I loved this.

Adelene sent me this link.   http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/352241.html

During a PaB meeting I told this story:

It may take some persistance to meet and understand that favorite grandma. When i was very little..i hated one of mine. It took my whole life so far to get to know her..but about 10 years ago..at about 30...i learned who she was as a human being..she has fed me as a human being since then. Our compassion for each other has grown and grown..and both our souls are lighter for it.

We just became entangled for no apparant reason and leaned to hear each
other for what we were.

What was important to me in the story was that it wasn't a story of either of us changing to become someone different. She was still pretty much the same woman, and I was pretty much the same, too. She still yelled, complained about people and thought women had specific roles they should fill. I was still an ardent feminist of the kind that thinks women and men can choose their roles; still a lesbian; and still self rightous about both things.


As a result of our compassion for each other both of us HAVE changed. I'm not so self rightous about my beliefs. She has invited my partner to come stay at her house with me. She respects my opinion and I hers. From dislike and disinterest we have moved to a deep love. She is the same; I am the same. We know each other for what we are, "good" and "bad", "socially acceptable" and not. What seems to have happened, is that we learned to listen instead of trying to change the other..just to see clearly.

I believe that Love and compassion are NOT about looking for the good in others. It's about looking carefully, closely at what the other is, seeing it clearly, accepting it as it is.

I know..you're thinking..what if it is EVIL! I don't have an answer. I really don't. Still, I think compassion doesn't exactly ask us to decide if something is evil or not, wrong or not. That's a different kind of knowing, a different kind of choosing to accept or not.

Andy and me

I was at grown up party on a veranda dancing with a 2 year old.  A little girl came on the veranda and noticed me dancing.  

I left for a while to tour the home, and when I returned the little girl homed in on me..you know how it is with little kids sometimes?  They look at you then narrow their eyes a little and march bent at the waist just slightly forward...like little adorable sharks.   This one..had obviously mistaken me for another child.  Now...I'm 5'6" tall, and certainly do not look like a child..I'm not sure how this happened.

"What's your name?"

"Corvi.  What's yours?"

"Andy.  How old are you?"

"41, how old are you?"

"3"

"Well, that's a little difference in age" (I think I was trying to say...hey..kid...I'm a grown up!!!)

"Well, I'll be 4 de 1 soon."

I smiled...and laughed...and...she pulled out the big guns...a leaf!!!  "I'll tickle you!!!"  She said!

So I ran!!!! fasT Fast!!!  But I could not outrun the tickle monster.   Must have been the high heels.  We ran around that party for an hour...

That was fun.

I was cuddled by sting rays yesterday.  They are beautiful, soft...they feel like wet velvet.  At first we were shy of each other..I was allowed to brush their wings with a fingertip...some of them...some never allowed me to touch them, though they came close enough to see and smell me.  

I waited, listened to each ray by watching them move.  Each had it's own story to tell.  There were different kinds, and even within the kinds there were differences of size, shape, color, scarring.  As I lay my hand in the water, they chose how close to come, and if they came close..how to approach.  

One kept coming by...stroking my fingers and standing still as I stroked her wing, she kept trying to approach my flat hand face on: nose, mouth and eyes ...but I was too shy at first to let her.  Too frightened that she might bite me.  I jerked away, and she swam off the first few times she tried.  Finally, after she petted my hand several times, swimming not only under my fingers but under my palm and sitting there..I relaxed.  She swam up and faced me, and began to explore my fingers with her eyes, and "nose".  A few more passes round and she began to swim under and over my hand...tasting it perhaps with the mouth on the underside of her body..cuddling it, and swimming against it.  Finally, she began to tickle herself against my fingers...stroking them with her back then flicking her wings against them and jetting away.  

Another decided to move himself between my palm and the side of the tank, swimming tight against my palm for minutes at a time.

Another kept coming close, and flicking my fingers with her wing..unwilling to come closer than that.

They each had a personality, a history of their own.  I don't know what they were feeling, but I know we came into a relationship, whether I understand it or not.  I wish I could go talk to them more often, understand them better.  Hear them more clearly.

They are beautiful.

Meadow vision from PaB 3/15/09 7am

a vision of myself in a meadow laying down, becoming the meadow, decomposing the worms crawling in and out of the lifeless crow.  I feel delighted as meadow, grateful to be aware of myself as it instead of crow, flying apart from it.

I am meadow whether i am flying or not, lifeless or full of cackles.  I am meadow and moving still, arising still, patterns forming and new patterns forming in the interplay between all the little bits of me that think they are themselves.  Each worm, each crow, each flower thinks it is itself and i know that it is meadow.

An accidental vision of me seeing being seeing.

a little gratitude

This week, I've been a little nervous about looking too close, and find that even when I do the nine seconds I'm "distracted". I loooooook...feeeel...allooooow..but at a distance from myself, not with the sense of "now" and "real" that I'm used to experiencing.

Today, I looked, I felt, allowed and it was all there again, reminding me of what I had missed. Oddly enough, I DO miss it when it's not there...even though my practice of the nine seconds is usually rare and random. I think that means I've grown quite attached to being able to grab that experience when I want. :-)



Thanks to Sweetie for love and patience.