Chance = Change

Happy New Year to all!  May the year be blessed for each and every one of you, filled with health, creativity, good fortune and love.  May we all meet over terrific meals, good wine, talk of important, interesting things, and resolve to love each other always, with open hearts, caring thoughts and generous actions. Love is truly all we have, so let's invest it wisely and grow it well.

      As for me:  we spent the last day of 2010 in interesting ways. Peter, Paul, Stephen and I started out the day, bright and early, at the marvelous Asian Art Museum, down on Larkin Street, at a special Buddhist bell-ringing ceremony.  Paul and Stephen holiday gifted us with a membership to that wondrous museum, so all 4 of us went at the special "members' only" early hour to stand in line to get tickets in order to actually ring the bell, which was a 16th century Japanese bell, huge and ornate, with Buddhist inscriptions all over its large brass body, very grand and gorgeous. It was hanging from a specially built "bell tower", constructed so that people could stand next to the bell, take the large wooden "clapper", made of a log some 6 feet long all tied up in intricate secure ropes, and with the force of 2-6 people at a time, ring that bell.  Our little group of four was number 48 in the line of 108 groups.   The number 108 is significant in Buddhist practice - the mala - the prayer beads - are always 108 in number...exactly what the number's significance is, I am not sure. But the bell was to be rung 108 times, thus the number of groups to ring it was also 108.
      Before the actual ringing, the Abbot of a Northern California zendo gave a blessing and read from the Heart sutra, some very beautiful Japanese storytelling about the Buddha and the nature of reality and emptiness.  It was a lovely ceremony. And right in the middle of a museum! Pretty impressive, actually. This museum is unique in certain ways, and this ceremony, which they've been performing for 25 years now, is one of the many ways they are special. When I first read about the ceremony taking place, I knew it was the way we should all be together for our last day of 2010. To mark the start of our San Francisco time together, and to recognize the special courage it took for us all to make this time happen the way we have been envisioning it.   I still look around and have to more or less pinch myself, it still seems so unreal to me: we now reside in San Francisco!  it is our home.  Still feels sort of odd. Right...very right...but odd. I am now a Californian...something I never thought would be true for me.

      It does feel - like the title of this blog entry states - like i am leaping off a hugely high cliff, spreading my wings, which , god knows, after all the years I've been living should feel strong and capable to me - but nonetheless, a leap is a leap, and with no familiar space beneath your feet, it feels like there is nothing at all beneath them, so trusting is important, yes..but there will be that moment before the wings start flapping ...that moment where you think: HOLY SHIT! I just stepped off a cliff! And the drop is a Looooooooong loooong way down, it seem to me!   Oh yeah, start flapping!  Get 'em moving! FLAP, dammit!  The turning of new year is another slightly disorienting factor: everything is NEW!
      The passing of time has always seemed particularly real to me at New Year's.  The dripping of the years through the glass of time....my aging gets more and more real to me. And in that way - that totally solitary way - one meets oneself in an extremely intimate way in the growing and aging process.  No one else can do it for you. Aging. Growing older. One can only do it by oneself. We can gather all we want to  into groups, support groups, discussion groups, book clubs, etc. but the final experience of it all - unto death - is done in solitude.  Yes the Spirit is with us ...there is that brain of ours that produces the ever - narrating voice, the announcer of our entire lives, who has been and is always with us - but aside form that little voice, our constant companion, we are utterly alone. We all know this. It's part of our awareness from the moment we are conscious beings. And we know it because that little voice inside our heads tells us it's so.  The voice is particularly loud when leaping off a new cliff.
    
      My commitment to writing in this new year - writing above all else - is scary for me. I have so much I want to write...so many things i've already written I want to get out into the world - so many new things I want to do....it's overwhelming me as I think about it all....but, I am a smart organized, courageous and clever woman, so I will conquer the overwhelm eventually....and the new writing workshop I am starting in a week, with Adair Lara, will be helpful, I know. It will mean more guided, assigned writing, but it will also mean more guided, wise learning from a woman I respect, and who can teach me many practical things.  Right now, there is an embarrassment of riches pouring out of my files, piles and stacks and stacks of writing I've done through the years. Is it of any interest to ANYONE? Only time and lots of effort on my part will tell....and, patience...i must remember patience.

     So, off we go...into the wild blue yonder of an extremely unknown unknown....when is it ever thus? Only when we fool ourselves that we are actually in control.  Let go , let fly! See you in the mid-air!
  

Labels: SF 2011