Balance, Longing, and Gratitude

I am working on a small service for Wednesday evening. This is a 30-minute online Vespers, a time for poetry, song, and reflection. My theme is balance. I'm blending Dorianne Laux's Balance, the excerpt below from Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, in which he writes of lovely and fanciful creatures called harmoniums that have found their own balance in the deep caves of Mercury, and David Whyte's essay on Longing in his (gorgeous, strange, brilliant) book Consolations.

And for the song, of course, Life Is Better with You by Michael Franti. I'm rocking this one!

Excerpt from Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

The planet Mercury sings like a crystal goblet.
It sings all the time.
One side of Mercury faces the Sun.
That side has always faced the Sun. That side is a sea of white-hot dust.
The other side faces the nothingness of space eternal.
That side has always faced the nothingness of space eternal. That side is a forest of giant blue-white crystals, aching cold.
It is the tension between the hot hemisphere of day-without-end and the cold hemisphere of night-without-end that makes Mercury sing.
…
There are creatures in the deep caves of Mercury.
The song their planet sings is important to them, for the creatures are nourished by vibrations. ...
The creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves.
In that way, they eat the song of Mercury.
…
The creatures in the caves are translucent. When they cling to the walls, light from the phosphorescent walls comes right through them. The yellow light from the walls, however, is turned, when passed through the bodies of the creatures, to a vivid aquamarine.
Nature is a wonderful thing.
...
Each creature has four feeble suction cups – one at each of its corners. These cups enable it to creep, something like a measuring worm, and to cling, and to feel out the places where the song of Mercury is best.
Having found a place that promises a good meal, the creatures lay themselves against the wall like wet wallpaper.
…
They do not reach maturity, then deteriorate and die. They reach maturity and stay in full bloom, so to speak, for as long as Mercury cares to sing.
There is no way in which one creature can harm another, and no motive for one’s harming another.
Hunger, envy, ambition, fear, indignation, religion, and sexual lust are irrelevant and unknown.
The creatures have only one sense: touch.
They have weak powers of telepathy. ... They have only two possible messages.
The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first.
The first is, ”Here I am, here I am, here I am.”
The second is, ”So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.”

Prioritizing Me

I'm keeping an intention to fold in physical activities high in my consciousness. It still hasn't turned into action much, but the realization that fun = moving my body is still motivating me to figure it out.

The latest scheme is to try for some family bike rides when it cools down a little. I think we're going to "borrow" my 80-year-old mother's Schwinn for Beckett (a much more appropriate age for biking!) so that we will all have decent-ish bikes. Umea's is a second-hand store find. Actually, I think Eric's is, too. And mine is the bike I bought in grad school, which I still adore. 

The other goal is to play tennis Monday evenings. 

And soon I'll be able to get back to yoga at lunch 2 times a week. 

I've done fairly well going for one long-ish run on the weekends. 

One of the fun things at camp was playing "ga ga ball," which I hear is taking the nation by storm, following the pickle ball revolution. My son was surprised but pleased that his mom did pretty well - for a beginner! It was a reminder that I'm kinda athletic. Felt like being little and playing baseball and kickball and all kinds of other things - and being pretty good at most of them just by being fairly coordinated. 

Although ABQ does not have gaga ball pits, it is embracing pickleball. Many of my older friends are enamored. Once the City opens the registration for pickle ball lessons, I'll sign up to learn that. Then I need to find a partner to play with!

All of this requires carving out time in the week for something that I actually find fun, even though my kids don't. The past 14 years have been trying to find things to do as a family. Now... it's probably ok to strike out on my own again and leave them to their screens and their friends.