Scorched fingertip

I thank you
for hurting, for
the warning

for letting me
get to sleep
against expectation

I thank you for the elegance
of shiny healing skin and the ripple
of blister beneath

for guarding
my fingerprint
despite it all

The Shortest Night of the Year

Like spice, the pollen, ripening grains
thicken the air. Wind has died
to a regular breathing
handed along like a secret
from branch to branch

This house stands in the middle of
thousands of miles of fields.
The lawn itself is wide
and flat as a plain. Only
the trees, planted at the edge,
make this space different,
the center of something

                        First
there is the west sky
where darkness folds down
crimson, vermilion, gently
as a skirt to the floor

Then fireflies, and the light
of moon falling wet
and yellow on the lawn

There is a hollow
where throat meets
shoulder. It holds
the heat of sunlight

                        Earth
falls away slowly here.
To every side    the horizon
when it is day

- Carol J. Pierman

 in The Naturalized Citizen

 ___

Happy summer solstice, friends.

Redwood Creek

Muir Woods - a deep pocket of green and old-growth beauty nestled in a cranny of a valley in Marin, just north of San Francisco. A place many Bay Area kids go on elementary field trips, and a place I try to take any out-of-town visitor. A place I've taken you before, in a manner of speaking.

This spring I went with my girlfriend for her first visit ever, and after a winter of torrential rains, it was the creek that particularly captivated my eye. 

Have you ever been? What is the name of a beautiful forest near you, or that you have loved while traveling?

My insurance company is of the nature to be confusing, and other possibilities

My insurance company sent me a letter yesterday that instantly woke up my anxious angry side. 

In it, in cheery blue rows and columns, were some numbers that add up to them deciding they are not responsible to contribute any payment toward a minor medical procedure I needed recently.

Today as I thought about this, I heard in my mind some phrases I encountered in Thich Nhat Hanh's writing once, the beginning of what he called the Five Remembrances: I am of the nature to get old; I cannot escape old age. I am of the nature to get sick; I cannot escape sickness. I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape death...

And it made me think of how in Al-Anon, I have often heard and read people talking about re-tuning their expectations. For example, "I have stopped expecting an alcoholic to keep every promise." Coming to terms with reality and expecting what is probable, an alternative to being heartbroken or angered over and over by a predictable happening. Choosing to make peace when making a change is not within your power.

That type of emotionally tuned-in realism has been very hard but interesting for me to start adopting as a perspective on life. I have approached life very differently in the past, been a person who ran things into the ground out of excess will to keep them running, a person who ran herself into walls out of anger that they existed. 

Someone in a different program (AA) wrote something about this that I also return to in my mind, because it felt so true for me when I read it:

"...I hold on. I fight. I resist. It doesn't even matter what I resist; there is simply something in me that tends to resist things as they are. I have been fighting since I was very small. And I believe that my addiction was a response, in some measure, to the fact that the fight was futile, and I could not tolerate the fact that I didn't control the world. I could not, or would not learn to accept it."

- Marya Hornbacher

Waiting

So all that comes down to: tomorrow I will call my insurance.

And: today I'm turning over the possibility that my insurance company is of the nature to be confusing. My insurance company may be of the nature to make unjust decisions or mistakes. My bus is of the nature to be late. My customers are of the nature to send me emails about errors my company made with their orders. My coworkers are of the nature to make errors. 

(I imagine saying to myself, Ah, a complaint, right on schedule, instead of getting worked up.)

Expecting these things feels like turning a literal corner in my mind. It feels quite different from expecting perfection and being angry when something goes wrong. It feels like quite a relief.

"So remove your judgments whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay."

- Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

Books read in May 2023

1. Oona, by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Raissa Figueroa (2021)

A sweet and sweetly illustrated picture book. I love especially how the illustrator depicted Oona, our mermaid protagonist - like an actual little girl, wearing a summery tank top rather than one of those cursed shell bras, with the tail of a lion fish.

2. Oona and the Shark, by Kelly DiPucchio (2022)

Sequel. I liked the plot of this one more - the outgoing and stimulation-seeking Oona tries to win over a shy, quiet-loving shark! What a good tale for kids. 

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J.K. Rowling (1997)

A reread, of course.

4. Elmer and the Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett (1950)

I reread the first one, My Father's Dragon, recently for the first time in a very long time, and goodness, what a special series. I love the tone, the nonsense, the imaginativeness and especially the maps. A powerful throwback to the childhood road trip where my mom read these aloud to us (and completely captivated us for the duration). 

5. Password to Larkspur Lane, by Carolyn Keene (1933)

Another little something I haven't really touched since childhood (apart from when I read an old edition of the first Nancy Drew in college and discovered the aggressive racism that had been edited out in later editions). It's quite silly how mysteries and clues and coincidences just land in Nancy's lap...also how often she gets conked on the head and knocked unconscious by baddies. I remember even as a child being somewhat concerned about her health. But still kind of fun, and very quick. Also quaint seeing all her 1930s ways of finding information, e.g. an injured carrier pigeon has landed in her yard with a mysterious message? Why, she'll send a telegram to the association of pigeon fanciers with its serial number!

6. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS, by Azadeh Moaveni (2019)

This one has really lingered in my mind. The author is a journalist whose work I knew from her memoirs about living in Iran as an Iranian-American. She follows a number of individual young women involved with the Islamic State, mostly ones who traveled to join it (from Europe and North Africa) but a few Syrian women as well who found themselves living in an occupied homeland.

I learned quite a bit I didn't know about ISIS, about the global and regional contexts in which it arose (including the Syrian civil war, which I knew almost nothing about previously), and about the various contexts that lead women to choose to work for the group and live in its territory. Most haunting of all to me were the stories of four British schoolgirls who ran away as teenagers to live in a war zone they were told would be an Islamic utopia. 

I continue to find my thoughts turning to the information and stories contained in this book, and I would recommend it for anyone looking for better understanding of the above topics. It's gripping, and though it is serious, it is not as grim or depressing as it may sound.

Humorous side note: my library had this shelved with the books on spousal bereavement.

7. Rosewater, by Liv Little (2023)

Like The L Word, but about black millennials in London, and more artsy in tone. Wasn't much of a fan of the main romance because I wasn't much of a fan of the love object, but it was an engaging read.

8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling (1999)

Enjoyed this one more on a reread than I remembered. So many little buried clues and allusions.