Monday, March 28, 2011

Rain

I slept splendidly through a night of steady, cold rain and awoke to a deluge of a day.  My thoughts seem squishy and damp, just like this day.  Ruminating a recently written poem feels like the entirety of my morning’s musing.

The Rain

Where is the green growing place in which dreams plant abundant offerings, food
desire.  Tomatoes ripe red or possibly pomegranates fat with scarlet seeds that tempt
Persephone tied to the underworld with a mate to whom much has been promised
within whose ebony root cellar sprawl permanently entangled shoots in shared soil
after pollination rise sprigs of new life.  Figs feel more compelling than apples.  Figs
should have been the forbidden fruit trickling from woman’s hunger dropping seeds
into grass amid flowers.  Tulips budding hot fuscia array guarding purple white turnips
forming unseen beside squash and eggplant and beans, sensible vegetables of lesser
temptation but also in need of water.  As for rain no one knows if it will come or not.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Equinox

Last night at 23:31 Earth was for a moment standing straight up with its axis pointing neither away from nor toward the sun – at an equinox.  This equinox marks spring for the Northern Hemisphere (vernal equinox), fall for the Southern Hemisphere (autumnal equinox).  Whatever season we are heading into we Earth dwellers were all held in a moment of balance between an equal day and night. 
Wikipedia explains that equinox occurs twice a year when the center of the Sun is in the same plane as Earth’s equator.  The name “equinox” is from Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night) denoting that night is of equal length north and south of the equator.  An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days) around March 20/21 and September 22/23 each year.  On a day of the equinox, the center of the Sun spends a roughly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the Earth.
A time of balance sounds great.  Our healthy human physiology thrives in balance.  Balance of alkalinity versus acidity.  Insulin and glucagon are used to keep the amount of blood glucose in our bodies in balance.  Our kidneys work all day to maintain salt and ion levels in homeostasis.  When we are out of balance physically the body will manifest illness.  Our physical bodies are a complicated system working constantly for balance.
But what of our mental and emotional need for balance?  Imbalance in the non-physical self can manifest illness as well.  In the natural passage of time a moment to be in equilibrium benefits us physically and emotionally.  At times the psychological quest feels like a seesaw relentlessly rising up and falling down so that I’m either riding high or crashing suddenly onto my behind as if someone jumped off the other end.  Other times, mental balance feels to me just a moment that passes, much like the moment of equinox.  I can get there, but I cannot stay.  Work and play.  Expenditure and rest.  Eating well versus eating junk.  Sleeping and staying up late.  Exercising and not exercising.  Knowing the “right” thing to do for balance and actually doing it are two different challenges.
I know I feel best when I am able to keep my mind in balance.  Certainly I’m hoping to do better than just two moments a year in a state of balance.  Perhaps this marking of the Earth’s equal posture can stand as a seasonal reminder of our need for balance, our need to be aware of keeping certain life things in suitable relationship as we mark the forward passage of time.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Dormant

My lawn is brown.  Stubbly sticks of centipede grass appear dead.  This is disturbing to my four year old daughter.  I know in a matter of weeks green will come, along with growing and mowing of grass.  This is something I believe because I have seen it come to pass year after year.  She does not have this experience.      

Dictionary.com’s first six entries for dormant are
1.  lying asleep or as if asleep; inactive, as in sleep; torpid:  The lecturer’s shout woke the dormant audience.
2.  a state of rest or inactivity; inoperative; in abeyance:  The project is dormant for the time being.
3.  biology in a state of minimal metabolic activity with cessation of growth, either as a reaction to adverse conditions or as part of an organism’s normal annual rhythm
4.  undisclosed; unasserted:  dormant musical talent
5.  (of a volcano) not erupting
6.  botany temporarily inactive:  dormant buds; dormant seeds

Today, as with most of my musings, roots with questions.  How to explain dormant to a child?  My daughter has been in extreme physical growth for her entire four years of life.  A state of minimal metabolic activity has yet to happen to her!  She has no articulate memory of past year’s winter changing to spring.  Perhaps next year she will remember.  We older humans, as creatures of biology, certainly remember the normal annual rhythms of nature and have felt them within ourselves, too.  Times of growth, times of cessation, times of renewal.  In earlier periods greater numbers of people lived connected to the cycles of seasons and were perhaps more aware of their own changes parallel to those of the earth.  Now, as we have artificial light, alarm clocks, and twenty-four hour access to all sorts of foods from all over the world all year long we may not see clearly seasons of plenty and sparse except in the color of lawns and shrubbery.


What are the lessons of dormant?  Waiting and wondering are part of living.  We are participants in normal annual rhythm.  Finding oneself latent for a while is of benefit.  Allowing oneself to rest is natural and essential.  The dark times, the times that may look like sleep, can be a cessation of growth.  Cessation of growth is needed to store up for future growth and rest from past growth (sometimes painful).  We must at times be in the dark where there is knowledge to gain.  Being dormant is temporary.  Inactivity is not beneficial forever.


Brown to budding to blooming to buzzing to bearing fruit then dropping to dormant to go around again.  Eventually every life form, be it plant or person, is called forth to grow whether the child believes it will happen or not.   


Explaining Dormant
Tiny peeps from a back seat, why is the grass brown?
It is not dead, deep down it is alive in its roots, shoots waiting
waiting for the sun to warm us; we are tilted away now, our axis
leaning into the dark to let time teach change.  It will come
green again.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Yes

One reason yes is on my mind is from the Power of Intention Perpetual Flip Calendar based on Dr. Wayne W. Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention.  The entry was not for a recent date.  It was for August 6, the day displayed after my four-year-old daughter flipped the pages even though I told her "no" she could not play with mommy’s tablet.  The entry indicated that saying yes more frequently and almost completely eliminating no was basically saying yes to life. 

I am outnumbered by my children three to one.  Loads of requests come my way.  Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the number of times I say "no" in a day.  Stand in the bathroom sink to see in the mirror?  Go to Target in the fifteen minutes between piano lessons and soccer practice?  Sign up for another after school club even though we are already involved in student council and recycling club?  Go to bed without brushing teeth, again?  I do not wish to grant these requests to avoid the word "no" but want to use "yes" more.

Dictionary.com defines yes with several entries; three are listed. 
·         noun – an affirmative reply
·         verb (used with an object) – to give assent or approval to
·         interjection – a strong expression of joy, pleasure, or approval

I think Wayne Dyer makes a good point.  I recall the 2008 Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man.  The commitment to an affirmative reply to every question posed was hilarious.  Jim Carrey’s character could have harmed himself countless ways and married a foreign mail order bride, but ultimately he felt freed and happy.  As I attempt more affirmative replies, I feel that same twisted face Carrey showed as I force myself to allow things I might initially deny.  Can my daughter wear a flowered shirt with butterfly pants and rain boots?  Can my son use the computer to look up every Pokémon and print them all out?  Can my eldest use my favorite nail polish to paint her toenails?  Can they have an Icee that will color their teeth and tongues blue for the entire day?  Can we stay up past bedtime to watch an IBM computer play Jeopardy?   

Doling out assent does raise positive energy.  But, yes is a tricky word.  It must be handled carefully so as not to overextend ourselves, commit to things beyond healthy limits, or allow actions which are harmful or unreasonable.  Expressions of approval can reside in how we phrase answers.  Yes, I will help at school by baking brownies AND yes, I respect my limited time by not volunteering for field day.  Yes, you may spend your allowance on another pair of flip flops AND yes, you can wear them any day except for P.E. day.      

My daughter did no harm playing with my calendar.  I could have said yes to her request.  I could have used a variety of synonyms:  all right, okay, sure, yep, yeah.  Yes, we can use some of these today.