April 2, 2020
Today’s
idea – I read a John Steinbeck quote in today’s Brain Pickings dispatch that reminds
me of healthy grasslands. “All the
goodness and heroism will rise up again, then be cut down and rise up.” He
wrote that during WWII. It seems to me that whatever we assign to be evil and those
things we hold up as good have always cycled round and round one another
through time and space and attitudes and cultural appropriateness or
inappropriateness. They feed each other, they abide together, they fight and
make up. My Lakota friends shared their news with me, “Keep praying in
ceremony. We have been told to keep
praying and when the grass turns green again, this sickness will be over.” Here is more evidence of the vital need to
tend to the prairies and meadows of our heart space. Awake, asleep, awake, asleep, in safety, in
peril, in safety, in peril, here and gone, here and gone, here! Sometimes, don’t
your days feel like a light switch under a toddler’s thumb? Life can feel like
a flicker.
Today’s
observation – It grew balmy today, the kind of day when we can be fooled into
thinking the world is normalizing. Maybe
incrementally it is. And I have been grateful to live with a small clutch of
people on a five-acre campus in a small rural city. I took my quarantined self out for a walk
with my pooch, he ran me to the Mississippi river following his nose along a
zigzag scent trail. We were mostly alone on the walkways, if you don’t another count
the litter and the geese, a cyclist whizzing past here and there. I imagined the wild creature within me crooned
to the ghost moon and welcomed the wind. How it cut through trees clearing out
dead limbs and rattling empty seed pods on the tall brittle stalks of last autumn’s
perennials. A drum roll for the world renewing itself regardless of what we
want that to mean. We are swept up in it
too, one way or another. Walking back up
a side street to campus, a little boy was combing his toes through fresh blades
of grass in his postage stamp size front yard, his mother watching him from the
stoop. He glanced at me and my dog, sized
us up and asked, “Are you bringing me my schoolwork soon?” I’m wearing sweats
and a t-shirt with sneakers, dressed incognito, I think. Apparently, my professor-ness or teacher
attitude shines brighter, and I respond, “I’m not that person today sweetie.” We exchange smiles, and he waves me on. There is no hiding some things.
Today’s
image – Soon we will all be wearing cloth masks, the word on the street is that’s
about to be a thing. That means in
America, there will bloom a new fashion trend, requiring growing wardrobes of face
masks. We’ll collect them like t-shirts
and handbags. Bands will sell them for
souvenirs beside their CD’s, and school’s will add them to their fan gear. We
can take a cue from Beijing or Phnom Penh, make them haute couter fashion items.
I’d better get busy sewing!
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