haiku for silence

View from The Gatehouse,” Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos,
December 8, 2010, photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

 

Sleepwalking I arrive
but silence awakens me
to our suffering

________________________________________________________________________________________________________


On this second full day of silence, something snaps. I thought I came here because: I had vacation time to kill, I wanted to give myself a gift, it had been a long time since I’d been to a silent retreat in Taos with Natalie Goldberg. Today I am reminded that this is not play. When I go into silence, pain emerges. I wake up.

A quick step out of silence to give you an update, QM. I am also reminded that I met you here, that our friendship was created in silence and through the humanity and compassion we find when we come here. I am grateful for you, for all the friends I have met through Taos, and for everything I have learned about myself through coming here.

I am not writing much since arriving. In fact, I have only thus far written in the zendo during collective Writing Practice. Outside of class, I have spent my free time in The Gatehouse, where I’m staying. I’ve read, slept, and worked on collages. After I publish this post, I might venture out for a walk. I crave the cold air in my lungs.

It is good to be here, to wake up to all of me. To be humbled again.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________




-Related to posts Sitting in Silence and haiku 2 (one-a-day)

Read Full Post »

Sitting In Silence

Moon Over Taos Mountain, Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo © 2003-2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

December marks a time of darkness and silent reflection leading up to the Winter Solstice. Most Decembers, Natalie holds a writing retreat around the time of December 1st through 8th. In Zen, this time is called Rohatsu Sesshin and marks the enlightenment of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. For those heading to Taos to write, it’s a time of community solitude, an opportunity to go within.

Slow Walking, Natalie Goldberg, Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, Tri-X B&W film print, photo © 2003-2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

This week ybonesy and several other writing friends will be making the jouney to Taos to sit in silence. I find comfort in knowing they will be there under Taos Mountain. When they sit, they sit for all of us. The zendo casts a wide circle. Everything is connected. We can sit and write in solidarity.

There will be long nights under Mabel’s lights and slow walks into Taos. Some will walk the morada, visit the graves of Mabel and Frieda, soak up places that Georgia walked on her first visits to New Mexico. Notebooks will be filled with Writing Practices, later to be reread.

Whatever’s at the surface will fall away. What’s important is what is underneath.  Underbelly.

Sit, Walk, Write. With Gratitude to a long lineage of mentors and teachers. For all that has come before. And all that will be.

Note: ybonesy and I met in Taos at a Writing Retreat. We’ll be forever connected by that thread. And the practice that became red Ravine. We’ve written many pieces on our time spent in Taos. To learn more about Sit, Walk, Write or our experience of studying with Natalie Goldberg at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, check out the links in this post. Or click on any of the posts under Taos. With Gratitude to our readers, those at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Natalie, and all the writers and artists who keep showing up to brave the silence. We are all in this together.

–posted on red Ravine, Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Read Full Post »

sitting like (the moon over) kitchen mesa haiku

Moon over Kitchen Mesa, moon at dusk at Ghost Ranch, August 1, 2009, photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

silent Moon hovers
dreaming of New Mexico
she sits for us all

off in the zendo
friends dancing in the middle
slow walk to the end

irrational mind
each day a new beginning
Summer wears your face









__________________________________________________________________________________

In honor of our friends sitting in Taos with Natalie this week and last; photo by ybonesy and haiku by QuoinMonkey.

__________________________________________________________________________________

-related to too many posts to mention them all, but here are few: Birthday Of Mabel Dodge Luhan, Sunrise On Taos Mountain (Reflections On Writing Retreats), Sitting in Solidarity, A Taste Of Ghost Ranch, and haiku 2 (one-a-day).

Read Full Post »

Missing the Mountain

Taos Mountain From The Zendo, silent writing retreat in Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey.
All rights reserved.

— a year ago we were there…

– posted on red Ravine, Friday, April 6th, 2007

Read Full Post »

Listen for the Black Dog

My visceral response to your sketch of Dirty Dog and Retro Wallpaper is black dog – the Black Dog of loneliness. Late at night in Taos, the silence would waken me. But it wasn’t silence; it was the dogs of Taos barking in the distance. Dogs have always scared me. And when we walk Morada Lane from Mabel’s to go into Caffe Tazza to write, I’m always aware of the dogs, lurking around fence corners.

A friend in art school started a series of paintings the year we graduated. She called it her Black Dog series. She was obsessed with research on black dogs. It took me a while to understand what she was talking about. But when I saw her brooding wall-sized images, I knew. It was a gut reaction. Deep loneliness. I visit the place often. There is no map out. You have to find your own way. She painted. I took photographs. We weren’t running. We were looking to know the Dog.

What I want to say is that loneliness is a part of writing. And sometimes loneliness feels like Dirty Dog looks – bared teeth, facing off, marking territory. Underneath, the loneliness drives me. Like fear, I’ve learned to embrace it. Even when my life is so good I can’t stand it – even then, late at night when the whole house is sleeping, and I’m up writing – the Black Dog is there, lurking around fence corners.

I still wake up in the middle of the night, scared and lonely. I try not to push it away. The last few weeks, I’ve been listening to Writing Down the Bones on CD. What I love about books on CD is that I hear the writer’s voice. I first read it almost 20 years ago. Revisiting it now, I am taken back to Beginner’s Mind, where I need to be to teach. It grounds me. I find comfort in the gnarled roots of other writers’ loneliness.

I’m tired. I’ve really been pushing myself the last few weeks. On the way to work this morning, I realized I wasn’t in my body. I almost hit Liz’s car backing out of the driveway. Looking for ground, I pushed the button on the Alpine stereo; I glanced up to see the sun rising in billowing blush clouds in the distance; I listened to a writer read her work. The early sky reminded me of mornings walking from my room at Mabel’s to the zendo. A deep calm came over me.

Stopped at the light on the corner of Winnetka and Bass Lake Road, crawling to my day job, I was just sitting. Natalie was revisiting the chapter on Engendering Compassion and the way she used to be tortured by loneliness. But something had turned. The dog doesn’t come for her anymore. She seeks him out. She hunts the dog.

The last thing I heard as I turned the corner on green –

“When I don’t feel loneliness, I know I’m not in connection with the edge of my life. I look around for that Black Dog, loneliness, and make sure it’s near me.”

Listen for the Black Dog.

Thursday, March 15^th, 2007

Read Full Post »