Shandali

Life requires quite a bit of dead heading.

It's scary at first. Then, freeing.

Every clip clip clip comes with the possibility of a future bud.

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For 9 years this w**d popped up in our landscaping. For 9 years I pulled it out, certain I was acting as a good and fastidious gardener. Weeds were the enemy. I knew this.

Then, one year, I grew tired of the w**ding. I sat on the porch. Had my coffee. Read a book of poetry by Edgar Lee Masters instead. Weeding could wait.

To my surprise the w**ds flowered. Goldenrod, it turns out. Beautiful in gilded relief against our purple flox.

As a gardener, I thought I knew my purpose. Then, just like that, life finds a way to remind me; my meanings meander through life changing in proportion to my openness to discovery.

"George Gray"

By Edgar Lee Masters

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me--
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

"Its difficult
to get news from poems," started a poem by William Carlos Williams . I read it on the glowing screen of my phone.

You hold in your hand a tiny super computer with access to the sum total knowledge of humankind. A pocket sized library of Alexandria.

You can look up how to fish.
How to bake a cookie.
How to shoot a gun.
How to get to the nearest park.
How to read poems by any writer.

It's very telling, though, what it can't tell you.
Whether to respect nature.
...to resist gluttony.
... to fight with honor.
... to appreciate beauty.
Whether to take the time to indulge in poetry.

For those things you need something no technology can give you: kindness.

Kindness is not productive or always rewarding or even meritous. It's Its own reason. You can't equation your way into it, quantify it, or even monetize it.

It may seem like kindness is a waste during hard times. But without it, all we are left with is the hard times.

"It's difficult
To get news from poems,"

William Carlos Williams wrote,

"Yet men die miserably
Every day
For lack
Of what's found there. "

(Photo, Bok Tower Garden, FL)

Yes it's a beautiful world. But for every sunrise, their's a sunset. Every peace has its war. For every couple that manages to make it to old age, there are Melville's "Locked lovers leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank benieth the exulting wave; true to each other when heaven seemed false to them."

One...
Two...
Three...

Jump.

(Photo: Maggie Valley, Smokey Mountains)

Most days I feel pretty smart.

Then my kid will ask me what time is. Or, what color is the wind. Or whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

I think I finally understand what Whitman meant:

"A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he."

Maybe we are all like Whitman's proverbial grass - blades of different shapes and sizes. All unified by our deep rooted questions...

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Yoga at a hotel? Dont lug your mat around. Just use a yoga towel. It's light and compact.

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The perfect place to see Florida fall foliage is at the farmer's market.

Halloween on a Shanadli Yoga Towel.

Poor skeleton. She has no body to do yoga with.

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Joy.

What a funny little word.

Joy to the world!
Ode to Joy!
Almond Joy!
Joy ride.
Joy stick.

Mostly, we use joy to mean "happy."

But it can mean so much more.

"Surprised by joy," Wordswroth wrote in his poetic style, "impatient as the wind, I turned to share... oh! With whom but Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb..."

Here, joy seems to be a transcendent moment. Something we see that transports us from our workaday life to touch the infinite. It's that feeling we had when we were kids, standing on our tippy toes, holding up a crayon drawing to show an adult.

So consuming is this feeling, that Wordsworth, turning to show his companion what he saw and felt, has forgotten that she has died. Years ago. His little Catherine. Her six year old body long buried.

Can happiness be so transcendent that one forgets the death of a child? I'm not so sure.

Only joy - a peek at the eternal - can do that.

A brown leaf on green life. The sun through trees. Diamond shimmers of dew drops. We are surprised by joy. A spot of time. Just a moment. It's enough. We are joy full. We dont escape the world but enter into it more fully.

For a moment.

Then the corporeal rushes back and our sorrows continue.