Shedding Light

Love the body of water sparkling and the birds singing as Laurie Anderson speaks to us.  Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

And this:



Still, it is sobering that U.S. voters (given that only a portion of the population chooses to vote) are so evenly divided and polarized.  Life in the balance.  Light alternating with darkness.

Here's what Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi wrote:

"Whatever clothing we wear, whatever persona we adopt, it's our job in this world to be human candles.  To shed light in the darkness, wherever we go."

Yoga with the Camera and the Birds

The photos were taken during my morning yoga practice a few days ago.  For the last few weeks, because I was not feeling well, I did not spend any time on my yoga mat.  It felt good to be back on my yoga mat. While I was performing the asanas, the sun was rising, and I was unable to resist interrupting the asana practice in order to grab my camera from the table and take some photographs while standing on the yoga mat. The second photo was taken through one of my windows, using the zoom function.  I resumed my yoga practice.  Then the moment came when I couldn't resist leaving the yoga mat and going out on my porch to take some black and white photos.  This is the best of those photos:

Again I returned to the yoga mat, but soon a flock of bushtits arrived, and their wings were illuminated by the rising sun.  Once again, I reached for my camera as I stood on the yoga mat:

If you turn the sound up, you will hear something from "Chants of India," by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison.  My camera is part of my yoga practice this time of year when it is light enough in the early morning to see outside.  There is more and more early morning birdsong as spring approaches.  

Swallow's Nest Mandala Revisited / "All The Little Birds"

This morning while reading at our local newspaper's website just before 7 a.m., I noticed this headline for an evening musical event.  For some reason -- unclear to me but significant in its outcome -- I clicked on the headline to read more.  These days I rarely go to any events in the evening because I go to bed very early so that I can wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. without needing an alarm clock and get 8 to 9-1/2 hours of sleep.  For that matter, I rarely go to live music events or public gatherings, preferring to spend my social time in walking and in meeting with friends daily at breakfast time.

There was something compelling about the intensity of the gaze of the young woman next to young man in the news article's photo, and the mention of "Child Ballads" drew me in further.  Next I clicked on the link to Anaïs Mitchell's website, while musing that she was likely named after Anaïs Nin. There I found myself moved by the fascinating shifting nature of the image on the cover of the album she had recorded with Jefferson Hammer.  Entering the website, I clicked on "Media" and went to her videos.  I scrolled down, and the words "Mad River Rising" caught my eye, as I had spent some time years ago near the Mad River in Humboldt County in Northern California.  What also caught my eye was the name "Daniel Houghton" as the director of the video and that the animation was done by students at Middlebury College in Vermont. On my mother's side of the family are people named Haughton who came from Ireland to Canada to New England, and I idly wondered if Daniel Houghton were a distant relative.  I also thought of bev and her new stringed instruments from Vermont.

This is a classic example of how I am drawn into the internet by chance clicks that lead me places I never expected to be -- where I feel things I never expected to feel, where things I never expected to heal can begin to heal through the creative efforts of others.

Before I left to meet with my friends, I had watched the first half of the video and found myself in tears but didn't want to be late for my friends.

Caught up in the stories of my friends, I forgot my tears until a few hours later when I returned home and finished watching the 13-minute video:



I didn't realize how much I had needed the relief of unexpected tears in these few days after the anniversary of my father's death in 2003 and the anniversary of yet another time that my Richard nearly died but was resuscitated in 2008.  He lived for another month -- just long enough for me to be able to visit with him in the ICU before he died in the afternoon of April 20, 2008.

Although I didn't pick up all the details on the first watching, the second time I did notice many significant details I had missed the first time including the Scandinavian knitting pattern that my mother had used when she made a pillow for me many years ago:

The pattern now seems to me to be of four little birds.

Here's the commentary for "Mad River Rising":



And footage of the Vermont flood of 1927:



Watching this little animated film today was healing for me on so many levels.  I take heart when I see what younger creative people are doing with their energy these days.  Although I won't be able to stay up late to hear Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer in person, I am grateful to have discovered them today through the magic of the internet.

(the photo at the top of the post came from a post of mine from 2010 called "Swallow's Nest Mandala.")