Celebrating the 4th of July

While the rest of America is celebrating the birthday of America in merry parades and carnivals, I'm sprawled out under a tree in a corner of Concord, MA, a famous corner though it is, on the banks of the Walden Pond - yes, the beloved home of Henry David Thoreau. I've long been reading his book by the same name, Walden, long been wanting to visit this little lake, and long been idealizing Thoreau's lifestyle, a life of solitude, contemplation and "living deliberately."

"... my friends ask what will I do when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?"
~Thoreau

I've been asked this question myself a few times when I go away on my own little solitary retreats, and even though they're not long enough to watch the progress of the seasons, they're long enough to watch nature in its season, on that particular day or week. And this warm summer day is a gorgeous day to see the beauty of the woods around Walden. I found a shady tree, laid out my blanket under it on a moss carpet, and the view below me is the pond through the trees.

Thoreau was given the gift of this plot of land by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and on this plot, Thoreau built a one-room house by himself, including the chimney, cut his own firewood, grew beans to sustain himself. He took residence in this tiny home on the 4th of July, in 1845, and so here I am, unwittingly celebrating the birth-day of Thoreau's Walden!

Earlier today, I also got to visit the homes of Emerson, Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of who lived in Concord around the same time, and were great friends. They were the original Transcendentalists, who believed in the goodness of man and nature. Emerson's home was surrounded by beautiful grounds where he wrote his famous "Nature" essay, LM Alcott's house was filled with corners and staircases where she set Little Women, and Hawthorne's Wayside House was the only house he ever owned which he had bought from the Alcotts. And as it happens, the 4th of July happens to be Hawthorne's birthday too.

Thoreau's Walden hut

Alcott's Orchard House



Hawthorne's Wayside House

Emerson's House and Gardens



Seeing their houses, how they lived and wrote, their workplaces and walking spaces, these literary legends somehow seem friendly, their wishes and fears relate-able, and the words of their hearts not too long gone. To walk in their paths, see through their windows, standing behind their chairs, literally watching over their ghostly shoulders has been a fascinating trek back in time for me.

I even got to visit their graves, their humble final homes, when I walked through the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, named by Emerson himself, and it is a beautiful resting place for these lovers of nature, laid out as a garden for the living as much as for the dead -

"When these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history: the good, the wise, and the great will have left their names and virtues on the trees..." ~Emerson



Feeling Lost, Finding Light

I woke up at 4am this morning to drop off Akhil at his friend's place (he's getting a ride with his team to the airport to go to Iowa for the Odyssey of the Mind worlds) and then I headed back home to catch up on my lost sleep. Instead I found myself becoming more and more awake. I started noticing the silence all around me, not a soul on the streets, a dense fog enveloping me, making it feel like I was floating on thin air, or rather thick air, floating on clouds, the distant lights like starships from other planets, the looming trees like gentle genies. I let myself be sucked into this magic, this mysterious, ethereal place, like I was not on the earthly plane. And then suddenly I realized I didn't know where I was. I had to focus to find the landmarks, to feel the shapes of the churches and cemeteries with my eyes, to figure out where I was. And then when I felt comfortable, I'd feel lost again. As disconcerted as this made me feel, I was getting used to it. I liked the awareness it was bringing to this moment. The early morning drive along the dark, back roads was a lucky recipe for pulling me out of everyday routine, mundane thoughts, my repetitive mind going over the same old silly worries, anxieties, and petty pleasures. I liked the feeling of being cocooned at the same time as being lost.

I thought if I could feel this in my daily life - feeling safe while I feel my way around the big questions, figuring out "who am I", "where am I", "where am I going", I would love to do this full time. Instead, I convince myself I'm trapped, nowhere to go, feeling pressured to perform, like a monkey on a leash - a short leash!

I will stretch my leash a bit this weekend though, when I get away on a solitary retreat - away from the world I feel trapped in. The hermitage in Cresco is calling me like one of those distant starships in the fog. I've been looking for an escape for a while now, and thanks to Akhil, I'm finally getting to look forward to some solitude, some soul-time, and some time to center myself. I've been going like a top at top-speed: spinning out of control, losing any contact with my center, on the verge of falling off, feeling lost. I'm hoping the trip to Cresco will help me find my light again, of the starship that will lead me home again, to finding myself again, to maybe even figure out a way to lose my leash entirely - I can hope!

A Golden Day of Weeding

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is quite another.
- Henry Van Dyke

21st of March is still a week away, but today was my first spring day. It's been warm all week, but I was only able to get out to enjoy it today - after work - finally. And what did I do to celebrate it? Weed! What a joy it is to weed on a golden day - how blissful to feel the sun on my back, soaking in some solitude, the sky a clean, clear blue, the smell of cherry blossom in the air, listening to the birds singing all around me, feeling the coolness of the grass, the tug of the weeds as they give in... I spent hours doing it - all by myself. A landscaping business guy felt sorry for me and stopped and gave me his card - to offer some spring cleaning services. My housemaid last week saw the sad state of my front yard - dead twigs and overgrown weeds and offered the services of her husband - for a hundred dollars. I happily turned them both down. How can I explain to them that I was saving my weeds and my winter twigs for a warm sunny day - for a day like today - just so I can enjoy the glory of spring, and the glory of weeding?


As I made my rounds in and around the nooks and niches, I found a bunch of tiny irises hidden under an overgrown butterfly bush. I had planted them a few years ago but forgotten about them. Their deep blue petals are divine and I love their delicate golden centers. I paired them with mini daffodils that have been popping up cheerfully the past few days, and put them all in an old mustard jar (a present from a friend). It's like bringing in the sun and the sky - a bit of spring inside - they make me smile every time I pass by them.

Not Quite Spring

But a day in a greenhouse stirs up thoughts of the tropics... here in the Longwood Gardens

An Orchid Extravaganza - and it was!

Paths of petals

A purple anemone, a parrot tulip and a passion flower

An upside down garden!?

And a delightful Children's Garden

Longwood Gardens is so much more, but for a winter day, their giant greenhouse was more than enough to slake my thirst for some green.

Greed is good!

Saturday mornings, I love them! Yoga, coffee, and books. After my yoga class in a church, coffee in one of the parks, I get to go to the library and spend the rest of my morning browsing around in books, books, and more books. I don’t have any particular pattern for browsing, just that I usually start with something in the back of my mind, something I had read about, or something I want to learn about, but most times I let the books call to me. This morning it was about juncos. Every January, these little black and white birds show up on my deck, first thing each morning, even before I get out of bed, to look for any leftover bits of bread that I might have thrown out the previous day. They’re the cutest little birds (more about them another time) and I slowly started learning bits and pieces about them. Today I thought I’d read up on them specifically.

So I planted myself in front of the bird shelf in my local library, and browsed through book after book about birds, birding, bird watching, bird feeding, bird finding, and anything else about birds that anyone could think of writing a book about. Some National Geographic books with glorious colored photos, some Audubon Society books with illustrations and drawings, and some bird storybooks with more words than pictures. And I sucked them all up, greedily. I came home carrying a stack of books that I almost toppled under – twice.

I never would have considered myself greedy, but as I was toting my pile of books home from the library, the word popped into my head, and I pictured a tiny squirrel grabbing nuts with both its paws even though it already had both its cheeks bulging enormously from previous finds. I looked up the word Greed in the dictionary, and it refers to an excessive desire to possess wealth, goods, or abstract things of value with the intention to keep it to oneself. So what is it about my love of books that feels greedy? I love seeing piles of books next to my bed, all waiting to be read. Reading, or even looking forward to reading, the first page of a new book, is an anticipatory pleasure above anything else I can think of. Sometimes I don’t/can’t finish what I start – the pleasure of anticipation is sometimes more than reading itself, and I don’t have the time to read all the books I want to. But I’ve read so many books that have brought me so much wealth – a wealth of ideas, a wealth of knowledge, art, culture, taste, societies, peoples, nature, and of course birds. And the more I read, the more I want to read. If this is not greed, what is it?

But greed has a negative connotation – insinuating sin. How is it that I don’t feel sinful when I read? Even at its height, the voracious gulping and swallowing of any written word that comes my way doesn’t feel sinful. Is it because greed is not necessarily always sinful, but only when it is referred to something inappropriate? Or is greed not the right word for my love of books and reading? If I flip it to a positive word, the word god comes to mind. Is it a coincidence that they begin and end with the same letters? Probably. What are words, if they don’t prompt a feeling? Maybe the feeling I feel when I read is more godly than greedy, even if it was only about grey colored birds? So it can't be too far from the truth that if books are my god, then the library is my temple. And Saturday, my Sabbath.

Rays of Healing with Reiki

I had a Reiki session with someone my Yoga teacher recommended recently. I didn't know what to expect, and I didn't want to read up about it, so I just went, and figured I'd take in whatever comes my way.

It was a small cozy room, a rented office space in a gym, and she was a petite blonde woman, and those were my first impressions. She introduced herself as Jodi Hutchinson, a certified PA, but her passion is in ancient healing traditions like Reiki, Ayurveda, acupressure, etc. The energy healing session I requested for was Reiki, so all healing was meant to be entirely hands-off. I was curious how this would even work.

We started off talking about how I came to her, and then about a few things that bothered me (bald spots, neck pain, work) but it seemed like there was another conversation going on beneath the surface that we weren't verbalizing. Once we started talking, tears started leaking out of my eyes and I didn't even know why. I had no pre-conceived topics of conversation - I just went with what was coming from within me. Mostly about the unsatisfactoriness of my work, and any direction past this job. So I was really surprised, when Jodi said at the end of the session, that I was releasing a lot of old, pent up sadness. I hadn't said anything to her about my unhappiness, but when she mentioned it, something touched a nerve, or my emotional faucet, and it came out in more tears. It seemed like even the conversation we were verbalizing wasn't anything concrete, and in fact that was the case with Reiki itself - I couldn't put my finger on anything. For an hour or more, Jodi was guiding me through a healing session that felt meditative, as if I was in a half-trance. Even though I found it hard to understand what was going on around me, I could feel something deep within me. I guess that's what was getting released as tears. It felt like I was cocooned in a nest of protective energy.

Besides the tears, what I felt during the session was a tingly feeling in certain parts of my body - in my feet, my arms, my chest, and my forehead. Later Jodi explained this was the energy moving! I also felt heaviness sometimes, chilly, lightness... I was pleased when she said that my body absorbed the energy work she was doing without any blocks. The one block that she said she couldn't dissolve all the way was the tight knot in my neck, but for me, as soon as I got off the table, I felt the neck pain was gone! That was one tangible thing I could take away with me.

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