Becoming a Lake

I love this story and its message, which came to me today—

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice’s complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
     “How does it taste?” the master asked.
     “Bitter,” said the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, 
     “Now drink from the lake.”
As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked,
     “How does it taste?”
     “Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.
     “Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
     “No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,
     “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

(from Tao and Zen)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Lake Louise

Everyday Havens

A haven is close to heaven, close to having.  Its etymology is harbor, from old Norse, though the figurative refuge it offers is more recent, from about 1200.

I’m not immediately interested in the big havens, like the offshore islands that are tax havens, or the safe haven that could be won by knocking on the sanctuary door, as at Durham Cathedral; but I depend on many small.  Always, havens of quiet—hushed groves, noise-cancelling headphones, rare manuscript rooms in old libraries where one can use only a pencil.  Havens of color, like the Bonnard gallery upstairs at The Phillips Gallery, or the Old Mexico Shop in Santa Fe, with painted pottery as big and round as hugs and smoky paper flowers in exotic, vibrant shades.  And in this chilly January month, havens of warmth—the fireside at Asilomar, a china teacup, a patch of afternoon sunlight along a harboring wall, and one carefully heated room in our cottage, the rest colder than the outdoors, door shut and guarded vigilantly as a refuge of another sort, to keep the cold from rushing violently in.

Havens of laughter.  Havens of lucky love.  Havens of every sort, holding us tight.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”    —Maya Angelou

image:  Refugi de la Restanca, Simonjoan

New Beginnings

Happiest New Year!  

May 2013 be bright and clear.

I offer this poem, as a way of beginning it.

image: Sunrise with Black Poplar, Babisnauer Pappel near Dresden, Henry Mühlpfordt

Wishes for the New Year

A clean slate, but one with ancient potency and stories in its fabric.

The capacity for joy.

Companions, to warm your feet and heart.

Composure within.

Time enough, and a wealth of space in which to be.

A year of promises kept.

A year of promises yet to make.

Natural wonder.

Art and music.

A riff of birds.

A stretch of water.

Lingering rosemary.

Fortune sketched in tea leaves.

Someone to help it all come true.




image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Mission with Oranges

Pockets of Quiet

The ocean at year's end, but hardly quiet where we've come.  Everyone had the same instinct—to get to land's end as the year too was ending, to let the spent days go, carried like other wrack away, elsewhere, by the cleansing waves.  Some sort of primal urge draws us to the water.

And there are pockets of quiet.  A deer outside the corner window, under the oaks.  A gleam of Pacific off the small balcony off the bathroom.  Raucous neighbors gone out to play.  Some of us lost in books and picnic sandwiches by the nice fire.  These words.  Others I've promised myself in the coming year.  More meditative moments.  A still center, from which to regard the unquiet world.



image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Shorebird

Some Color for the Year's End

A Bonnard for the last week of the year.  This young woman is looking a little pensive, reflective.  Remembering or looking forward, as the final days of December demand.  I am wearing my cheery purple sweatshirt (my Mom's) instead of a cheery striped red blouse, but the effect is to brighten a day that has little color of its own.






image:  Pierre Bonnard, The Striped Blouse

Evening Reverie

Coming back to a favorite place late in the day, late in the year, a winter's dusk with rain still dripping from the winter trees, to find lights on, a Christmas tree—a Noble Fir—in the entry, a fireplace, a vase of lilies and carnations, warmth and welcome, and a golden gingko dripping golden leaves out on the deck where we ate wedding cake with friends, though even then my mother couldn't make it.  And we've bought books, a clutch of new mysteries, and eaten good chicken mole and cornbread and sausage, and admired the colors of the knit sweaters on their racks for just $3 each, even some Italian, in soft Italian colors.  The dark closes, and we are snug inside it, held tenderly by this place that has somehow hugged us to it.




image:  Rainy Night in June, Another Porch

Buon Natale

I'm feeling blessed from all around the world—carols from King's College, Oxford; wild huckleberry licorice from Montana; a CD of songs from the Maltese tenor; Sicilian mysteries; linen napkins from the south of France; my childhood Christmas stocking from Santa Fe; Peruvian coffee; purple socks with a Tibetan rose pattern; my mother's red plush bear from Mexico; greetings from friends in Malaysia and my cousin in Minnesota; bounty from truly everywhere.

Happiest Christmas to all.





image: Via Da Procida during Christmas 2007 in the old town of Salerno, Italy, soloxsalerno

Joyous Christmas Eve

Joy.  Peace.  Love.

Times ten.

Times yet another ten.







image:  Christmas Lights, sjncousin

Christmas Lights

Shopping (wild blueberry jam, olive oil soap, Sumatra decaf, French linen napkins); and a delicious oyster sandwich with spinach, aioli, and caramelized onions, though not out on the sidewalk.  Indoors, for the foreseeable future.  Lights, cheering the rain.






image:  Christmas Lights, D3B