Living, Writing

Out of the Ashes, Endlessly Turning

A YEAR AGO THIS WEEK, Ann, Geronimo and I fled the then-largest wildfire complex in California history.

We were voluntary evacuees who came home to find everything relatively intact, so our story had a happy ending. My niece and nephew-in-law weren’t so lucky; residents of Corralitos to the far south, they owned a house in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park that, like almost all the others in that neighborhood, burned to the foundation. Many people fared similarly, some worse.

“The Fires” were the second time in my life I faced a “will I die in the next five minutes?” moment.

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Crit

Words To Bring Back: “Terrible”

– Definition: adj. Of a nature to excite terror; appaling

– Used in a sentence: “That’s the most terrible Hallowe’en costume I’ve ever seen.”

– Why: The current connotation of “terrible” as slipshod, sub-par, etc. really grinds my gears. Time to get back to roots and enjoy it as Webster and Funk & Wagnalls intended.

Etc

Why I Love: Geology

IT’S THE SMELL OF THE rocks. It’s knowing what everything on the surface is sitting on. It’s the finding of hand-samples. (It’s also the finding of fossils.) It’s the divisions of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. It’s the appreciation of Deep Time. It’s the walking-about in nature. It’s that every rocky layer is a page in a vast book. It’s the feel of obsidian and chert and soapstone. It’s knowing the Mohs scale. It’s using the Mohs scale. It’s that the raw ingredients are made out of stardust. It’s literally seeing the connection-to-everything-else.

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Living

“Return to the Breath”

SOMETHING ANN AND I SAY to each other when life seems fretful and jagged is “Return to the Breath.”

It’s a compact admonition against spiraling out of control with what-ifs and oh-my-gods. Return to the Breath means sit (or stand, or walk) and pay attention to your breathing.

If you center your attention on breathing, you can’t help but connect to the moment you’re in — and know that The Moment is all you’ll ever have or exist in.

There are many schools and methods of breath control. One of my favorites, which I learned in the law-enforcement chaplaincy academy, is called “triangle breathing:” Inhale for a count of five. Hold for a count of five. Exhale for a count of five. Repeat until calm.

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Torah

365 Names: Providence

PROVIDENCE literally means “that which/one Who provides.” It’s a comfortable and comforting image: G?d as Supplier of Necessities. For some reason, it pops up a lot in 18th- and 19th-Century literature and life, including as a proper name. Perhaps it’s an Industrial Age thing.

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