#006 Birthday Season
Like the summer sun, Rain of mind
Happy New Year to all new and old subscribers.
I’ve crossed two seasons of time since last writing, which means I’m a little overdue for another piece. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a restful hibernation focusing on some personal work that’s making it’s way out into the world this spring.
Instead of dwelling on what hasn’t happened I’m going to keep going and celebrate the bits that have: writings for my daughter’s birthdays - Ren and Ruru - now 5 and 3.
In writing these I often try to describe the feeling I hold as a father and witness to their childhood. It’s about capturing the omnipresent feeling of this time and all the learnings that are wrapped up in it, and the indelible qualities of their personalities. Then too it’s the flowing nature of how I relate to it all.
Stacking experiences on a perspective of joy creates expansion and possibility. The felt experience of this is momentum that I need to keep going and do my best. In the end it’s all strangely beautiful and simple when you focus and make space between to notice.
Now that I’m at the tail-end of our birthday season and feeling a refreshed perspective for the new year, I wish you all the same.
C
Ren Age 5
Five points on a star
Five fingers on each hand
Five years since we released you
into the world
How special it is to feel significant
in the brightness of your eyes
a season of endless light
Bold, Radiant& True
Who knew you were the beginning
Of a tragic awakening
A whiplash of reality
In a world numbing itself
As time drips by
And soft hazy clouds hold our memories
I long for the grassy hillside
Where I can lay forever as my memories take shape
Up there in the blue
You are in everything
Beyond the blanket of your starry eyes
A landscape open and free
Ruru - Age 3
My favorite thing about this time
Is the availability of a new perspective
/
I wept the day we met
As I noticed the slowing of time
Behind frozen tears
Now there’s a season in every hour
And every moment a waking dream
Wondering with new hair, what if?
/
Orbiting shadows
Polishing ego
By the grace of a sweeter world
Maybe it’s that longing gaze of yours
tenderly flowing
Like the summer sun
Rain of mind
/
Or maybe it’s your spirit
That tells it’s been here before
Maybe that’s how I feel so young
When every day could be another day
Maybe it’s because you’re that old
And you’ve held it all before
Like the Earth
and her stream of all beginnings
/
Oh how your curls dance in the light
Animated and alive
Found behind closed eyes
And those crystalline tears
Renewed
/
Nothing is sacred
And I try not to hold on too tightly
Between the heavens and earth
Celebrating the moments passed and passing
This experience of you is everything
Quote from Elsewhere
I used to be hard on myself. I used to get down when I couldn’t deliver in August on a promise I made in January. But I realized this year that the only thing that matters in the end is that we keep coming back, and that we find ways to fall back in love with things that bring us joy, however brief it was the first time.
I don’t promise myself anything anymore.
I’d rather have high hopes with low expectations.
Because hope fuels us, can be refilled, and opens the door to possibility. While expectations are traps that lead to disappointment.
Alex Tran & Alex Otieno’s “Common Discourse”
