Beginning(s): The Story

There is so much to say, I don't know where to begin. I sit here frozen at the keyboard with beginning after beginning flashing to mind. I want to tell the story, that's it. I want to say how I came to be here, on this page, on the second of September, after having launched this blog on September first. I want to tell of my excitement of beginning. And I want to tell how this is hardly a beginning at all. How I've been riding this Freeway for years now, but have pretty much kept that fact to myself.

Well, I'm coming out!

I could say what landed me here was the purchase/gift of a digital camera last November. Playing with that camera evolved a passion. Not for taking pictures, per se, and certainly not posed pictures. Anyone who has ever been near me and a camera at the same time knows I hate posed pictures, strongly favoring candids. But I don't suppose many know why. I haven't said, really. Until now. And that's all part of the coming out.

I met a channel (a woman who channels information from 'the beyond') last year whose spontaneous (channeled) message to me at the time opened the ground up a little for me. Her words scratched the hard earth of me such that something buried there could sprout, and sprout it has. Its first little worm-of-a shoot appeared. Cotyledons gave way to first leaves. First leaves parted for the second and third leaves. The seedling has reached adolescence, which you are now regarding by way of this blog. Full-flower adulthood is yet to come, but coming.

What am I talking about?

Giving voice to the earth's heart, being its mouthpiece: that's one way to say it. That's how the channel put it. And since that day with her sitting by Jamaica Pond now two summers ago, I have turned an ear toward that...charge? Invitation? Call? All feel true. In retrospect, I see my intimate relationship with the earth and its various bounties is a long-standing one. It is only in this past year and some that I've begun to understand the extent of that relationship. The camera clinched it. On the macro setting, and playing around with aperture and such, I've seen: morning glory, creeping phlox, bearded iris, poppies, cosmos--flowers I've looked at year after year--as if for the first time. No, not as if, for the first time. There are worlds in there. Tiny little worlds I had no idea about. I would load the card into the computer, and gasp. Each time, each photo session, I would find something all new, something I didn't even know I'd shot. A surprise. A miracle.

There's looking and there's seeing, after all. John Berger has written beautifully about this in Ways of Seeing--and maybe in About Looking too, for all I know; I haven't read it. And I could go on and on about this, but I won't. And I could share images, which I shall--here's one: nasturtium or crucible? And you will look or see--hopefully, see. But in the meantime, there is the that. The 'what I saw,' see. And there is the impulse to share it. No, not share it, BLARE it. Rave on and on about the perfection, the order, the PLENTY, the humor, the lightness, the insignificance. About the stories, the lessons, the complete, unselfconscious flagrance. Just the color alone! To view one then the next then the next of the array of flowers--wild, cultivated; annual, perennial--that I have captured on "film" is to be bathed in wash after wash of rich color, from the subtle of the pastel to the vibrant intensity of the jewel tones. But never mind all that magnificence. Get this: life just DOES this. With or without our attention, our notice, our care, our neglect. Life just does this, and needs nothing for it--no praise, no encouragement, no nothing.

To be like the flowers - do you see where I'm going with this?

Have you fretted today? Stressed about something? What have you resisted today? For me, it's this that I have been resisting, saying all this. And all along the way, as I type, I feel the interference threatening to stop me. "Who cares? You're too scattered! Where is this going to get you?" These and more want me to give up. But I won't give up. I concede that I will be clunky with this at first - so what? I am new to this, speaking for the earth, expressing its very heart. It's no small job, and feels to me to be an important one. Part of me wants to say "You picked the wrong gal. Find someone who's more structured, less poetically inclined: she'll get the job done!" But truth be told, I do want this job. I've already accepted it, in fact. And I know how to succeed with it: just give Love its way with me.

JUST!

I'm learning. It's a process. Late last summer, I spent a couple of days in a powerful place, by a river at the foot of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. What makes this place powerful for me is that it is so c l e a r. Think no static interference; just the program itself, and nothing between you and it. Anyway, long story short, I "channeled" a poem there--while swimming, no less. It may sound weird to say, but I'll say it anyway: it was as if the earth was speaking to me. As if? As if I were taking dictation, listening and picking up the words. But they did not come independent of the environment. Damselflies, joe pye weed, sapling birches and pines, fallen trees, the kingfisher: all these spoke to/through me. And I put it all down as best I could once I was finally back with pen and notebook after returning from the pond. Ask me about "Wakefield," if you're curious about the poem. Or maybe I'll post it later. But in any event, the point is this: I listen, and respond. Like the flowers, you might say. At my 'best,' that is. It's no longer second nature (interesting term!) anymore, if it ever was, for us to BE so purely, so unselfconsciously, the way a loon will simply "loon," or a tree will simply "tree"-- not trying to be good or better or successful or something it's not.

Life is always speaking to us. We listen, or we don't, and in either case it speaks on. I say that listening and following is the only way to go. From where I sit, it even looks like the only real chance we've got: to each be the particularly shaped, twisted, colored, textured thread we're intended to be such that this weave of humanity has integrity--no rents, no slubs--and just plain works! This is my vision, my ultimate passion for the Freeway. And all of what you'll find here from this day forward will be in service to that.

Welcome to Love's Freeway.