, ran through the gate and up the stairs.  I let a couple more people go through, then stepped up again with the card out and made it through.   I got up to the top of the escalator just as the train pulled away.

I'm glad she caught the train.  I hope her hurry was because she really needed to be somewhere quickly, and not just because she lives in that impatient, hurried, exasperated space.

There were some large cumulus clouds in the sky to the northeast - bright white against the early evening sky - and reflected in the glass windows of some of the tall buildings.  Had my card worked better, I would have been down the tracks on the train with Ms Hurrypants.  But then I'd have missed the clouds.  Better to not be in a hurry.  The next train delivered me to Takoma, in a fine state of mind.

The Present Weekend

It's 8 pm Monday evening.  Labor Day weekend 2015 is coming to a close.  I feel very good.  I had a busy weekend - time to catch up on a lot of stacked up business from the summer - and I accomplished a lot.

All sorts of things - from finally making it to the wine store to pick up an order from over a month ago, to planning for next summer's family reunion, to planting some herbs for an indoor garden, yoga teaching, fall schedule planning, listening to and playing some music, reading a few random news articles that caught my attention, washing some laundry and cooking dinner.  I had a good walk, a good bike ride, and worked on a back-bend practice all 3 days.  I called Dad for a chat, sorted out a pile of mail, and organized and filed a few more papers (though there's still a stack).  I looked at my retirement budget, and set up a little spreadsheet to track the family trust account a little better.  And a few more things.

All this was aided, at least, because I stopped using my iPhone so much as a distraction and used it for a to-do list that I kept with me all weekend.  I kept adding more to it because I was getting so many things done.  Most of the things that aren't checked off are ones that I need more information about, and I have emails and messages out requesting the answers.

I've also had really good, balanced energy.  When I felt my focus and energy flagging, I'd switch and do something more active for a while.

I talked with my yoga classes about the observing mind and the thinking mind.  The observing mind is always in the present, taking in what is happening.  The thinking mind, sometimes, seems determined to keep me out of the present.  Yoga cultivates and strengthens the observing mind.  It helps me stay focused on what is before me now.   When I couple that with having clear intention about what to do, I accomplish a lot.

A Giant Shadow

I like shadows.  I'm not sure why, but the two-dimensional, monochromatic abstractions of the world fascinate me.  On my way to work, there's a large grassy lawn - really large, much bigger than the typical lawn here.  It is also on a slope, so it rises up into view.  On the eastern edge of this lawn is a tall white pine tree, with branches that have been trimmed off following damage from storms, so there's a long bare trunk and then a number of asymmetrical branches.

In the early morning, as the sun crests the hill to the east, the tree casts a giant shadow out across the lawn for several hundred feet.  A projection of the tree onto a gently curving surface, it's sheer size - the shadow is much larger than the tree itself - and simplicity compel attention.

A Yoga Anniversary

In early September last year, I taught my first yoga class.   I planned it for about three weeks, and thought it went OK.  More classes followed, with lots more preparation, and I began to get more comfortable in the role.

It was January though, before I taught a class without planning it out.  I just didn't have the time to do it, but found that I had enough stored up from the 4 prior months.  Over time, I did less specific planning, and more general preparation.  I stopped worrying that I wouldn't know what to do, and began thinking about how to keep things fresh and interesting - how to avoid a rut of teaching the same thing the same way for too long.

I explored some different approaches, including picking 5 poses for a week and using them in all my classes, from beginning to advanced, in appropriate ways.  I taught short courses, focusing on breath for one,  and shoulders for another, which focused me to dig deeper and carried out into my general teaching.

Now, heading into the fall term, I have almost 330 hours of teaching behind me.  I'm at ease in the teaching role,  but always looking to broaden and deepen my teaching.  Each class has unique challenges and opportunities.  Tonight I had a good number of new students - some new to the studio, and some new to yoga.  I have to be observant and adaptable - which I always should be, but it's more obvious in this situation.  I think it went OK.

Much has changed in the past year, and I want it to keep changing.  I never want to find that I'm just "phoning it in."

Watching the Energy

I've been watching my energy ebb and flow the past few days, as I readjust to eastern time and work schedule, while gradually catching up from the energy outflow of the trip.

Sometimes my energy doesn't match the activity I think I should be doing.  Being at work, and feeling completely like not being at work, is an extreme example.  Being alert and energetic late in the evening is another - how then, to get to sleep?

I observe these mismatches, and wonder how to bring things into more balance, so I'm really ready to do each thing, and have the right energy at the right time.  

Getting enough rest, and eating well, help.  I also know a number of yogic practices, some energizing, others calming, that are useful.  I'm trying to get balance and alignment before finding myself too deep into a situation with the wrong energy quality.

Tipping Point

Back from a week of vacation to the Northwest, visiting Seattle and the Columbia Gorge.  After a long day of travel and a short night, I was up early to go to work, with a yoga class to teach on the way.

A few times a year, the gradual change in seasons reaches a tipping point.  This morning was one of those.  Leaving the house at 6 am, it was still dark.   All summer long that walk has begun in the early light, with birds beginning to sing.  Today, the sounds of night insects filled the air, and the birds were not yet stirring.  

Soon I'll be able to watch Orion overhead on the early morning walks.  Autumn is coming.

Shade

On a hot summer day with the sun blazing down,
there's nothing more pleasant than a patch of shade.
Add a nice breeze, and it's close to heaven.

Exhale to Emptiness

As the exhale leaves, my diaphragm relaxes and settles back under my ribs.  When I watch my breath and follow the exhale, that's where my attention goes.

The inhale seems to expand energy out in all directions - the exhale to draw everything back to a single point, which then vanishes.

When mind is attuned to breath, exhale can also lead mind to empty and become still.  The distracted mind becomes focused, then the object of focus vanishes into the space in the center.  The infinite possibility of emptiness, to be filled with the next breath, and a new path of thought.

Emptiness.  Space.  Freedom.  Possibility.

Flat Lucky

Saturday after breakfast was to be a trip to the farmers market and grocery store - getting it done earlier in the day than usual.  We went down to the garage, and while getting in the car, I noticed that the left rear tire was low - quite low.  We drove to the gas station we usually go to - the air compressor was broken. The tire seemed lower.  We drove across the street to another station, and I pumped up the tire, realizing that it had almost no pressure at all, and that I had left the valve stem cap at the first station. It inflated, but I was nervous about it.  Back at the first station to retrieve the cap, I saw that there was a cut, or a tear, in the outer edge of the tread at one point.  Now I knew the plans for the day were changing.

We drove back home, parked in the driveway, and called AAA.  After the spare was installed, I drove to the nearest tire store, arriving about 10:30.  They were very busy - cars parked everywhere, and waiting room full.  I stood in line, checked in, and then sat down to wait.  They stopped taking new customers at 11, as they close at 1 on Saturdays.  I was one of the last people to leave - about 1:20 pm - with new tires on the rear wheels.

We missed the farmers market for the day, but got everything else in.  Tomorrow we're driving to Pennsylvania so Pam can run in some track events in the Pennsylvania Senior Games.  It's a very good thing I saw the tire this morning, and didn't end up with a blowout out on the road somewhere.

Things often go the way they're planned, but sometimes they don't.  That's when you find out how the practice helps you accept and make the best of whatever arises.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

There's a scattering of yellow and brown tulip poplar leaves in the yard.  Late July seems very early for the trees to begin shedding leaves.  I'd think they'd be in the height of summer photosynthesizing now. Also, the weather hasn't been overly hot and dry.  But we've had some storms, and perhaps that brought some leaves down early.

I watched a storm roll in yesterday from the west.  Dark gray clouds, lightning flashes along the underside of the clouds as well as searing sky to ground bolts.  It swept in, enveloping the building in a blanket of gray.  For a few minutes the rest of the world disappeared as rain gushed from the sky.  Then the rain eased, the buildings, trees and sky gradually reappeared, until there was a break in the clouds and sunlight streamed through.

There's a very large crapemytle tree on my usual route home.  Crapemyrtles have long, flexible trunks and branches.  When they're in bloom, and it rains, the flowers are heavy with water and the branches bend over the sidewalk, below waist height.  I ducked under the outer fringe into the space within, surrounded by blooms and scent.  I almost didn't stop, getting home was in the forefront of mind.  But I did stop, and stood in the space, breathing and taking in the sensations.  Then movement caught my attention, as a mockingbird flew in, flaring its brown and white patterned feathers as it landed on a branch a few feet away.  I think I was an unexpected sight, and after a few moments watching me, it flew away.

I continued on down the street, into a landscape teeming with birds.  Catbirds, pairs of doves, small flocks of robins and starlings, were all around in the yards, trees and shrubs.  Perhaps it was the time of day - a little later in the evening than usual.  Perhaps the storm front had brought some birds with it that are beginning to move with the seasons.  Whatever the cause, it was a very lively scene.

Flutter By, Butterfly

Afternoon light, after the rain.
A butterfly flits and flutters
 in a chaotic seeming path.
Then lands precisely on the purple flowers
 and probes for nectar.

The Wind

Today brought wind.  Shifting wind. Strong wind.  Wind that seemed to be in my face as I cycled, pushing me back, no matter which direction I rode.  Cooling wind, pouring around the side of the building on the warm, humid day.  I stood, arms outstretched, enjoying the freshness as the river of air streamed past.

Wind.  It's the feeling of touch that senses wind most directly.  Eyes detect the wind's effects, as it transports clouds, flutters leaves, swirls dust.  Vibrations set into the air by the wind come to the ear, and sometimes scents to the nose.  But most consistently and directly, the wind touches us - warming or cooling, rushing past skin, pressing, sometimes buffeting.

I lay under a tree, looking up through the leafy branches, and watched the branches bend and leaves flutter, energized by the swirling gusts that came from one direction, then another.  Leaves glow with light streaming in from above, and dance in the pulses of air, making lively patterns of light and shadow.

Wind.  It circulates air around the planet - bringing to me the air I breathe next, and carrying my exhale away, swirling and mixing into the atmosphere.

Awareness. Breath. Enough.

My life touches on the present, more and more.
Lingering longer in focused awareness.
Dropping another level down, into detail and complexity of incomprehensible richness.

Expanding, a little at a time, my awareness of all that is.
Around me, light and sound and touch and smell, the ways I sense the things I can know.
A flood of data available to my senses from all around, most filtered out, ignored.

To become conscious of just a little more is cracking a door open to a world of wonders.
Too compelling to turn away from.
Hidden in plain sight, until seen.
Then impossible to ignore.

The sky, this morning - so often it is the sky - that draws me in.
Clouds - light reflecting and refracting
From tiny drops of water formed around tinier particles of dust.

Ten breaths to watch the clouds.
I'm always amazed at how much they change in the space of a breath.
If I'm watching - truly watching.

One moment, the most beautiful thing imaginable.
The next moment different, and just as beautiful.
This moment is enough.

If life ended now, I would be full.
And yet, I yearn for more moments - like this, yet utterly unique.
Full and rich - enough.

I walked home in early evening.
Warm afternoon sun lighting high cumulus clouds - again, the sky.
Then the rich greens of trees, shrubs and lawns.
A pair of goldfinches serenaded while a bumblebee worked scented purple blossoms.

I reached the front steps and took one more glance to the left.
There, in a beam of golden light, a cardinal sat in profile.
Brilliant crimson crest, yellow beak and dark eye.
I watched for seven breaths.  Then he flew up to a shadowed branch.

Enough.

Finding More Space

I stayed home this morning instead of going to Natalie's yoga class.  I felt that some time to be more relaxed, to have a little more space in the day, would be good.

Things come up to fill the space.  I cooked for breakfast rather than brunch, worked a bit on my website, and looked through some yoga notes from last week to organize the ideas and prepare for this week.

A little more space to "be," rather than "do," although there was plenty of "doing" in the end.

As night falls, I'm getting drowsy.  Outside, fireflies flash out over the yard, and the dark shapes of birds flash to and fro.  I watch them as I count ten slow, even, breaths.  Finding more space.

Bigger and Bigger

I watched a construction crane go up today at a building site across the street.   Erecting it took most of the day.  What was most interesting to me was the leveraging of the tools.  Each section of the crane tower arrived on a flatbed semi.  It's hard to tell the scale from a distance, but they must each be 40-50 feet tall.

First, a normal size mobile crane would unload the section from the trailer and stand it upright.  Then the task was passed off to a much larger mobile crane that rose perhaps 20 stories into the air.  This machine was able to lift the section over to the ever-growing crane tower.  Then the section was lowered into place and quickly fastened to the section below.

The two workers on the tower would then climb the ladders of the new section and await the next.

Flight of the Ladybug

This afternoon I found a ladybug - or ladybird beetle - on the wall of the 13th floor restroom in my office building.  I suspect that he/she rode in after lunch on someone's clothes.  Leaving it there didn't seem right, so I went back to my office and got a paper cup and an index card.   Back in the restroom, the ladybug hadn't moved.  I covered it with the cup and slowly slid the card across.

I had a little less than an hour before leaving, so I taped the card on and set the cup on my desk, making sure there was a little air gap.  When I left for the day, I thought about releasing the bug in the plantings right outside the door, but then thought the larger park space up the block would be better.  I'm glad I did.

When I let the ladybug out on the ledge, it quickly ran over toward a fallen leaf and climbed on top.  This action was startling in contrast to the immobility expressed on the restroom wall - the bug clearly was responding to being in its natural environment.

It paused for a few seconds on the leaf - I guess to survey the surroundings.  I was expecting it to crawl off onto one of the overhanging plants, but it suddenly unfurled it's wings and flew away, rising up out of sight toward the tree canopy.  Whatever fate befalls it, I'm glad it didn't remain stranded on the 13th floor restroom wall.

Fledglings

Walking home late last evening from a meditation class, I crossed Colesville Road and started up the hill on Spring Street.  To the left is a parking garage with a strip of grass, shrubs, and some landscaping trees.  A little patch of habitat, where Wednesday morning I had noticed a mockingbird and thought it seemed an unlikely place to make a home.

Last night a plump, fluffy bird in a tree branch over the sidewalk caught my attention.  I didn't recognize it right away, and then I saw, a few feet away, an adult mockingbird.  I had a little rush of the cute baby emotion as I realized this was a baby mockingbird enduring a little helicopter parenting.

This morning I walked into the front room and thought I'd go to the window and look out at the day, before settling in to meditate.  A rustle in the shrub beneath the window - the same shrubs with the now-abandoned cardinal nest - caught my attention.  A dark backed bird perched in the top twigs of the shrub.  A robin was on the lawn in front of the shrubs, and both birds were cheeping.

The bird in the shrub, smaller than the other, fluttered its wings awkwardly and disappeared down into the leaves. More cheeping.  Then it fluttered up again into the top layer and sat.  The parent, down on the grass, waited - patiently, or impatiently, I couldn't tell.  Then the little one powered up its wings and launched off in a low flight - arcing down to almost touch the ground before disappearing behind the dogwood over in the hastas.

I wish both these little ones success in their launch into life.

Sense of Time

I woke up this morning, ready to get up for the early yoga class I teach before work - woke up, probably 12-15 times.

Usually, my sense of time is reliable.  I'll wake up right about the time I expect to - 6am is typical.  Even if I set an alarm I rarely reach it, as I'll wake up 15 minutes or so before it goes off.

Sometimes I'll wake up very early in the morning - midnight or 1am - thinking I've slept all night, but then I'm back to sleep for the duration.

Not every night is like that, though, and last night was exceptional.  I remember waking at 1am from a sound sleep, and being surprised that the night still had 5 hours left.  After that, though, I kept waking up thinking hours had passed to find it was 15 or 20 minutes.

In spite of my messed up sense of time, the world kept spinning and the clock kept ticking, and the right time to get up finally arrived.

Keeping Cool

I went for a run up the Sligo Creek trail this afternoon.  It was pleasant in the shade, and hot in the mid-afternoon sun.   Quite a few people were out on the trail, enjoying a nice, temperate mid-July day.  After the warmest May on record, and June in the top 5, we've seen some welcome, cooler weather in July.

I stopped running as I came out of the park and walked up the street toward the house.  I paused to stretch in the cool shade of a tree, enhanced by a breeze blowing on my sweat-beaded skin.

A catbird swooped in from across the street, landing in a low branch of the tree, then hopping to another.  Agile in flight, it moved from one perch to another with just a few flaps of wings and a glide, maneuvering deftly with tail and cupped wings.

Empty Nest

I peered into the cardinals' nest this morning as I left for work, and found it empty.  I'm sure I had checked just the day before, and the two little ones were still there.

I'm sure they were too little to have left on their own.  What might have happened?  Did some predator raid the nest?  If so, what was it?  Another bird?  A rat, or snake, or squirrel?  It likely will remain a mystery.

I was looking forward to seeing the hatchlings grow up and fledge, and was sad to see the nest empty - so abruptly.

Planets and Lightning

I taught an extra yoga class tonight, so was walking home later than normal - right at that transition between dusk and night.  The sun was long set, but there was just a little light left in the sky.  Off in the west, Venus and Jupiter  floated in the slowly darkening sky. In the north, a large cloud hung in the sky, full of energy.  Lightning bursts inside the cloud gave it a strange glow.  As I walked down the street, it flashed periodically like a giant firefly.

Some Outdoor Work

I enjoyed getting outside this afternoon for a little while.  The sun was out, but the temperature was moderate, in the low 80s.  I added to and circulated the compost, pulled a few more weeds from the strawberry patch, and checked out the afternoon sunshine pattern with an eye to locating a raised garden bed for next year.

The fig tree is growing back nicely.  The fence I erected will protect it from the deer through the rest of this season, I think.

I took down a branch from the tree by the front corner of the garage that was shading the lilac and Rose of Sharon bushes.  I cut the branch up and bundled it for curbside pickup next week.

Some clouds moved in, and the mosquitos came out.   They seem late this year, but perhaps that is just poor memory on my part.  I must say, they bother me when I'm outside - enough that I'll stay in to avoid them.  So if I'm going to enjoy working outside, I'll have to become a bit more tolerant of the buzzing creatures.

A Path Taken

The afternoon dried out the roads after heavy morning rains, and I set out for an easy run.  My turnaround point was the bridge over a tributary that joins the main creek from the west.

For eleven years I've been running, walking, and biking up the Sligo Creek Trail.  When I approached the bridge, I noticed a dirt path that came down along the side of the tributary.  Something about it, perhaps that it seemed quite well used, caught my attention, and I decided to follow it.

Often the little side trails take you quickly up to street, or dead-end behind a house, but this one meandered along the stream.  I was surprised at how much water was running in the tributary - almost as much, it seemed, as in the main branch - and at the extent of the park land, particularly on the far side of the creek.  Houses lined the hill on the left, but across the stream, I could see nothing but forest.

Eventually the path led me out to a street, in an area I hadn't been before, and I turned around and headed home, happy to have followed my instinct - the day made richer by a little exploration.

Little Ones

Monday I wrote about seeing the young rabbits playing in a yard.  Yesterday, as I walked home, I saw young sparrows in two different places.  Slightly smaller than the adults, lighter in color, and a bit less secure in their flying - but, as they would have to be to survive, very alert and capable of flight.  They seemed to be out with an adult, learning to forage.

As I left the house this afternoon for a short run, I noticed a shallow nest in the shrub by the front door.  I heard a short, sharp bird call and spotted a female cardinal farther down the line of shrubs.  Peering into the nest, I could see the downy shape of a baby bird, and a little movement.  I hope the parents are successful in rearing their little one.

Lilies and Rose of Sharon are blooming, and some crepe myrtles. The hydrangeas are holding on but starting to brown around the edges.  Yesterday I watched a bumblebee, covered in pollen, working the Rose of Sharon blossoms.

The summer energy gathering part of the annual cycle of life is in full swing.  Moderate temperatures - only a couple of days in the next 10 forecast to touch 90 - and plenty of rain are making this a good year for the local creatures.

An Evening Walk

I walked home from Takoma Park this evening.  It's 2.8 miles, according to Google Maps.  Mostly north, and just a little bit west.  I walked across the grass near the Metro station.  Robins and starlings, foraging in the wet lawn, flew ahead of me, landed, and then flew again as I approached.  Eventually they all figured to fly away from my path, not further along it.

I was two-thirds of the way home before I woke up to how perfect the evening felt.   Seventy-nine degrees, but low, or at least moderate, humidity - a thoroughly pleasant temperature to walk in shorts and a sleeveless top - my yoga teaching attire.

The moon was rising behind me, the sun setting ahead and off in the west.  In one yard, three rabbits chased each other around.  Young ones, from this year, I think.  A tall conifer in the yard had branches clear down to the ground, which seemed to be their safe-haven.  Around the corner and down the hill a bit, and another young rabbit nibbled on a streetside planting.  Off in the distance, a balloon, escaped from a party perhaps, floated in the pale evening sky.

Birds sang some songs for the end of the day - less boisterous than the morning songs - and then some insects started up their night songs.  As I passed the Rose of Sharon bushes in the neighbor's yard, I saw that all the blooms were rolled up for the night.  They'll unfurl again in the early morning light.

My facebook feed tonight had this quote - attributed to "Native Americans:"

"When the blood in your veins returns to the sea, and the earth in your bones returns to the ground, perhaps then you will remember that this land does not belong to you, it is you who belongs to this land."

Whether or not the thought is actually Native American in origin, it captures how I often feel - that I'm just a part of the world - connected to the broad world of life, matter and energy around me, and connected back through time to the very beginning of it all.

Light

Where yesterday was gray and dark, this morning is filled with light.   As the Earth turns toward the sun, the morning light steadily evolves and grows.

A gentle breeze riffles through the trees, bringing movement to the shadow patterns cast on lawn, wall, and window shade.

Where yesterday's rain encouraged a day indoors, listening to the patter of drops on roof and window, today's invitation is to come outside, into the light.

Rain

Often, here in Maryland, heavy rain comes with a thunderstorm.  But today, there was no thunder, and no strong wind.  Just a very thick, dark layer of clouds that brought rain throughout the day - sometimes light, and sometimes a heavy downpour.

In the afternoon, during one of the heaviest periods, I walked down to see how high the creek was running.  The water ran fast in the gutters down the street, and every sidewalk and driveway added to the flow.  At the bottom of the street, the water spread out in a layer into the cul-de-sac.

Where our street ends and the park begins, a tributary stream that drains down from Georgia Avenue and has been put underground in a storm drain, rushed loud and muddy out of the culvert, pouring between nearly full stream banks.  Having spent quite a bit of time in that stream doing trash cleanup and invasive plant removal, I was surprised at how much water was flowing and how high up the banks it was.

A hundred yards or so downstream, the tributary makes a sharp bend, passes under a foot bridge, and merges with the main body of Sligo Creek.  While well within its banks, the creek was very high.  It covered the rocks near the playground, including the one I like to sit on, and rushed past the base of the tree trunks.  Plastic bottles, and an occasional tree branch, floated down on the fast current.

The rain was cool, but not chilling.  Even with my umbrella, I was thoroughly soaked by the time I got back to the house.

Relaxing the Mind

Relaxing the body means letting go of tension in the muscles.  Relaxing the mind means letting go of fear, anxiety, the need to react to every stimulus, the need to be "doing."

When the mind has space, not ruminating over some anxiety, or bombarded with stimuli and demands, then there's room for creativity, room to dream of future possibilities, room for choice.

Meditating helps me find mental space.  Taking time - a few hours or a day - to follow whatever comes up wherever it leads - is another space maker.

The time to make and explore mental space is not wasted time - far from it - it is the least wasted time of all.

Space to Move

Being constricted, constrained, is not a good feeling, whether in body or mind.  I function best with space - space to move, space to make choices, space to experience.

"Tension is the enemy of space," says yoga teacher Jenny Otto.  Relax, make space, find space.

Relax your body, and it functions better.  I've been playing around with this on my regular walking commutes.  When I intentionally relax, feeling tension drain away, I walk faster without even trying to.

My quest in yoga practice is similar - relax, and body has more room to move. Less effort, better results.

Morning Light

I'm enjoying the early morning light in Colorado. There's a lightness and brightness from the clear air and altitude - colors are crisp and vibrant and edges sharp under the pale blue sky.

There isn't even a hint of a breeze to ruffle the leaves. Just before the summer solstice, the light comes more gradually, intensifying slowly, deepening the contrast between the light and shadow on the tree trunks.

Now, a little gust ripples through the lower branches, then quickly dies away to stillness.

Bicycles

My first memories of riding a bike are of learning on a large tired single speed bike in Lewis, Kansas.  Go a few feet, wobble, fall over.  Try again - eventually balancing and heading off down the street - so proud!

As a teen, I rode the high handled, banana seated bikes of the 60s, jumping curbs and popping a "wheelie" now and then.  Then, in high school, I got a Gitane 10 speed.  I rode it sometimes to high school, enjoying the speed and the dance of finding the right gear to ride.

I didn't ride for quite a few years in Alaska - then in the late 80's got another bike.  On nice days it was fun to ride.  I went the 10 miles or so around the Mendenhall Valley a few times, and one summer I commuted the 9 miles from home to work a few times.

Our bicycles, and much other gear, were lost in the garage fire before we moved to Maryland.  A couple of years after moving, we bought new bikes, but didn't ride them much - just a few short jaunts on the Sligo Creek Trail.

This spring brought a new interest in cycling.  Pam got interested in participating in Senior Olympics events, and we got out on the bikes for some longer rides up and down the trail.

I began riding my bike on Sundays over to Takoma Park to teach yoga, and find it an ideal way to commute - a nice ride down the parkway and then a good workout climb out of the creek valley.

We heard about the Washington and Old Dominion railway trail from a friend a couple of weeks ago.  Today we drove out to Leesburg, Virginia, to get a 20 mile ride out and back on the western end of the trail.  It was a lovely day, and this is the nicest trail and ride we've been on yet.  Bicycles are so refined now - lighter, more responsive, and mechanically smoother.  But the feeling of riding - the joy of propelling myself along the trail, feeling the breeze in my face - finding the right gear to move smoothly - making the effort seem effortless - is still the same as it has always been.

Hydrangea and Mulberry

Hydrangeas are beginning to bloom.  Compared to some of the earlier spring plants, they take their time - fully leafing out before beginning to bloom - pale green at first, then turning whitish and finally taking on color.  Pink, or blue.

I stopped this morning to take in a blue one.  I was on a sidewalk, outside a fence and lower down than the yard the plant was in.  As a result, the blooms were at or above eye level.  Once I stopped and settled, I began to notice other things.  The textured matte green leaves.  An ant exploring around the surface of one leaf.  Then another ant up on one of the petals.  I don't know what they find high on the plant to eat - or otherwise interest them.  But I was impressed that they could explore all the way up the maze of stalks and branches, and then find their way back - which I assume that they do.

I walk under a large mulberry tree at one point on the path.  Coming up to it, I saw a catbird fly in a branch - then, startled, it flew a little higher.  Next thing I knew, a squirrel was running out a branch above me, the catbird seemingly in pursuit.  Thunk - a mulberry hit my left cheek.

Summer is Here

As daily high temperatures rise into the 90s, I switch to my summer attire of shorts and t-shirt  for the warm, and often damp, walk to work.

The showers in the fitness center bring a welcome freshening before I head up to the office.

Breath-Powered Yoga

Breathing is the most fundamental physical activity that I have conscious access to.  My heart is always beating, but I can't change it's rhythm just by thinking about it.  If I want to inhale..... Now!  I can.  I can speed up the breath, slow it down, and even pause it for a time.  But if I'm not thinking about it, the breath just happens, some 17,000 times a day.  

The muscles used to breath are strong.  Breathing provides a natural rhythm of expansive and contractive energy that can be tapped to initiate movement.  Rather than breathing while moving, or even synchronizing breath with movement, the breath can become the beginning of the movement, and propel its direction.  Then the practice begins to deepen, until the entire movement is breathing.

When the breath is at the center of awareness, I can keep my body aligned so that the breath is privileged.  I feel the entire body pulse with breath.  Strenuous positions become easier as the muscles are fed a strong and steady supply of oxygen.  Breath aligns rib cage and spine so that side bends and twists are both easier and deeper.

The expansiveness of inhale lifts and aligns, and the power of the core engaged to exhale moves the body.  Breath-powered yoga is the term that came to mind when I began to explore this territory, moving beyond moving "with" the breath, to moving "from" the breath.

Ten Minutes

I had ten minutes this morning before I needed to leave the house.   What to do?

I'll sit by the front window and see what happens.

The pre-dawn light is soft and dim.  High up in the trees the leaves flutter and flow with the breeze.

Birds are singing - cardinals and cat birds.

A squirrel runs along a high, but thick, oak branch.

Two birds flash into view from the side of the house.  One after the other, like two racers in an air show, they zoom across the street and disappear around the corner of a house, under the car port.

I look down to take a note, and when I look up, they are racing towards me, across the lawn and back around the side of the house.

Just after 6 am, a bank of high clouds emerges from the flat sky as sunlight kisses the eastern edge.

More birds flit around in the trees across the street.

I hear the distant roar of a jet.

It's time to leave.

As I walk up the street I see and hear a cardinal sitting on a wire, calling out his territory.  Down the street, on another wire, sits the denizen of the next territory down, and up the street a bit I hear a third.

I stand for a few moments and watch the beautiful puffs of clouds lighting up in the morning sun.  

Today's Main Events

A little yoga practice first thing to loosen up.
Meditation
Prepare breakfast
Shower
Eat breakfast
Teach yoga
Eat lunch
Practice tai chi
Bike ride
Play piano
Teach yoga
Cook dinner
Eat dinner
Relax - think about a blog post

- pretty good day today.

Out in the Woods

I spent a couple of hours this morning in the woods.  Nearing the summer solstice, the sunlight has a quality of depth and richness.  Working along, pulling garlic mustard plants, I found that my tai chi practice had changed the way that I move.  I felt more deliberate, more balanced, my arm flowing out to take a plant, then drawing it smoothly back to put in my bag.

Birdsong filled the air - the call of a wood thrush and the cat bird's stream of chirps, squeaks and whistles.  A cool breeze rustled through the canopy of leaves, making the light shimmer.  I pulled up a wineberry plant and was amazed at the variety of small, wiggling things teeming in the soil.

We were working not far from the Beltway.  The stillness of the woods and the richness of life all around me seemed far away from the hum and roar of cars and trucks hurrying by beyond the concrete wall.

More and more, I identify not only with my human-ness, but with the broader community of life.  The oak trees, the ferns, the cat birds, the dragonfly.  Like me, they're constructed from a molecular program, the stuff of the earth and the energy of the sun.  And like me, every individual being is unique, and utterly dispensable.  I wonder if anyone has calculated the total number of DNA molecules on the planet.

Mayapple

I spent a couple of hours in the woods this morning, looking for Mayapple and pulling several non-native invasive plants.  Mayapple is a native forest plant.  In Sligo Creek Park, there has been concern about the impact of deer overpopulation and non-native plants.

When I found mayapple, I recorded the number of mayapple shoots and the location on my iPhone.  I pulled invasives - wineberry, honeysuckle, bittersweet, and garlic mustard - that I came across, not making any attempt at a comprehensive eradication.  A few times I pulled invasives and found little mayapples underneath.

The morning was pleasantly warm, sun streaming through the trees, the woods filled with the sounds of birds singing, hammering, and rustling in the underbrush.   Doing this work makes me feel good.  I never know what I will discover.  I feel myself tuning in to the subtleties of shape, color and texture that distinguish one plant from another.  I have to be open, perceptive, and accept that I see only a tiny bit of the detail that is spread before me with each step.

Tai Chi Chuan

A few years ago, before I began practicing yoga, I went to a few sessions of an informal tai chi class.  I enjoyed it, and began to learn the sequence, but the man leading the sessions left to work at a different location, and I didn't pursuit further.

I don't remember what the trigger was, but yesterday I was inspired to look up some beginning tai chi videos on YouTube, and I spent the day today, off and on, working on the first part of the Yang style sequence.

It's a mind-body practice with many similarities to yoga, and at the same time, it seems very different. It emphasizes gesture, and the body is in constant motion.  Yoga vinyasa practice also has continuous movement, but the yoga poses seem to have more structure, somewhat less fluidity in the form, than tai chi movements.

I'm interested to see where this sudden interest leads, and what I learn from it.  

Three Layers of Mind

Mind is layered.  The layers can be active, or calm.  When an outer layer is calm, the layer beneath it is visible.

Three layers are most obvious to me.  In the outermost layer, the mind is hyperactive.  Thoughts compete for attention with one another - there's a frenzy - mind jumping from one thing to another, finishing nothing.  The mind is anxious.

The second layer is where clear, focused thought occurs.  For it to be productive, the outer, frenzy layer must be calmed.  Here problems can be considered, and solved.  Mind can focus and stay with an idea long enough to explore it, to come to resolution.

Mind is judgmental in these first two layers.  In the first, it focuses mostly on fear and negativity.  In the second, it will judge things as good or bad.

The third layer surfaces when the thinking mind is quiet.  This is the layer of observation, of non-judgmental awareness.  Things are seen, and accepted for what they are.  The mind is calm, not frenzied, not thinking or trying to solve a problem.  It's simply alive, aware, receptive.

Power Limits

I've been riding my bike to Takoma Park on Sundays to teach yoga.  After trying out a couple of different routes, I've settled on the slightly longer, but simpler and more scenic, route of riding a couple of miles down the Sligo Creek Trail to Maple Avenue in Takoma Park, then heading uphill to the studio.  It is one long gradual downhill followed by a shorter, and for a stretch, brutal up hill.

The ride home is the exact opposite - a fast cruise downhill, braking for the speed bumps, followed by a long uphill, with the steepest section right at the end coming up to the house from the park.

Last week I rode the whole way back in 23rd gear (out of 27 on my Trek 7500 bike).  Coming up out of the park, I had to stand up to power through the steepest parts, but made it easily.

Yesterday I decided to try gear 24.  It was noticeably harder to push and keep rotational speed up during the steeper gradients, but I was still feeling pretty good as I approached the short but steep lift up from the park path onto our street.  I couldn't hit it with a lot of speed because the path was covered with large plastic sheeting laid down for heavy equipment being used for a stream restoration project, and I got just halfway up, about two turns of the crank, before I realized that my full body weight on the pedal wasn't providing enough power to keep the bike moving.

I hopped off before crashing, and walked the bike 15 feet or so up to the street, then was able to power up to the house.  It was interesting to find that physical limit - no amount of willpower could overcome the realities of mass, gravity, and the gear I had selected.  There just wasn't enough power for the job!

Catbirds and Foxes

The past couple of days have been cooler - in the 50s - for my morning walk to work.  Also a little breezy.  Very spring-like, pleasant, and a little invigorating.

As I walked the path through the wooded area not far from the house, I heard a lilting, creative bird song - then a "mew."  And then another.  I knew it was a catbird - the shy, gray relative of the mockingbird.   I looked around for it, and was startled when it flew out from the honeysuckle just a few feet from me.  I watched it as it flew off through the understory, eventually landing in a small tree near another catbird, perhaps its mate.

I walked through the path and on up Alton Parkway.  As I approached the lot where I've seen wildlife before, I stopped to look.  Indeed, about halfway up, at the base of a tree, were the two young foxes I've seen before, lying in the green grass enjoying the morning sun.  I stopped to watch, mostly shielded by a parked car.  They rolled in the grass, jumped around, nipped and pawed at each other, before one ran off into the underbrush.  The other rolled onto its back and lay for a while before sitting up for a long scratch, then lying down again.  It seemed a picture of carefree contentment on a beautiful May day.

Natural Day

Yesterday evening I was tired, and laid down on the floor in the front room for a while.   Even with eyes closed, I sensed the slowly fading light, and it carried me with it.   A few times consciousness came back to surface and I thought of getting up.  But my body was very heavy, the light a little dimmer, and it seemed natural to end my day with the turning Earth.

I began the day with an early walk down to the park for yoga in an open, grassy area.  There was moisture in the air, mist perhaps, but the lightest imaginable.  I practiced for about forty minutes, enjoying the spacious feeling, the birds that flew by, and the squirrel leaping through the tree in front of me.

Then I went home for breakfast, changed, and went back to the park for a two hour work party removing non-native invasive plants.  Our focus was garlic mustard, but I worked on whatever appeared in my path - wineberry, oriental bittersweet, honeysuckle, English ivy - feeling my mind tuning in to the shapes, patterns, and subtle color variations by which I recognize the plants to leave, and the ones to remove.  I came across a couple of deer, and after initially startling them, moved around them so they could stay in the corner of the park they had picked for the day.

After lunch, Pam and I drove seventeen miles north to Montgomery County's Rachel Carson Conservation Park.  I had just learned about it, and thought it would be interesting to explore.  It's a large area, over 600 acres, with meadow, forest, and a stream.  It has trails for hiking and horses, but compared with other places we've been, is very lightly used.  We wandered the trails for an hour and a half, enjoying the natural state of the place, hearing the hammering of woodpeckers and the rush of water, far enough from subdivisions and roads to feel a little wild, a hint of what the mid-Atlantic region was like before the modern human invasion.

This morning, I'm still feeling the effects of yesterday's nature overdose - more interested in feeling the breeze, watching for a bird, seeing the sunlight dappling the forest floor - than in the things on the list I had planned to do.