Depth: a sleight of hand moment

"The more I understand about the way that internalized oppression distorts my thoughts, feelings, and actions, the better able I am to compensate for its effects and develop specific strategies to undo them. Knowing, for example, that the Ashkenazi Jewish history of cyclical expulsions, massacres, and attempted genocide has left us jumpy, urgent, inclines to leap into action too fast and talk a lot helps me monitor my own urgency and disbelieve it. Knowing my ancestors survived by trying to be indispensable helps me rein in my tendency to take on way too much." - "Bigger is Better" from Medicine Stories, Aurora Levins Morales

We needed to get ourselves out of the wagon, into Scout the Subaru and make a move/slide into appreciation. With all those inconvenient, oppressive and too often overwhelming sensations and thoughts that would convince us -- it will never be any better, we could have cemented ourselves into self-inflicted oppression. But then, the contradiction of it all is ... it is better in the next moment, could have been much worse if we held fast to being overwhelmed. Instead we savored a wonderful salmon and millet lunch and made the decision to "compensate for the internal oppression".

Pete drove to one of our favorite beaches not far north of where we live. We forget the real name of the beach and prefer to give it names we remember. This one is the Annie and Nathanial Beach because young farmers we know live close-by.

We walked. The sun and sky were alive and blissfully blue. The Salish Sea magnificent in her watery way, shells emptied of their former inhabitants and trees cut for whatever reasons by humans lay along the shore. People and dogs were happy to be out of the house, and probably just as happy as we were to be walking on Earth, breathing sweet clean air, being part of the everything.

We shopped to fill our drinking water jugs, bought some millet and quinoa for future meals, butter to melt on pancakes or toast, and a pint of San Juan Island Vanilla ice cream to eat on the ride back home.

When we pulled up alongside the vardo, I was filled with that sweet depth of connection that comes most clearly when you return home and know this place anew. Pete put it this way, "It's really good to get out and see where we live." Though the sun was already turned to early shade, the sky above us was a feather bed turned upside down, or right side up. Spacious and warm, light and bright.

It was one of those 'sleight-of-hand' moments, David Abram writes of in his book Becoming Animal

" If we rarely notice such transformations today--if we seem to have lost our sense of the earth's audacious and metamorphic magic--it is likely because our depth perception has become impoverished." 

We live with dozens of wild rabbits. It's too easy to live with the illusion that these animals are domesticated 'pets.' We have little illusion about their real, and wild natures though we feed them regularly and they make our place here feel so much more because their lives are filled with wild. Yes, they huddle under our rigs, trucks and cars for shelter; feed on our veg and fruit trimming, and sometimes we get a little more friendly when a life event brings us closer.

Purps, the rabbit in the video, named because there is a purple-like tint to the deep markings that underlay the red-brown fur, was injured several weeks ago. A deep hole below the left eye. At first I thought the injury was a lucky escape from being dinner. But over time we see that rabbits have a very territorial and easy shift from docile to defender. Rabbits fight each other. We watched the injury closely, made sure Purps got extra greens -- especially Chickweed, to help nourish. The other rabbits singled out Purps once she/he/they was injured. I wonder if it's because we offer more attention?

It feels good to be blogging again. I've taken purposeful time away to ask my heart about writing. The answers are changeable, like the weather so my posts have been different. This one is filled with photographs the speak of the depth of feelings not easily put onto a flat screen page.

The Leo Full Night was bright and fat last night, maybe this post is one of the ways to play with words for a fun party. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together.