What do we hear?

Cherry blossoms and garden bits, @Maggiehongkong

There is a favourite time of the day, any day, that I embrace enthusiastically. The darkness before the sunrise, any sunrise, anywhere in the world. Missing a sunrise, missing this silence and the power of the seemingly infinite space between what was and what is yet to meet us, would make me feeling I am missing balance in my life.

This time, for the sake of the context, the village where I am is never silent. There is always a dog communicating with another dog. There are dog-codes to warn movement, warn something is happening, some car passes somewhere, some cat jumps a fence from garden to garden, humans wake up perhaps and start their chores slowly. Once the dogs are awake, there is then the rooster’s concerto. Our rooster is deeply sleeping I would say, while the ones from the neighbourhood are loud and about, taking full responsibility for waking up our corner of the world.

I drink my first coffee in semi darkness. The only light on being the street light, which one would argue it can lit up a stadium too. At first, the snow-whiteness of this light was not my friend. Once I became familiar and understand its utility really, we became friends. I would wake up and start moving around the house with no other lights on. This white-dissipation embraces all windows and lit from outside inwards, allowing me both freedom of action and safety of knowing what I am doing while practically still moving around “in darkness”.

A long introduction this morning at first hours as I grow fonder and fonder of setting up a context of my statements. Setting up a context allows me to equally see the evolution of all things, allow me to mark on the dot how impermanent things are, how fragile life is and often times, reconnects me even more passionately with all that I have and I am today. And I am not only one person. This is also what context highlights for me.At times, in a very disturbing snow-white light. At times in a dim butter-soft light. At times in a diffuse stand-by light.

The snow-white light is full on right here and now.

There is not one thing to highlight. There is a multitude of scenes, a tight and close circle of participants, multiple events, multiple reactions and responses. There is equally a possibility in taking a real break, at times powered by a solid nap, to observe, take in, creating and generating on its own a fury of insights with or without action points, responses, to-do lists and finally often going back to all my rainbow post-its as a way to pat myself on the shoulder for fulfilling my dreams in real time. This is not a competition or a busy-ness map. Far from it. I simply decided to award myself out-loud and unapologetically for all the seeds planted and the gorgeous flowers dreaming to foster, long term mostly.

Going back to the context, I came to notice that I embrace a newly found sense of freedom. A sense of freedom I have always carried and I could see how at times, the borders of our daily lives, might have suffocated my authenticity at times. I am still rambling in a way, and engage you now in this early morning debate on what creativity might mean to myself and also to you. The suffocation I mention here is simply referring to the time. The real time I could have to invest in being authentic. Dot.

Time is this extremely “precious material” that we seem to have, that it changes its properties, that zooms us in and zooms us out, “timelapses” and “slow-motions”, creates a void, fills us in with the enthusiasm of new beginnings and marks an end of an era.

Time is a newly found theme raising from a summer garden conversation with my friends. I go back and forth, back and forth with intention to take notes, gain insights and jot down mentally how did TIME influenced a particular moment in my personal history. Creating a new set of context for my better understanding.

Let me cheer you up for a second here. Micky here, is a hugger. She takes any occasion to playfully find her way into our hearts, into the sleeves of anything we might wear, snug in an find our beating hearts, and then as they usually do in safety turn upside down and demand” now you love me back too”. This moment, this time, has no value. The word”precious” is well served here. The photo is essential to keep the memory lane alive and be able to go back and connect with that moment over and over again when I will be far away.

As a bracket for the sake of the context again, the “snow-white stadium light” is now off. More roosters are waking up. There is no sunrise yet, only the melting blue light of the horizon at the edges of the hills covered in forests. Beauty in becoming as I write, as I take this in, the beauty of creating this memory for myself and become acutely aware of it.

The silence is as fluid as it gets. The connection we might establish here it keeps me alert, responsible, dedicated to a craft that I hone for decades and yet I have kept it too long simmering inside, or simmering on endless notebooks.

The silence connects me to real questions, to real life events where action in fact becomes a necessity. “What do I do now” turns many a times into “ How can I help?”

Sitting here in the earlier hours, simply hearing back the stories, the stories reflecting real events, real fragility, real situations that change life equations, I ponder. There might be some information here that might not always bring hope. No matter how attached to this concept we might be. The snow-light stadium lights says “It is what it is”. And it might also be perhaps quite sad. This is a moment to acknowledge there are mysteries and real situations that will turn everything upside down. When this life equations reset themselves, you look at the data you have, at the resources you have and you say “How can I show up here?”.

When we listen with our heart and we meet someone’s pain I find this question to be the only one that can bring some momentarily relief. All the positive thinking, the innate holding on hope as the ultimate game changer, all the things I use to preach and practice both on me and others, are now put aside. Sometimes they might loose their meaning entirely. This snow-white annoying light offered me a valuable insight.

There was a meaning in me being here at this very moment. A mystery of life that I would accept wholeheartedly. I fully embrace all there is to simply show up. There is no-list, just a background brainstorm going on in paralel, with the humility that I would be able to hear truly and be near someone in pain today.

I could have edited this photo and concentrate on the flower buds only. And yet, the moment I wanted to capture is also the time I sat down with my feet grounding on that soil, still damp from the overnight rain. This is also the time when Micky came down and snug inside my vest bringing my smile and laughter back. Our pet-friends know how to show up in such a phenomenal way. They search for your eyes and look deeper inside our hearts and simply hug you. This is as precious as it could get.

There is silence. There is hearing. There is listening with one’s heart in its purest form. There is this frequency of love so warmly decoded by our dog friends.

Dear friend, should you carry a deep sorrow with you today and maybe days to come from now, should you be scared that you might not be heard when you need most, should you be torn between what to do for others and how to also rest and take care of yourself, I hereby offer you a snug inside your heart just as Micky would do. I would like to grant you from my heart a direct hot line to my heart. Dial in and pour out whatever you have stored and did not know how to make sense of it so far. All being new, all being heavier that initially imagined, all turning your life equations as you knew it yesterday, upside down. Dial in and pour out your heart in this invitation to grow up ten fold, to show up ten fold for those who need you most today. Dial in and pour out your heart in the new purpose still unfolding. This imbalance will somehow generate a new rhythm of love, a rhythm of service, a rhythm of new discoveries around how large we can show up and unfold our bottomless resources to love back. This is a time to step up and deep dive into a powerful new you. Making the very best with all the data we have got today. With so much care and love.

Dear friend, I am here to listen and care and show up too. You are not on your own. Dial in and pour your out your heart.

Looking for a poem to offer us a warm balm on this colder spring morning, I came across Jane Hirshfield and her book, The Asking: New and Selected Poems.

The Asking:New and Selected Poems, Jane Hirshfield

I loved her poem “I would like”

I would like

My living to inhabit me

The way

Rain,sun,and their wanting

Inhabit a fig or an apple.

I would like to meet my life

Also in pieces,

Scattered:

A conversation set down

On a long hallway table;

A dissapointmend

Pocketed inside a jacket;

Some long-ago longing glimpsed,

Half-recognized,

In the corner of a thrift store

Painting.

To discover my happiness,

Walking first

Toward

Then away from me

Down a stairwell,

On two strong legs all its own.

Also,

The uncountable

Wheat stalks,

How many times broken,

Beaten, sent

Between grindstones,

Before entering

The marriage

Of oven and bread-

Let me find my life in that,too.

In my moments

Of clumsiness,solitude;

In days of vertigo and hesitation;

In the many year-ends

That found me

Standing on top of a stovetop

To take down a track light.

In my nights’asked,

Sometimes answered, questions.

I would like

To add to my life,

While we are still living,

A little salt and butter,

One more slice of the edible apple,

A teaspoon of jam

From the long-simmered fig.

To taste

As if something tasted for the

First time

What we will have become then.

(Apologies to the author as I could not honour the original punctuation due to the template of the quote here.)

There is a quote in Romanian language we usually take on when things go a bit unexpectedly. “Și când credeai că nu mai poți, mai poți un pic”.

Free translation at the spur of this moment: “when you thought that you could not bear it , you simple can a tiny bit more” .

There is a well of resources hidden deep inside us that simply shows us and strengthens us.

Disclaimer - this is not a letter about myself. It is a dedication to someone who might be in pain today and would not have yet found the power inside to raise up.

Namaste. I hear you.