Erbie, Arkansas

Erbie

    Ian,

     The crows are talking to each other in the canopy of trees here at the cabin. They sound like a pack of dogs, what are they saying? Each has a different voice, a different accent...I never noticed that before. One's voice low and gravely, another with a quivering timber; some screaming and some murmuring. Are they just making it known that these are their woods or trying to solve some family argument? Is it a family at all?

So much in this world I do not

understand, things living and playing at the drama of life. 

A damselfly nymph,

Daisies,

And a tortoise wearing a horribly cracked, yet healed shell.

I envy the healing.

A whole flutter of blue Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, delicate and shockingly perfect

But oddly devouring mud......

     I saw a shell of a craw fish and looked away, thinking it dead (you know I look away from death any time I am able); but then on closer inspection found it was just the discarded shell. I felt relief imagining the newer, more colorful and brighter fellow that burst forth. It made me think of you, Biggun. I put out bird seed in front of the cabin and this morning the black wax sunflower seeds and peanuts were gone, but tiny seeds remained. This means the crows and squirrels have been here first. It is another story of the woods.

     Giant boulders along the creek in a narrow gap that I found were cloaked in lacy blue lichen and thick fuzzy moss-occasional golden blooms at the end of a single hair sticking out of their eye brows. Some of these monsters were weeping moisture. Not dripping over the top or oozing from underneath; but moisture perspiring from within the rocks themselves, like the Russian Orthodox Icon weeping myrrh at the monastery in Blanco. Impossible but true, Ian.

     Sitting with Debbie in the cold springs, I look up into the canopy above us, and then to the waterfalls, water shoots....and down to the silt and minnows and water bugs below and I think of you,

as I always do when beauty finds me. And again in my head I hear murmuring (not unlike the crows); the whisper.....

I wish I could tell you with my human voice, instead of my crow-muttering, that everything I see and feel and do and wonder about...

dream and imagine and puzzle about.....

would be lovelier with you in my woods and by my side.

                                                                                                                         Love, Mom 

 

Memorial Day (archive 5/25/20)

 Memorial Day

(Archived 5/25/20 Day 880)

     Dear Ian,

         Just so you know, I told your cousin Chelsea that you are my hero.

I told her that I have been thinking of the word "memorial" coming from "memory", and another derivative, the word "remember". Funny to think that the word "member' is in there, too. 

MEMBER:   a person, animal, or plant belonging to a particular group; a constituent piece of a complex structure. a part or organ of the body, especially a limb.

Seemed so right to think of you on Memorial Day as all of these things, and also as one a bit more patriotic; more "memorable", so to speak....as someone brave. A WARRIOR...... Yes, we are supposed to remember our warriors, are we not?  

Yet you never died,                                                                                                                                  You never die, You never will. And I am so terribly proud of you in my sadness. You were a warrior to the cause, the real cause of all this spinning craziness. And I am proud.

In this world of ideas and frames, You are real, honest and whole...always were. Still are. It is no surprise to me, at all, that You have gone out to the furthest, most ancient realms of space and time. 

                                                                    To creation times.

When you were here with me, I never saw real fear or hesitance  in your desire to explore life, every edge and corner and nook of it; never faltered when there was a fight or a cause or a principle at stake. It was as if you had just not been born with that one human gene we all have....the one that makes a person unsure of where to put your foot.

You put your foot everywhere.

So I guess all this foot-putting was just practice for where you are now, out there and here in the vastness. Same heart power you have ever had, my warrior son. I am a proud Mom and I know the uniqueness of You...which makes me a little proud of me, too.

       Someday, I want you to tell me what you are learning in the wide open spaces of creation energy at the beginning and end of all things. I was never as brave as you, my warrior boy, but I always loved and saw you as a member of everything I am.

      And I am your consummate fan.

                                                                                  Love Mom

Solitude

Solitude

(5/7/20 archive)

Dear Ian,

No matter how solitary I feel, no matter how lonely and isolated and bereft of connection; the Universe and God and All seem to keep peeling away more people from my life. I've lamented for 20 years this aloneness I've begged God for more love, more humans to share my walk. I've prayed for a mate. Yet each year I have fewer friends and more diluted connection with those left: my kids, family, dear ones.

I see the irony more than ever. The more lonely I feel, the more alone I am.

A giant tug-o-war going on...

A winnowing

A pruning

A falling away of humans

Gradually I give in to it and have no idea where it will lead.

I have enough imagination (for short moments) to believe that all this is orchestrated for some purpose. I hope so. I miss you.....

                                                                                            Love,

                                                                                                         Mom