An essay by Ela Harrison titled "My Heart Lies in the Choice Between "The Fleet" and "All the Ships"" appears in the current (Winter 2015) edition of The Georgia Review. Harrison's previous publications have included poetry, book reviews, nutrition and food writing, blogging, and academic writing and translations. This is her first extended essay to see publication.

And what a prestigious venue for publication! Prestigious, yes, but also exquisitely apt, both for the essay and for the writer, as you'll see. Likewise, an apt subject for the first post of 2016 on this blog, with its recurrent preoccupations about words, time, and transition.

Today, December 17th, is the 742nd anniversary of Rumi's death. The Sufi community celebrates loved ones' or heroes' death days, or urs, with informal but intentional gatherings in celebration of the life and to reflect on how that life lives on in our own lives. So tonight was different from the normal Thursday night Sufi gatherings.

We shared our favorite Rumi poems, we squeezed a couple of Dances of Universal Peace into the narrow confines of the Little Chapel, we did a couple of zikr practices and a carefully contained dervish whirl.

Interesting to reflect on Rumi's perennial appeal and what an apt representative he is of what we call Sufism.

I used to think this only referred to "other people":

Prolonged/habitual dieting will inevitably lead to rebound hyperphagia (insatiable hunger) and accelerated weight gain, until a healthy weight is restored.

 *See the bottom of this post for some sources

I really believed I was a special case. That was never going to be me. Even less me was the accompanying idea that this extra weight would cause the person to feel so much better that soon she wouldn't mind it.

Then, this past 18 months, it happened to me.  "What's constant is the shift..." But how am I going to move through this shift?

As I've continued to process last week's thefts, the feeling of violation, I've been resisting the temptation to blame myself for manifesting the woes and at the same time attempting to ask, without self pity, what I can do/could have done differently. What is it that needs my attention and is not getting it?

Again with the questions. Perhaps there's a beautiful symmetry in the fact that I find questions so useful everywhere and always and in the fact that the one quality on which I pride myself and which I hope never to lose is that of listening/being a good listener.  But am I listening enough right now? I feel, rather, that I'm grasping desperately...

High heat is here. High, dry heat.

Elsewhere, gardeners favor raised beds. Here, contrariwise, we sink them. Cooler, shadier, hold moisture better. I take sacks with me into the river wash and bring home plant debris, horse poop, bat poop, as mulch that is also shade. 

What's alive so easily parches to death; what's already dead doesn't compost because it's just too dry. I love heat, but when it's so high above my body temperature, it makes me wonder if there is after all a "too hot."

The idea of a Devil as malignant power that can punish or take control of us is really the grown-up version of a boogeyman to scare children. It's the process of creating a character to act out the idea that the world is full of unknowns and beyond our control and that this should make us afraid.

The truth is--and most children seem to know this, which is perhaps scary to adults--the "unknown" and the "beyond our control" are some of the richest, most compelling, wondrous aspects of being alive. Another truth is this: many things we consider unknown we do in fact know; we just haven't allowed ourselves to recognize that we know.

Pretty much every time I have an "epiphany," after the euphoria of realization the next beat is "Wow, but I already knew that!"

Here's an example: the Devil is supposed to be terrifying, but we actually say "Better the devil you know." What is it that we really know here without acknowledging it to ourselves?

This Saturday, March 14th, begins John Slattery's Sonoran herbalist apprenticeship program. I'll be participating. Actually, I'm already participating, since I'm doing partial work trade. I'm so grateful to be spending time in an herbalist's office--that milieu, those aromas, working with other herb-minded folks.

The classes, two-to-four days a month for the next seven months, are often overnight camping trips. We're going to be introduced to many different zones of this bioregion, which is far more than just desert thanks to the mountain ranges. But balancing the wide geographical range, I know from having taken a couple classes with John already that we'll be directed, encouraged, urged, to look exquisitely closely at what grows right at our feet.