Tag: spirit

HELLO

Something odd happened the other day, happened in my mind. I’ve been mulling it over in hopes that I could articulate what it was and have made no progress…so am just going to start writing this morning in hopes that in search of the right words, the words instead, will find me.

Here goes.  I had just come home from a morning, mountain bike ride. The first half more or less, downhill which meant ofcourse that the return was more or less, uphill. Suffice to say, for me at any rate, a push that promotes lots of steady, deep breathing and the accompanying benefits.  Blue sky day, the perfect temperature, little wind. It was peaceful, timeless in its own way.  Lots of lizards, two bunnies, the occasional crow and with only two fellow trail mates passed, definitely far away from the maddening crowd. The trail was, for the most part, along a spine of the Santa Monica Mountains which meant that it afforded views down into complex canyons with glimpses round some of the bends, out to a sapphire sliver of the mighty Pacific. You can come off one of these rides feeling pretty, darned good with a healthy rush of endorphins to boost the mood. I came home…a place I love to be…and into my office which is more playroom than office. Some exercise equipment, a chaise. Favourite family and friends’ photos, treasured books, adventure mementos, a couple of meaningful landscape paintings. Think, “A Room of Her Own.”

I curled up on the chaise just to rest I suppose, let the body come back to itself, to meditate. In that stillness, I felt some mental shift initiate. Not from a particular thought really…just a stirring, a door opening, a lift off? All of the above. Then as best as I can describe it, like shedding an outgrown layer of skin the angst of life fell away.  By that I mean an underlying tension I’ve carried for as long as I can recall of a sense of longing, not belonging, some ancient burden of disappointment, a sorrow in life of separation from what could make me happy in the marrow of my bones. Everything simplified in thought and a presence, or an identity – an energy? – stepped forward. It was my soul to which I weirdly felt prompted to say out loud no less, “Hello.”  It was as if I was seeing myself for the first time unencumbered by history, desire, gender, no need or any agenda that could complete me.  

It was some non physical identity that had ever been complete, and all along waiting for the earthly me to come to arrive at the point that it could begin to meld into …well…me.

Years ago, I was had been working very hard and had reached a point of exhaustion. I was happy in my work, so it was not any sort of depressed fatigue it was just mental and physical fatigue, the kind where your defenses are down. I had the good fortune of getting hold of a local masseuse who then skillfully plied her wares. At some point well into the session, she was working at the top of my spine and I had a full on, out of body hallucination. My identity, sans physical body, was floating in outer space and I was looking down to the beginnings of a spine being created. Somehow it was clear to me that this was a body being made for me to enter into. The story goes on from there but for these purposes this was the only relevant bit. The presence I felt on the chaise and the one I felt in the grand mysterious darkness, were one in the same. I think either something real happened or I am off my rocker.  I’m open to either. 

If real, it has something to do with being at a point in my life, at 70, of letting go. Letting go of agendas, expectations or goals… Not that I don’t still have some, but enough of them have been met, enough hurdles hurdled, valleys crawled out of, tears shed, goals reached that the struggle has calmed down. I’ve come out of the rapids into a kind of neutral zone of being. I’m still here so I’m sure there will be challenges yet tomeet, but maybe some thinning of the veil has happened so that I’m at a naissance of a continuum or understanding of a continuum that is me. If this is true for me, it is true for you. It is true for all of us.

AFTER THEY ARE GONE

AFTER THEY ARE GONE

I felt my Mom beside me today. There she was…her presence, love and support right beside me as I walked down the gangway to board my plane. She died 16 years ago and yet there she was. Sudden tears, hot with longing and gratitude, puddled in my eyes. I don’t know what those moments are…visitations? The continuing journey of grief? Both? I’ll try to unpack this to get to the source or cause…here goes…. 

Last night I got to do a concert in NY with my most favourite musicians in the world. Top drawer and well over a decade’s worth of making music together…not nearly often enough but a privilege for me every time we are together.  So, there’s music…the spiritual discipline of it, the beauty, the literal and metaphoric harmony. The physicality, the vibrations. Also, as it was a new show, the pressure and focus of it…the aspiration that it will work, that I won’t fuck up and that the lyrics I inadvertently make up when I do fuck up, make sense. The joyful process and exertion of prepping for a show is also a kind of hurdle. Mom liked to say, “When the hurdles come, keep hurdling.”  Words to live by and boy, did she. All to say…for atleast two days leading up to a gig like that I’m living in an altered state…half in the world, half in rehearsal. The sensation is what I imagine it would feel like to be stuffed into a canon.  The launch of this new show went well last night I’m thrilled to report and the ensuing wash of relief and gratitude moved me to another kind of altered state…of breathing again. Early out this morning on 4 hours sleep…so exhaustion perhaps lets one’s guard down whilst in that state of re-entering “normal” life.

Walking down the gangway, suspended mid air between last night and the day ahead, I felt her. I felt the seeds of art she had taught me when she would move back the living room furniture, crank up the stereo and we would dance together, spinning in delight, my beautiful Mother and five year old me.   When she had set up a rehearsal space for me again in the living room before I was to sing at ten years old at the Tokyo American Club. It mattered. The message from her to me was that I mattered. I felt that all the calls she had made to make it possible for me to have childhood opportunities to perform serially under the auspices of a professional theatrical company, Toho, in Tokyo where I was raised…calls and effort that had created an apprenticeship throughout my childhood that in turn had led to the my being able to hurdle without falling last night.  I wanted and want to tell her, to thank her, to let her know that now at 70 I am reaping the benefits of her gifts as a Mother, my mother.  Did I conjure her? Was she there hearing me? I pray so.

Two other times of late, I’ve had a moment.  She is gone now but years ago my long-term pal Heather and I had for over a decade shared a dream to again live in NY and, eventually, for a few years we did. Sometimes together and then in our own flats. It was heaven. We had big girl playdates galore in the city…taking in plays, exhibits and concerts, walking through the fairyland of snow blizzards down the middle of Fifth Avenue, staying up late, sharing friends and life overlaps. It was rich and meaningful and its own special miracle. As I came out of my NYC hotel last week a blast of air whooshed by me and suddenly it was as if Heather was on my arm again, walking the way we would together.  Tangible joy.  She had a cluster of very close friends and each has reported over the years similar “Heather moments”. Does she fly by or is it just that our love for her, cut short by an early death ran so deep that it continues to find ways to express itself?

This last…well, you decide. My partner Patrick and I had the distinct privilege of having been introduced to the remarkable Irish scholar, Manchan Magan. He was an angel on the earth who led a unique life… travelled the world as a seeker living variously in Himalayan huts, with cave dwellers in Thailand, with a plethora of native tribes throughout the Americas…always finding connections in language back to his native Gaelic. His ideas were vibrant and overflowing with joy. He recounted tales at some point of being so happy at age three to sit in his familial garden, talking to the grass in kinship…rejoicing that he too was sustained by a harmonious source. Tragically this magical, Gaelic scholar…suffered a horrid and aggressive cancer and died, with so much more to give, at 55. Damn. A few days before he passed, he kindly wrote thanking me for being a “supporter and guardian.” That word “guardian” lingered in my mind and I wondered what it meant? What was the task he had set me to? 

Ten days after he died, I bolted awake at 4am with Manchan prominently in mind.  “Why?”, I wondered but then his word “Guardian” fueled a desire to pray for him. And so I did, for his continued journey and purpose…along those lines, to the best of my ability.  After a while, things calmed and some funny sounding words came to me …Gaelic, I presumed. Feeling I would not remember them come morning, I asked Chat GPT what they or words sounding like them, meant in Gaelic?  The response was, “May you be well. Goodbye, little one.” Then the voice continued in English…”Live in the Knowing. I am living in the Knowing.” 

Whose to say? All I know is that these moments organically fold into a continuum of memories.  If indeed these are visitations, I pray that once I’m on the other side, my soul can visit and impart some comforting presence just as I have been, imagined or otherwise, companioned by people I have known and loved and will always love. Wouldn’t that be fun! Atleast I promise I’ll try.