Karinaland River

  2) Change, Breath and Life as Our Teachers   What are the good old times? They are always past, they are gone, whether they were good or bad. Here is a quote from  Octavia Butler ’s  Parable of the Sower   : “All that you touch you Change. And what you Change changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.” For decades, in every one of my classes, I am talking about  Change . It is the core of my  T’ai Chi teaching  and daily practice, and of course it is at the core of Taoism. Exploring  Breath  as friend and teacher: it invites us to participate and learn about the constant  Change  of in and out. “Allow yourself to be breathed,” I keep repeating when guiding students to discover  Natural Breath , which is actually more difficult than learning specific breathing techniques.  Being breathed   challenges us to cultivate yielding, listening, awareness, sensitive participation. This practice teaches...

  1) Change is the constant we can count on….     Every hour, every day, the garden changes. Every season, every year, it presents itself differently. Time to introduce you to the many new late-spring faces in  Karinaland . They are looking at the world expectantly, with much joy, delight, innocence, and love – ready to play, offer nectar, be cherished, talked to, and develop capsules of seeds, be rocked in the wind. Spread their beauty. Can you see it? Waiting to be pollinated by all kind of insects, bees, hummingbirds, butterflies. What do you recognize in the flowers’ faces? Wonder fills my heart. I see my own spirit mirrored back to me, sensing kinship, as well as intriguing and mysterious  otherness , feeling inspired. Often, I can’t help but erupt in sounds of admiration. Each face is utterly unique.   Can you find the bumble bee?     Plants are so inventive with their costumes and customs: colors, shapes, fragrances, textures, how they grow...

  Mustering courage to keep speaking out loud     On Sunday February 5, 2023, the world is changed with four shots. Three shots into Marya’s back, coming from her second husband Chuck, then one shot for himself. Both dead, a murder suicide. Losing Marya this way – my 54-year-old step daughter who I was close with especially in recent years – is utterly shocking and incomprehensible. That evening, she tries to leave the home, perhaps a fight. We will never know. He was a veteran. May both rest in peace.    Altar for Marya   I knew Marya for 32 years, first as a beautiful, feisty, angry, insecure and often arrogant young woman, who goes off to study at Humboldt State University in Arcata. Then getting married to Andy Jensen, and being a dedicated mother of two girls, Jennifer and Sarah, extensively volunteering at their schools. Later she becomes a grateful daughter who greatly appreciates the devotion with which I was caring for her dad Bob Blauner, my late ...

  This past Sunday… several eras of my life converging…   Bent low, kneeling on the sidewalk , I am braiding green and already brown, long leaves that belong to the fragrant narcissus flowers gone a while ago, leaves now limply on the pavement becoming braids. Across the street, I hear the voice of a woman explaining loudly: “Here is where Bob Blauner lived, and his widow, still here, created this mural…” I turn and see her waving towards the garage describing this  landmark  to two other women. I am amused and respond slowly rising from the ground: “Yeah, that’s me, I am the widow.” The three, quite surprised, cross the street. The  tour guide  introduces herself as Kim Voss, from UC Berkeley’s Sociology department. I figure that she probably joined after Bob had taken early retirement in 1992. She lives around the corner on Acacia, taking her two guests on a walk in the neighborhood. Kim has watched the mural come into being. I ask if she has noticed my n...