SLEEPING IN A COFFIN AND DREAMLESS SLEEP

Edith Piaff, the legendary French singer, as I mentioned earlier, used to sleep in a coffin. Though I wouldn't like to do that literally -- no wriggle room!-- I have been doing it lately metaphorically. It is the tiny space, no larger than my body, a cell, a monk's cell, a cell in a prison, a narrow, confined space, as in asylum or convent, a small, very humble abode. I find it hugely comforting, secure, holy, healing, calming. I return here often during the day, and have made it a habit to remember I have it. Remember, if you don't know you have it, you don't. It is a place where all the teeming, jostling ideas, feelings, dreams in my head find rest and I fall into a dreamless sleep while being awake.

POST SCRIPT TO ORGANIZING, OR, IF YOU DON'T KNOW YOU HAVE IT, YOU DON'T HAVE IT

I stumbled upon the literal and metaphoric truth of this as I went through the cupboards and saw that I had many things I had written on my list to buy. If I don't know or remember where something is, then it's as good as not having it. This applies to things, knowledge, wisdom, truth and is deeply connected with memory and consciousness. We have not only to know something, but to know we know it. Here is an example: you might have powers of endurance, courage, love, strength, wisdom, insight, creativity, etc, but if you don't know where they are (in you, easily accessible, just a thought, a memory away) you'll feel and worry you don't have them.

EINSTEIN AS EXILE

“I am truly a lone traveler and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude – feelings which increase with the years.” 

The world as I see it, by Einstein, trns Alan Harris 

POSTSCRIPT ON RETURN, TEARS, EXILE, AND SOME MARVELOUS THINGS

I'll tell you wherein my blindness consists -- when I am in state, say, feeling low, down, dirty, I forget it is only a state, a single point on the arc of my ever-changing, shifting existence; that it will change, just as joyful moments change and shift. I know this, but can't practice it much of the time. I think this is my definition of enlightenment: Knowing and remembering knowing, that Truth, a series of unfolding, contrary processes, transcends them.

In short, I am in a different place -- the earth has moved in its orbit and on its axis, the solar system, the galaxies have moved on their way to God alone knows where.

HERE ARE SOME MARVELOUS FACTS TO CONTEMPLATE

The daily rotation of the earth on its axis is 1000 miles an hour.

Its annual revolution about the sun is at 72000 miles an hour

The solar system is moves within the local star system at 46800 miles an hour

The local star system moves within the Milky Way at 720, 000 miles an hour

The entire milk way is drifting with respect to the remote external  galaxies  at 360,000 miles an hour.

EVERY LIVING THING CONNECTS US DEEPLY WITH THE UNIVERSE: For womanoverfiftyfive

The web of life is all around and in us -- a bird feeding outside the window, a plant on a window sill, a tree, lettuce growing in the garden -- these are deep connections. We mistakenly think that only 'talking' or 'touching' is connection. Our community extends far and wide, near and deep. I have mind and heart-linked with spiders in my bathroom, ants, dolphins out at sea. A neighbor's cat who come whenever she feels like it, striding noisily through the cat door I still have from ten years ago when staying-at-one-place allowed me to have pets in the US, which I leave open just for her, just for that moment of delight and joy when she comes, sometimes not for weeks. We have to teach ourselves to get out of the habitual definition of connection to see how everything belongs to us, and we to everything.

ORGANIZATION, WORKING, DOING, MAKING MUSIC

One distinct advantage of our dual life -- 6 months in the US and 6 months in India  (apart from the 10 days of jet lag hell flying west; by the way, does anyone else experience this other than me? Do tell!) -- is ORGANIZATION. In order to reclaim  my territory in both homes I have to re-organize the study, home, kitchen almost each time. Memory lapses, the need to know where everything is, the inevitable atrophy of 6 months, demands it. That, and the process of reclaiming a past life, making it present and relevant now, for one's needs have invariably changed over the course of 6 months: I'm reading different books, working on a different project, eating a different diet, depending on the state of my body that asserts itself strongly as I age, as its shelf-life decreases, as it grows feebler and more in need of care and nurturing, the other end of the spectrum from infancy where the unfolding line of time joins up with itself again.

I love organization. I am reminded each time I reorganize of the word, ORGAN. Our body functions because it differentiates, adapts 'organs' for specific functions; we live and breathe because of such organization; society functions through it. Without it there would be anarchy, chaos, death. The words 'work,' 'action,' 'energy,' come from the same root. One cannot do much without it. With it, however, one can become the organ through which the wind makes music.

THE BIRD FEEDER IS FILLED! IT IS FILLED!

Looking at the fig tree, still full of leaves, the filled birdfeeder, painted a madder red, with its first bird, a finch, head and back the color of madder, feeding, and after a week of ‘hell,’ I’m here, back, in our lovely home in Del Mar. Word is getting out in the bird world: the feeder is filled! The feeder is filled! The lady is back for the winter!

This is what it means to be back, to be here, not in some space-less spaces in the head where one cannot get beyond one’s own biology. Biology is everything. It is either kind, or not, and right now it is kind, and my belief that the kindness and unkindness should both be one notwithstanding, I am relieved it is kind this morning. I am at rest and ready, in my own slow and slumbering way, to do or not do as I am moved or not.