British Park. Mobile, Alabama. Christmas 2021. Credit: Mzuriana.
Light.
In these dark times, I need light. Maybe you do, too.
For the joy, the promise, the inspiration that light brings, I revisit the song, This Little Light of Mine.
My favorite is this by the Soweto Choir:
New to me this year is from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, in a 1960 performance:
May I find light in each day.
In January 2011, I had sold my house in Missouri, but hadn't yet set off on what has been a 15-year slomadic ("slow nomad") journey . Thanks to four women, I had the most marvelous guest homes in Missouri.
My mother, the proprietor of Carol's Cottage, died in spring, 2021. I don't know if I think of her every day, but I do often. The day before yesterday, for example, while I made my bed and lay down a blanket on the mattress, one from my childhood, I smiled, remembering her phone call one day decades ago: "Do you want to go to a sperm auction with me"? And, of course, I said yes, not knowing in the moment what to expect. (The auction was at a well-known farm with prize-winning bulls, and it was their sperm up for the highest bid.)
Co-hostess of Catrisse Bluff, Charisse, died last summer from a long and painful auto-immune condition,. On the day she died, I was in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, en route on buses to my intended destination of the tippity-toe of South America. That evening, I bought a strong stout from the bartender at my lodging, which I intended to raise to Charisse's spirit. I told the bartender my friend had died. She said to me: "Our people are only on loan to us."
Pamela House is home to other people now. Pam's flame dims from a different sort of auto-immune malady. She requires care in a skilled facility for the acts of daily living.
What about Chez Kathryn (which is actually the correct rendition of her name), you might ask? Well, she always keeps the light on for me, and I most recently landed on her doorstep for at least six weeks while I recovered from the pneumonia I picked up in Panama, Ecuador, or Peru in September, and searched for a new-to-me car. Kate features prominently in the Kate on the Loose episodes, in which Pam co-stars.
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| Carol Cottage |
Before I roll out my 2026 word of the year next month, below is a recap of years past:
2018: Courage
2019: Action
2020: Build
2021: Joy
2022: Disciplines
2023: Fear
2024: Migration
So, 10 years yon, how goes the disparity between Black and White life expectancy?
"In 2022, Missouri’s life expectancy rebounded from 74.6 years to 75.4 years having fallen steeply immediately following the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the 2022 life expectancy is still about two years lower than our state’s life expectancy was in 2019 and remains about two years under the national life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. Further, the disparity in life expectancy between white and black/African-American Missourians remains substantial, with white men living 8.5 years longer than black men and white women living 4.4 years longer than black women.
"Pregnancy-related death rates among Black/African American mothers were three times higher than white mothers.42 Of the 68 pregnancy-related deaths, 57 (84%) were preventable.
"The infant mortality rate among Black/African American residents was over double the rate for white residents (11.7 versus 5.1)."
I don't have comparable stats for Louisiana.
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| Myrtle Grove Cemetery, Opelousas, Louisiana. |
I'm not talking about listening to a guided meditation, although those are certainly good.
I'm not talking about listening in a way that I might pause to note the travel talk of geese as they fly north in the spring in their arrowhead formations.
No, I'm talking about this → for five minutes, with eyes closed, I actively listen, with the intention of meditation, to the ambient sounds wherever I am at the moment:
Intent and action are the keys for me in a listening meditation. Intent: mindful meditation. Action: For five minutes:
Credit for this video:
"An eight-part series (Poetry of Perception) on representations of perception and sensation made for fundamentalsofneuroscience.org. "We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think." Oliver Sacks
Words by Walt Whitman
Animation by Daniela Sherer danielasherer.com
Narration by Peter Blegvad
Sound + Music by Skillbard skillbard.com
Produced by Nadja Oertelt nadjaoertelt.com"
Brought to my attention by The Marginalian.
This 10-year old post happens to feature Curley Taylor. He and his band re-entered my post-Louisiana orbit in June 2019, when they performed at Tucson's Monterey Court.
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| Monterey Court in Tucson, Arizona. May 2019. Credit: Mzuriana. |
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| Performance center, Vermilionville, Lafayette, Louisiana. June 2015. |
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| Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble. Vermilionville, June 2015. |
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| Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble. Vermilionville, June 2015. |
Sometimes when you listen to music, live especially, it pushes against you like an ocean wave or like a force of air, where you feel exhilarated and breathless at the same time, where your head actually falls back a little from the strength of the sound coming at you.
This is what it felt like in the Lupus Garage when The Harvest Season played, as the band's flow rolled up and back in small waves, then pounded the shore in a rush against the beach.
If they had been calling to people at the back of the church to come to Jesus, why, I might have been tempted to do just that.
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| Face From a Cosmetic Spoon. Credit: Cleveland Museum of Art |
I'm good for a five-minute meditation. Five minutes is achievable for me; any longer and I'm going to put it in the category of a chore, thus less likely to fold into a daily routine.
This month: a meditation of touch.
I lightly move my fingers over the terrain of my face, staying in the physical moment, feeling the sensation of skin on skin, how my face receives the touch of my fingers, and how my fingers feel the touch of my face.
I note how the texture of my lips differs from the texture of the skin on my chin. I feel how my eyebrow hairs lay. I linger over the ridged skeleton of my forehead beneath the skin. I notice the warmth or coolness of my fingers on my face. Along my jawline, are there stubbly bits or is all smooth?
During this meditation, I know that tender memories will arise of my mother caressing my skin when I was a child and of me, in turn, caressing my daughter's face. I'll feel these memories, but I'll allow them to float by as I return to the meditation of my touch in the present, letting go of all else.
