You Bare Trees . . . You Sleeping Daffodils

Winter windows and I face east to watch the sky rain metal before turning to ice. Tree branches sag under the weight of it all. The sight of aching pines disarms the story of me. Meaning, the mere image of this beauty enters my retinas and is translated into the recognition that my role may not need be. Season by season I am falling into the mystery of openness which says: there is no distance. You bare trees; you sleeping daffodils . . . . I am eliminated and destroyed by the wordless way in which you take down my walls. That's what trees say to whomever is left. And also, they are laughing at how one misses what isn't even hidden.

The medication is working. Day by day, pain is disappearing: first from my neck, then my rib cage all the way around, my lower back and finally my hips. Fatigue subsides and little by little I can add normal tasks back into my life. Six months of chronic pain was enough to bend to my knees, not in prayer but in surrender. There is nothing to protect. It is here that the body's deepest function starts to unfold. For so long I've fought with my body. I held the mind and intellect at level far exceeding the mysteries and magic of body. Only in certain contexts would my body express the openness and wisdom of the body-mind communion. How unfortunate to live so long with the fear of one's own wholeness. Pain has been my teacher of intimacy.

For lunch, vegetable curry over black rice and chickpea-potato samosas. My first samosa was in Kenya. What a delicious little triangle of flavor! When Mama Joanne taught me how to make them, I kept picturing my grandfather's burial whereby the service members folded the U.S. Flag and handed it to my grandmother. I doubt he ever ate a samosa. I miss Mama Joanne; she was with me everyday in Kenya – except that time when we loaded her belongings and family up into a lorry to escape the post-election violence against her tribe. She stayed away long enough for the tensions to ease. I missed her then, too.

The dog curls up at my feet when I write but lately, she doesn't ever leave my side. As endearing as that is most of the time, I feel her need for something that I cannot give. She stares at me and makes soft whining noises, especially when I sink deeply into writing mode. I ask her all kinds of things in my Kora-voice: do you want to go outside, do you want some pets or a belly rub, do you need more water? I think she wants to go for a walk, which is still a hard thing to manage. I try to tell her that by looking deep into her eyes. I see her nostrils flaring quickly in and out when I do that, as if she can smell what I'm thinking. But she still cries a little.

The mind and the body have to open further in order not to suffer, I think. Perhaps this is the only way for the whole the perceive itself. At least, that is the thing I'm thinking today – easterly – gray – today.