Talisman

The fountain in Dupont Circle.

Some folks have asked me about the image in the new banner, what it is and what does the key unlock. M.S. Merwin says it best. Thanks again to (Not Plain) Jane who introduced me to this poem a long time ago.

TO THE HAND

What the eye sees is a dream of sight
what it wakes to
is a dream of sight

and in the dream
for every real lock
there is only one real key
and it’s in some other dream
now invisible

it’s the key to the one real door
it opens the water and the sky both at once
it’s already in the downward river
with my hand on it
my real hand

and I am saying to the hand
turn

open the river


Potomac River with the breeze skipping across its surface.

Basso Profundo

I believe in alternate realities, multiple universes. I can "see" some of these alternate realities, I can sense them (or I imagine I can). I'm more in touch with the details of some of these universes than others. In one alternate universe I know quite a bit about, my name is Reggie. I am a tall black man, long-boned, with knobby knees and elbows, big feet and hands. I'm very shy, awkward and softspoken. I wear my hair in natural dreads, wear faded t-shirts and jeans, and most important in terms of what I want to say today, I play the bass guitar.

The Reggie persona is one that I really "get," even though I am nothing like him physically or in terms of personality (me, softspoken? Uh ... I don't think so!) I really "get" his love of the bass.

Even here in consensual reality, I have always been entranced by the sound of bass guitar, by the feng shui of the bass. My first real boyfriend in high school, David Ingersoll, played bass in a band called the Soulphonics. Though he was a total sweetheart in every way you can imagine, I'm certain part of his allure centered around the fact that he played bass. The only time I've ever fallen in love at first sight was with Miles, who plays the bass. The greatest love of my life? Yep. He plays the bass (though he would prefer to play guitar, I think). Even my internist plays the bass! For heaven's sake.

With the idea of practicing happiness in the forefront of my mind yesterday, I sat for a couple of hours in a guitar shop, holding bass guitars and listening to the guy in the shop play different basses. They all sound so different, and feel so different, too. The guy in the shop was encouraging; I was hesitant to go in, thinking he might be disparaging. I imagined him thinking, Why does this old lady want to learn how to play the bass?

What actually happened is that he thought it was cool. He was clearly amused, maybe almost delighted by my interest. It was a lot of fun.

My spirit guides have been telling me lately: Be a cool cat at the end of a sizzling summer. Spirit guides are famously vague when they hand out advice. They want me to think, to work with their advice, not follow some literal instructions blindly, without contemplation and reflection.

What could be cooler than learning how to play the bass?

It's coming to me that there are moments in life when it's possible to create happiness, merely by following through on old plans and desires. I've wanted to learn to play bass since middle school. What have I been waiting for?

The Practice of Happiness

The people were oblivious, but the venerable dog was well aware of me standing there, taking his pic.

I do believe that everything I need to get through even the most difficult moments is at hand, if only I will pay attention. For instance, at the end of a hideous summer of relentless heat and toxic air, when I'm kind of at the end of my rope physically and psychically, a friend will whisk me away, up to the mountains and the river as Rod did last week. Friends step up to the plate all the time when I need some help. I am very grateful.

Right now his excellency the Dalai Lama is sitting at the kitchen table here at the chateau, smiling calmly from the cover of the book The Art of Happiness. Instead of reading the book from cover to cover (as I suppose I should), I've been practicing the art of bibliomancy. When I feel like surfing (or scuba diving) in the ocean of wisdom, or am in need of a reminder about the preciousness of this existence, I open the book randomly and read whatever is right in front of my eyes. Last night I read about all the ways that we increase our own suffering. Oh my, yes, sometimes I work so diligently at that task. Ha. After a few minutes of reading, I was laughing at myself, all my antics and inner dramas ... melodramas, actually. Silly Reya. For heaven's sake.

What a revelation it is, that happiness, at least as defined by the D.L., isn't something that drops down from heaven. Just like compassion and mindfulness, happiness is a practice. Wow. So when I catch myself increasing my own suffering, the practice is to just stop, breathe, and return to the practice of happiness. I'm not talking about denying the state of suffering, but I don't have to crank it up or prolong it, do I? I like the idea of practicing happiness. It makes more sense to me than pursuing happiness. As you see I am really chewing on this.

Speaking of the way things come to me just when I need them (if I pay attention that is), here's a little bit of a teaching Pema Chodron posted on Facebook yesterday. Sublime. Love those Buddhists!! Oh yeah. Shalom.

I quote this so much, this Poem of Rick Fields, where he said:

Behind the hardness there is fear
And if you touch the heart of the fear
You find sadness (it sort of gets more and more tender)
And if you touch the sadness
You find the vast blue sky

This is what I am encouraging. The next time you feel yourself hooked, if you pause and you breathe with it, and you don't act out and you don't repress, but you think of this quote, and you think the ones who will create the new culture that is needed are those who are not afraid to be insecure. Whatever it is that you think at that moment, maybe this is what it feels like to be burning up the seeds that have caused all the pain on this earth.

All I can say is: Wow.

About Face - Maybe

Two buzzards doing their wobbly circle flight-dance above the Potomac.

For a long time I've held a grudge against Thomas Jefferson for that "pursuit of happiness" idea he inserted into the Declaration of Independence. I love all the ideas about independence, liberty and so forth, but happiness? I've believed for a long time that chasing after happiness is like forever running after a carrot that is so close, and yet so far away. My own life's experiences of happiness have always been fleeting. I've preferred to pursue states of being that are perhaps slightly longer-lasting, such as satisfaction with work well done, the contentment of a lazy afternoon reading the New York Times, or the pleasure of climbing into bed when the sheets are crisp and freshly laundered.

One recent publishing trend has centered around books about happiness. (Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, Darrin McMahon's Happiness: A History, Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, for instance.) You should have seen my eyes roll around when I saw the book titles. I can be such a cynic sometimes, for heaven's sake.

Just yesterday, though, I started reading the Dalai Lama's book, The Art of Happiness which is really giving me pause for thought. Honestly there's nothing I love more than learning something I don't already know, or when an entrenched thought form gets uprooted. I love finding out I've been totally wrong about something. It's such a revelation!

The thing is, I trust the Dalai Lama. If he says it's a human birthright - the pursuit of happiness - then, well, maybe I'm going to have to apologize to old Thomas Jefferson. Maybe Thom was on to something after all. Because the Dalai Lama, in spite of everything, seems like a pretty happy guy. He seems lighthearted, good humored. This is exactly what I'm aiming for as I head into my "golden years." I might have to revise all my assumptions about this.

The pursuit of happiness ... Hmmmm ....


Very cool looking thistles, aren't they? Prickly little dudes, but cool looking.

The Need for Speed

See the land dropping away from the cabin? What a crazy landscape.

My friend Rod (with whom I just stayed at Tanglewood) says sometimes you have to get in a car and "go fast" down the highway. All your cares peel away, fly away, or so he says. I'm inclined to agree. Almost the moment we got outside DC, onto the freeway, I felt my late summer consternations evaporating. I like the idea that troubles are slow-moving. I really like the concept that troubles can be left behind in the dust. Oh yeah.

I'm not sure this works if you're in a car all the time, zooming up and down the freeways, but for people like me, (I'm rarely even in a car, let alone zooming), it's a real change of pace.

One of the tenets of Chinese medicine is "moderation in all things." My Shi'atsu teacher used to say, "moderation in all things - including moderation!" I love that idea - that sometimes, in order to break congealed energy, we have to go too far, too fast, we have to step into the extremes. Too much of the too far, too fast, too extreme is very unhealthy, but a little bit of it here and there? It really helps.

Today is another code orange day - toxic air, extreme heat and humidity. Summer this year in DC was way too much of too much. In fact I was so entrenched here over the summer that I lost my faith in the turn of the seasons. The trip up to Tanglewood, coupled with a break in the weather (for a day or two - love the synchronicity, weather gods!) reminded me that things DO change, that life unfolds to the better way. The relentless heat and terrible air of this summer got inside me somehow, where it congealed, made me so cranky and hopeless. Getting in Rod's car, zooming up to W. Virginia, helped me leave a rigidity of mind and heart in the dust.

I believe, once again, in the turn of the seasons. I know that this awful summer must end. Woolly socks season will come, it will. Onwards & upwards. Shalom.


Screened-in porches are just the thing in a swampy landscape like DC (or up in the mountains, at the beach ... well ... anywhere really). A porch is outside, but also inside. Love screened in porches!

Living Outside the Box

Halfway down the steep path that leads from the house to the river. Walking down it is like a freefall.

Everything at Tanglewood pitches forward towards the river - including me, should say. Only the trees stand at a true vertical, and the house itself, thank God. At Whitings Neck, the Potomac is so serpent-like, looping and switching back and forth. I read somewhere once upon a time that a meandering river is an old river.

Water is so powerful, and so very patient. It kept rushing past the limestone, rushing, running, flooding, receding, flowing, year in and year out, century after century after aeon, until it wore away the rock, creating the steep cliffs on the W. Virginia side of Whitings Neck.

Water vs. rock? If you give the water time, it will always triumph. The river vs. Reya? When I'm there, I want to sommersault into the water, sink to the bottom, or perhaps be carried along on the current down to the Chesapeake Bay. It's very seductive.


The cabin at Tanglewood. The shed on the left is Rod's studio.

When I stay at Tanglewood, after a day or two I begin to biodegrade. Rod, one of the men who currently holds the deed on Tanglewood, calls it "going feral." When I go to the beach, I usually decide to forego my urban habit of wearing wear make-up. When I go to Tanglewood, I don't even THINK about make-up. After a few days there I can't remember what I look like in make-up. I forego all my usual standards of appearance in order to dance in shamanic alignment with the wildness of that place. It's not a conscious act. Wow.

In the evenings, after a day of slowly tumbling (energetically) into the river, being worn away by the power of the Potomac, biodegrading in the hammock under the trees, I take a nice shower (outdoor showers are SO COOL), wash my hands and face, and enter the absolutely beautiful civilization of the indoors. Rod and Tom have made Tanglewood inviting, cozy, and beautiful. It is a nest for humans, it really is.

It's a restorative, humanizing, healing dynamic - honoring the wild by day, then moving with gratitude into the comforts of home and friendship by night. What a great vacation!


From the terrace. Those trees on the other side of the Potomac? They're in Maryland.

God is Nice to Me

I went on at some length, explaining in great detail to my friend all the reasons not to go up to the cabin under the trees, on the cliff overlooking the Potomac. His response was a three word email: You are going.

He'll be in the art studio all day working on projects. I can be sick here, or sick up there, on the screened in porch, reading a book, drawing, dozing. So maybe I won't swim in the river (though I might ...) and I won't drink too much wine (just tea, thank you). I won't be making curried salmon (soup instead). BUT ... it will be peaceful, beautiful and healing. I will be outside the whirling vortex of Washington DC, away from everything for a couple of days. In other words: just what I need. I am going.

I'm outta here. See y'all on the flip side. xx love and Shalom.