Middle season 27

 

Sedum. Fullersburg.. Changing seasons in 2 leaves. Rose reblooms in back yard

Mimetic Desires

 

How to know what you really want

In this 5-minute video by Big Think, Author Luke Burgis breaks down the difference between “thick” and “thin” desires and introduces the concept of mimetic desires. Mimetic desires are imitative and influenced by our external life, like our parents, friends and community. They are considered thin because they are ephemeral and not worth feeding. Thick desires are the ones that are aligned with our core and universal human truths, like growth and beauty and kindness. Burgis suggests it’s worth mining your life and reflecting on moments when you felt deeply fulfilled in order to identify patterns that point to what you really want. Lately, whenever I feel pulled toward a particular direction, I ask myself if this is a thin or thick desire and then decide if it’s worth my time and effort.

7 Types of Rest

 

@DrDaltonSmith's TED talk basis

The landscape of now keeps changing

JKZ Episode #39

The landscape of now keeps changing. The winds of change blowing slowly or ferociously. 

Put your ear to the rail and listen deeply for what is called for now and follow the glide path. 

Practice of apprehending the full dimensionality of experience coming at you, coming toward you, in front of you, behind you, all sides of you.  

Taking up residency here in space of your own awareness.  

Silence, stillness become the coin of the realm.

* * *

The image above is taken at Spring Rock Park.  I've been running there on Mondays for a few months.  I sit at a bench by the basketball court at the bottom of the hill.  There is a garden club garden there.  I can watch as the seasons change week by week.  

Not too long ago, my after-work run felt like it was in the bake oven of the day.  And the sunlight has changed. Now (8 weeks into work) it's late afternoon sun, a sense of changing temperatures.

This past Monday, I wrote this in the after run:

Bumble bees at the sedum. Asters glowing with afternoon autumn sun.

This morning I noticed on my bike ride to work that orange locust tree leaves filled a gutter.

Unrepeatable Miracles

rose in back yard blooming again

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. 

Tara Brach

Maple and Birds

Mori Ippo (1798-1871) Maple and Birds

 Saw this at the Art Institute of Chicago today.

Equinox. Changing seasons.

 

Jane Hirshfield "How Rarely I Have Stopped to Thank the Steady Effort"

 How Rarely I Have Stopped to Thank the Steady Effort

by Jane Hirshfield

A person speaking
pauses, lets in
a little silence-portion with the words. 
It is like an hour. 
Any hour. This one. 
Something happens, much does not.
Or as always, everything happens:
the standing walls keep
standing with their whole attention.
A noisy crow call lowers and lifts its branch,
the crow scent enters the leaves, enters the bark,
like stirred-in honey gone into the tea.
How rarely I have stopped to thank
the steady effort of the world to stay the world.
To thank the furnish of green
and abandon of yellow. The ancient Sumerians
called the beloved “Honey,” as we do.
Said also, “Borrowed bread is not returned.”
Like them, we pay love's tax to bees, 
we go on arranging the old notes in different orders. 
Desire inside A C A G G A T.
Forgiveness in G T A C T T.
In a world of space and time, arrangement matters.
An hour has no front or back, except to those whose eyes face forward,
whose tears blur thought and stars. 
Five genes, in a certain arrangement, 
will spend this life unrooted, grazing. 
It has to do with how the animal body comes into being,
the same whether ant or camel. 
What then does such unfolded code understand, 
if it finds in its mouth the word important-
the thing that can be carried, or the thing that cannot,
or the way they keep trading places,
grief and gladness, the comic, the glum, the dead, the living.
Last night, the big Sumerian moon
clambered into the house empty-handed
and left empty-handed, 
not thief, not lover, not tortoise, just looking around,
shuffling its soft, blind slippers over the floor. 
This felt, to me, important, and so I looked back with both hands
open, palms unblinking.
What caused the fire, we ask, meaning, lightning, wiring, matches.
How precisely and unbidden
oxygen slips itself into, between those thick words

Link to LeapingClear

Middle Season #26

 

Lead A Quiet Life

Claude Monet, 1896

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands.”

—1 Thessalonians 4:11 

From Austen Kleon, quoting the writer Hanif Abdurraqib:

truly cannot stress how enthusiastically I’ve tried to convert my pals to The Church Of Minding One’s Own Business — has served me on every level imaginable over the past several years.

not even as a “no thoughts, head empty” thing, but my commitment to minding my own business sharply clarifies what I consider my business and what I absolutely do not, and so it realigns my focus, my depth of care for the things I DO care about, my actual & literal energy, etc

like, quite plainly, I think I love the ppl/things I love much better (& am more open/available/curious to love NEW ppl/things!) because of the space I save simply by understanding what I don’t have interest in knowing any more about

I think because we get tangible windows into the lives of others all day, it can be easy to be convinced that the window entitles one to a depth of knowing, but I have to resist that because I can turn back to the concrete/real knowing, the potential for new knowing, etc

Wainright Coast-to-Coast Walk

 Recently heard about the Wainright Coast-to-Coast Walk across northern English.  Here's an article about it.

Some Autumn Haiku!

Bluebird on a Maple Branch, by Ohara Shōson, 1935

singing to 

the crescent moon 

autumn cicadas   

Ogawa

------

after a long day 

even taking a bath 

is work  

Issa

----

autumn wind 

fragrance from a 

late blooming flower  

Basho

How to avoid criticism

Willow and Crows, attributed to Katsushika Hokusai, 1842

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Aristotle

Jane Hirshfield "Works & Loves"

 Works & Loves

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

               1

Rain fell as a glass

breaks,

something suddenly everywhere at the same time.

               2

To live like a painting

looked into from more than one angle at once —

eye to eye with the doorway,

down at the hair,

up at your own dusty feet.

               3

“This is your house,”

said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket,

and I entered.

               4

The happy see only happiness,

the living see only life,

the young see only the young,

as lovers believe

they wake always beside one also in love.

               5

However often I turned its pages,

I kept ending up

as the same two sentences of the book:

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.

               6

A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain

but not by its flies.

               7

The grief

of what hasn’t yet happened —

a door closed from inside.

The weight of the grass

dividing

an ant’s five-legged silence

walking through it.

               8

What is the towel, what is the water,

changes,

though of we three,

only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.

               9

“I was once.”

Said not in self-pity or praise.

This dignity we allow barn owl,

ego, oyster

Middle Season 25

 

Unofficial start of fall

 

From our CSA

The dryness has delayed a few of our late plantings as it is hard to get germination without a good rain. There is a chance next week so we will be seeding spinach, radishes, and arugula on Monday. We still have another round of lettuce transplants as well. The first round of cover crops are all in the ground waiting for a rain to get them growing. The plus side of the dryness is perfect harvest weather every day and less rot in the field. Labor day is the unofficial start of fall for us so we will start harvesting winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes and apples in mass for the next month before we see a frost. It's hard to believe summer is almost over.

The dryness has delayed a few of our late plantings as it is hard to get germination without a good rain. There is a chance next week so we will be seeding spinach, radishes, and arugula on Monday. We still have another round of lettuce transplants as well. The first round of cover crops are all in the ground waiting for a rain to get them growing. The plus side of the dryness is perfect harvest weather every day and less rot in the field. Labor day is the unofficial start of fall for us so we will start harvesting winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes and apples in mass for the next month before we see a frost. It's hard to believe summer is almost over. 

Plant seeds: spinach, Simpson lettuce, mesclun, radish; wind chime bed: radish; back garden: rocket, spinach

Jane Hirshfield "Twelve Pebbles"

 this is a section of the poem "Twelve Pebbles" by Jane Hirshfield

Making & Passing

New new new new new

bluster the young birds in spring.

An old branch hold them.

Generation.

Strange word: both making and passing.