Diving Deeper

Dreaming up the land

They say that living beside running water, brings on powerful and sometimes dangerous dreams.  This was my dreamscape.  My childhood fantasy, after seeing the film Ring of Bright Water, was to be a writer and live in a cottage by the sea with otters nearby.  In the summer of 2002, I was visiting friends in the Missouri Ozarks after a year of being a water gypsy.  I had been wandering from watering hole to watering hole, with my then-husband, looking for somewhere to settle. For four days, staying in our friends' dome-house deep in trees, I experienced the most spectacular thunder-and-lightening storms.  When the rain stopped, I reluctantly agreed to look at property in the unimagined domain of heartland America.

Water poems by William

Happy Birthday dear William!  This post is a gift for and celebration of a friend of many years. We met in 1992 at Schumacher College (center for ecological and spiritual studies in Devon, UK), where I took part in a 3-week course entitled the 'Greening of Medicine' by Dr Patrick Pietroni. 

I ended up returning to Schumacher for a 6-month  sabbatical.  William has remained working there ever since.  I'm glad about that.  And I'm glad to still have his wonderful friendship.  Here are two of his poems for me - referencing water of course. As you'll see, he has a zany and refreshing style which  lifts me out of taking my life too seriously or into taking it more seriously, as needed!

The first poem was derived from an email he sent to me when I returned from the US to the UK in some disarray in spring 2007 following a dramatic turn in my marriage.   He's writing of some severe spring flooding in England that year.  I couldn't resist turning the text, with a little editorial licence, into a poem. The second is a poem he sent for my own birthday this past 14 July.  

Glad you touched the maelstrom (Sara after William Thomas)

High on a hill
and well above the bottom
of the Nidd valley
the water takes another route
and there is a stone wall

It is the flood plains
which are in difficulties
must be very nasty
for people who live there

I saw a middle-aged woman
saying "something must be done"
but I fear the elements will
be felt in times to come

Spent several nights there
but don't really like it
I can't relate to it
can't find where to hang

I'll move back for winter
the sun, moon and chestnut tree
find these elemental presences
are of primary value to me

Suspect your predicament will
continue to feel strange yet
maybe all of life is strange
and all people also strange

I used to think of normal people
and mavericks, but not any more
events like these wash away
the illusion of normality

I saw a film about it which
was quite thought-provoking
and stretched the skeptic's
point of view severely

I'll look out a copy for you
And ... perhaps something else
which is somewhat overdue
keep in touch and let me know

Water, clear water (William Thomas)

This morning I was tidying the scullery,
and I found a full thermos flask.

I knew it was full, owing to its weight.
Its heft, its mass, its great number of pounds, ounces and grams,
All mixed together.
The lid and cap were screwed on.
What was in it?
Normally, abandoned thermoses either have the caps off,
Or are empty.
Someone didn't get their coffee.
They heaved it a great distance all day long,
A silent bulk in their pack, full of the promise of refreshment.
But late in the day the promise faded, and finally died.
Back at the college it was obsolete,
its value eclipsed by the presence of a drinks machine.
Or, great Scott! It couldn't be......
my own thermos from last weekend could it?
I usually make an extra coffee to take into the garden,
But I may have become distracted and not drunk it.
Now it would be foul and rancid.
The stainless steel...stained.
I would have to brush it, rinse it, brush it, rinse it
And moreover, scrub the stopper.
And moreover, remove the rubber O ring and scrub behind it,
And scrub minutely the O ring itself.
The enormity of the task poses a test of character:
Should I engage with both the thermos and the task,
Or should I walk away, abandon both and all?
A twice-abandoned thermos, harbouring a secret, a story,
a brief preciousness lost in a great redundancy.
In that moment I found myself equal to the task -
Perhaps I had slept well.
I unscrewed cap, unscrewed stopper
Peered in, and gasped.
Water, clear water, nothing more.
Not even tea, nor one of the soggy leaf infusions
Participants leave around to torment me.
Had this water once been hot? It must have been.
But why, why, why?
Was it destined to be consumed as water,
Or to be added to something?
Its destiny was neither.
The sun that shone on the leaf
The leaf that nourished the tree
The ground that received the trunk
The funghi that broke it apart
The sediments that buried it deep
The bacteria that released its methane
All the armies of machinery that extracted it
The grinding cogs that were driven by its burning
To turn great magnets and produce current
That flowed through the circuits of our Lincat EB4
Had finally come to this:
Cold water, just as it began.
Just as it had always been, since it first arrived, perhaps on a comet.
Star water, clear water, universal water.
After such a journey,
It deserved better than to be poured into the sink,
It deserved at least to quench a thirst or water a plant.
But I poured it into the sink just the same.
I am sorry.

Landscapes of Transition

 

This morning, I awoke with the story below in my mind.  As I rummaged among my old computer files to find it, I wondered if my remembering was connected with some time alert.  It was.  Yesterday's anniversary of Rabin's assassination in Tel Aviv.  I try to pay attention to such synchronicities, and so I am posting this today with a prayer for the transition of death.  May we all  face it and treat it with honor and grace.

Direct perception of nature: a book review

 

My perceptions of the natural world and the power of non-verbal communication between its elements (from rock to plant to animal) have been stimulated by living in the diverse bioregion of the Missouri Ozarks and working with water as a therapeutic medium.

Several books by Stephen Harrod Buhner have shown me what is possible, in terms of understanding life and one's place in it, if you are willing to step out of the everyday linear paradigm and into the all-pervading non-linear (oscillating) vibration that is life.

This month, in a workshop on developing intuitive skills for aquatic physical therapists, I'll be sharing his approach to direct perception in an adapted exercise from Ch. 12 'Depth Diagnosis and the Healing of Human Disease' of the book I have reviewed below.

Direct perception is a way of truly knowing, not thinking, what is going on inside a person that some people call intuition. The intention is to know the person's problem, and what it needs, by perceiving them directly, without any judgment.

How often does any of us do that?