Chapter 149
Congratulations on making it to another year!
The following was mostly written a month ago, coincidentally the same day Mauna Loa began to erupt on the Big Island of Hawaii, where I had planned to spend winter before the universe decreed otherwise. Today, as I gather my thoughts for this article, I checked online and found that both Mauna Loa and Kilauea have stopped erupting… for the first time since 1981 in Kilauea’s case. When Kilauea kicked off in 2018, lava burst up a mere 4 miles from Fantuzzi’s house. Subsequent lava spouts emerged further away. We escaped, many friends lost their homes in that year.
Good Grief
Good Talks* didn’t include this title in it’s list, well, I guess it should come under the heading Good Life really. If we don’t get some Good Grief in our lives, then they will most likely not add up to the best Good Lives we could possibly have.
In order to really have Good Lives we need to experience… correction, we need to observe our own remotions to experiences and in so doing, enable ourselves to direct those emotions into actions and movements that best facilitate a Good Life.
We cannot go through life without loss. When we experience loss, we experience grief, unless there is some deep psychological block, and even then, as a mammal, as an element of this globe, this universe in fact, we are endowed with the ability to sense, aka feel. Just because we do this at a certain mind-strummingly fast pace, it does not preclude the ability of every other atom, particle, element to do the same.
The indefinable we or me or I of course does not cease to exist, it neither exists nor does not. Whether or not one subscribes to an ego-led version of spirituality encased in hierarchical bumpf we call religion, there is a faith-full, a science-based, and an observational rationale to argue the statement as fact: Energy does not cease to exist, it self-transforms.
The mountains appear to us mere mortals as ageless, motionless, timeless. Yet once in a while a mountain loses its cool and blows its top and we all stop and take notice for a while, after those of us in the immediate danger zone have fled for safety of course. In the interim, a millennia of moments; great monuments of stone laid layer upon layer by time, water, wind, to smooth the edges of the mountain’s energy-brimmed souls. Potentiality, overcome with kinetic imminence and awash with gravitational, thermal, chemical potential energies, their voices are a mere mamosecond (mountain version of nanosecond) from screaming louder than a human eardrum may bear.
When they do sing forth, ‘civilizations’ may crumble, entire generations evaporate into mindless history to be lost for ever. The run of time in a day of a mountain outpaces ours by thousands upon thousands, a mere breath for those creatures of rock and clay would wipe out a geological era with the efficacy of a meteorite impact.
Good Grief I recall. The loss of a useful item might chafe, of a good coat can strike up a grieving that lingers for days. The loss of a close family member may plunge one into a vortex of violent emotions littered with memories like reunions and echoes of plagues. The loss of a limb can throw light onto darkness and the loss of a sense will shift everything a step to one side.
Good Grief from Good Loving, Good Giving. Caring for animals, really caring for them, creating an environment that suits their needs, not just ours, giving them the knowledge, security and tools to live comfortably in their animal skin in our human animal world. Much as we would raise a child, we must also raise and care for a child of another species. Our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, cousins, lovers all take the form of every thing in every way. All energy transforms eventually.
Good Living includes understanding how little we understand, but may strive always to understand more… fully. Good Intentions nurtured by Good Words, Good Deeds, Good Vibes, Good Feels. We can go on like this for ages. It’s not without merit. For who among us does not need more GOOD in our lives?
Grief is Good for us. Not too much, but just enough. Let me taste the meaning of this feeling in me. Let me look a little deeper into the gaps between the things. Let me allow some time and sit with it. Lifetimes ago such words engendered ridicule and scorn. I don’t now care. If that’s the response in the cells of those who read, their journey is yet long. I journey on.
Good Days. Good Lives. Good Thoughts. Good Byes.
*Good Talks = heading on a website I was reading
With curiosity, Kat Dancer
bodymudra@gmail.com
403-931-3866 (h)
+1 415 525 2630 (c)
