depending on the viewing angle

black throated blue warblers, Birdie, baked goods & feeling the fullness of it all

Good morning, precious muses

Blessings this September

On Saturday morning I was driving to our favorite nearby bakery where I was going to pick up some sourdough bread and a chocolate croissant for David

and Spotify's DJ feature was playing and began to play the recording of Edelweiss from the film the Sound of Music

This was a delightful surprise because

-number one, I don't listen to very many old musicals on Spotify, so it was a little unusual that it would pop it in there

-also, I'm about to see the Sound of Music, like the way it was originally shown: a particular kind of film in an old timey theater down … I think it's the Coolidge Corner Theater, closer to Boston, forgetting what town [it’s Brookline] … with a couple beloved friends and muses, so I've been looking forward to that

-and most importantly it brought me joy to hear Edelweiss because when I was a little girl my dad played the Captain in the Sound of Music and so we sang that song together then when I was 12 or 13/11 ?... And then I played Maria myself when I was 32, and I've directed the show; it's just a dear, dear show, but not a show I listen to the songs of very often just because I know them ohh so very well,  so hearing it come on was a sweet treat

Then I drove back downtown Amesbury where I had to stop by my office really quickly because I realized I'd left my air pods in the office on Friday

And so as I was walking from car to office, I was making a recording of myself talking and singing Edelweiss that I was going to send to my dad

and as I got to the door of the office, outside there was this beautiful bird dead on the bricks right in front of the office door; maybe it flew into the glass door; birds do that sometimes

And so I was singing Edelweiss, this beautiful song, and there was this beautiful dead bird (I wasn't sure what kind of bird) this beautiful … iridescent black and blue shadings

And meanwhile I was also like stopping by the office to pick up this thing that I had accidentally left behind

And I got back into my car afterward and I thought, That seems to be some sort of … some sort of perfect encapsulation of life: the beauty of song and shared memory and the intention of bringing it into the life of those you love, and then the remembrance of death …

You might be able to hear the shaking of Birdie: he's been in my lap and shaking and right now he's scratching himself too hard, and sometimes when he's been doing that lately, he's been making the most mournful barking noise; we don't think it's allergies, we think it's anxiety;

Just at the vet for this on Friday, and this is part of the story, too … because found out his kidney levels have changed significantly and probably this little dog - this complicated, sweet dog we have cared for for the past eight years or so - won't be around too much longer, 4 to 12 months, probably

And in the moment when I heard it from the vet, it was a relief (which is a long, complicated tale for another day)

but looking at him and sharing in both the sweetness of him and how challenging it is for him to exist sometimes - both for those of us who care for him, but more especially for him, because sometimes he's hurting - and there's not a lot to do about it

And back to that bird and that moment

because driving home from the office with the sourdough bread and the chocolate croissant from Annarosa’s Bakery, where the people are just as beautiful as the aroma of the baked goods,

I thought about how all of it is a big old mesh:  an amalgamation of beauty and connectivity and death and pain

And a little later that morning I spoke with Aunt Juanita, David's Aunt Jeanie Draper, AJ, I call her, one of my most beloved muses, one of the wise women in my world

and she knows a lot about birds and feathers and she shared with me in the moment her own understanding of the fact that birds with blue feathers …  the feathers aren't exactly blue! … if you hold them up to the sunlight, you'll see them turn black, you'll see the color change

and so later she sent me a snippet from a book guidebook on bird feathers and in it there's a reference to a study entitled Coherent light scattering by blue feather barbs from the journal Nature in 1998, authors Prum, Torres Williamson and Dyck; if I can find it on the interwebs I will link it [and I did above]

In iridescent birds, granules of melanin embedded in the barbules function as minute reflectors of numerous colors… Like a prism, light is absorbed and scattered into component colors so that, depending on the viewing angle, you see either a rich array of color, or little of it, so that the feather appears black.

[the actual quote is from Bird Feathers: a Guide to North American Species by S. David Scott & Casey McFarland]

AJ and Uncle Dirk identified that bird, when I sent a picture, as a black throated blue warbler that was probably migrating now that the weather's changing

On some level, the weather is always changing in our worlds, isn't it?

And the colors that we see in a given moment depend on the viewing angle

And it's not just about viewing, like the viewing angle we might take and the light we might take in if we look at a bird's feather

It's also about the quality of feelingness, because light and vision are only one aspect of our experience

As I sit here with Birdie and I feel into the simultaneity of grief and gratitude for him, I am struck by what a marvel it is that he is settled and calmer in my arms when I'm feeling the fullness of it all, not just trying to manage him, which is what I've mostly done with this dog in the time we've known him

And meanwhile birds are flying; there's a dance going on outdoors and the leaves are changing

This is the time of year when I find myself with one crumbly, delightful feather after another appearing in various spaces

because I see one on the ground and I'm struck: it's particular look, the sepia tone or the way it looks like a Jackson Pollock piece;

I pick it up and I can't help but marvel at it for a while and then I bring it indoors and eventually it finds its way outdoors again

This world is so full of beauty

When we spoke on Saturday, AJ said, “The wider your eyes become, the more blown away you'll be” and it's true

From scientists who figure out about how bird feathers are prisms

And me with my little bowls of bird feathers and

drying leaves and

bits of Birch bark and

tiny little twigs that for whatever reason fascinate and delight me

stones that shimmer, found at a campsite, treasured forever

and by forever I mean just the length of this one little life

It may or may not be apparent but, I'm at the point in my cycle where everything's so vulnerable, and what strikes me in this moment is this tiny, tiny blossom that my friend Linda Loo Hoo, muse, gave me

 She gave it to me as the tiniest bouquet/in the tiniest bouquet of wildflowers and it lived in water on my desk for a couple weeks

and then I plucked it off a week or two ago, and look how magenta it still is!

How is it possible?

How is this world possible?

The mix and miracle of sorrow and sweetness, I pray that it's yours today:

that you let yourself fully taste it, the bitter and the sweet, the sour and salty, and also the mundane - God bless the mundane - just picking up the air pods you left at your office …

Whether you're in a moment of inconvenience

 profound vulnerability

shatteredness

managing or

settling and sensing

May your eyes be wide

May you choose the angle that gives you a rich array of color

And if this is a moment when you need the feather just to appear black, if you need clarity and simplicity, may that be your experience

So much is available to us as humans on this planet

Whatever will serve you today, in this moment, may you receive it

Blessings and thank you