As we approach Earth Day, if we are doing so observantly, there is grief suffusing the gratitude. Although the dualistic human mind can’t actually entertain both at the same time, the whole human being not only can but usually does, because gratitude lives within grief; it is appreciation for something that promotes a sense of loss when it is gone or threatened.
Grief is a most sacred flavor of Life, a sacred flavor of Love, and like Love, and Life (and fear and anger…), grief comes in its own spectrum of flavors. In the course of any given week, the prism of humanity is displaying all of them.
I had occasion to appreciate my own little personal rainbow this week. No complaint about that, nor complaint that there were no great prize-winning grief avalanches in my immediate world this week. I bow to the many with whom those landed. But my good fortune made it possible to savor grief’s subtler characters, and kept gratitude in the conversation.
I did experience a minor avalanche a few weeks ago, when, against my better judgement, I attempted to follow “recommended dosage” on a regimen intended to chelate and detox Mercury from my system. Such substances can make mischief with any metabolism, especially a sensitive one, but sometimes the cure can feel worse than the malady. I had to stop, and took some weeks to reset my good humor and functionality. I have now re-commenced the regimen this week, building incrementally from tiny doses, and observing the affects with humility and wonder.
As I did, I could more consciously track the swelling of grief out of my tissues into my psyche. As I had suspected, at least some of these heavy metal deposits were somehow bound with, and liberating in their departure, old un-metabolized psychic and emotional material. I could feel the bud of grief opening under my sternum, the slow burn pressure to cry for no reason. With it, though, a sense of being more alive, as it sizzled there through the day, an alchemical frontier, a controlled burn of proportions manageable enough for me to both appreciate it and, so far, function around it.
This thickened and quickened atmosphere in my field served to cast other poignant moments (more than I can recall) in higher relief:
Dictionary.com’s word for the day Friday was Farouche. I did not know the word, but I noted an instant rapport, even before reading the definition. It felt more pleasing in my body than my own name, as if speaking to a shape more native than my current form.
While I don’t want to be defined as “sullenly unsociable or shy,” I suspect at least two people reading this blog, who have lived with me, might see me in that description. As I read deeper into the etymology, I conceded a smile:
“Farouche comes from Old French. Prior to that, farouche may come from Late Latin forāsticus, “belonging outside,” from Latin forāsor forīs, “outside, out of doors,” which is the source of foreign, forest, and forfeit. “
I have written before that I am more comfortable outdoors than in buildings, often more comfortable in solitude than in conversation. Recently at Dance Camp, I found myself dancing along with the group just outside the circle. I felt more free and comfortable there, a moon orbiting just outside Saturn’s main ring, connected with and contributing to the circle energetically, but free to move unencumbered, less oppressed physically, less overwhelmed psychically. This, I assume is because that moon, my moon, is in Aquarius, the sign often described as “aloof.”
Therein lies the rub. It seems when I am indoors and in most human company, I am in the land of a second language. I am in Rome, doing as Romans do, nervous system always vigilant, heart always a little homesick.
Then there were all the opportunities my scarcity-sensitized psyche had this week to feel the ache and pinch of “under-fundedness,” and to wonder what, if anything, more was mine to do about it. I won’t recite here the litany of wants, needs and exigencies indefinitely postponed. I’ve said my prayers, offered it up, and given humble thanks at the creative dispensation of providence I’ve already seen: Negative windfalls, like a discount on rent, sizable car repair costing less than estimated, etc.
Then, yesterday, my dear old Vitamix went quiet, and while we all might feel relief when a power blender is silenced, I think the motor expired with finality. This is a tool and a friend I may not have the resources to replace. Not only did I spend some elegiac moments appreciating my trusty kitchen companion, which has served me through many kitchenless years; but I also bowed deep, anew, to the dear friend who gifted it to me during one of my extended sojourns caring for my mother. Words fail, and even now bounty prevails.
If I am open and patient, each of these moments is followed by a counter blessing, to make me sigh with achy wonder at the mystery of Grace, and the limits of my understanding. How delicious the taste of grief in Humble Pie.
In order to retrieve my vehicle, after the above mentioned repairs this week, I had to briskly walk 45 minutes to the auto shop in busy traffic and boisterous wind. I was grateful to have been physically capable to do that (as there are times when I cannot); still, I was very tired afterward when I encountered an email from my stepmother that quietly and uncannily triggered a splendid cocktails of feelings and ideations I’d not felt in quite some time. Such an opportunity it was to distinguish past self from present self, to parent the child within, and to ache with both Love and Grief at once, to expand and contract, to know and not know, at the same time, in the same space.
The last sample from this week’s personal palate of grief is a matter of the pinon. After years of drought stress, the piñon trees in our area are dying. I’d already noticed with sinking heart the increasing number of brown trees littering the sweeping slopes, when a park ranger friend confirmed for me what is happening. I’ve seen similar with pine beetle kill in Colorado. HIllsides gone brown and denuded. The sight activates primal sensibilities of “amiss-ness.” This week I found my senses registering exemplars more vividly, as if petitioned for tribute.
I scribbled down some musings in unfinished elegy….And all around, so far, the junipers thrive.
(Once again I apologize the I cannot get this WordPress page to honor the intended formatting, which delineate the lines below into four irregular stanzas. Put them where you want them.)
Death of a Pinion
The pinons are dying.
These once thriving appendages of the One Life
shedding brown eyelash fringe off rough, black skeleton hands
as life withdraws to find new veins to fill and flow through.
From the outside it looks like death.
But it is only a change in course
for an unstoppable river.
As I drove into the morning sun
To walk among trees,
Away from my species,
The young man in the left turn lane
Motioned me to open my window.
It’s 50 mph back there.
I just smiled, turned back to my own road,
and watched –
as my window finished closing –
the words I might have said
assemble in my head
in piqued letters of a color
somewhere between
wisdom and has-been,
Speed LIMIT, not requirement.
Opinions are dying.
All the commentary and facts
that fed certainty,
and identity,
The mind’s life run itself out
in a tangle of fruitless branches,
dry gullies, dead ends.
Fuselage of an old miracle.
Its glory unquestioned
Its story abandoned.
From the inside it feels like death.
But is this not just Life’s investment adapting
to cleaner burning intelligence?
The water of life flows around the old,
not stopping to condemn or complain,
Dreaming, always, of an all ways journey
From Home, to Home,
Being everywhere, traveling nowhere.
ML April 2023
taodaughter 