Last night was the full moon. I observed it with the White Light Coven as I have been for the past several months. Practicing ritual, observing the changing seasons and the many faces of the sacred has brought reverence back into my life.
Things are changing in my life so rapidly. I feel behind on my work, and that’s something I almost always keep on top of. Transformation is coming about in the home, in my marriage, in my life.
In fact, there is no more marriage. The relationship remains but the marriage is gone. Although it’s hard and I feel shaken, it’s not a bad thing. Growing is incredibly painful no matter what age you are. At fifty, I thought my lifestyle was pretty established. Now it’s all been thrown into sudden change.
Life. Circumstances. When your old patterns become just too painful you change them.
In January I’ll be moving to Susanville, going back to the land where I raised my two sons, back to the high desert, a harsh land of extreme temperatures. A land of rocks and wind.
I’m going back to listen to the wind.
You just never know when your world will be turned upside down.
I came to the north to work on our house, to rent it out. It was one of the best road trips my husband and I had. And now we’re talking about separating. Twenty years and I’m looking at moving into my own small studio above a garage in the country. But at least it’s my land. Our land. Twenty-two acres of rocks with a view of a valley in muted earth tones. It catches my breath.
And the wind. There is always a wind up here. A loud, roaring wind, a restless wind. A wind that stirs me up.
I’m still reeling at how quickly it has changed. Or has it been that quick? I’ve stayed because of love. I’m leaving because of love. Although I’m not leaving as much as I’m being asked to leave. I stepped over a line. I crossed a boundary, and maybe there is no going back.
Marriage, at least a marriage that is worth anything, leaves you with a rip in your soul. You bleed. You change. You think you can’t possibly feel this devastated and go on.
But you do.
Sometimes an animal just wins you over. When I got to the house in Susanville, two kittens had been left behind by the former tenants. Yellow Kitty and Gray Kitty. They live in the rocks, but little by little have become quite tame. Food tends to do that. Yellow Kitty is a tom cat. He sleeps curled up with me and Radar, the dog. He’s made a home with us. Gray Kitty is a good soul, but hasn’t bonded in the same way.
I’m restless here on the hill. The house is empty and I feel very alone. My companions are animals. I try to do Tai Chi every day, but I still feel anxious. I don’t know what it is, what energy has gotten inside and made me feel so on edge all the time. I’m home, but not at home. I can’t focus. I’m having trouble writing.
I miss my husband.
It’s been years now since this shoe tree on Highway 395 between Reno and Susanville cropped up after an old renegade shoe tree was chopped down on the road to Alturas. It seems to have established itself. It’s a bit of a scraggly juniper, not a noble tree, yet it does have its charm. People leave notes, the leave their mark in a pair of old shoes.
On the outside it looked like an ordinary bamboo house on stilts, but on the inside it looked just the way I would expect a shaman’s house to appear. Feathers, bones and dried herbs hung from the rafters. Glass jars filled with some kind of amber liquid sat on a shelf. A water buffalo skull stared down from a high corner. At the far end sat a very large drum, feathers and beaded talisman dangling from it. The shaman of the Eng tribe looked up from pulling a palm leaf through the basket he was repairing. “It’s okay to touch anything except the drum,” he said. “It’s a spirit drum to talk to the other world. If you touch it, the Nats will become angry.”
Aun San, my translator turned to me. “The last time someone touched his spirit drum he made them pay the equivalent of fifty American dollars.”
I’ve always believed that people come into our lives for a reason. Of all the places I’ve been, I often find myself climbing the mountain path to the Eng tribe in Burma’s Shan State. I’ve never been in the presence of so many spirits as I was in that forest–the Nats who live in trees and by rivers, mischievous, malevolent, protective or kind, there are as many different kind of Nats as there are people, as many personalities.
The Eng people dwell partly in that spirit land. When I’m in their presence, I feel in the presence of something ancient, something that’s not asleep but always watching.
I’ve been having a hard time writing consistently so decided to start posting photographs for a while. I’m missing Hainan Island in particular and Asia in general, so will start here with this photo of Lulu’s daughter. We were in the southern part of the island at a Li wedding. The goats were in a pen in the yard.
I’ve been training the koi in our pond to eat out of my hand. Every morning I sit with my hand submerged in water and let food float around it. Some of them, especially, the pure gold one let me stroke them. Others swim close but dart away as soon as I move.
It’s not hard to see why koi ponds and Zen are closely linked. There’s something calming about these sleek creatures that glide so easily through the water. Or maybe it’s all the growing things–the water lilies that are just opening or the giant ferns and elephant ear plants around the side–but fish, water, plants, all bring balance. They erase negativity.
They remind me to walk slowly.
This is one of those trains of thought that has been haunting me for the past couple of weeks, ever since I posted the stone Buddha photo. Who are the gods of the modern world? What are the shrines that we consider sacred? Are they billboards or computer screens? Roadside altars on the highways of Mexico?
Are they shoe trees where hundreds of pairs of shoes dangle like canvas fruit?
We live in the science age, yet people today are as superstitious as ever. They’re still in search of meaning in any way they can find it.
We still have artists and poets and dreamers. We still have people who see beyond the ordinary and are willing to lead us there.
There are still visionaries in the world willing to risk their reputations to grasp for beauty in an age of chaos.
The rock sculptures along Moonlight Beach in Encinitas are humble constructions. They are not built for shelter or to keep one from getting lost. Their creator leaves no mark as to who he or she is.
Their very beauty is in their anonymity. Impermanent. Collapsible. They can’t be sold and they don’t lend themselves to advertising. Statements of simplicity, these rock piles stand as shrines to quieter ways in the modern world.
