Stormy

Thought of the day after Suzuki class, "There is tension in stillness."  That just helps with all of it.  (Has to do with what I was doing with my arms, and also a competition that we had to see who could be the most still in between moving.)  This was the last day of the intensive, the drop-ins are only 1x/week.  I want to find a way to keep practicing (with other people), but the time of it is hard for me.  I just feel so grounded, like I have to work to pull my feet off of the floor, and that when they touch the ground again, they are in full contact.  I like that, not a common state for me.  Also, other stuff related to acting and emotional withholding came up and I want to work through it.  I'm finding a relationship with the emotional and the physical that I'd like to spend more time exploring.

We are now having a thunderstorm.  When I walked up the stairs after class it was dumping rain, and then by the time I got my jacket on, it had stopped.  So, I got back to work in the dry window, even patches of blue sky, but that's gone now.  Dark, thunder, wind kicking up.

Lot of information today, I wanted to remember this poem by Kabir, a reminder for me that now is all we've got.  Everything important that you think you can keep putting off, what would you regret if the opportunity to change things, to say things, to do things, were suddenly taken away?
 
The Time Before Death - Kabir (Robert Bly Translation)

Friend? hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think... and think... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time
            before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
          City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
that does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

Monday in January

Woke up with a horrible headache, dehydration, but I might as well have been drinking.  We ran around playing follow the leader last night, and I didn't drink enough after.  It went on for a while.  By the time I managed to drag myself to the store to get ibuprofen this morning, I had drunk enough water that the headache had mostly subsided.  I didn't do anything for MLK Day.  Read and cleaned and got rid of more stuff at home.  Came across this quote from Kabir (as quoted in John Brierley's A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino Portugués- Someone asked me about the Camino de Santiago yesterday, so it's been on my mind.) :

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive,

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think...and   think...while you are alive.

What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death,

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

Do you think ghosts will do it after?

 

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

Just because the body is rotten-

That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

 

If you find nothing now,

You will simply end up with an apartment in the city of death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life

You will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out Who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

 

Went for a walk near dusk.  Wanted pictures of birch trees.  Here are a couple of those.

Birch, Jan 20/L Herlevi 2014

Dusk, Jan 20/L Herlevi