With the mere mind and heart

I moved to Laguna because one day in May on a field trip my students and I hiked the canyon at Crystal Cove. That day for the first time since I'd been south I felt the mama impulse in my blood.  That means I could feel the land rise and fall, it means that my breathe as if breathing earth particles caught then plummeted in silent then threshold spirit-plateaus.  Like the earth was actually breathing me.  I forgot how it felt to be so connected to the green, even though it was coming to me in my dreams.  I looked on the map when I got back to my room in Huntington that day and saw the wilderness surrounding Laguna.  In the most quiet place in my heart where I go when I get still or maybe where stillness goes when I get my heart I quieted then asked me, I mean spirit-me, what do you want and this little apartment here, that's what, when the silence parted, I could see. Fall has never had such a thrill.

The two first months here I ran in constant press in preparation for grad school which was between two major trips back east.   It was not until Beth came the weekend before last that I could be here, now.  Grief can be so hectic the way it pushes you around.

Tonight I made dinner then sat outside under my plants and twinkle lights the canyon walls above me houses constellating the ridge like touchable stars.  Oh big California, oh rancher artist adobe houses on cliffs I could put 9 of my little apartments inside.  12 if you count your deck.  16 your garage and carport with the at least two antique cars....

In the last two chapters of one of my textbooks for gradschool I read about contemplative therapies. I was sitting in the crazy sun.  I learned that Maslow and others have long issued what came to me those early months my first fall out of college, when I gave myself to poetry and meditation each and every day.  That human consciousness, for most of us, is in its infancy.  That with the mere mind and heart alone we are capable of sheer galaxies inside.  I strapped in, alone, back then and have never stopped enjoying the ride.  Since then it has been my only and final guide.

It's nice to be not so alone in that anymore.  To know what this path has all been for, or to have one tiny clue anyhow.  It's really nice to be outside at dinner, in the warm fall in California, the mama hush cradling me in her round green Laguna arms.