writing | Survision Creative

May This new year be filled with peace of heart and peace of mind…

The mists, gentle rain, pulsing winds and shining light of this corner of the world fill my heart’s cup. This is Middle Earth, with friendly hobbits, wizards and elves living in the timeless forest, freely offering sweet potions of wisdom and blessings to all.

As this new year begins, my resolutions swirl around my feet and float up above my shoulders, caressing me into feeling more faith in myself. Yes, I will (fill in the blank) and yes, I will (fill in the blank) etc. We’ll see how it goes.

A Sufi teaching says that gratitude is the key to will —and while I don’t yet understand that exactly, I am teasing out possible meanings. Steeping ourselves in gratitude – authentically counting our blessings: for life, for health, for shelter, for birdsong, clearly empowers us, if only to get up and out of bed in the morning!

To start the New Year, I also like to reflect quietly, and re-read passages from some of my favorite works. This year it’s Turgenev’s First Love, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, and Muslim Sufi mystic Inayat Khan’s unique symphony of truths, Vadan: “True love is without beginning or end…it is willing surrender…It is love that teaches us, Thou, not I.”

Following a theme of love and renewal, my favorite Pablo Neruda poem, from Extravagaria, has swum to the surface of my consciousness, so I’ll share it here:

This is where we live

I am one of those that live
in the middle of the sea and close to the twilight
a little beyond those stones.

When I came
and saw what was happening
I decided on the spot.

The day had spread itself
and everything was light
and the sea was beating
like a salty lion,
many-handed.

All that deserted space was singing
and I, lost and awed,
looking toward the silence,
opened my mouth and said:
“Mother of the foam,
expansive solitude,
here I will begin my own rejoicing,
my particular poetry.”

From then on I was never
let down by a single wave.
I always found the flavour of the sky
in the water, in the earth,
and the wood and the sea burned together
through the lonely winters.

I am grateful to the earth
for having waited
for me
when sky and sea came together
like two lips touching;
for that’s no small thing, no? –
to have lived
through one solitude to arrive at another,
to feel oneself many things and recover wholeness.

I love all the things there are,
and of all fires
love is the only inexhaustible one;
and that’s why I go from life to life,
from guitar to guitar,
and I have no fear
of light or of shade
and almost being earth myself,
I spoon away at infinity.

So no one can ever fail
to find my doorless numberless house –
there between dark stones,
facing the flash
of the violent salt,
there we live, my lover and I,
there we take root,
Grant us help then.
Help us to be more of the earth each day!
Help us to be
more the sacred foam,
more the swish of the wave!

“My soul is trembling in the wake of a colossal change,” I said —

“This is what you do,” replied a dear friend of many decades, reminding me of my life’s path so far, the cataclysms that have driven my personal evolution.

I’m sitting on my sheepskin beside the fire in the wood stove in a cabin built 150 years ago. I’m listening to Boris, the glorious Americana rooster sing his cock-a-doodle-doo. I’m watching Anna’s hummingbirds, one, two, four, five, seven and more, stream to the two feeders outside the window, their magenta head-dresses glowing in the muted light of this overcast day. The beams and shingles of the 19^th century cabin ceiling were crafted from hand-hewn redwood milled from this canyon long ago.

It wasn’t an easy process, leaving my four-bedroom home in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of endless corn and soybean farms in the middle of the continent. The neat widow’s nest I’d fluffed and sorted until it was just right, my late husband’s library organized by subject in the redwood bookshelves he’d built, my tribe of loving and creative friends, my well-appointed Little House on the Prairie. Four years of dramatic transition – and blessed support.

And now, back home.

The tender romance that blossomed before and during the months of my cancer treatment: beginning in a French bistro in Carmel, a cup of coffee and a hug, with the kind-hearted gentleman who went on to take care of me the week of my surgery and who swept me away back to the coast in a madcap road trip last month.

Feeling the blessing of my husband on the other side, who would want me to be cared for, loved and happy.

Now, feeling nostalgic for a place I wanted to leave for much of my time there. We human beings are such odd creatures. Perhaps it was the shock of all Big Sur’s easily forgotten details – cold bedrooms and hauling firewood, poison oak blooming on my arms and face from touching the pets, a dash of PTSD looking out at the wooded canyons all around this Little House in the Big Woods.

Small things, a small price to pay for the privilege of living in love, again.

The joys of touch, the warmth of hugs, of cuddling under the covers. A delightful man who brings me coffee in the morning, who kisses my feet and makes me laugh. Like, duh.

Such a decisive moment and when did this change begin? A query from my sweetheart’s spiritual daughter, a beekeeper and animal rescuer who visited us this week.

It began in the moments when I realized I might have only 5 years to live. Wouldn’t one last chapter be sweet? My gentle knight in shining armor consoled me, telling me over and over that I would be OK, and we agreed we wanted to spend this next chapter together. So here we are.

Now begins a time of forest bathing, star-gazing, and luminous healing in domestic bliss.

Even a spiritual warrior trembles on the brink. She wonders about choices and consequences, longs for what is past, then clarifies her priorities in order to move forward with a peaceful and courageous heart.

And away we go!