miso walk, part 3

 

Then, it is true that meaning arises from presence. I know this because my mentor told me it is true.  This is why the sideways glances when I am not paying attention. She’s always ready with a lesson but it is uncanny really that they never seem to be lessons. I only get the ‘ahas’ after we have met. However, this unexpected visit and this attention to my attention…. hmmm, something tells me the metaphor of our relating is being extended to my concerns.

It is funny how recently I have felt my mother’s presence. Leaping Lena.  She leapt because she was known to not wear underwear and her friends thought it was funny to lift her schmatas up to see if that were true at that moment. Leaping Lena, just like the herds of caribou, leaping and running so fast with the power of their great numbers. Maybe this is how that leaping translated into my mother’s genes. Something in her, something prehistoric said to her innermost being, ‘Don’t wear underwear and we will make you leap.’  There is no leaping in isolation, only in the herd, that’s why her friends were part of the makeup of this recreation of her genetic code. There is no miso in isolation. The microorganisms love company, crave attention and their master’s presence.  

A wise person wrote that isolation is devoid of meaning. Meaning must have connection. No audience, no miso. I have known connection through love and listening. Ecosystems and the beings they contain know connection through levels of moisture rising and falling within trees and plants; or levels of salt or places to lay eggs with food sources nearby to feed the nesting mothers and the coming chicks. Ecosystems and biomes are big ways of saying everything is like an egg, seemingly self-contained with all the nutrients one needs before pipping through the shell with its egg tooth, creating the small aperture which eventually turns into the entranceway to whatever destiny the egg is carrying.  Imagine the living mechanisms of ponds and fields whose edges around the world touch bays, estuaries, mangroves, and rivers. All living systems are edged by active connections with lives most will never know. But the egg cannot survive in isolation. Meaning, and life arrives from connection to sources, trails, waterways, and winds.

Now, the dragon may not understand winds until it has reached its 100^th year, but it will feel them and thrive because of them. They say that Mercury is the messenger of the gods. But many would say that it’s the winds. Most will agree the winds are important. But we also look for water when we look for life.

The water the water the water. The essence, sand and dust of our loved ones, the pull of the moon and unseen forces, all belonging and all connected. Tides come and go. Some call it a cycle. Some see the sets of waves and know that iterations have their changes in the mighty growth of increments. That’s what I was thinking. But my mentor was walking along the edge of the bulwarks watching the cell tower. She didn’t even turn back to see if I was listening. But I heard her say, “Osprey have been known throughout time to recognize water dragons.”

Those steeped in their work know intimacies of interactions that cannot be seen by the casual observer or even the connoisseur. This knowing takes living with what you want to know. Listening is important. Ask any miso master or ask any cow bird that’s been raised in another bird’s nest. It knows it is a cowbird only when it hears its mother’s song.  I envy those in the daily repetition of work that brings them to the edge of the wetlands and waterways. But when I remember my mother or listen to my mentor, there are clues that I think will lead me where I need to go.  

 

 

from miso walk, part 3 of 3

 

miso walk is a chapter in bird dreams, riding hope, - sometimes a fable, weaving  our connections to birds,  meandering rivers and dragons, fermenting miso and consciousness,

wetlands, our extended kin and ancestors, our mentors, and Wisdom.

Inspired by actual events and a sense of place and belonging by a woman who addresses the reader  on behalf of the earth

 

Here’s my links for more writing and copies of my books

https://amzn.to/3F5N7No   
https://linktr.ee/fredakarpf

 

miso walk, part 2 of 3

“A traditional miso craftsman will tell you that their microorganisms work harder when someone is watching. They talk to them.” And then with a fake stern look at me, for she caught me drifting, “Microorganisms can listen and you cannot!”

I thought, ‘The work of microorganisms is not often in the news.’ My mentor gave me another sideways glance. I could not stop to hold my focus. I will lay blame to the rarity of walking with her by my wetlands so far from our usual meetings. She said there’s a lesson to be had from one that works with miso for everyone talking to flowers and trees, birds and everything else not human in this world.  I agree. What is humbling, my mentor shared, is that the master craftsman said, “I don’t make the miso. I just create an environment where the microorganisms make it.”

Ah, now I could understand that she was not just talking about miso. Which is wonderful and delicious, and adds umami to all foods it touches. Umami is that uncanny flavor that takes you on a journey. You’re off before you even realize it. What happened?  Deliciousness. That’s what happened. This is the fifth flavor that brings deep satisfaction and translates to deliciousness. I knew sweet and salty. My mother had sour in her repertoire which I firmly rejected as a kid. Holidays is when bitter might came round.

We know more about everything now. I would guess my mentor recognized the miso master as kin. They had so much in common. She enjoyed telling about the oak barrel that he used to make traditional miso. The wooden barrels, grown and made from oak in the United States traveled all the way to Japan for this purpose. The barrels have air pockets which provide the perfect environment for the microorganisms to grow.  As my mentor would point out, so many worlds within worlds.

We approached the broken part of the bulwarks where I like to sit and watch. There are a few worlds here as well, both seen and unseen.  I was lost in thought about perfect and imperfect environments. Sanctuaries and turtle crossings.  Protected marine areas and wildlife bridges so that animals are not hurt by automobiles. Nature reserves and open spaces, some with butterfly gardens. Road crossings to protect migration paths. These thoughts like Li Po’s “wind from the pine trees trickles on my bare head.”

~ ~ ~

Basho said to write out of the heart/mind. There is no separation from the heart and the mind, there is a crossing, just as people are now understanding the need for animal crossings so that they can be spared the danger of traffic and move under or over the road while following routes that have been taken by their predecessors for ages. The heart/mind has been followed by some for ages but there are known splits and these are telling apertures in our history with nature. Where some see through to new possibilities; and some see only the economy of resources.

I have to wonder about the dragon that appeared to me.  It has been a few years now since that time. And I have been feeling, like many, that not only have I lost my way but that I had better tie myself to a purpose now. So much is at stake. Experts are talking about mass extinctions. The world that was once so big has become that much smaller and therefore more vulnerable to our impact.

It is said that only mature dragons write. I think it must be because it takes a long time to merge your heart/mind in this world. Many face the darkness before they rise with the sun. Most who create positive change step away from who they were and everything that they think they know drops off of them like spangles and beads whose threads have worn thin with time. If what many say is true, there is a reason to change this wardrobe which no longer serves. First, it is good to know who you are even if finding your way means crawling through a dark night.

 

 

miso walk is a chapter in bird dreams, riding hope, - sometimes a fable, weaving  our connections to birds,  meandering rivers and dragons, fermenting miso and consciousness,

wetlands, our extended kin and ancestors, our mentors, and Wisdom.

Inspired by actual events and a sense of place and belonging by a woman who addresses the reader  on behalf of the earth

 

Here’s my links for more writing and copies of my books

https://amzn.to/3F5N7No   
https://linktr.ee/fredakarpf

 

miso walk part 1 of 3

 

One thing I have in common with osprey is that we’re both beachcombers. There’s a special bond among us who roam the beach. There are those that search for sea glass and have been doing this for as long as glass bottles have been plentiful. Blue glass reminds me of images of roaming rivers that curl like a blue dragon, the bends as soft as the curves of the glass smoothed by the ocean’s tumble. Blue beach glass is at the apex of a beachcomber’s world. But the apex is actually a plateau that derives its character from the frame of mind you enter the beachcombing. When locked in the house all winter with work and chores, the first day in February that I go to the beach, just to be there, feels like a vacation even when it’s cold and damp. I am soon drawn toward the necklace at the water’s edge. My mind unfurls and without even trying, my body relaxes.  Perhaps red glass is more rare than blue. It does not matter. I wander the beach, finding this smooth shell, broken but beautiful, and without realizing it I am moving like a water dragon. I move up where the tide crested, but where the water recedes, there is a downward curve, and I move down closer to the water.  As I follow the wrack line the beachcombing has now become the ocean’s labyrinth walk. I match the mindless mindfulness of the labyrinth but hug the boundary of the sea. So, it has been said and so my mentor, who I have decided to simply call Mentor, roams the beaches of Sandy Hook frequently. She will tell you that you cannot artificially cook glass and find it to have the same qualities as glass that’s gone from boil to simmer and back to boil again at the water’s edge in the salty sea. And you cannot expect your mind to uncurl without letting go of the intention to do so. There are standards and there are practices.

Mentor told me that these same standards apply to miso. ‘Why miso, why now?’ I wondered to myself. Although, my mentor’s mention of the blue glass had my mind hop to blue dragons, and that had a deep resonance with me.  And then I realized it’s because it reminded me of the dragon who was curled inside my head.  I sometimes wondered if it was the one speaking to me and I only thought my little Skunk osprey friend was talking.  I also wondered why the dragon curled inside my head had not paid me a visit since that first time. But the infrequent opportunity to walk with my mentor brought me back to her words. Time is precious and she is like blue sea glass.

 I am sorry to say that I missed the start of her thoughts on this topic because my mind drifted again thinking about the Crow Women and Virg. Was there something Virg was trying to tell me when she poked her head through the wind column?  When I resumed listening, Mentor was saying, “Because all of life is about tastes and smells, seeing beauty, the discoveries, the sense of fullness that wonder brings, the making it what it is or helping it along to be what it can be. We sometimes get set in the direction and more oftentimes are bumped off course.”

Again, my keppe was open to wandering thoughts. ‘Maybe this is why rivers and bees do the viggle vaggle? Or is there a greater purpose in all the turns and curves?’ I could not stop my mind from taking a few turns. Maybe my mentor was hypnotizing me? Some have said that the sex of a fish depends upon how many twists and turns its mother took back to the spawning area. For one creature, a turn or bend in the road just provides a different view, for another it can be as profound as changing the course of its life’s story. Even changing the course of another creature, because all stories in nature are related. 

miso walk is a chapter in bird dreams, riding hope, - sometimes a fable, weaving  our connections to birds,  meandering rivers and dragons, fermenting miso and consciousness,

wetlands, our extended kin and ancestors, our mentors, and Wisdom.

Inspired by actual events and a sense of place and belonging by a woman who addresses the reader  on behalf of the earth

 

Here’s my links for more writing and copies of my books

https://amzn.to/3F5N7No   
https://linktr.ee/fredakarpf