attentions, connections, cedar trees, first bear drawings, dreamtime, a story, a love letter, seahorse brightenings

thread/seahorse story
finn has been painting snowflakes, rivers and waves. i have been listening to alice coltrane, tinariwen, and meredith monk. now finn's snowflake is in the river, going to meet another river in the water, to spread out and diffuse, like sunlight. part of what i think about is how bodies can (if they choose to) eventually become part of rivers someday, like maps that contain other maps. i can never think a whole, complete, lovely thought. is this because of the internet? i know people who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. and 20s. we are all changing. these days i try to just pay attention and live. i have these sayings up around me: "singing makes me happy" "i can be a mother, writer, and teacher" "you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars" "you have enough time" "no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should", etc. have you ever written a love letter to your child self? "dear little one, little self, did you get lost, are you okay, did you move through time? according to me, you are still writing your life." what you don't say in those kind of letters is how there might be threads that break off of selfs. for example, the male and female seahorse come to each other in the morning, in their separate homes, and when they see each other, they brighten--their skin literally changes color. and they trade dances and respond and brighten some more and eventually one of them stops responding, though, to the other. and then they go and have the rest of their day off doing something else. sometimes they do spend a long time brightening together, their tails hooked around the same shoot of sea grass. the moral of this story is, love will come back because it's like the sun. also, it's already here. but right now i am a thread caught in dreamtime; i am cedar trees on the cedar river, valentine's days, frosts on windows, paintings on easels, the boy who imagines himself as a dog constantly--as the baby of a dog. one of the very first figurative drawings he draws is of a mama bear, in blue. "the quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention." (julia cameron)