When Spiders Rule
A chill wind blows the yellowing leaves off the trees. They drift down to the ground like giant snowflakes. The air is pregnant with the feel of the coming holidays. Fall has truly come with the sudden drop in temperatures. November appears as a mirror image of March. November is the vibrant color of decay while March is the decaying color of about-to-burst-forth Spring.
The birds are at the bird feeder all the time now. They are not stopped by our presence when we come to fill the feeder or blow leaves under it. Nothing stops them. They swoop around the feeder and the surrounding trees like Kamikaze pilots, darting here and there recklessly. The squirrels are in a frenzy as well, stock piling and burying acorns and walnuts which they will retrieve without fail in a month or so in a snow-covered land.
The trees are most beautiful for me at this time of year, when many of them are bare and a scattering of leaves remain on dark brown branches. The leaves that remain on the trees blow on the limbs with dainty grace in their precarious positions. Yet these are the survivors. The other leaves have fallen and gone the way all living things eventually go. Most trees have lost all their leaves and they stand in stark contrast against the blue sky, the stormy sky, even the night sky. They are perhaps most beautiful at night, like arms reaching up to the darkness trying to grab at the stars twinkling between the branches. Moonlight dances on their limbs.
November is the last glimmer of color and in some places the color seems to be predominantly yellow. A carpet of yellow lines the woods now. And now one can see inside the woods, so dark and impenetrable in summer. Some forests have carpets of oak leaves– dark brown tan in color. Or there are forest paths with variegated colors– vibrant crimsons against yellows and faded greens and tawny tans. The unmown lawns are now taken over by the spiders and, at moments, one can see a world of webs covering fields that only appear in a certain slant of sunlight. It is the silent take over of the spiders before the snows come.
The yellow, the brown, the crimson leaves are complemented by the ubiquitous yellow, brown and crimson mums that appear on the roadside near mail boxes, on porches or along driveways. These tough little flowers withstand frosty chills and stand tall throughout most of November. Hearty souls and so giving in their colorful, velvety splendor.
Soon the season of lights will begin. Autumn, as a season, seems the fastest to come and go. I hold each moment in my hands as a treasure, but the moments all sift through my fingers like grains of sand. Then Christmas comes and fades in a flash, and we are into the Nor’Easter blizzards of January. Another year is gone. The years do go faster as you grow older. We go about living our lives, trying, against our natures, to treasure the good moments. Now in November, at Thanksgiving, it is our time to say thank you. Inspired by the Native Americans let us thank the earth. Let us say thank you to the trees for their constantly changing beauty, to the stars for their piercing presence in the night sky, to the leaves for their beauteous colors, to the sun for its life-giving power, to the Spring for its awakening hope, to the Summer for its warm, thriving growth, to the Fall for its bounty, to the Winter for a time of renewal, to the snow flakes for their hushed, white silence that transforms our world, to the animals for their pure souls, to our families and friends for their love, and, lastly but mostly, to the Higher Power of our belief.
Happy Thanksgiving and may you each be blessed with the all embracing, pervasive Love in nature.
A Foretaste of Fall
(revised version)
It is the school-imposed end of summer, Labor Day weekend, a weekend I look forward to all summer long for the love of Fall. It is not good to be this way. Religious leaders preach living in the present for that is all we have. I have yet to overcome this and many other bad ways of thinking. I look forward to the crisp days of September when a breeze shimmers through, what I call in my ignorance of the real name, the penny tree. It is so named because when the wind blows the leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. I live for the days when the sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. The angle of the sun in its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects going this way and that. My eyes capture swallowtails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. Some carrion must be nearby. Earlier we saw two golden hawks fly sunlit into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to overwinter– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks or snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have left already– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone and the bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing excitement upon spotting him.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sebum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight is near. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
(Aknowledgements to “likes” and comments may be delayed. Recuperating from surgery.)
Spring’s Siren Song
It is late afternoon and it is Spring by the calendar although still quite cool. And I have just spent the late afternoon listening to music. Some have likened it to the sound to bells. Others to bird song. And still others with unimaginable disdain, to “some kind of nature noise.” For me it is one of the happiest of sounds. The act of creation transformed into sound decibels for all to hear. A sound that comes from the earth and resounds to the heavens, unwittingly praising the Almighty. I hate to leave, and wish I lived even closer to the pond, so that the sound would surround me totally, filling my ears every evening with the sound of perhaps the single-most highlight of spring for me. The siren song of the Spring Peepers.
How have they cast their spell over so many? I cannot say except that their song is uplifting and filled with hope despite the natural perils they face daily. For, as true of all of us, they may die at any moment– say as a meal for a nearby perching crow or underneath murky waters eaten by a snapping turtle. They call for a mate without ceasing, without fear, single-mindedly, without a thought for their own safety. It is nature at its most elemental, in its most singular scope. They all sing out vying to be heard– so many voices. In some spots, I am told, their song is deafening. How nice to be there; I cannot get enough of their sweet music. It moves me to tears– these tiny creatures singing out their heart’s desire.
As I return home to family “situations” and domestic duties, I yearn for the simplicity of their song. Their total fervor. For if they sing then all is right in that small part of the world. Progress has not paved over their pond. Disdainful humans have not drained a “vernal pool.” David Carroll writes about vernal pools in one of his books on turtles called The Swampwalker’s Journal. As the title suggests, Carroll walks such places in search of turtles and other amphibians. He defines a vernal pool as a pool of water that fills up in Fall and Winter, swells in the Spring and often dries up by end of Summer. But a vernal pool is utmost a place of magic, not only a place where turtles lurk but where mating frogs deposit gelatinous eggs which turn into tadpoles first, and there, later become frogs. And after a requisite series of warm days, followed by spring rains, on the first dark night, vernal pools become the site of the “salamander night.” Salamanders leave their hibernacula to go for a night of endless mating and then return to leaf litter in the woods to disappear for the rest of the year. Some people who know nothing of vernal pools and their function deem them a nuisance, a “big puddle” to be filled in or drained. Some people know little of Spring Peepers except that they are “noisy,” “like some sort of insect.” Poor insects being made out to be the pesky lowest of the low. The natural symphony of hormonal, harmonic sounds sometimes falls on deaf ears.
And when, after finishing my evening chores, I try to read, I find the haunting sound of the Spring Peepers deep within my psyche, making me restless and anxious and wishing to be at that pond, surrounded on all sides by their sex song, inebriated by the unbridled joy in the air, immersed in the utter power of nature manifesting in one of her gentler forms. In the song of the Spring Peepers nature celebrates life-to-be rather than taking lives away. For most of all the song of the Spring Peepers is a song of tremendous faith, faith in love and faith that love will propagate and new life will emerge untouched by the oft destructive hand of man.
Repetition of Forms
The Marsh in Winter (Millbrook, NY)
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Sheep in Winter (Standfordville, NY)
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“Nature is very beautiful; but still, in one sense, it is very silent: it tells us of the beauty of everything without revealing the Beauty that is behind everything.”
Panamahansa Yogananda
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I cry red berries
wash them with teardrops
so you can eat them in the morning
with your breakfast
as you listen so intently
to the news on the TV
I want lifetimes
with you…
Without you
I would be
shivering in the snow
in nakedness
berryless
bereft.
A Few of the Last Leaves Upstate
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FALL IN NEW YORK CITY… Dedicated to the two most compassionate bloggers I know of… Gigi in Chicago at/ https://gigisrantsandraves.wordpress.com/ and Tiramit in Thailand at /https://dhammafootsteps.com/ for their total kindness and because they wanted to see Fall in New York City
Central Park
Central Park
Sakura Park in Morningside Heights, Harlem
Sakura Park
Sakura Park
Riverside Park in Morningside Heights in Harlem
Our block in Morningside Heights, Harlem
Columbia University in Morningside Heights, Harlem
“Cool Change”… Fall Upstate in Millbrook, New York
This was one of my brother’s (R.I.P.) favorite songs… “Cool Change” by Little River Band.
Autumnal Septuagenarian Love
Waking to your touch
electricity in
your massive
healing hands
without a glint
of sexuality…
Waking to your smile
whispers sweetly
to my soul…
like the first time
so long ago
on our first walk
together
when your arm
brushed against mine
and shook our worlds
out of their solitary
orbits and
sent us to the moon!
Your grey fluffy hair
sparkling silver threads
entices every time
I sniff your fragrance
and inhale the heavens
the warmth
of your cheeks
in our fleeting
embrace
I would it
would last forever
like our love!
The smile lines etched
around your sky blues
alter the pulse
the course of my blood
and with each glance
reach for the stars
twinkling inside my head!
The wrinkles in your cheeks
and your furrowed brow
pluck at the strings
inside my bosom
for I know the hard times
and worries that
engraved them on your face!
As day turns to night…
On the doorway
to Orpheus
in pillowed embrace
your big hand
holds mine
and makes me
feel safe and loved
and little
as you drift off
leaving me wishing
for morning
to awaken once
more to you
fears tears
so long to wait
till morning!
We are old
How did this happen?
and we are in love
more than ever
youthful passion gone
replaced by years of fidelity
affection, quarrels, laughing,
teasing, crying
always sharing, caring
yet attraction still stirs
and the years of together
have sewn our souls to one!
Loss is inevitable
and unacceptable
In equal measure
The God I used to find
in nature
I now find in you
And the ecstasis
of gazing at the sky
now rests with the mystery
of you!!
A happiest of birthdays to the love of our many lifetimes together! Hope to continue our journey together to enlightenment!
May the rest of your seventies be healthy and happy and filled with love!
💖Your wife
Blessed by Spirits
I have had three visits from the spirit world. Some might say they are “vague imaginings” born of grief and loss. But I know vague imaginings and these were different. In each case I had a soul connection with the spirit in question while they were living so it is not so strange that I would connect with them in death.
The first one happened when I was on my first trip to Europe at age 22. I was off to visit the tiny peasant town where my Grandfather was born. It was a tiny mountain town in the province of Enna, reachable by train and then a long bus ride up the mountain. The name, Valguernera Caropepe. I was in the train station in Sicily and an old Sicilian man looking very much my Grandfather’s type— short, grey-haired with a warm smile— saw me and started singing the words to Stormy Weather. I turned to look at him stunned. When I was a little girl I spent lots of time with my grandparents in Larchmont. Grandpa and I were inseparable. We danced and sang to music on the Victrola or his mandolin by day, had our evening cocktail together in the late afternoon (a Shirley Temple for me, Whiskey Sour for Grandpa and I got his cherry). And, at nights in summer, we went for walks catching fireflies, or sat together in the bedroom, each at our own window, in the silence of our thoughts, watching the neighbors in the courtyard below. Even as a little girl, I could feel that there was something special about the quiet we shared and that we were always connected. Physically, emotionally, and I like to think, spiritually. I took his death very hard. About Stormy Weather— whenever I walked into the living room where Grandpa was inevitably to be found smoking a pipe or reading, he would sing: “Here Comes Stormy Weather.” I looked into the smiling eyes of this man in the Sicilian train station as he sang the lyrics of the song Grandpa used to greet me with and I saw Grandpa for a few seconds. And then I had to leave to catch the train to his town.
The second time I had a brush with the spirit world was when my father died. Dad had been sick for three years battling colon cancer. The end was near and I visited the hospital often but had just taken a new job so was not at the hospital every day as, had I been stronger emotionally, I would have liked to have been. Again Dad and I were very close. Not like Grandpa. But in temperament and looks. My father married a Sicilian and I was the only one of the three children who looked like him with blond hair and light skin. And I was shy and quiet and liked writing and music like Dad did and didn’t like the screaming and yelling that was much a part of our family life. Dad didn’t either. Dad and I were sympatico— even to the point that my mother was sometimes jealous, though she had no cause to be. A few days before Dad died he went into something like a coma. His eyes were closed and he was mostly unresponsive. My Mom in an effort to get a response, teased him (Dad was the tease in the family) one warm November day, one last time, and told him it was snowing outside. (It wasn’t.) Dad’s eyes fluttered and he opened them and looked out the window and presumably saw it was not snowing. A few days later Dad died. I was at work in the ladies room at the time. I remember the exact moment. I knew Dad had died. I went back into the office. Moments later came the phone call. I had the moment down right to the minute. I called my fiancé to go to the hospital and see Dad before they took his body away. And then I stood on the street corner waiting for him, frantic with grief and stunned despite all the time we had to “prepare” for Dad’s death. Suddenly I felt a zephyr pass through me on the corner. Dad’s spirit. No mistaking it. No, for sure it was Dad. And then it began to snow. The snow only lasted a few minutes. A sign. Dad, a teaser, gave his last tease, for the benefit of my Mom. I told later told her there were a few moments of snow.
I didn’t get a message when my Mother died. We had quarreled the last night she was alive. My husband and I had done some fancy footwork to grant her last wish— we had gotten her home so she could die in her own house. We had been her main caretakers and it had taken a terrible toll on us. And though I didn’t get a message from Mom when she died, I’ve got her inside of me. Today even clearer than when she was alive, I hear her telling me how to handle the problems of life. (I still don’t always listen.) And, we inherited my Mom’s ten-year old dog— a miniature poodle, named Ko-ko. Ko-ko came to live with my husband and me and we loved her to pieces in our childless marriage. We never expected her to survive losing Mom (especially after losing Dad a few years before) and losing her home, but she adjusted. When she lost an eye to my aunt’s cat we again never expected her to pull through, but she survived. She drank up love like a parched plant and we were only too happy to give it to her. And then she developed Cushing’s disease and a cataract in her good eye, arthritis and a bad heart— but she kept on going with the spirit of a puppy. I almost believed she would live forever— even when she was diagnosed with cancer. But she didn’t. And in October, her 17 and ½ years came to a close. She had an appetite up until the last— eating dinner the night she died. Ironically it was a stroke or something she ate that impaired her breathing. It was too late to go to our vet. We decided to take her in first thing in the morning to be put down by the vet she knew and loved. I stayed up through the night with her trying to help her make the transition but she clung to life. And in the morning we brought her in to be put to sleep. Our tears were joined by a tear streaming down Dr. Howell’s face. I think he had begun to believe in her immortality, too. He gave her the shot. She reared up a moment and then was gone. We had made plans to meet my aunt and uncle that day. We could not break the date— it was too late to even call. They were coming to New York from Connecticut. I just couldn’t go. My husband, God bless him forever, went to meet them with out me. I went home to rest a bit, collect myself and then meet them later. I was at home on the bed doing Reiki, an ancient Tibetan form of energy healing, on myself. My eyes were closed but I was wide awake. And I “felt” Ko-ko. She was running in a white field filled with white flowers and then going towards a tunnel. I was with her at her eye level close to the ground and all around was pure white and she was very happy and excited. Running to be reunited with my parents. And I felt profoundly blessed by her presence as I did in life, for she had a beautiful soul. Instead of visiting us in spirit, my mother left us an angel.
I have longed for further contact with these three souls and with my Mom but the longing goes unfulfilled like so many desires in life. I am indeed lucky to have had these three visits. They are high up on the list of treasures in my life, whispering of a life beyond this one. Treasures too ephemeral for touch, treasures locked away in the depths of my soul.
Beginnings & Endings
No one in my family liked summer. Probably because we lived in New York City and summer is not fun there. Moving upstate changed all that– up to a point. Although I must admit a weakness for those beautiful June days when the temperature reaches perfection, the sky is blue with fluffy clouds, and a soporific breeze wafts through the trees. And true, one has much more time with the four or five extra hours of sunlight. Still in all, when the first hints of fall come I am bordering on ecstatic.
First there is the change in light. The sun, still hot in mid-September, does not pack the punch it did in July, when one could be outdoors for an hour and come in with a change in skin color. Temperatures cool. The grass does not grow as fast. The “blood” of the trees starts to flow back into the trunk causing leaves to change color. Walnuts, acorns and apples fall. The bats leave the attic for warmer climes, giving us yet another chance to plug up holes inside to keep them outside next summer. Summer houses are closed down. The butterflies, that were so rampant outdoors in August are now inside the stomach of many a child with the start of school. Even adults are not immune. Many grown people feel the flutter of back-to-school anxiety come fall. After all September means “back to school” for many, many years. Time to “honker down” again and mean business. Fall offers a new beginning and there is a tinge of excitement added to the anxiety in facing some thing new.
And most of all, fall is a time of riotous color, when a walk in the woods finds one reveling like a drunk, besotted by the yellow, orange, crimson, russet world which our eyes imbibe like a hefty cocktail. It is a time when Italian comes to the lips in a loud “Que bella!!” The green of summer is bucolic and raises the spirit, but the many colors of fall intoxicate. People start talking of peak color, and leafing becomes the pastime of many. It is the time to plant bulbs and endlessly rake blowing leaves.
But fall is a time of melancholia, too. Flowers die. Reptiles go into hibernation. Insects die or overwinter. Songbirds migrate. Trees eventually loose their leaves. Anxiety over new beginnings can be uncomfortable. And the end of the lazy days of summer brings with it shorter days, longer nights, and possible depression for many people. Moments of sobriety seep into intoxication with the new world of color as we may remember loved ones who can no longer share the beauty. Who can no longer enjoy those cool crisp days in September, so coveted in August, when coolness brushes the cheeks.
For autumn is a celebration of endings, too, perhaps best described by the French poet, Guillaume Appollinaire, in his poem Autumn:
“A bowlegged peasant and his ox receding
through the mist slowly through the mist of autumn…
Oh the autumn the autumn has been the death of summer
In the mist there are two gray shapes receding.”
When the Walnut Leaves Begin to Fall
It is the school-imposed end of summer, Labor Day weekend has come and gone and I am looking forward to Fall. It is not good to be this way. Ideally one should be living in the present… for that is all we have. I have yet to overcome this and many other bad ways of thinking. A breeze shimmers through what I call (in my ignorance of the real name) the penny tree for when the wind blows the leaves look like so many pennies shimmering down from Heaven. The sun is so hot it tingles on the skin– yet it is not the strong sun of July that burns quickly. The angle of the sun in its diurnal slant is different. Summer is definitely slipping away.
The bees, wasps and yellow jackets are having a heyday in the goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed and Purple Loosestrife. The marsh is thick with flying insects going this way and that. My eyes capture swallowtails. Happily the monarchs are still here. A turkey vulture circles overhead. Some carrion must be nearby. Earlier we saw two golden hawks fly sunlit into the back field. A wisp of a cloud floats by in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. This summer has flown by in the blink of an eye like a fritillary flits by the flowers in the marsh.
The smell of fresh cut lawn is intoxicating to my raw senses. Soon the grass will cease to grow and the lush green will look washed out. All of its inhabitants in the metropolis beneath our feet will dig deep underground or turn off their bodily systems to overwinter– an amazing concept to a mammal. Some fill their bodies with a type of antifreeze. Nature never ceases to astound. This summer I have made my peace with the insects. Terrified of them as a child I have come to love and respect them, indeed hold them in awe for the feats they accomplish. Our accomplishments pale as humans, supposedly so superior.
No longer do I see turtles sunning on rocks or snakes coming out to bask in the heat of the road. Some species of birds have left already– unbeknownst to me. I just know that some I used to see are gone and the bird song of the spring mating season is a fleeting memory. One lone humming bird flies around the marsh intermittently, causing frantic excitement upon spotting him.
It is the time to dead head the flowers of summer. It is the time of Black-Eyed Susans and Peonies and Sebum. And soon it will be the time of the Mums.
With each gust of wind yellow finger-like walnut leaves shower down on our heads– like large yellow snowflakes– a foretaste of snowfalls to come. The sun’s shadows grow long as twilight is near. Soon the white cloud “lions and tigers and bears” will retire into the black cave of night. And the summer will die and in dying, give birth to fall. The comfortable rhythm of the changing season beats in our sometimes unhearing hearts.
Face to face
“Be fearless, sincere, and loving and you will be able to look everyone in the face, knowing that you have done your best.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
A Flowering Friendship
“The duty of friends is to continuously help each other to develop themselves. When souls seek progress together in God, then divine friendship flowers.”
Paramahansa Yogananda
(Click to enlarge)
The Smiling Moon
“THE BEAUTY OF NATURE IS LIKE A FOUNTAIN. YOU SEE THE BEAUTY OF THE SPRAY, BUT YOU DO NOT SEE THE WONDERS INSIDE THE DROPLETS… THE MOON SMILES AND THE STARS TWINKLE BECAUSE THOU ART SPARKLING THERE”… “Divine Romance” p.87
Paramahansa Yogananda
Oceanic Currents
Paramahansa Yogananda
“As soon as you lift your consciousness to the state of divine awareness, you see the oceanic current of God’s light flowing behind all matter.”
Stream in our backyard in Millbrook, New York that eventually flows into the Hudson River which in turn flows into the Atlantic Ocean, thereby hinting at global consciousness.
Equanimity
“Calmness is the voice of God speaking to you through the radio of your soul.”— Paramahansa Yogananda
A temple in Khajuraho, India at Dawn
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For contributions and an introduction to the children at Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
The Return of the Animals
I confess to being a springtime scrooge. When everyone else is oohing and aahing over the warm weather, welcoming it and delighting in it, I cringe, knowing that, despite the fact that there are some magnificent days in April, May and early June, Spring is the harbinger of the dreaded hot-humid-hazy, lazy days of summer. Admittedly, this is a terrible attitude and a worse way to think, not living in the present at all.
April may be the cruelest month as T.S. Elliot writes, and I concur in many aspects, except for the return of the animals. Why? Because the animals work their unique and miraculous magic on depressed souls and bring joy. I once read that animals were natural anti-depressants… a very astute observation. How a child’s face lights up with joy to touch an animal or observe one up close. Adults, too, are wooed by their innocence. Animals bring enchantment, enrich our lives. That is why therapy dogs and other animals do such good work in hospitals, prisons, hospices for the dying, wherever there is misery.
The return of the animals brings music to the air, replacing the ominous gale winds of winter and the blanketed silence of snows. Insects hum and buzz. Birds sing and chirp. Windows are opened wide to allow sweet- smelling, soporific breezes to blow through our houses. Little green shoots become beautiful flowers in our gardens, along side roads, in the fields. Trees come to life again, gods of greenery. Fat, red-breasted robins perk up the lawn in their search for worms. And we no longer have to worry about animals starving. The deer we see mid-March in groups, scavenging for food are thin and weak. And the squirrels have run out of their stores as well, raiding the bird feeder which they normally leave to the birds. A late Spring means animals will starve and die with no edible items.
And yet, with all the pleasure the return of the animals brings us, do we welcome them with open arms? No, we fumigate our land and spread pesticides all over their territory. Many species of birds are heading towards extinction due to our use of pesticides and, generally speaking, our “development” of the land. We destroy vernal pools, thinking them mere puddles rather than the breeding place of frogs and salamanders. We take the babies of spring– the lambs, the calves– away from their mothers and slaughter them. Sometimes with abject cruelty, in full view of the mothers. The mothers wail in anguish. We break bonds stronger than the supposedly solid bond of human matrimony that nowadays fails as often as it succeeds.
In The Letter Writer, famed author, Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: “In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know–all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
This is how we repay those who bring us such joy, such love, such purity– those who uplift, save lives, care for us. It has been said that a dog is the only creature who loves his caretaker more than he loves himself. Dogs have it over us in this.
Spring is almost here and, with it, the return of the animals. Let us open our hearts to our fellow creatures and show them the appreciation they so deserve, for without them there truly will be, as Rachel Carson direly predicted, a “silent spring”.
For contributing to Michael’s home for street children in Uganda, click link below picture of Michael and Angie…
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Last of the Informal Show
These photographs are the last to go to Michaels Makindye Foundation for street orphans and homeless children in Uganda. See reference at end for information and donations…
Some of my India pictures are going as well… see “India” on the blog. One appears below…
Delhi Market
Makindye children
Michael and Angie
Click on link below to see Michael’s charity:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Jeepers Peepers
Above: the vernal pool not yet unfrozen and below: the YouTube video to hear the song of the Spring Peepers
It is late afternoon and it is spring according to the calendar although still quite cool. I have just spent the late afternoon listening to “music.” Some have likened it to the sound to bells. Others to bird song. And still others, with unimaginable disdain, to “some kind of nature noise.” For me it is one of the happiest of sounds. The act of creation transformed into sound decibels for all to hear. A sound that comes from the earth and resounds to the heavens, unwittingly praising the Almighty. I hate to leave, and wish I lived even closer to the pond, so that the sound would surround me totally, filling my ears every evening with the sound of perhaps the single-most highlight of spring for me. The siren song of the Spring Peepers.
How have they cast their spell over so many? I cannot say except that their song is uplifting and filled with hope despite the natural perils they face daily. For, as true of all of us, they may die at any moment– say as a meal for a nearby perching crow or underneath murky waters eaten by a snapping turtle. They call for a mate without ceasing, without fear, single-mindedly, without a thought for their own safety. It is nature at its most elemental, in its most singular scope. They all sing out vying to be heard– so many voices. In some spots, I am told, their song is deafening. How nice to be there; I cannot get enough of their sweet music. It moves me to tears– these tiny creatures singing out their heart’s desire.
As I return home to family “situations” and domestic duties, I yearn for the simplicity of their song. Their total fervor. For if they sing then all is right in that small part of the world. Progress has not paved over their pond. Disdainful humans have not drained a “vernal pool.” David Carroll writes about vernal pools in one of his books on turtles called The Swampwalker’s Journal. As the title suggests, Carroll walks through such places in search of turtles and other amphibians. He defines a vernal pool as a pool of water that fills up in Fall and Winter and freezes, swells in the Spring and often dries up by end of Summer. But a vernal pool is utmost a place of magic, not only where turtles lurk, but also where mating frogs deposit gelatinous eggs, which turn first into tadpoles, and then, later, become frogs. Vernal pool habitats hold a galaxy of small things that come to life the instant ice and snow turn back into water. And after a requisite series of warm days, followed by spring rains, on the first dark night, vernal pools become the site of the “salamander night.” Salamanders leave their hibernacula to go for a night of endless mating and then return to leaf litter in the woods to disappear for the rest of the year. Some people, who know nothing of vernal pools and their function, deem them a nuisance, a “big puddle” to be filled in or drained. Some people know little of spring peepers except that they are “noisy,” “like some sort of insect.” (Poor insects being made out to be the pesky lowest of the low.) The natural symphony of hormonal, harmonic sounds sometimes falls on deaf ears.
And when, after finishing my evening chores, I try to read, I find the haunting sound of the spring peepers deep within my psyche, making me restless and anxious and wishing to be at that pond, surrounded on all sides by their sex song, inebriated by the unbridled joy in the air, immersed in the utter power of nature manifesting in one of her gentler forms. In the song of the Spring Peepers nature celebrates life-to-be rather than taking lives away. For most of all the song of the Spring Peepers is a song of tremendous faith, faith in love, and faith that love will propagate and new life will emerge untouched by the often destructive hand of man.
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To read about and/or give to Michael’s foundation for orphan and street children in Uganda, click on the link below the picture of Michael and Angie:
http://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-Makindye-Foundation
Informal Show… paintings and photographs
In May the art work below will be going to Michael’s home for homeless and street children in Kampala, Uganda, The Makindye Foundation. For more picture links and information on donations etc. click on link below…
http://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
(Click on all images to enlarge)
“Bontecou Lake”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Wildflowers by the Roadside”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Weeping Willow”, Lucasville, Ohio (Photograph)
“Reflections of Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract watercolor)
“Sunny Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract Watercolor)
“Trees in Winter” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Moonlight” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Sunlight over Trees” Millbrook, New York (Watercolor)
Some of the children in Michael’s Makindye Foundation…
(see link at top)
Synchronicity
The Oxford dictionary describes “synchronicity” as “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
Wikipedia has a longer definition: “Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.”[1] In contemporary research, synchronicity experiences refer to one’s subjective experience whereby coincidences between events in one’s mind and the outside world may be causally unrelated to each other yet have some other unknown connection.[2] Jung held that this was a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind that can become harmful within psychosis.[3]“
As a Bipolar 1 woman who was not diagnosed, let alone medicated, until I was 28 years old, my life was full of synchronicity. I was working as a clerk in Columbia University libraries, cataloging art books. My family did not “believe” in psychiatry nor in mental illness. I kept everything secret from them until I could no longer, when I had my breakdown at age 28. At that point I went for emergency care to the Columbia Counseling Service and was told to stay with my family for a week or go to hospital. I was lucky enough to be able to go to my parents for a week . I had begun therapy with the psychiatrist I would wind up staying with until age 74. But at the time I was all alone. I had a best friend from grammar school who was living in France at this time. She and I corresponded every week. We remained close until she died at age 39. I had a few friends at work, but I lived alone and was isolated. And I became psychotic at times. Synchronicity ruled my life. Parts of a song on the radio, or a program on the TV, a man singing in the street… they all had special messages for me. I thought of people in the street as “teachers” for me to learn from and the people who worked with me, as “mystics,” who understood me, and who were trying to train me.
It was exhilarating when the teachers were happy with my progress but terribly depressing when I did wrong. There were “signs” for me to interpret all over the place. And at work, I regarded every book I catalogued as something that held secrets to help me get mentally well or learn truths about life. I would do my job faithfully, most of the time, but while doing it, I was on the constant look-out for special messages meant for me. I did what I called “readings”. I would find some lesson in each book. One book I was working on held a special secret about the womb and the egg and the sperm uniting and becoming a zygote. I pictured the uniting of the egg and the sperm as fireworks. (Thirty years later, saner and married and actively creating art, and, writing a newspaper column upstate on the side, I created an abstract photograph called “Conception”.) But in the library, I did what I called “time travels.” I didn’t talk to people much during this period. I listened to co-workers and street people, read extensively and deciphered messages. People would come up to me at work to actually talk to me sometimes, to be nice, I guess, and I would leave the world of the womb, and zygotes or some such thing, and talk to them normally as if I were in their world. I was not!!
In other words, to put it in professional terms, I was WACKO!
That is all behind me now and fortunately, though I have had some hard times, but they have occurred within the realm of a marriage, to be 35 years long this May. It has offered me the only stability and deep love in my life. Gone is the world of readings and messages. Gone is the synchronicity. Sometimes I miss it but not the craziness that went with it. Now I have more meaningful, everyday experiences of sanity. There are still some epiphanies, but not like the old days.
Before I close I must add, there was at least one incident that was truly synchronicity… that was not delusional… that felt distinctly like a message from God, the Universe. I was working at my desk and suddenly my scalp felt prickles all over it. I grew alarmed and so decided to go to the reference room for one of my “readings.” Clearly this warranted research. I went to the Reference Room of the library and found a one volume encyclopedia which I pulled off the shelf. In order for the reading to give answers impartially, I had to open it at random and then put my finger on the page. So that’s what I did whilst my scalp prickled. My finger pointed to a picture. It was a print of Christ with a crown of thorns. I was stunned. I felt like it was a message from God. And to this day I think it was. It was a message of hope and love.
Yesterday I wrote to a fellow blogger, Anneta Pinto-Young, at Devotionalinspirations.com, who is a Social Worker and a Christian Minister and recounted this story briefly in response to her post on coincidences in her series on “Hearing God Speak.” She told me something very wise. She said that religion and science have always clashed over these type of things. Sure, I was delusional for much of the time, but I did have occasional experiences like this one. And, she said, that was God sending me a message of his love and encouragement. I felt that then and I feel it today.
Maybe I don’t need the secret messages any more. God’s word comes through friends now and most definitely through my long-suffering husband.
What can I say but look out for synchronicities and see what message there is for you.
Energy of Spirit, Life of the Mind and a Sense of the Ineffable
What does the magnetic energy of the earth have to do with the mind and spirit? Well, as it turns out… EVERYTHING!
Hypnosis, creative inspiration, meditation, mysticism– all of these states have something in common. They are all related to states of mind with the same pattern that have been measured by scientists to be found in the alpha pattern of brain waves. The alpha state.
There are 4 states of consciousness. First there is the beta state or normal waking consciousness which is measured by scientists at 13-30 herz or cycles per second. Herz is the measurement for 1 cycle per second. 13-30 herz is associated with the everyday state of awareness. There is the theta state of dreaming which is measured at 4-8 herz or cycles per second and the delta state of sleep at 1-4 cycles per second. This is associated with sleep and dreaming along with the delta state. Then there is the gamma state which weighs in at 25-80 herz. This state is associated with when the brain is hard at work in the waking state. And finally there is the alpha state of consciousness at 8-13 herz or cycles per second, peaking at 10. This is the state that we will focus on here. It is the state present during hypnosis, creative inspiration, meditation, mysticism and religious states of awareness.
The alpha brain wave pattern resonates with the magnetic rhthyms of the earth which also are most concentrated at 10 cyles per second. Here’s the thing– states of mind in the alpha state are vibrating with the same rhythm as the magnetic rhythms of the earth. These alpha states have long been associated with meditation, spiritual states, mysticism and A FEELING OF ONENESS WITH ALL!! Scientists differ as to whether or not humans are affected by the magnetic rhthyms of the earth. It seems to me that the feeling of oneness, the feeling of the ineffable and unity, is experienced in alpha states due to its synchronicity with the peak magnetic rhythms of the earth. Think of how synchronous feelings of oneness occur when the mind listens to music or pulses to the beat, witness a beautiful sunset or engages in religious ceremony.
We are talking of a feeling of oneness with all, unity with the earth. Eastern religions, in particular Hinduism, talk about oneness with all, unity. As my Indian friend, Anjali, has told me, Indian temples have long been built purposely on places on earth where the magnetic energy is strongest so the temple visitors may feel the energy. And Indians are instructed to wear silk to temple because it is a strong conductor of energy. In addition, the YouTube video, “101 Amazing Facts about India, the Indian population and Indian Culture” put out by FactsNet, says that Indian temples have copper plates to absorb the energy of the earth. The spirituality of India is the energy that is in synch with the rhythms of the earth. These bring about a feeling of oneness, closeness to God and all nature. The Hindus plug into the feeling of oneness with nature and the earth because their brains are sychronized to the rhythms of the earth. I have talked about nature as it relates to religion very often with my private guru, Sachin. For Hindus energy is all important. Because our minds cannot really easily fathom praying to energy, there are many Hindu gods and also no “head” god as Christians believe in a personal God. It is hard to think of praying to energy. I connect through nature and think of God as a personal God just to pray to “Him” but I believe Energy is our God. That is just my thing. Things that bring on the alpha state connect to the earth, connect to the Energy of the earth, connect us to our apprehension of the holy.
It seems ironic that in this day and age, with the scientific developments and advances that have been made, we know so little on the nature of man’s waking state of consciousness… so little on the potential of the human mind in altered states of consciousness. ASC’s include some of the highest states of mind known– creativity, higher consciousness, cosmic consciousness, religious and mystical states, peak experiences. Out of such states of mind come some of our greatest achievements. We all can share in this greatness, taste the sublime, through alterations in the waking state of consciousness. People feel their lives profoundly changed for the better by what Maslow has termed “peak experiences.” And people best able to accept death are those who have experienced transcendence. And for well over millions of years, people have spent centuries passing on written and oral traditions down through the ancients, ideas on consciousness and the need to develop higher consciousness, isn’t it time for the rest of us to pay heed ?
MOONSIDE 
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