#Buddha

When Traveling Through a Storm….

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Here’s one good reason to read:

Captain Bligh, in his ill-fated, famous Mutiny on the Bounty story, sailed from dreary, oatmeal-eating England to Tahiti, lush land of coconuts and little clothing. He naturally headed across the Atlantic to curve around Cape Horn, situated way down at the bottom of South America. But the ship, plagued by fierce winter storms, was unable to navigate that Cape. Instead, after weeks of battling fierce weather and sailing backwards rather than making headway, Captain Bligh ordered a change in course around the Cape of Good Horn (at the southern-most tip of Africa), adding over 10,000 more miles to the Bounty‘s journey.

In the midst of the sleet, snow, and wind that eventually turned him back:

Bligh could note that blue petrels and pintados, “two beautiful kinds of bird,” followed their wake. – Caroline Alexander, The Bounty

When to turn? When to change direction in a life?

Remember this: in the harshest, most ungodly conditions, note unexpected beauty, following your travels.

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Hope Cemetery/Barre, Vermont

Inner Lives

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

With the kids at school this afternoon, we gathered goldenrod galls. On an old board, I cut the galls open with a knife somewhat too dull for the work. Inside, we discovered the hidden world of the larvae, curled up in its spongy nest. All winter, these miniature creatures have lived in their solitary round homes, steadily growing, with a single shaft of light illuminating their passing days.

50 weeks – 50 weeks! – are needed to create this fly: roughly 350 days. Then, those that survive the winter, those that are lucky enough to be passed over by chickadees or curious children, live for two weeks: perhaps 14 days.

Our children, intently curious, good-humored in a light mist, have a life cycle fortunately (generally) so much different. How many long days and night have gone into my mothering? I wouldn’t begin to count. It’s not a mathematical equation.

Nor was it really mathematics we explored today beneath that rough covering. It was life.

BLUEBIRD

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there…..

– Charles Bukowski

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Photo by Molly S.

Children & Flies: Biosphere Companions

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

A rainy March day yielded existential questions regarding flies in my fifth-grade daughter’s day. At supper, she chatted about catching a fly in the minutes before the first class and another hidden in a friend’s desk all day, allegedly feasting on granola bars.

The Woodbury schoolhouse is 200-years-old, with filled with all kinds of corners and crannies, high ceilings and gorgeous windows: delightful habitat for flies. I asked if she thought the flies might be back tomorrow. She didn’t know. Tomorrow, she guessed, their companions could be wasps or ladybugs. In third grade, the children kept a keen eye on a mouse hole concealed behind the teacher’s desk. It’s not long until the birds begin nesting in the trees around the school, and the snapping turtles emerge from the wetland to bury their eggs in the ball field.

At the end, while I was laughing, my daughter said simply and matter-of-factly, “We are all in the biosphere.”

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.

– Issa

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Woodbury, Vermont/Photo by Molly S.