The Movement of the Year

2010 was about transitions for me. Change and movement were key words as we said good-bye to the home we'd lived in for 13 years and the city we'd lived in for 30 years. We were homeless for a time, living in a friends basement suite for a couple of weeks, taking to the road like gypsies(as our daughter told her friends). And finally landing on a new island, orienting ourselves and moving from a temporary home to one we decided to buy. Accompanied along the way by the ups and downs of doubt and joy, adventure, wonder and discomfort and the unknown. Life: the mixed bag we put our hand into and never quite know what we'll pull out.

Here's a little photo journey through the year.

Moving day January 2010

Last wistful look out the front window

Gypsy Life begins

Making Friends in Taos, NM

And how could you not take route 66, given the opportunity??

Found my way back to the coast (just south or Santa Barbara)

Finally landing on Salt Spring Island April 2010, home to many gentle sheep & artists

Sharing the joys of country life - ah the clothes line! Aug 2010

September brings a new home, Buddha discovers a Zendo

Winter in the country sometimes means no power! November 2010

Toss in a little reno work for added craziness & stir!

Pointing Toward Harmony

I love setting up house, it's kind of like creating a collage. You work with colour and texture and form, moving pieces around until they work together in some harmonious way. You work with couches and chairs and tables and Buddhas and bowls instead of paint and paper and canvas.

I don't even mind unpacking boxes. It's the preparatory work, like cutting the bits of paper or painting the ground. It doesn't seem like work to me, it's energizing, creating this sense of home; a place for spirit to live. And so that's what this week has held. A week of settling in, enjoying some sunshine, helping the Buddhas find their proper homes, finding the right wall for each painting.

And then there was the joy of hanging clothes outside on the clothes line attached to a giant fir tree. I swear clothes get brighter and cleaner just from hanging out in this lovely clean air (this is a paid advert brought to you by a bit of rope and some sunshine). And there was the sheer delight of digging in the dirt and planting lettuce and radishes, some parsley and spinach and radicchio and taking the kilometer walk down the gravel road to the mailbox. I can feel my spirit breathe a sigh as it settles into this sheltered, rural spot with forest on one side, orchard trees and straw covered garden beds on another, and a stretch of panoramic ocean view in front. It recognizes home.

And where is the Dharma in all of this? I think it is about the many steps it can take to get closer to some goal that's in your heart. I can look back and see the many mundane steps it took to get here, the painting and cleaning and the ups and downs of house selling and packing. But mostly it's about honouring the call of the heart, doing what may not always seem logical or safe but doing it anyway. And somehow as you take the mundane, daily steps, you move closer to the heart's calling. Sometimes it's clear what the next step is and some days clouds cover the horizon. Some days you need to adjust your course around fallen trees and downed power lines and sometimes you just need to sit still and wait for the direction to make itself clear.

And so gradually it becomes clear at the gut level that we can never really know what's around the next corner but we have faith and trust that life is unfolding as it should. And there is always that sign in our heart pointing us toward harmony.

Walking On Ice With the Dalai Lama & A Pee Wee Hockey Team

I don't live here anymore. In fact I don't live anywhere right now. I have read about "ground-lessness" but I had the first hand, slightly uncomfortable experience of it on moving day. As I drove to deliver my belongings to the garage where they will be stored for the month of March I realized, I don't live where I used to. I don't live where I will in the future. I have no idea whether I will like my future home and my previous home is no longer an option. There is no turning back. Openness stretches in front of me.

I have spent a lot of time getting ready for this move, thinking about it, planning it, working for it but now it is right here, right now. But there is a different quality to it when you are in the middle of it. You are no longer playing at it, imagining, hoping for it, or grumbling about why it isn't happening as you'd planned. You are it. It came as a tangy taste of having no ground beneath me, the bitter sweetness of true unknowing. An interesting sensation that required just breathing and not backing away from it. It is our state all the time, anyway, we just don't realize it. Mostly we trick ourselves into our feelings of control and security. We prefer them to the quivering state of groundlessness.

And it was all fine. I sensed the slight feeling of chaos and being unsettled as I went about the following weeks activities. I don't usually live in people's basements. I don't usually have no address, no phone. I don't usually have an abbreviated set of belongings stored in wicker baskets and a small travel bag. Who am I, anyway?

As I completed each errand and loose ends got tightened up I felt a little lighter, a sense of closure was moving toward me. I was ready to leave the lovely home we'd lived in for the last 12 years. I was ready to declutter and move on to a new part of my life. And each task, each appointment moved me further away from the past and launched me into my future. I am ready to be the agent of my own impermanence, to move into the shifting landscape of change.

Our daughter has been getting alot of mileage out of telling her friends that her parents are gypsies, and sending me text messages asking me when the caravan pulls out of town? And so today, all the campfires extinguished, the laundry lines taken down, the wine bottles drained, the garbage bagged and disposed of, the caravan folded its awning and wound its way across the Strait of Georgia and over a snowy mountain summit or two. Dinner this evening, came out of a crock pot in a little motel room in Clearwater, BC. The late night is producing a cool rain that may turn to snow overnight but the room is warm and cozy. We are thinking about an ice walk in Maligne Canyon tommorrow and Larry King is talking to a re-run of the Dalai Lama on the TV. The Pee Wee Hockey team sharing the motel with us is strangely quiet right now. Hopefully they will wake up early, make a lot of noise so we can curse them and get on the road early. Who knows what will happen, really.

Waving Goodbye

By yesterday afternoon I was exhausted and over- whelmed. Packing and making decisions about what to do with "stuff" were taking their toll. I realized I was doing the classic add-on. I wasn't just tired, I was "I am so exhausted what if I can't finish all of this, what if I get sick. Why can't I just go with the flow? Why can't I just enjoy this? And yada, yada, yada." In my head I know better and yet the siren's song of habit beckons. It lures me on to do it the way I have always done it. And that was yesterday.

This morning brought fresh energy and the opportunity to start over. Less add-ons. More just doing. More things flung into the give-away bag and the pot-luck potlach boxes. Tomorrow some friends are having a little "leaving town" pot luck for us. I thought I would take along a couple of boxes of the more interesting treasures I am parting with and let people see if any of it calls to go home with them. I thought it might be a fun end to the evening. Not quite a potlach but a nod in that direction, perhaps that pottery cookie jar might find a new cookie baker to keep company or the Christmas tea pot might settle in to a new cupboard.

On other chapters that required closure.... Yesterday I drove by the place where my homeless friend had her camper parked. She was gone, without a trace. In the past several weeks I had run out of ideas and energy to offer. I had to turn my attention to my own moving. Last Tuesday when I'd stopped by her camper was still there but she wasn't home. And now I was left wondering, what had happened, where did she go? As is the human tendency I expected her to still be there doing the same thing. When I found her gone I worried she had been towed away against her will. The thought crossed my mind that I could have done more. I reminded myself I didn't need to feel like I'd let her down.

And then this evening the phone rang. She remembered that soon I would be gone too, from my home, from my phone number, that she might not have any way of contacting me. She called to let me know she had taken her insurance settlement and found a bed and breakfast room in a nearby town. She wasn't clear what her next step was, but all the avenues we pursued that lead nowhere showed her that it was time to leave Victoria. Her settlement allowed her to pay off a sizable debt that she owed and now she could move on. She said that if we never met again she wanted me to know that I had been helpful to her on her journey.

All this was said with such humility and a sense of wisdom. Sometimes during the process she had just seemed confused and indecisive to me, but here she was at her best, speaking from a deep place of clarity and kindness. When she said she didn't know what was next and was simply waiting to see what came up, it reminded me of a true Dharma practitioner. And like a mindful practitioner she was taking care not to create a further wake of karma, by calling me and bringing closure to the little part of the journey we'd traveled together. She was, in essence, pausing at a fork in the road up a head and waving good bye. It was all spoken like a true Bodhisattva, with gratitude, humility, clarity and a recognition of our place in the cosmos, one where we do our part, but are not the conductor of this little travel plan. It felt good to know she was safe and dry and had taken the next step. She offered me her love and blessings on my journey and I to her, in return. A little sad, a little sweet, a little puzzling, like many of our encounters in this life.

A Meeting of Buddhas

Buddhas have gathered on the dining room table in preparation for moving. Even in this collection of statues, you can appreciate their different Buddha energies. I had never really noticed this before they decided to gather . If my father were alive he would probably wander through the dining room and say something like, "they look like they're waiting for a bus."

When I look at them I can appreciate the solid, grounded, earthiness of the large concrete one, in a way I never noticed before. The smaller ones in the foreground seem delicate and deeply serene, especially the one I painted in a bronze-like finish. And then there is my fat, happy, orange Buddha. What can I say? He always makes me smile. And I love the way the sunlight bounces off his shiny orangeness. And then there is the delicate brass Thai style Buddha, sitting on the ginger grater shyly in the background.

The moving Buddhas remind me of the changes swirling around. Sometimes I can go with it and sometimes I am trying to hang on like a kid on a merry-go-round. Sometimes I just feel a little terrified and want to pull the covers up over my head. Although we won't be far away I am starting to look wistfully at the landscape of the city. Yesterday we remembered that we have lived here in this city for 30 years! Where do the days go? No wonder the Buddha told us "to work out our salvation with diligence." We so easily drift along in the dream of time, imagining it as endless or not thinking about it at all.

The first boxes of things will make their way to Salt Spring today as we go over to visit and finalize the details on the home we will rent starting in April. Impermanence is busting out all over. Boxes are everywhere. Little piles of chaos inhabit many surfaces. What to do with this? Or that? Many objects have made their way to various new homes. Beware of the approaching me, I will try to give you some stuff! Lots of movement. And outdoors is no different, the daffodils are filling the yard and ornamental cherry and plum trees are in full blossom. The new crocosmia are shooting up through the old brown dried ones from last fall. They are fine with that. The old mixing with the new. The new pushing effortlessly and perkily forward. Perhaps I should take my cue from them. No problem, just new life replacing old as it always does. Drop the story and be free!