www.planetware.com630 × 407Search by image Delphi, lying on the slopes of Mt Parnassus high above the Gulf of Corinth

By the Gulf of Corinth, I sat down and wept. Delphi was just out of sight across the water. The water was the improbable aqua/azure blue of the Mediterranean. At night phosphorescence glowed on the waves. Above the pine-clad mountains rose steeply. The air was fragrant with mint and oregano. The sky was perpetually cloudless and the sun baked the earth. When you couldn’t bear the heat, you cooled off in the warm waters of the gulf. Out of the same water came the little fish you ate for breakfast.

All of this I saw through swollen eyes. I felt as if my life had ended with my family. All three of them were still alive, but lost to me.

There was a lot of ironing to be done there. It was Camping Krioneri,where sheets were provided, so my hostess set me to the task. I cried and ironed. I ironed and cried.

One day, fire swept down the mountain. The big bellied planes dipped water from the gulf and dropped it above us. As the day passed the planes came and went and everyone got red-eyed like me.

Many years ago.

I find myself once again in pine mountains under the hot summer sun – no rivers of Babylon here, only the small pond where the coots and ducks and red winged blackbirds rule. Every window presents beauty: towering Jeffrey pines, quacking aspens, steeply climbing green-clad slopes, a distant alpine meadow tawny in the drought. The air redolent of pine, cedar, acrid poplar, sage. Whereas the Greek village was white or bright with colour, little brick runnels of spring water coursing down beside the road, this village is log-cabined or soft green and yellow, the colours actually mandated. The people do not stand in the mid-day sun and shout in Greek about politics. They smile and greet you. They even stop to talk.

Kind of them. But meanwhile … we are struggling with a problem that feels intransigent. We move one step forward and then seem to slide two steps back. You can tell yourself that this is the nature of healing, but it is hard to remember that when you wake up brokenhearted and see such sights outside your window.

Can the eyes of grief bear the gift of beauty?

www.greece.com1024 × 768 Camping Krioneri in Akratas, Greece

Keat’s sketch of a Grecian Urn from Wikipedia

When the poet, John Keats, wrote the line, “Thou foster child of silence and slow time”, he was talking about a Grecian urn. http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html  The urn had survived from the days of ancient Greece and the figures depicted on it were a freeze shot of life in that time: a boy and girl almost kissing, a garlanded cow being paraded off to be sacrificed. Keats expresses envy for these happy people immortalized in their joy. He seems to have written it in May 1819. In 1820, he was diagnosed with consumption or tuberculosis, probably contracted when he took care of his brother, Tom, who died of the disease. Keats died at the age of 25.

But the line keeps recurring in my head here on the mountain. In my last post I talked about sitting still on a rock beside a pond for over an hour, watching and listening to the coots and ducks and red wing black birds, studying the stone itself, the reeds and the water.

After 9 a.m., the birds, who started their serenades around 5, begin to fall silent in the heat with the notable exception of flights of angry red wings after the thieving hawk. As the heat grows, the silence deepens, although from time to time, the breeze rises and the pines begin to purr. The sound will start off down the road and gradually arrive, cooling as it comes. To me it is the most comforting sound in the world.

The village goes by mountain time. Workmen here are even harder to pin down than in the city. The plumber may be a plumber some days. On others he may be a painter, layering oil colours on canvas. The pellet stove repair guy may not regard your emergency as one. Things move slowly here.

I have been nagging myself because I’m no longer filling my days with useful tasks, Then yesterday, I found myself sitting and staring and realized I was just on mountain time.

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Lao Tsu, author of the I Ching (Book of Changes) Photo by Jan CharisseMarie from photobucket

For much of my childhood and youth, I was called Joy, one of the reasons I was able to grasp the concept of irony easily. I have always been particularly struck by the sound of the word when bellowed. More recently, I enjoyed “Joyce” pronounced Joyeeeese bellowed by the 45 year “superior” in my tai chi outfit. I came running as fast as my 70 year-old legs would carry me.

But that’s just more of the same black humour.

I had a dream the other night – as they say in song – it featured Mendelson Joe, an ex-rocker of some note and a naive artist and activist, whom I knew 30 years ago. In the dream, he was taking me to Montreal on the back of his motorbike. I’ve ridden on the back of a motorbike once around the neigbourhood and it was not sheer joy, but this long excursion made me happy. We stopped for a break and Joe parked his bike beside his friend’s bike in a field. When we were ready to go, we began walking toward the field, which suddenly and swiftly began to fill with water. By the time the two men rushed in, the bikes were completely submerged. They were able to drag them out. They were big strong bikers after all. Whether the bikes still worked I never found out.

Later as I was having my morning pu-er, I opened the I Ching at random and found “Lake”, the trigram for it is a broken or yin line over two solid, yang lines. Lake contrasts to the mountain, the culmination of solidity. Instead Lake is concentration through pooling. Certainly my dream was a dramatic illustration of that.The swift, silent flow of water was astonishing. Whereas the mountain is proud and upthrusting and in danger of excessive isolation, lake gathers through lowness.

I turned to Hexagram 58 (6 lines, a double of the lake trigram, the first yin at the top and the last yang at the bottom -lake above, lake below). The pictograph or Chinese letter representing it has 2 “dancing” legs under a rectangle ( a smiling mouth) and above it, 2 waving arms. It is called Tui, translated as “The Joyous, Lake” by the Wilhelm/Baynes English version of the I Ching, “Exchange” by Deng MIng Dao’s and “Delight” by Thomas Cleary.

I had opened the I Ching at random, but then, as my favourite detectives are fond of saying, “There’s no such thing as a coincidence”. (Cue eerie music.)

“True joy,” Wilhelm tells us rests on firmness and strength within. Deng says, “True joy relies on inner strength and remains gentle and wielding on the outside”. Cleary says, “When difficulty is entered with delight, people forget their toil, …. people forget their death.”

All three emphasize that it is the coming together of waters, the exchange of two lake waters, of human interaction that brings joy.

And no, no whining that there is no strength within. Of course there is, although it may not feel as if it is of your own making. (Speaking to myself, you understand)

In the last few weeks, I have posted a series called “Bulletins from Shangri-la”. See 115journals.com describing the joy I found in a Sierra Nevada mountain village. I am now back at sea level. I am thankful that spring finally arrived here while I was away. The trees are fully leaved. The lilacs are just opening. The urban woods I walk in is walkable once again. The hawk surveys me from her tree top as I pass.

And yet —-

My nephew passed on this week at the age of 42 nine months after a terminal diagnosis, months full of suffering. He was cared for at home throughout this ordeal.

And there are other family problems, unresolved and festering.

I have an image of my mother’s recently emerged and happy spirit https://115journals.com/2014/05/25/bulletin-from-shanri-la-4-spirits/welcoming my nephew into her joyful embrace. A comforting thought. He seems to have zoomed right through the veil. But I am still sad and aware that my grief is as nothing compared to my sister’s.

As to the other problems, I woke up this morning and asked myself what I could contribute today. Yesterday and the day before, I listened to those suffering. Today I saw that I needed to do something different.

I wrote in my journal:
See the light.
Stay grounded.
Open you heart.
Remember joy.

Deng says, “If we must have forbearance through times of suffering and adversity, then we must have happiness in times of joy.” Joy once experienced can never really vanish. Open the flood gates and water will rush in.

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And thank you all so much for your encouragement.

I love this bright glimpse of a cardinal. The resident cardinal on my street sings on these bright mornings.