Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Shedding Light





Here I am in Lloyd again this morning on my porch and it's not quiet. The train is coming, there is a crew of men out front, slicing through branches which threaten the power lines. My brain is busy and buzzing and it rained last night again.

I have friends who are in Mexico right now, doing yoga and taking writing seminars and getting massages by people who claim not to be of this planet. I talked to a man in the Netherlands yesterday who went to see Bob Dylan the other night. I got a comment on my blog from someone who is an Orthodox Jew. I follow a web site where people who live in Cozumel discuss where you can buy chocolate and also where you can buy an entire roasted chicken with tortillas, pickled onions and fresh salsa for eight dollars. I made soup yesterday from leftovers. I live in a place where bananas grow next to aloe which grows next to heirloom roses which grows next to rosemary, both domestic and wild and where gold finches eat at the feeder, their feathers turning bright yellow after their dull (to my eyes) coloration of winter.



I do yoga myself at a woman's house who is Catholic. I am in a play with two Episcopalians, some Baptists, Methodists, a Jew and a Pagan.

We all believe we are the center of the universe. How can we not? Our universe is our universe, the one we can reach out and touch, smell, feel and we see it through the lenses of our own eyes, and what we see is translated into information through our own brains with our own experiences, perceptions, beliefs and what we've been taught. Two children raised by the same mother in the same house are at the center of different universes.

I need to go take a walk. I think about Bob Dylan and letting someone from another planet adjust my spine. I check on the chickens, I take a few pictures, I look at old pictures of Cozumel and I wish I were there wondering how those people are and if the water is still that clear and coral fans beneath it still wave in purples and pinks and oranges.



I think of friends in their gardens and I wish I was there, too, admiring the kale, the wild orchid, the fruit trees.

I am glad I am here. I need to go to town. I don't want to.
I am at the center of my universe. I can't imagine how big it is. It is as big as my mind will let it be. It is as small as a tiny frog hiding in the leaves by the spigot.

What I want to say is thank-you for being part of my universe. For telling me how it is in yours.
Because isn't that what we're doing? We're putting down words and saying, "Here's my universe," whether that universe is made up of babies and children or fears and worries or loneliness and sorrow or joy and music or biking or baking. And we visit and then our universes connect somehow, making each one of us live in a bigger universe, one with more colors and more lenses and more experience.

Perhaps that's what this web and our friendships in real time are doing. They are proving the fact that the universe is constantly expanding. With words, with pictures, with thoughts, with actions, with each of us, hurtling out to our own personal edges, reporting back in, bringing chickens, bringing stories, bringing recipes and secrets and joys.

My finches fly into your gardens. Your children learn to walk on my porch. Your songs fly into my heart.

I am grateful.
I am expanding.

We are meeting. We are sharing. We are spinning through space and we reach out and touch stars and then, pulling our fingers back, are amazed that our fingers are still our own fingers, reaching out again and again to touch more stars, to feel the heat or the freezing burn, to nod and say yes, this is how it is for you, let me light a candle for you because you have given me more light by which to see further, let me try to do the same for you.

Not much of a trade. My candle for your star, but it's a candle from my universe. It's not much, but I will gladly share.

12 comments:

  1. yes, yes, candles and stars, jews and catholics...
    SHOW ME THE CHICKENS!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay, Magnum. Just for you. See the next post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Singing do wa ditty ditty dum ditty do!

    ReplyDelete
  4. It is funny sometimes, how much lives can intertwine here in blogsphere! I thought about that this morning actually when I was getting ready for work and I heard the Today show say there were severe storms heading to Florida--I stopped and went out to see where they were heading =) So funny.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ms. Fleur- Dammit. Now I have that song in my head.

    SJ- We got storms last night. Topped off our water need nicely.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ahh, nice.

    Little Catholic schoolgirls in tartan uniforms on the beach across the world - cute but freaky though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ms. Jo- I have been going back to that same beach club in Cozumel for twenty-two years and I remember when that daddy was young and single. He looked like a pirate. Well, he still sort of does. But a daddy pirate. I wonder how many children he and his wife have now. They had three, last time we were there. Beautiful children. Getting good, Catholic educations, obviously!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love it when you blog about Cozumel. It makes me want to venture there some day. Such beautiful water and people!

    Any future trips planned?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Lady Lemon- Oh, I plan a trip there about four times a day. Unfortunately, Mr. Moon does not. So no. Not in real life, only in my mind.

    ReplyDelete

Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.