Gratitude – A Wabi Sabi Life

One Path

“crossing the river of life”
Mo Chuu (mother river) Bhutan, October 19, 2025

“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!”
Friedrich Nietzsche in The Marginalian

This time the path led to touring and trekking in Bhutan, with an early three-day layover in Bangkok. Curious about Bhutan since reading that its Gross National Product was based on happiness, in recent years I’d begun my research. Committed to traveling with a Canadian company, and wanting to experience the country by walking in its forests and on its mountain trails, after last year’s heartening experience, I opted for a women’s hiking tour hosted by Wild Women Expeditions. Away almost three weeks in October, companioned by three women from the US, we were expertly hosted by local guide Chhimi from Blue Poppy Travel.

Since walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino in May 2022, I’ve made annual long distance walks. Each has been a known pilgrimage with sacred sites marking well worn paths trodden for hundreds of years by seekers and practitioners. Bhutan was no exception, as ornately carved wooden temples perched on mountain plateaus, white stucco stupas scattered in fields and on roads, and prayer flags strung across chasms constantly reminded us that we were being held by Mayahana Buddhism, the state religion deeply integrated into all aspects of Bhutanese life.

From our first walkabout during our first day in Paro, when hearing chanting we came upon the first of several ceremonies and offerings for peace, compassion, and the ending of suffering of all beings – hallmarks of this form of Buddhism. Chhimi confirmed my hunch that given so much current global conflict and suffering, the monks and nuns were engaged in even more ceremony as antidote. As I write this post, the country is hosting an unprecedented Global Peace Prayer Festival, November 4-17, in its capital, Thimpu, at the site of the massive seated golden Buddha, in hopes of rekindling hope and shared prosperity. We were deeply moved that this small country of 700,000 citizens was undertaking such effort, and expense, for the well-being of the planet and all its beings … for each of us.

Buddha Dordemna, Thimpu (for perspective)

We were many times blessed on our expedition. Everyday the sun shone in an azure sky when the week prior had brought unprecedented rains washing out trails and creating landslides on the only highway traversing the country, resulting in hours’ long delays. Narrow road shoulders became more treacherous with debris and washout along cliff edges. Days after our departure, major storm systems in neighboring India were bringing more rain.

Too, we had countless “right place, right time” moments, including watching monks practice their festival dance in the field one Sunday morning; meeting a local girl who invited us to use her bow and arrow to practice the national sport; having an unusual roadside photo opp with a Himalayan Grey Langur; seeing one of the four Queen Mothers (the earlier king married sisters), and the current King and Queen pass us in their motor entourages (no photos allowed); and even seeing Mount Everest from our plane departing Paro.

To have journeyed in such a small group, with two women who, like me, were celebrating their 70th birthdays was an answered prayer, as we supported each other in challenging climbs that took us to heights of 3000+ meters, and lengthy, quad and calf gripping descents.

I am filled to the brim with visceral and visual impressions in which here, now, is my first humble attempt to put into words. Many times, as is my way, my heart overflowed in tears. I trust poetry will emerge … in the right place, at right time. But for now, may this suffice.

With much love and kindest regards, dear friends. “om mani padme hum”

Beyond Patience

Beyond Patience

If I knew another word for patience,
would it open me to the act?
Perhaps something that invokes the patience
in the zinnias after first central flower has died
and before the next buds are formed.
Something that speaks to the patience of winter
while the field is greening more deeply every day.
To be patient is to believe there is a moment
beyond now that will be better than now.
So perhaps instead of patience, the word
I’m longing for is presence. The capacity
to be only here. Only now. Here in the garden
where the zinnia row is thick with leaves.
Here in the meadow where it’s warm and
the tall grass tickles my bare thighs. Now
in the week before my sweet girl arrives.
Ah, there it is, back to the anticipation.
Try again. Presence, as in now, in this moment
when swallows swoop and skate and swirl.
Now, when my breath opens in my chest,
opens like a zinnia, many petalled and red.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer ~

And here I am, again.
Inspired by this gift and its thoughtful discerning between patience and presence.
With the perfect photo as complement.
Simple. Elegant. Present with what is here now.
Only now.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Resist

“One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a counter-cultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy — like music, like love — is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us.”
Maria Popova, The Marginalian, July 6, 2025

I would add that noticing beauty – in life’s imperfections and beyond -is, too, such a miracle of consciousness.

And so it was this past week when I en-joyed my now third annual, summer sojourn on Vancouver Island, visiting dear friends. My idea of paradise when we eat every meal outside in their “beyond gorgeous” garden – a labour of love this abundance of blossom, colour, bees, and butterflies. “Heaven on earth” is how I describe it, without a word of hyperbole.

Prosecco and a picnic on the beach; pickleball with a food truck lunch and ice cream cones; cooking together as I shared some favourite pasta and appetizer recipes while sipping a gorgeous Italian red from Brindisi (note to self: track it down); and the perfect “next in my year’s worth of celebrating” birthday party – with candles on the lovingly-made chocolate torte, a talking circle among friends, meaningful gifts, and an orange balloon! A “time out of time” experience that filled my heart.

And in a matter of eighty minutes I was home, landing on my piece of prairie patchwork, greeted by my man and our dog. Resuming routines – pickleball on a very cold and windy Friday morning, walking in the river valley on a summertime hot and green Saturday morning, and celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary at one of YEG’s (and Canada’s) finest restaurants, leaving us to wonder why it had taken so long to return.

Times grow darker south of the border. There is no denying the continued, utterly bewildering commitment to policies and practices devastating people. I like knowing that this week of choosing and celebrating joy, and love, and beauty, is my act of resistance. Like a stone dropped in the pond…the butterfly wings flapping…that dragonfly that landed on my chest and rested for several minutes… miracles of consciousness that matter.

…Everywhere I look there is tyranny.
Everywhere I look there is goodness.
This contradiction is killing me.
It is the only thing keeping me alive.
Abbey E. Murray, “Ode to the Grimy Breeze of an Underground Subway Platform“

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. Resist!

PS – I’ve been irregular getting to this page and so have chosen to take a “pause” for a bit, posting as the mood strikes.

Tiny Choices and Small Moments

“So, what are you plans for the day?” I asked Sig one morning last week, before he got too involved in monitoring our stocks.

“I haven’t decided,” he casually responded.

Heading upstairs to get ready for the day, with a stop in the kitchen to warm up my coffee, I thought how wonderful, how privileged even, to have the freedom to decide your day. Later on, I mentioned this to Sig, and he agreed, both of us recognizing the gift, the abundance, the richness of his statement and our lived reality.

Yesterday, reading a couple of blogs from my writerly friends, both meandered around this insight. Helen, in Ageless Possibilities, opened her reflection inspired by a quote from novelist, Louise Penny, in which she describes life as being made up of the tiny choices we each make every day. Helen writes,“Years ago, I made a collage titled Someday, a visual dream of reading, gardening, lazing, yoga, friends, and family. I did not realize then that someday was quietly unfolding through my daily choices.”

Gretchen, author of the wise and bittersweet memoir, Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver (IMHO, required reading for anyone navigating the care of elderly parents) wrote with spicy humor and a dash of irreverence, “One does not have to carpe the crap out of every single day.” Call it a gift to self as she described her recent 73^rd birthday, shored up by others who echoed that it’s always the small moments of a life – being present to and curious about – that matter.

We’ve had a ridiculously cold start to summer with inches of heavy, wet snow falling in the foothills and highway whiteouts on Solstice. Last weekend, thunderstorm warnings resulted in hailstorms that shattered flowers and shredded hostas and the fragile spinach, arugula and lettuce seedlings. The local greenhouse warned that recovery might be tenuous, particularly for large-leaved vegetables and fragile tomatoes. In the scheme of things, we needed moisture. Still do, as I recalled a skillful gardener-friend saying a few years ago, after a similar dry winter and spring, that if we dug down, at best we’d see an inch or so of damp soil and then dry, sandy earth beneath. I make mention of this because I’d planned to spend time weeding and tending to those hail-struck pots and beds. But instead, I made the small, yet significant choice to visit a friend who I hadn’t seen since we celebrated my birthday. My friend is living with lethal cancer, and depending on the day, would probably say on borrowed time, where and when those tiny choices, and small moments, matter enormously.

The final post I read yesterday was written by Anne Lamott in response to the USA’s choice to bomb Iran yesterday. A choice with consequences too profound and potentially devastating to fathom.

“I have no answers but do know one last thing that is true: Figure it out is a bad slogan. We won’t be able to. Life is much wilder, complex, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children, or that I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the face of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy, we are saved.”

We are saved.

May it be so.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Joy and Sadness

…At the same moment, I experienced exactly the opposite emotion. The tears were at the same time tears of an immense sadness—a sadness at what we’re doing to the earth, sadness about the people whom I had hurt in my life, and sadness too at my own mixed motives and selfishness. I hadn’t known that two such contrary feelings (joy and sadness) could coexist. I was truly experiencing the nondual mind of contemplation.
Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, Tears of Joy and Sadness, 2025

A “better late than never” post, I knew when I’d read Rohr’s meditation yesterday that it would be good grist for my writing mill, but I’ve been struggling to find the words.

Yesterday, when I’d read another email with the invitation to share a favourite dog poem, I suddenly realized it had been two years to the day (not date) when we’d said our final “good-byes” to Annie. Reading and recalling, at the same time I was hearing Walker the Joy Boy, bounding up the stairs to watch squirrels with a second floor advantage. “His version of screen time“, says Sig, as he can spend hours glued to those floor to ceiling windows.

Bittersweet.

There’s the world close up, across the border, and oceans away…the new e-bike I bought last week…the need to find the perfect buyer for its predecessor, my Danish cruiser…the hail that for two nights shattered blossoms and shredded leaves giving a poor prognosis for some harvests…the rain that finally fell for hours and hours soaking the parched earth…a lingering sadness from my birthday…the delight with my new decade new haircut.

Bittersweet. The co-existence of two contrary feelings.

Still at a loss for this blog, I turned to editing some poems. Trying to track down a reference to one, I opened Breathe, a collection from Lynn Ungar. I know it’s not Friday when I typically post a poem, a photo, and a reflection, but this is it. With better words that I can muster at the moment to acknowledge life’s bitter and its sweet, and unabashed joy that comes from living with dogs – Beckey, Sassy, Torch, Peggy, Lady, Annie, and Walker.

JOY

I don’t need to tell you this world
is hard, and getting harder.
We thought it would be better than this-
more sensible, more neatly worked out,
more righteous, according to our impeccable
analysis of what righteousness should look like.
And yet, here we are. No good pretending
it isn’t both a slog and a crisis,
which is to say, wearing on every last nerve.
And still, when you least expect it,
you find yourself ambushed by Joy, who,
tail whipping and ears slicked back to her head,
launches herself into your lap,
leaving you breathless
and covered in kisses.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Saying Thank You

*a birthday memory repurposed, with thanks*

THANKS

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

~ W. S. Merwin, 1988 ~

On Monday night, I listened to the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, recite this poem at an encore presentation of the annual Poetry and the Creative Mind fundraising celebration for National Poetry month. She, as did many of the guest readers, selected poems that had particular relevance for these times. Limón closed her reading with one of her own popular poems, A New National Anthem (the link here a YouTube of an earlier recitation.)

Evident the power of poetry to timelessly bear witness with profound prescience to current events and realities. Merwin’s poem was copyrighted in 1988. Limón’s thiry years later in 2018. Both were read at the event’s original broadcast on April 24, 2025, weeks before the Los Angeles protests and the illegal and incendiary reactions from the American president and the Republican administration.

Moved by both poems and Limón’s passionate reading, I was perturbed by the counter-intuitiveness of “saying thank you” with growing urgency in the face of the growing darkness. And yet is this not holding one’s heart open in hell? The gratitude for Life, all of it? The messiness and mystery and madness? The grace and grit and grief?

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And to you who will be assembling in peaceful protest tomorrow, to say NO to any and all king-making, and who are marching from Cairo to Gaza, thank you.

To Travel Is To Feel

The best way to travel, after all, is to feel,
To feel everything in every way,
To feel everything excessively,
Because all things are, in truth, excessive
And all reality is an excess, a violence,
An extraordinarily vivid hallucination.

~ Fernando Pessoa ~

This photo, taken three years ago while strolling in Lisbon the evening I arrived to acclimatize before walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, is a modern homage to Portugal’s man of letters, Fernando Pessaro. His understanding of travel mirrors my own experiences, often reflected in my own poetry and photography.

This spring, SYNKRONICITI, the literary online quarterly founded by Katherine Grace McDaniel, again made a home for my creative expressions. In the current issue Identity, my poem “Ammonite Answers” and companion photo of the Moroccan mesa which inspired it, are but dozens of submissions beautifully curated by Katherine. As a poet who writes about the beauty in life’s imperfection and photographs its shimmer, often in response to my travels, I appreciate having my work accepted from among the many writers, poets, and visual artists from around the world who submit.

But what makes these acceptances all the more special is the time Katherine takes to uplift each contributor’s work by posting her often intuitive, always thoughtful impressions on her website’s blog and social media. In the case of my poem, she writes:

“Carl Jung recognized travel as a powerful tool for self discovery and individuation. Our interaction with unfamiliar parts of the outside world helps us hone who we are and often opens our eyes to things we didn’t know about ourselves, as well as confirming things we suspected.”

Hers is feedback as gift, both acknowledging, and inviting me into a deeper reflection on my writing and how it resonates with another. Thank you, Katherine.

Here’s the link to Katherine’s labor of love, that includes mine and that of many other global creatives.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Saudade

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about that quintessential Portuguese quality called “saudade.” A bittersweet yearning…a tender sadness…the presence of absence evoked in fado music and singing, dance, poetry. Qualities represented by this photo I took in Andalusia five years ago.

Last night, while eating dinner at our favorite Portuguese-Spanish influenced cafe, saudade stirred. Even before we entered, I felt waves of nostalgia for those times three years ago when eating in Portuguese cafes along the Camino, or in the tapas bars with Sig in Malaga, and that sweet match-box sized vermuteria we stumbled upon our last sunny Sunday in Sevilla.

Maybe it was yesterday’s summer-like weather inviting us to relax after a day working in the yard and garden, readying it for more outdoor living. Feeling the sun warm on our backs and faces, no jackets, gloves or toques, each of us remarked over the pleasure we felt not needing to brace against the cold.

Certainly, it was evoked by the cafe’s newest Sunday night addition, a Spanish singer-guitarist. Several of his songs so moving, I was almost brought to tears.

The longer I sat within the mood of the moment, I realized that this for me is particular to Portugal and Spain. That as much as I love being in Italy – and to date have visited many of its regions – I don’t recall being stirred in the same way.

I was to have returned to Italy this fall to again walk la Via Francigena with a small group of women. But due to no registration, I needed to cancel. I am disappointed. But I wonder if saudade is calling. And if one day, I’m to make another long-distance walk in Portugal and Spain. Not so much an “exterior” pilgrimage to Santiago, but the “interior” one to my soul. The outward destination not really the point. The journey that matters, experiencing anew what evokes and stirs.

Feeling saudade, the proof that I loved and lived,
dreamed and remembered… even if for a moment.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Presence of The Absence

There is a word in Portuguese that has no direct equivalent
in any other language: “saudade.”
It is not just longing. It is more.
It is longing mixed with melancholy,
with expectation,
with tenderness and with a gentle sadness.

It is longing for something that was. . . or maybe never was.
It is absence with the scent of memory.
It is love that did not have time to end, but neither to continue.
It is music that echoes in the void left by someone.

In fado they sing saudade.
In our long silences, saudade is hidden.
In lonely walks,
in lost glances out the window,
in letters never sent.

Saudade does not want to leave.
It doesn’t heal, because it doesn’t hurt completely.
It doesn’t break you, but it doesn’t leave you whole either.
It’s the sweet wound of souls that feel deeply, beyond words.

Carrying saudade within you is proof that you loved,
that you lived,
that you dreamed… even if for a moment.

~ Waves of Life, Facebook, May 4, 2025 ~

*singing* *fado on the steps in Lisbon, May 2022*

Exactly three years ago I was walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino to Santiago. During my first evening in Lisbon, I encountered the essence of “saudade” in a young street musician strumming her guitar, perched on stone steps across from our hotel, singing “fado,” the Portuguese equivalent of the “blues.“

Once home, in preparation for writing about my experiences, I heard a Portuguese guide refer to fado as “the presence of absence.” This inspired a poem which was published later that year in 100 Caminos, an annual Chilean anthology celebrating Camino poetry:

. . . now my memory mends and fills
those cracked and empty places
with jasmine perfume and birdsong
blistered heels and sun kissed faces

Saudade captures much of how I’ve been feeling this year. Tired from the moral outrage I’ve felt in response to the incessant displays of blatant evil. . . disappointed with life events that didn’t quite become as I’d imagined. . . I feel “the longing for something that was . . . or maybe never was.”

Disillusionment giving way to letting go. Discernment that comes with age.
The proof that I have loved and lived and dreamed.
The presence of the absence acknowledged and allowed.
And what is asking to emerge next.

Life’s unfolding along its silver thread, invisible until it’s not.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. It’s nice to be back after several weeks’ absence.

To Say Nothing But Thank You

TO SAY NOTHING BUT THANK YOU

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.

~ Jeanne Lohmann ~

I posted this poem a year ago, almost to the day.

Its message so vital. So simple. So enough. What else is there to say?

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

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