Black Swan

A Black Swan event is nearly impossible to predict and has profound and universal impact, changing the world forever. Now, this rare bird, this crisis, has crash-landed into our lives, threatening millions of humans. We are told to “flatten the curve” and stay home indefinitely, while hospitals amplify their care ability and a vaccine eventually arrives.

Before, in my workplace, I shook hands with guests. I hugged, and received hugs, abundantly, from co-workers and friends, old and new. Last week I watched happy visitors touch, inhale, try on and breathe all over beautiful, seductive things in the now temporarily closed Phoenix Shop. This nasty virus apparently survives on surfaces, and well, you already know what we all came to understand. 

A day after swearing off embracing at work, I found myself standing a few feet from my lovely co-worker Caitlin, with whom I hug often. Suddenly I said, "Aw, forget it!" and we turned to each other for a quick, big hug. As we briefly clung together we laughed, and the world snapped back to normal again, for just a moment. 

My personal prescription for sanity (other than hugs!) is to indulge yourself with Mother Nature.

Drink in the rays of the sun each day. Whether you sit beside a window in a comfy chair or lay down in the grass and dirt outside, just absorb the amazing strength of our planet while enjoying the warmth of our star.

Feast your eyes on a flower, admire trees, listen to birds, take deep breaths of the breeze. Marvel at the miracle of your body as you walk, hike, dance, and sing in the shower.  If you can, stare at the sea, or the mountains, or watch waves on the beach. (You can listen and watch nature on screens too, though that’s a little too Soylent Green for my taste.) 

Wherever you are, you can usually gaze at the stars or the moon at night. Remember that while everything changes, some things do not. I don’t think the constellation of Orion is going to rearrange itself, or that the dog-star Sirius will go walkabout off to a different galaxy.

Take comfort in what doesn’t change, or what won’t change as much. Thick blankets, soft skin, warm pet fur, chocolate. Write letters the old fashioned way, on paper, with pretty colored pens.

Read that daunting book you’ve had on your shelf for years. For me, it's Old Path, White Clouds, by the beloved Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh. Relax a little - eat pasta and ice cream. After that, take a bellydance class via Zoom! Have a kissing marathon with your shelter-in-place companion. Find solace in prayer and meditation.

For those who enjoy the company of their families and their partners, there is a special kind of bliss in being together, and being safe. One hopes that our communication skills will improve, by sheer density of opportunity to practice them, combined with the powerful need to understand and help each other during this global emergency.

A friend gently explained to me that the well known saying “May you live in interesting times” (considered a curse) was popularized by President Kennedy to remind us that great challenges generate great progress. The Chinese saying was actually “Heroes come from turbulent times.” 
When we face our fears with as much grace as we can, we become heroes.

How will we progress? Perhaps we’ll learn that we really are just earthlings, all of us astronauts, and that we need to wake up to this reality more than ever before. Perhaps we will find more ways to love and care for each other, and for our magnificent, one-of-a-kind planet. Perhaps all of this will, ultimately, be healing.

The cover of our early edition of Thich Naht Hanh’s book A Guide to Walking Meditation, shows him as a young man, standing beside a country road with a big smile on his face, a tall sunflower as his walking staff.

He says, “I put my palms together, like a lotus bud, and pray that we all find peace.” May it be so.

The Winged Life

"He that binds to himself a Joy

does the Winged Life destroy.

He that kisses the Joy as it flies

lives in Eternity's sunrise"  

                                          --William Blake

I've been listening to birds a lot lately. Watching them with fresh eyes, too, especially when they take their wee swims in the birdbath outside my door. A little water, a little green, a feeder or two, and you too may notice we are living in an aviary.

This Spring I heard Loons for the first time. Their melancholy evening songs unfurled over the lake as I almost missed the moment, running around trying to record their long moaning hoots and tremulous spiraling calls to each other.

The nickname of one of my favorite feathered creatures is the Be Here Now bird, also known as the Olive-sided Flycatcher. The more prosaic description of its call is "Quick Three Beers".  But if you are listening to him in the Springtime at Esalen Institute, you too might hear him singing, "Just Be Here..."

Recently I spotted (true words of a birdwatcher) a small yellow-chested bird with a beautiful song. She flitted, as only a tiny bird can flit, among the branches of a purple flowering bush, chirping in what was surely delight. Ah, the Lesser Goldfinch.  (Quick note, if you have cats, playing these recordings will drive them nuts!)

The Flicker gives a bark-like "Kyeer" call in the daily dawn chorus, sometimes punctuated with drumming on oak trees. This is the kind of sound that can make you laugh under the covers as you prepare to meet the day.  There are other members of the flock among us: Woodpeckers, Crows, Hawks and the unmistakable heavies of the bird world, the Ravens.

Birds have provided our philosophers, dreamers and lovers with poetic opportunities for centuries. From condors to hummingbirds, they spark our collective imagination as they lighten our hearts.  These angels of the animal kingdom are so far still abundant here in Big Sur, with its ample forests and meadows, along with (this past year at least) abundant rainwater blessing springs and streams.

A friend told me once over coffee that one of the best things about waking up spiritually was to finally, finally hear bird-song in the morning. Thank you dear friend whose name I cannot remember. Your words are with me still.

Church of the Sunset

At the end of my days, will I say simply that I watched a lot of glorious sunsets? Could this be enough?

When I was a young thing fresh out of college running wild in the Berkeley hills I watched sunsets. A group of us met several times a week above the Lawrence Hall of Science to celebrate the sun sinking into the San Francisco Bay. We'd jump-start the evening with a splashy orange glow. A different sunset for every night.

Infinite combinations of clouds, sun, moon, stars, and jet planes echoed the dramas of our small, ever-changing group of friends. We called ourselves the Sunset Club.

One friend from that time, a lovely lost Irishman who came to California by way of Liverpool, had a trove of poems he shared. One fragment stays in my mind, written to his wife: "To find you I came this far, to where the sun sinks into the Pacific like an old man at a spa."

Now witnessing the timeless passage of the sun below the horizon is a life-long ritual, my Church of the Sunset. And yet I ask myself, on quiet evenings, is this pleasure perhaps, too simple?

Sensing the  planet turning away from the sun is essentially passive. You have to stop, be present, maybe enjoy a glass of champagne, and express gratitude for the day. It would seem that there's not a lot of action required to observe nature. And yet, cultivating stillness is a major achievement in a world where we are quite possibly more distracted than ever before.

Do I go outside to see celestial bodies at dusk or dawn? Or do I turn to the internet for pages of news and gossip? It's a measure of how pervasive contemporary gadgets are that even here in Big Sur we face these questions.

These days, I find I watch the sunrise as often as the sunset, mysterious but true. The pink light of dawn  floats at the horizon, above the fog rolling in from the sea. This tender display gently caresses me awake, leading me outside. My feet touch the cool grass, my cats nap on garden chairs, birds chatter and sing out, hummingbirds zoom up to the feeder. The day begins.

And I remember another poem, this one by Rumi -

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you:

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.