Soften the ground of your being and Connect the Dots

I was sitting on the futon last night.  Dinner was made and Pete was in the Quonset washing up from his day of soldering pipes for the bathhouse and generally filling his day with doings.  He would serve up the curried lamb and butternut squash soup and pour it over the fluffy red rice and together we would move into one of the simple pleasure routines of enjoying a movie on the DVD with the evening meal.  Sitting there in that midpoint of a day, I checked in with myself and thought to answer the question, "How or what are you feeling?"  Content was one of the answers, but there was more.  Something else was attempting to connect the dots within me.  Not sure of what puzzle was there for me.  I just sat and breathed.  Something about getting older; something about noticing the empty space; something about being where we are now blank spaces and dots with many lines connected yet other lines yet to be. 

Time passed, the curry was warm though a bit runny it was satisfying.  We watched the  movie THE OWL MAN, an odd and simple story about being human, and about friendships and being something that is human-animal-and angel.  The pace of the movie complemented the day including a talisman word, and name, that is popping up often:  Grace. Two characters in the movie are named Grace and the space between them ... the space between the connection between those characters is an elegant example of art in film and art in an ordinary and extraordinary life.  Some time during the evening before we went to sleep a conversation between Pete and me led to my earlier experiences during the morning.  My harvesting adventure and a brief meeting with another young and vibrant woman in our community finally connected the dots that tickled at me.  "I have been those young women," I told Pete.  "Been there done that,"  Pete added.  Yes, I have been that young energetic beautiful woman in the community innovative and inspiring the older among the town with new ideas.  Even as I write this morning, I can see that dark-haired young bodied me who was still called "Yvonne" making calls and playing with the energy of possibilities. 

Aging and connected with more dots than I could have imagined as a dark-haired, young bodied me, I feel the sorrow, note the missing parts of dreams that were illusions though not so at the time.  The softened parts of my being did not get that way without many episodes of hard-headedness and bumpy roads, but they do soften.  My joints call for something I never knew to name as a solution:  cod-liver oil.  The chemical injury and sensitivities to my system ask that I use both sides of my page tapping into my intuition when logic simply does not have enough dots to satisfy me.  Makua O'o ... this blog and my journey as elder in the making fills with dots that go off the page, often.  So many ways to connect, so many stories to tell.

Time for more tea.  A hui hou.