 Stirring white crystal sand
of bone meal into rich brown mud, she places each tulip bulb, coated in the dark mixture, a nest of kiss-shaped eggs, close, but not touching. In October’s now, she sees April, sealing it in, pats down the earth, like a sea-turtle burying her offspring. Maybe the bones’ phosphorous will glow a little in that darkness—guiding the shoots upward, as the luminescent sea signals to those baby turtles: This is your chance. Swim.
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The Last Possible DayOn the last possible day,
at the foot of a leafless tree, try to pop a perfect apple down, hurl a rotten one to loosen that wormless one, stare up, dizzy limbs shake against a still sky-- Breathe. Picture it. Follow through-- Thud of success. Bite sun-warmed, dusty skin into hard white sweetness. Quiet, then frogs buzz. The ears of a doe and two fawns flicker at the tips of golden brush, listening for dusk.  #AncientAutumn trees,
chlorophyll-unmasked-- True colors only visible in the brief tilt of October light  The house it haunts
is in your hand, bathing your face in its small, square glow-- You didn’t know: your sentence was a seance, phantom tapping from the other side-- flashing ellipses in a bubble: dot dot dot dot dot dot--  I've been following my extremely talented artist sister (@KirstiRingger on Instagram)—her drawing contributions to #Inktober this month are off the charts. I'm late to the game, but decided that I'd use the daily prompts to write something instead of draw, for the last 10 days of the month. My "ink" pictures will be of my very hasty, daily drafts! Today's prompt: #TREASURE. There is a tree that I've been in love with for years, so I decided to write about her specifically. Harlequin GlorybowerAs if it weren’t enough that in late summer she blooms white fragrant stars, mocking jasmine, extending trembling threads of stamens, blushing shy pink underneath-- As if it weren’t enough that, when bruised, her hand-sized, heart-shaped, hair-soft leaves emit the smell of peanut butter (what insouciance in the face of injury)-- As if it weren’t enough that when her flowers drop, each waxy calyx hardens into a fuchsia tiara, a pointed pink collar-- As if that weren’t enough, inside each crown, She’s Placed The Treasure: a perfect, indigo pearl, an autumn jewel replacing every summer flower, A transaction in the inky currency of winter’s tongue. 
"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
I love swimming. Today I swam laps at my local Parks & Rec: Dishman pool. I hate everything about public pools. But I love swimming—gliding through the water, poetry runs through my head, it's work and at the same time effortless. So even though current circumstances require me to face the cement, chlorine, and adults who are not always nice about sharing their lanes, let's listen to this sweet little song and pretend we are swimming in a summer lake.... "You can splash me if you want to... but not in the eye!"
I was struggling to write #20. Not because there are not enough things to be grateful for, but because there are too, too many. Everything becomes so big sometimes that it becomes nothing, even when you want to appreciate it all. At the last minute, my day was filled with an assignment to write about the work of a global NGO that is on the ground, fighting the urgent new outbreak of Ebola that is taking lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's so scary and overwhelming that it seems to be yet another thing that our hearts and minds can't make space for. So I am grateful anyway, for the freedom to pivot—from writing about certain kinds of gratitude to suddenly writing about Ebola and the heroes working to contain it. That there is at least enough funding from our international community that we can turn towards a new crisis and say: doing nothing is not an option. Yes, we must still help here and here and here, and there is always too much, but still we begin and do our best.
When I was mentally creating my post with the vid of the pebble toad and thoughts about the armor of joyful exertion, I had another simple revelation. Listening to Pema Chodron while I was walking through the cemetery (yes, this is my jam), I heard her say something like, "what do you do when you're in a funk?" Seconds later, I saw a huge headstone with just the name, "FUNK," all caps. And this word keeps getting stuck in my head. FUNK. The truth of feeling low, how it happens to everyone. Sometimes because of great loss, sometimes for no damn good reason at all. And then, how very very close is the word: FUNKY. Which, in my mind anyway, is a great word. Funky is dancing, and not caring how it looks. Funky is getting DOWN—not being down. And I love the fact that at any moment, we CAN choose to change our funk to funky, if we fully accept them both as part of who we are.
Click the image above to listen to Lee Dorsey sing today's theme music by Allen Toussaint. And dance, dammit!  If there were an autumn tree contest this year, I think I'd be judging the ginkgo tree as winner every time. Yes, the multi-colored stars of the sweet gum, the lacy poetic Japanese maple, or the terracotta red giant oak all keep taking my breath away. But I'm in love with the ginkgo—the chantrelle/vase-shaped finely ridged leaves, matte finished and opaque like thick butter, clinging to the black branches like a swarm of butterflies, and then piling like royal confetti at her roots... And especially *this* ginkgo, who lives many blocks away from my window, standing out, alone, from a sea of rooftops and dark cedars. As the sun rises, the tips of her branches catch fire until she is singularly illuminated. Yesterday, I decided to try and actually find this tree and see her up close. She was only about five blocks away, and did not disappoint.
(I'm grateful that this tree is placed just so for my appreciation, and I'm grateful to my cowboy poet dad for whom gushing about an extraordinary tree would be very ordinary.)  I've discovered a couple of apps that keep me motivated as I run—they help you pace your steps to the beats per minute (BPM) of the music. It's kind of like dancing while you run and for some reason it makes me feel like a badass. The Flaming Lips: Fight Test
The test begins, now I thought I was smart, I thought I was right I thought it better not to fight, I thought there was a Virtue in always being cool, so when it came time to Fight I thought I'll just step aside and that the time would Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool I don't know where the sun beams end and the star Lights begins it's all a mystery Oh to fight is to defend if it's not Now than tell me when would be the time that you would stand up And be a man, for to lose I could accept but to surrender I just wept and regretted this moment, oh that I, I Was the fool I don't know where the sun beams end and the star Lights begins it's all a mystery And I don't know how a man decides what right for his Own life, it's all a mystery Cause I'm a man not a boy and there are things You can't avoid you have to face them when you're not prepared To face them, If I could I would but you're with him now it'd do no good I should have fought him but instead I let him, I let Him take it I don't know where the sun beams end and the star Lights begins it's all a mystery And I don't know how a man decides what right for his Own life, it's all a mystery The test is over, now  As I walked, I was listening to one of my favorite authors, Pema Chödrön, a buddhist teacher. The talk was called "The Joy To Do What Helps Us." This is something I think about constantly—the fine line between discipline and what she calls "joyful exertion." Too often we think that we have to strive in a painful, pushing way—tolerating the worst for a scrap of reward. But "exertion" is different. Chödrön talks about how we can create an "armor of exertion." This she describes not as a barricade, but as protection against hurting ourselves and hurting others.
I immediately thought of this video of the pebble toad. (Watch the video and look at his joyful armor of exertion!) I want to be this toad. But yesterday I was just plain grumpy. Tired of things going wrong, feeling achey against the cold weather, just HMMMFFF about it all. Then I got curious: what might make me feel lighter? It was no mystery. I already knew and I already know. I put on my running shoes and all my "joyful outdoors armor," and despite my aching joints, I set it in my mind to run to the freeway overpass and back, and to watch the cars and pretend like I was on a bridge over a river. I have no idea where this specific idea came from, but at the same time it came from a place that I know. It's what Chödrön calles your "bodhichitta"—trust in your basic nature. I ran in the cold as the sun set. It was dark but I could still see the brightness of piles of yellow ginkgo leaves. At the overpass, I watched the cars coming and going. I did a hiking ritual that a friend taught me: look at the water flowing away and let something go. Then look to the water flowing towards you, and ask for something. (My bodhichitta says this works with cars too, if you want.)     You know when you're a kid and you just can't WAIT to grow up so that you can do/have/be...something? And then you do grow up, and that something is not what you thought, or has a serious down side to it? Well for me, COFFEE was something I spent my childhood fantasizing about being able to drink. And as an adult? It has NOT disappointed!
To add an extra layer of complication, I was raised in a Mormon home. Coffee was forbidden. (Side note: occasionally my dad would make a hot chicory root drink called Postum, served with lots of evaporated milk and sugar. Why evaporated milk? Can anyone tell me? And what is evaporated milk anyway?) So coffee had an air of danger to it. When I smelled it brewing as I walked past the teachers' lounge at school, or when we'd go to this funky candy shop downtown with bags of fragrant beans everywhere, I felt a tinge of guilt—like when you catch a whiff of a good strong sharpie pen. You know you shouldn't inhale too hard, but there's just something that makes you want to fill your nostrils with it. Fast forward to today. Coffee *literally* gives me a reason to get up in the morning most days. I love how it smells, tastes, makes me feel, and that it gives me a first-thing-to-do ritual. Once or twice I've been persuaded that I should knock off the caffeine, so I've downgraded to decaf—even stopped it altogether for a few excruciating days. But this only served to make life less wonderful. So now I just enjoy my daily addiction. Yes it's a pain when I'm traveling or staying some place where coffee is harder to get. (Oh India mornings... I am sorry but milky, sugary chai is just NOT the same.) But a little portable instant espresso and some hot water solves that problem. Today—and every day—I am grateful for you, magical coffee. Today, I allowed myself *not* to write a big post and publish it all over social media. I was about to do it, and instead started listening to this amazing podcast / Youtube video by Pema Chodron: The Joy to Do What Helps Us. What helped me yesterday was to joyfully exert my independence and freedom not to post, and to walk outside in the sunshine instead... However there was so much I learned from her talk—I want to explore it in more depth in a later post...
A few seconds of today's Veteran's Day parade in Portland, Oregon on a crisp November morning....
Visible, and InvisibleIt’s Veteran’s day, and today I feel compassion and gratitude for soldiers who served my country. I also can’t wait for tomorrow’s parade (which happens to march right past my neighborhood). The kids twirling batons and the marching bands playing “Eye of the Tiger” always get me teary-eyed.
And while I am grateful to individual veterans, when it comes to my feelings about the military—it’s complicated. I am angry and sad about our country’s military past and present. I am angry that the effects of PTSD and inadequate healthcare cause a lifetime ripple of casualties (suicides, broken lives, and the latest mass shooting) for veterans whose service has supposedly ended. I’m angry about the violence towards women, people of color, and LGBTQ people that continues to haunt our military. I am horrified that we continue to sell to Saudi Arabia the weapons that are raining down on innocent humans in Yemen, for starters. But I am grateful that I live in a country where I’m still able to freely express this ambiguity and where in the midst of extreme partisan polarity, we are maybe also growing to accept and express nuance and conflicting feelings within ourselves. Maybe? I recommend this article about women in the military, and the internal conflict that many experience with trying to fit in and to move past at the same time. Women are the Most Visible Servicemembers, and the Most Invisible Veterans https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/women-are-the-most-visible-soldiers-and-the-most-invisible-veterans Happy Birthday, Mom! Today my mom turns 88! Double infinity! My first memories of mom are of her getting down on the carpet or the grass and PLAYING, like really playing, with us kids. She would let us dictate which magical character she had to pretend to be, and she’d be all in. Boredom was not allowed in our home. She’d simply come up with stuff for us to do: homemade play-dough, finger-painting with Ivory Snow soap flakes, EZ Bake cakes marbleized with food color and toothpicks. Her creativity is boundless. She would never say so, but she is a skilled self-taught artist who can draw just anything if she tries, and has always practiced beautiful calligraphy lettering. These days her body doesn’t allow her to go go go, but she does what she can. She practices songs on her piano even though her hands don’t quite obey anymore. She still remembers and tries to teach me Finnish words from when she and my dad and the first sprouts of their children lived there, over 50 years ago. She still calls me her “kuopus,” (Finnish for the baby of the family). I love you, äiti, and I’l always be your kuopus.I am obsessed with these arbitrary combinations of sounds and letter-shapes that stand for things-- photo by the author —these tools which can be used for the most basic of human survival (help!) and for the most abstract magic of life (shazam!). Words are a shadow of the thing itself—which, when we look and play with them also come to life as things.* In autumn with all the maple leaves falling and their ghost-shadows staining the sidewalks, I cannot resist this mental mantra—two lines from a life-changing poem that play in my head: “For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf.”** As a writer, I get the special privilege to play in the realm of giving a second life to words, which is of course a second life to my own first life.*** I live a life that dwells in the world of words, and I love it.**** For this I am so, so grateful. * “Literature, the best of it, does not aim to be literature. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality.” ― Mary Oliver ** Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish (poem copied in full, below). My college poetry professor (shout out to Richard Kenney!) had us read this poem—a metaphoric how-to poem within a poem. *** attributed to good old Ms. Natalie Goldberg who famously said that “…writers live twice.” ****Except when I hate it—which I sometimes do. (The mantra in my head when I hate it sounds like a line from Marianne Moore’s poem, “Poetry:” “I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle…” https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/poetry Ars Poetica BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind-- A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. * A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- A poem should not mean But be.  Today is Liisa’s birthday! Not many people have both an infectious laugh AND are themselves funny as hell—but she’s one of them. Ever since I was a tiny kid and she a teenager, she always treated me like my voice mattered. She listened, laughed, and learned alongside me, even though she already knew way more and probably had better things to do. As an elementary school teacher and now a skilled educational administrator, she has made the lives of so many kids and other teachers richer, deeper, and has ignited the love of learning in hundreds if not thousands of souls. As a mom to her own kids she is a phenomenal mentor and friend. My life would not be the same—in fact it’s not an exaggeration to say the world would definitely be less wonderful—without this person.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LIISA! P.S. Apologies to my other four sisters and two brothers who were not born in November and therefore do not get the #NovemberGratitude treatment. I'm grateful for the darkness. www.nationalgeographic.org/media/happy-diwali/ - Tiny lamps called diyas are a traditional symbol of Diwali. Here, girls in eastern India decorate a beach with dozens of diyas. Photograph by Khokarahman, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-4.0 Today in the U.S., we inched forward with record-breaking representation of women and minorities in our midterm elections. Today is also the Hindu holiday of Diwali—a festival of lights—a symbolic victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance. The evening is closing in extra-early here in the Pacific Northwest November, and tonight is the night of a new moon. Sometimes we need the darkest nights to see the stars that are already there, or the fireworks of our own making. One day the sun admitted, |
 Artwork by Anne Bentley bentleyworks.us |  |
I'm extra grateful to live in the state of Oregon, where we vote by mail and don't even have to use a stamp if we want to save that fifty cents (my local ballot box is literally at a McDonald's "drive-thru," which in true Portlander form, I "walked-thru").
This morning, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that women have only "been allowed," or "had the right," or... (there is NO good way to say!) that women have been legally participating in this basic part of democracy for less than 100 years. And that it took decades of activism, being voted down, laughed at, dismissed, over and over again.
When everyone “in power” tells you your idea is ridiculous—for decades!—it can be easy to start believing that, too. But sometimes, it can fuel your fire. May we stay hungry for what we know is right—and for what can make our lives extraordinary!
This morning, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that women have only "been allowed," or "had the right," or... (there is NO good way to say!) that women have been legally participating in this basic part of democracy for less than 100 years. And that it took decades of activism, being voted down, laughed at, dismissed, over and over again.
When everyone “in power” tells you your idea is ridiculous—for decades!—it can be easy to start believing that, too. But sometimes, it can fuel your fire. May we stay hungry for what we know is right—and for what can make our lives extraordinary!
“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.” *
As captured insufficiently by my iPhone, the Barred Owl with whom I shared a moment....
Yesterday, walking with an inspiring friend, we stopped at every other amazing tree to appreciate each one’s autumn colors (the auburn oak, the orange tie-dye flaming japanese maple, and my favorite: the butter yellow ginkgo with her chanterelle-shaped leaves). As I drove away, the fluttering of giant wings above the road caught my eye and I pulled over. It was this amazing Barred Owl. We stood and looked in each others eyes (his/hers with beautiful circular arches, a funny white mustache just like the guy on the Pringles can, and streaks of brown and cream feathers down his/her chest). The owl blinked and rotated its amazing head and showed me all its tricks. I always feel like seeing such things is important and that I should stand witness for as long as I possibly can. I tried to let the owl’s wisdom and fierceness and beauty seep into me. I guess that owls are actually common in the Pacific Northwest where I live. But today I am so grateful for such ordinary things...
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*― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
*― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
Yesterday, I rode my bicycle northbound across the I-5 bridge from Oregon into Washington, for the first time. It was terrifying. The bridge has a few hundred feet of elevation in the middle and then descends, which sounds fun except that there is barely enough width for your handle bars and you’re going maximum speed. To your right is the mighty Columbia river, to your left is the smoke and scream of traffic, and every so often the path narrows even more where the bridge buttress things stick into the trail. I had no idea what it would be like, but I followed my friend who had. By the time it was done, "terrifying" became "exhilarating."
(Below is a video clip by Portland Metro, about how to ride the bridge, which I edited for this piece.)
(Below is a video clip by Portland Metro, about how to ride the bridge, which I edited for this piece.)
CLICK FOR A 42-SECOND VIRTUAL RIDE ACROSS BRIDGE, (Original vid by Portland Metro, bridge image from George Rothert.)
I am so, so grateful to ride a bike. First, thanks to my brother, whose hand-me-down late-80’s mountain bike is my current ride. Second, thanks to my friends who let me tell my dark, vulnerable secret: I’ve always been afraid to ride bikes, and I didn’t properly learn to ride one when I was a kid. I avoided it because it scared me. Somehow as the youngest of eight kids, by the time I would have been riding, a lot got assumed. It was taken for granted that some sibling or friend somewhere somehow would teach me, and that I’d be interested enough (and not terrified) to try. I remember other hand-me down bikes, and a few tries with training wheels, but I never got into it. By the time I was about 11 years old, a terror hit me when I learned we were going to move to Scotland for about a year. I got it in my mind that everyone in Scotland was always on a bike. So I secretly took someone’s bike from the garage, and practiced alone, enough that I could basically stay upright on a bike. Newsflash: I never rode a bike in Scotland. It wasn’t until I was living in Portland and about to turn thirty that the panic hit me again. I’m going to be thirty. Thirty! This seemed just altogether too old to be afraid of bikes. So again, I borrowed a bike and practiced my turns in the park.
A friend lent me an old steel root-beer colored Schwinn I started making my way around town, solo, my heart racing every minute. And now, over a decade since, I’ve become a regular Portland cyclist. I still have my secret and not-so-secret fears about riding, but mostly I can’t believe how much I love it. The feeling of freedom and speed—I could ride all day. And perhaps because it’s a gift I discovered later in life, it always feels like a secret pleasure to me—not just another way to get around.
A friend lent me an old steel root-beer colored Schwinn I started making my way around town, solo, my heart racing every minute. And now, over a decade since, I’ve become a regular Portland cyclist. I still have my secret and not-so-secret fears about riding, but mostly I can’t believe how much I love it. The feeling of freedom and speed—I could ride all day. And perhaps because it’s a gift I discovered later in life, it always feels like a secret pleasure to me—not just another way to get around.
#IWantToRideMyBicycle #AloneAndConnected #gratitude #gratitudediaries #gratitudegrows #NovemberGratitude #WhatYouAppreciateAppreciates
Ila Asplund
Traveler. Baker. Beauty Seeker. Hiker. Paper Ephemera Collector. Sharpie Lover. Etch-A-Sketch Artist. Mondegreen (Misheard Lyric) Connoisseur. Public Space Ninja. Nickname Giver.
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