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In a tribute to Human Powers of Observation, I noticed that my life had lost its shape or had taken on a new, unfamiliar one.  There is too much drift, too much that feels as though I've become unmoored from what seemed steady and almost virtuous. These are not items large enough to be seen from space, they can barely be identified when in the same room, but they were my almost-constants, like drawing, color pencil work, staying in touch (other than Facebook, without which I would be substantially incommunicado), making stuff, staying awake more, not wandering through my days like a person wearing oven mitts who is trying to replace the screw in a pair of reading glasses.

Having now spent nearly a week with this awareness, I come, once again, to the crossroads of duality.  Perhaps an amorphous state does not signal failure to measure up but instead merely indicates what is.   And how is one to know?  As the day begins here with a burned-out light bulb in an inconvenient place, a shrinking amount of good drinking water and probably two or three other pesky matters, my strongest guidance tells me to let it go, for now.  Keep it simple.  All will be resolved, or not, and that, too, is a resolution.

I am coming around to the belief - too bad there's not enough material here for a manifesto or to gain tax-exempt status - that all is in flux and may always have been in flux, flux is not to be feared or avoided, flux and chaos are second, possibly first, cousins and every thing that is is a process.  An evolutionary process.

Shining brightest in the midst of what for the moment I will call knowing is that immediate action is not indicated.  Rather than action of any sort, a passive yet grace-filled state of allowing has been asked for. At last, an assignment to which I may be equal.

Say yes to dancing stars

Corita Kent's art, Friedrich Nietzsche's quote

“Our lives unfold in ways that we cannot fathom beforehand. That condition of not knowing produces a sense of wonder and openness to what may come.”  Roger Housden

(The Housden quote is from an audio series called Teaching What We Need to Learn, hosted by Raphael Cushnir.  As of Oct. 16, the programs were still available for listening or downloading here.  The link will take you directly to the recorded talks but there you will find a link to the HOME page which will give you more context.)

As evidence, which I gather on all topics because it seems wise to have as much proof as one can amass, on the morning I began writing this I found a link on FB to a new Pema Chodron title about change and uncertainty, obvious indicators of chaos.


If we are dancing stars born from chaos, then it really IS all physics, which I had begun to suspect.  But in a human and not a celestial body, as sentient beings, comfort and the awareness of chaos make difficult playmates.  Being part of a naturally-occuring process does not quarantee a quiet mind.

However, chaos as an antonym for complacency and not comfort takes on the aspect of quest, seeking/seeker, more of my favorite metaphoric rocket fuel to propel us beyond settling, being stuck.  We all know the water needs to boil to cook the noodles.

We churn, suffer our gastric juices.  We yearn and fidget, dream and try to foresee how we might map our lives as dancing stars, knowing we have not been endowed with such vision.  We reread the contract, looking for the loophole that permits explosive miracles to be born from tranquility, a sure passage to our hopes of greatness without the need for volcanic shenanigans.  Chaos, what an unexpected new best friend.