Pink Full Moon and Geraniums


Earlier in the week, on my way home from a conference on the other side of town, I found on the $1 cart outside of Second Story Books, Starhawk’s Dreaming the Dark — Magic, Sex and Politics. Though I always learn something from reading Starhawk’s books and I had not read this one yet, the book was so heavily underlined, I thought twice about getting it.
Something made me hesitate before putting it back, and I opened it at random. On the page was the following: “Directed energy causes change. To have integrity, we must recognize that our choices bring about consequences, and that we cannot escape responsibility for the consequences, not because they are imposed by some external authority, but because they are inherent in the choices themselves.”
I wondered why this had not been underlined in full when so much of the rest of the page had been underlined because I thought on reading it: “Exactly right; that speaks to our current condition.”
And being in the midst this dialogue in which there has been so much discussion of integrity (along with what we might have caused and how we might have been affected by certain actions), I dismissed the possibility that the underlining would be too intrusive for my own reading because, yes, this teaching comes at just the right time in just the right context for deep contemplation of the deep truth that to act with integrity, we must appreciate our own contribution to causes and results/responses in the undulating fabric of our connected being.

Freedom Plaza, August 12, 2018
I have in my library books in which just one phrase or just the very beginning is most resonant. It is this time of summer, when the light seems endless, and the heat just setting in as if on a permanent basis, that my thoughts turn to watermelon in food, and again in literature. I think of watermelon differently each summer from the perspective of having lived another year, and the same in having experienced the taste and the thoughts of the taste so many times before. When it comes the time of year when thoughts of watermelon spontaneously arise, I revisit these words:
“In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant. Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar.” (R. Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar).
Refreshed, I put the book back on the shelf, look forward to eating watermelon from the fresh farm market, and set the intention to start each day with open, receptive, and unjaundiced eyes, ready to learn and experience the same old things as glorious new ones, and to do the best I can.
To be a tantrica does not mean wild and indifferent sensual indulgence. On the contrary, it means fully engaging in all of life. A tantric life is one in which everything one does–work, family, relationship, consumption, citizenship–is steadily and progressively more informed by the teachings of yoga and infused with the fruits of the practices. A key aspect of participating fully in the life of a householder in a democracy is to educate oneself about politics and to participate. Please vote. Here’s a short video from the ACLU that you might want to watch and pass along to your friends and family.