Water of life

Today our toilet was blowing steam from beneath the closed lid, the tank having mysteriously filled with hot hot hot water and sending out burnt vapor. It sounded and looked like a hell mouth opening up!

It gave me a chance to remember that we are all connected in this building: us tenants, our contractor landlord and his errant knight plumber, and the downstairs ceramic artists who alchemize out of earth, water, air, and fire. We take for granted that most of the time healthy veins and arteries keep things moving in our dear 1870's building.

Recently an oil tanker ran into the Bay Bridge, causing a nasty spill into San Francisco Bay and our coastal waters. People came out in droves to rescue oiled birds and clean up beaches they love so much. Feeling spurred people to action.

Hillary Clinton notably showed great emotion in New Hampshire the other day. For someone so controlled and often sharp edged, she revealed her human frailty by speaking from the heart and nearly crying. That has been the demise of other politicians, but letting people see her real, unscripted self won her some votes.

And here winter rainstorms and high winds have conspired to uproot our trees, wash away embankments, and keep some of us in the dark while PG & E wires us up again. What are we taking for granted in our fast lives? For some, candle light means we talk close and get enough sleep. For others, it's a reminder that technology is one thing, forces of nature another.

Thanks to the water for teaching me about the flow of emotion, how it needs to be released at regular intervals.

Subject to Change

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

John Muir, that great friend of the wilds, knew that Nature is constantly in motion. Each being follows its own rhythm and cycle of change.

Those creative people who are naturalists of the human condition, experience metamorphosis in themselves and others all the time. Those with longevity, like Bob Dylan, have many lives and modes of creation as they chase their ever restless curiosity. Ever willing to be transformed, they transform others. Fans who get attached to one period or epoch may not fully appreciate that art and music and all things alive never stand still.

Even if you do not consider yourself creative, you are nonstop creative process. With each inhalation, you take on new form. On the exhale, you dissolve. We have an idea, try it out, retune it, and launch it out in the world. The response we get and our urge to create again leads to another branching idea and project. Living, breathing humans are transformation embodied.

We may shy away from this notion, for it returns us again and again to the dreaded Not Knowing. We get attached to what we know and are fearful about losing that certainty. We get stuck. We forget to wonder at the new beginning that this ending brings. If only we could trust the flow of life, we'd be carried on by the creative process and our soul evolution.

As always, to be continued...

Flying into Windows

Thud, thwack! The goldfinches are at it again. Maybe it's the angle of the light reflecting off our bay windows. Maybe the birds are brain addled or berry drunk. Or maybe they're just like us.

For whatever reason, our goldfinches have taken to flying into our closed windows. Their chests go thud, and their beaks and claws scrabble against the glass. I once watched one rise up above the sill triumphantly, after dozens of attempts to fly up. It paused there, then went right back to the launchpad branch. Thud, thwack, scrabble.

I've tried to hang things in the window, tape colored paper there. I've talked with them through the open window, to warn them about hurting themselves. They cock their heads and look at me, but apparently I don't speak finch.

I take them on as mirrors and teachers:

- in what ways do I repeatedly slam into windows?

- what am I trying to reach on the other side?

- am I persevering or just not learning from my mistakes?

How pitiable we all are. Or is it faithful? Without memory of failure, we launch ourselves with strong wings.

Welcome!

I'm writing out of a desire to connect with other people who root themselves and their creative lives in the natural world. I'll be sharing how contact with nature in the city and beyond sparks my art and writing and my daily life as a work of art. I invite you to share how nature supports your creative life.

- Gratitude and Blessings, Carol