Ginger’s House

Ginger’s spicy house:

where violets thrive; fabric’s hemmed;

and Kavi’s fed and loved.

Definition #172 Up

Kavi celebrates Spring

Sun

up

Kavi

up

Easter

up

Footnotes

The word “Easter” and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

Definition #133 NOW

Kavi in his box

Geneen Roth:
“but the truth was that sweetness and quiet and stillness weren’t as compelling as angst, drama and the chatter of discontent.
I mean, seriously: “now” just wasn’t sexy or appealing. It didn’t hold promises of splashy parades with cymbals and drums and opera singers thrashing about. The naked now, the one without frills, the one that was always here, just wasn’t as interesting as what could be. What should be. What I wanted to be. I was enthralled, as the Buddhist teacher Choygam Trungpa described it, with the process of “putting make-up on space.”

Finally, and this is going to sound a bit more linear than it actually was or is, love pierced the trance. I realized I wanted something more than I wanted to keep walking through the airports of my mind. I wanted to be here. For the purpling of sunsets and the clanking of dishes. For the soft way my husband’s hand feels in mine. I wanted to breathe when I breathed and eat when I ate. I wanted to live in and through my body, not my mind. And, not only did I realize I wanted that, I knew without a doubt that I already was that. Am that.

It’s not a done deal over here, however. The pull of my thoughts is still strong, but the love for this moment is stronger. The pull of drama still compels me, but the love for showing up where I am is bigger. Nothing can compete with the love of this life blazing in and through me, which, along with the depth of night-sky stillness, also includes outrageous laughter, salted chocolate and occasional swoops of sadness.

Every time I find myself wandering away, I bring myself back to what I love: to this very moment, these exact sensations, this coolness on the surface of my right arm, the sound of a single bird cheeping, the low thrum of the heater. I take one conscious breath and return to where the feast is: here. And when I do — when thoughts drop away and the one I refer to as “I” disappears — what remains is contentment itself. And it is enough.”

Definition #20 Psychic Senses

Kavi with his rare Jordanian camel

intuition in

my lap-light in eye beholds

the wonder that’s you!

Meeting Kavi at Ginger’sHouse

Meeting Kavi at Ginger’s House

I like the way,
at Ginger’s house
we took turns
around the circle.

First there was Kavi,
17 months old,
circling the rooms:
his carry-case abreast.

He crooned-
and delicately chewed
the cranberries and nuts
to Indian/African tunes.

From 17 months to
77 years old we each
took turns being
acknowledged:
aunties, uncles, cousins, moms and dads.

Spoke of opera, museums,
moving films we’ve made
created from a place
that played and sang and danced:

“How best can we take care
of earth, and man, and woman?
Teach our tiny ones to care,
discover life and share?”

Together.
Together,
always in this circle.