Winter is the season to turn inward. When fields lie fallow. Respite. Refuge. Rejuvenation.
As the clock on the year winds down, we may mull over the past year.
Except today I don't want to mull over 2010.
I want to take a pencil upside down, smudge the eraser across the page, scatter it to the four winds, wipe it away from history: an error.
Yesterday, hearing Pamela Wilson is like a balm, "You can relax. You really cannot mess up the unfolding. You cannot put it back together--Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall."
This morning I wake up and it's still 2010 and it still exists in history. (I'm not always this cranky, should this post be your first stopover, by the way....)
In an undeniable funk, I go for a long walk today, the longer the better although it's in the mid-40s and a howling wind cuts through the open ranges between the cookie-cutter homes which when you can find them bunched together in cul-de-sacs act as welcome wind barriers like being sheltered in a slot canyon. (I know that doesn't sound cold, yet in Las Vegas it's a precipitous drop from the balmy temperatures.)
I'm walking mindlessly rehashing wounds and rerunning stories of overt resistance chippering away in my brain. (Yes, another form of sly resistance itself.) I'm oblivious to the sun and the sky. But any zombie can walk this route. There are only so many rearrangements of roads and desire lines through the desolate fields around my Mom's condo, and I've criss-crossed them all these two months.
"Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky." - Ojibwa saying
In short, I am not paying any attention to the world. I'm still fussing with the pencil eraser.
Suddenly tiny iridescent wings capture the corner of my eye. There silent, sitting, a glittering green hummingbird with a rosy neck.
Odd. There are no bright flowers. Make that there are no flowers and no color besides muted brown, sage, bark, chalk. No bird feeders in sight. The miniature bird's about to fly away when it spots me spotting it. Immediately, I calm down and am totally present. It relaxes too, and decides to perch on the leafless tree limb for another minute. I smile inside--and out. We turn to leave. Lift off and flicker away.
I knew it was a symbol, a message:
"The Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards. This is a reminder that the past can't be changed but the past can teach lessons. The Hummingbird comes when it seems that what needs to be done is impossible. It teaches how to find joy in any circumstance." - Hummingbird totem via Crystal-Cure.com
That's worth reading again, sipping like nectar, and stapling to the history book on 2010: "The Hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards. This is a reminder that the past can't be changed but the past can teach lessons. The Hummingbird comes when it seems that what needs to be done is impossible. It teaches how to find joy in any circumstance."
I don't know about you. But that message couldn't be more precisely perfect and tailor-made for 2010 and 2011.
The species I saw is broad-tailed hummingbird. Its summer range includes Great Basin states like Nevada. December 30th is hardly summer, although I did spot him nearby the intersection of Sunny Days and Starry Nights (no joke). So, why isn't he sipping hibiscus in Guadalajara or Quetzaltenago by now?
A few weeks ago thinking towards 2011, I selected blithe as my themeword. Its etymology includes the Old Saxon "bright (said of the sky)," and a connection to the Anglo-Saxon "to shine" sharing its roots with words bliss, and bless, too.
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert—
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. - beginning of To a Skylark, Percy Bysshe Shelley
May be time to jam with the language of birds.
I watched this beautiful video yesterday where Pamela Wilson tells a story about resting in our natural Presence, deep listening itself, music, life's invitation, and "all of a sudden a little bird...":
begins you,
small, superlative being,
you are a miracle,
and you blaze - from Ode to a Hummingbird, Pablo Neruda
Bonus: A short, blithesome (==irreverently wholly) hummingbird-infused story of Pamela Wilson's "teacher", Robert Adams here.
Excerpt: "The sweet, natural happiness that I experienced in his presence was so very thick and blatant. All the ideas I had picked up about what it is to be in the presence of Truth were permanently cracked. The mind just couldn’t get around the chasm between what it thought holiness was supposed to be like and what it had actually met that day with Robert Adams. In its attempt to cross that chasm, it had fallen into it, giving rise to an absolutely undeniable experience of joyfulness and peace."
art credits: Broad-tailed Hummingbird photo by Inga Brennan via Birdzilla.com; Hummingbird, by Fred Tomaselli
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