it's been some days. since th e 26th of January and really before that i have been thinking so much about how i use that expression "barring the unforseen, ". And i'd been thinking a lot about it because it seemed that the scale was weighing heavy on the side of the Unforseen recently. more than usual. so it started me really thinking about what i mean by that. The Unforseen. and how i say: Barring it. WHAT??? and then the days of Wind came and the Unforseen was everywhere. and then, i went up the mountain to Janet's house. all empty now. all Left Behind. and i thought more about how this should not have been unforseen. It was a day she could have imagined coming. she never would have acknowledged that because of the kind of woman she is. but in her own quiet moments, i think she saw it coming very clearly. and what did she DO?, she loaded everything up and LEFT. the things she couldn't squeeze in the moving van, she abandoned. i think, not without some grief. she loved her life. her Stuff. a lot. in a really beautiful way. and i said before that Janet had been my Heroine all the time i knew her. even before the Unforseen caught her unaware and she had to find a new life. She just took a breath and Did it. and became a Master of Just Going. i think she was 60 something then. like i am now. and she created yet again a Home for herself and her animals. She learned how to live as a single woman with limited means. She spun her wool and wove her masterpieces, toward the end, teaching herself to use local plants to dye. I could write a book about Janet. but what is important to me in the moment is that when her unforseen was so visible and present in her life, she just left. she just moved on. i think she is not looking back. i'll find out. but she above all, lived her live so FULL y and with such Determination. and when that wasn't working anymore, she moved on. Just Going Janet.
so...where am i going with this???? i'm really not sure. we'll find out as i write it. ok.
i am going to Partner UP with the Unforseen. I am going to deliberately make a relationship with it. Take its hand and Just Go. Partner up. i will no longer think in terms of barring it. and i got this far the other day...i guess a couple days ago and i had a phone conversation with Dee, Dee Mallon. I'd wanted to call her and speak directly to clarify something i'd said over in Spirit Diaries Forum. and i listened to myself talking. she is good at asking questions and i heard myself answering them. and later, i thought about my life, how, really, it has always been In Response to the Unforseen but i just never acknowledged that.
a while back, my granddaughter mentioned that she couldn't get a book she wanted on Kindle. i ordered it for her and it arrived 2 days ago. on an otherwise blank page, two things:
Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma, "What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?" Bodhidarma said, "Empty, without holiness." The emperor said, "Who is facing me?" Bodhidharma replied, "I don't know." ..............The Blue Cliff Record
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. ............Marcel Proust
and i thought how a thread of conversation with her appears today, having fragments of thoughts, scraps of thoughts with threads connected and dangling. how so much, i can see more and more clearly how cloth making to me is no different than living a life.
and i woke to some level of consciousness the other night, night before last to be exact, having dreamed something that brought back the scene with my father, when i was in probably 10th grade. and i won't tell the details, but i was in a moment of Just Going with my 14 yo self and my father looked at me and said: "Who do you think You are?" and stopped me dead in my tracks. i can feel the sting of that moment as clear today as it was in that moment. and i think my life has been looking for that answer. and when i awoke to a level of semi consciousness, what i call the Narrator [ which has occured at a few times in my life when i especially needed clarity, a kind of Voice, that gives Meaning that i am unable to see myself] said:
you are a Dharma Bum.
...............and i sat on the edge of the bed and cried. no tears, no sound, but that very internal crying and i thought YES!!!! i am!!!!!! a Dharma Bum of Just Going.
and i feel really really good today. like, Really Really good.
stitching on the crows, i accidently stitched through the cloth that is backing. but....HOW BEAUTIFUL IS THIS? i want to make a whole cloth of just black thread.
and, here, Finally, because of so much Unforseen in the past few days,
i did it. this morning.
