November ! Shorter days and longer gatherings…
Halloween is barely passed us with its sugar craze and playfulness; in Stinson Beach the whole town got together to create the most amazing Boardwalk event with fortune teller, fog machines, scary shaky boardwalk and much more spooky fun stuff! I am not much for heavy lifting but I took on the drawing of an old electric billboard for the poster (not my most impressive piece of art mind you, but it was fun to be part of it somehow!).
In Bolinas, Mirta and her team made another fabulous display of marigolds, candles, food, pictures and all kinds of mementos and symbols for the celebration of the dead. Always a great gift for the community.
I am so grateful to be living here, blessed to belong to these two villages, so close yet so different!
It’s easy to take for granted all the good around us including other lives, woven with our own, in intricate and cryptic patterns. Day in and day out, we run along and keep repeating what has been done last year, most of the time. Only when a friend leaves this plane or when we spy the reflection of ourselves, unprepared, in an unkind mirror, do we realize for a moment the fugacity, the volatile quality of everything we hold dear, including our own presence here. Then we hurry toward forgetfulness again…
It has been said before but now is all we have, really. How much are we willing to give in awareness, love, curiosity, willingness, to this moment and all in it…? How much do we want to feel alive ? How much are we willing to do over, to discover, to reinvent, so that our now becomes brighter, lived fully, each minute a precious gem?
I know that when I choose to see the good in everything (and believe me it is a practice, a choice, an exercise) it’s like having a magic wand: suddenly colors are brighter, the world is friendlier, my mind is more at peace. A sense of looseness, of flow, of freedom, permeates everything…
Isn’t it wonderful to have this power always, to choose and see the good, the magical, the miraculous… the exquisite pain of impermanence being part of it all ?
Day after day after day, I choose gratitude and I remind myself how precious it is to be here, to see the sky, to know my neighbors, to go for my vision, to hope for the future, while rejoicing for the now, eternal and intangible now, this glowing speck of eternity I am part of.
Thank you for being part of it. Happy Thanksgiving… !
More later…
