Lizard

Last August, on my 30th birthday, I hiked all day and in the afternoon sat on a rock at the confluence of two arroyos, waiting. Next to me was a lizard with a blue belly, sunning itself quietly, waiting with me, it seemed, for my friend who would eventually arrive. My watch had stopped. I regarded the lizard silently. I had encountered lizards all over the place on that hike; most skittered into some low brush when they heard (or felt) the sound of my footsteps. This one was unalarmed. It was as though I had given up enough of my human self that I was no longer quite as threatening. I could be tolerated in the lizard’s space.

I read later that lizards symbolize the dreamtime, not sleep-dreaming but waking-dreaming, a state of mind where the world seems to open up and speak, without the usual static and interference. Of course, it isn’t the world that moves to make that happen but the mind that gives way. It usually requires a sacrifice of some sort, a wearing down of ordinary consciousness through time, silence, hunger or movement. I thought of that this week, two miles into a long hike, when I nearly stepped on a black lizard who was standing still in the middle of the path. It didn’t move as I approached. I paused. A thought surfaced in my mind that stepping over it would mean stepping into that dreamtime space. Would I sacrifice my humanness to let that happen?

Wake Up

Last night I dreamt I was living in a different apartment, and I hadn’t entirely unpacked. The space seemed so crowded, but I kept noticing it was things the previous owner left that occupied much of the space. She was gone; I could put those things away. It seemed every time I turned around, I noticed something else. The place was actually huge inside, with large shelves made of old, dark wood and a spacious dining room table. Next door lived a man who was supposed to be Joseph Campbell but who looked like Robert Hass. We were supposed to go hiking together the next day. I fell asleep in the living room. He came in very early to wake me up. It’s early, I protested. No, he said, you have to wake up; we have so much to do! I could see that whatever he had in mind for us was extremely important and very exciting, so I tried, but I couldn’t quite get my bearings. His eyes were bright, and he was smiling. He stood me up and shook me. Wake up! he said. Wake up! There is so much to do!

Having a Plan

Lately the left side of my brain seems to be insisting that I must (MUST) have a plan. Its insistence is egged on by external factors, various people and institutions in different sectors of my life requiring discussion, and in some cases even the filling out of forms, to map out what I will be doing with my time over the next two years. It has been strange interacting with people in this way, since no one seems to be under the delusion that the resulting plan will actually play out in reality. Yet it’s of such importance to everyone that I do it anyway. One person even told me, just tell us what the plan is; we don’t care whether or not you actually follow it.

So on Sunday I found myself sitting on the couch, sharing a bottle of wine with The Photographer, discussing this bizarre situation. It felt like sitting in a boat after a flood, all the wasted remnants of a week’s worth of anxiety floating by casually, unremarkably, things that only days before had seemed like life or death matters. In a moment of clarity, I noted that much of the time, I feel I am a force in my own right, interacting with other forces in the universe, that I have an effect when I put my energy into things. On good days, I am even able to muster some faith that things work out when I am true to self and purpose, that I can ask for help and receive it, and that beautiful solutions can appear unexpectedly, undaunted by my limited capacity for imagining them. Then someone asks me to explain exactly HOW everything will work out, and suddenly, I feel incredibly small, alone, and unsure how I have ever found it within my power to even tie my shoes in the morning.

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to have someone who could help me out of the flood water and into the boat. I was reminded that the best way to realign with a more expansive sense of self is through connection with other. That in itself is a beautiful solution, one I could not have imagined.

On Poetry

Noticing that a number of my posts were beginning with excerpts from poems, I thought perhaps the subject of poetry deserved its own page: On Poetry