Day dwindles into night, and we notice it. Night breaks into day, and we feel the birds winding up for their chorus.

No one can be immune to the accelerating daylength shift--lengthening here, shortening south of the Equator--toward the solstice. We notice, we recognize. It's like a habit that pre-exists us. Habit, in the original sense of a garment or costume (which means "custom") that we slip into, familiar attire.

But, since we make our own weather, sometimes just the right combination of triggers will trip an old circuit, an old path you've allowed to grow over with weeds is suddenly under your feet again. 

Paths and orbits exist for lifetimes; weeds, persistent as they are, are nonetheless ephemeral.

On Monday, I accompanied my dear spirit-brother M. to Santa Fe! We got home last night (Wednesday) around 1am, having put over 1100 miles on his trusty trooper of a car, having experienced awe-inspiring (and awe-ful and inspiring) natural and manmade beauty through all our senses, having experienced non-beautiful aspects of nature and man also, and having recognized that this, too, is part of the beauty that is existence.

This lady pictured, in her Egyptian-esque skirt, is a ponderosa-tall witness on the side of the highway through Malpais National Monument. Always watching, if we care to notice.

My primary role for this trip was as witness to M. as he checked out the school program and the place that might be--that, turns out, surely will be--host to the next stage in his unfolding. However, I had also to witness myself witnessing, and to see myself, normally a singleton, in constant company for three days.

My previous post on questions was lyrical and didn't go into practicalities. I notice that interviewees on podcasts and telesummits, etc., respond "Good question," almost reflexively, to every question asked, so that "good question" is about as bleached of meaning as other fillers and time-buyers like "I mean," "you know," "like." 

But the truth is, formulating a good question is part of seeing what you believe. A good question, in a sense, creates a possible world in which its answer exists. "Seek, and ye shall find" means "the types of questions you ask, and the way you ask them, will impact the quality and specificity--and even the fact-icity--of the answer." A question is a key to  a lock, is a heat-seeking missile, is a ladder to a glass ceiling.

I've been thinking and writing about practice, transition, and inward listening, at the same time looking for my own place as a contributor, a listener, an artist. 

I'm drawing a lot of blanks. Or is it just that I'm surrounded with blank canvases, fields and arenas and spheres of potential?

That is a question. But asking it doesn't make me an artist all by itself. Have I been around the block too many times to say "I have to start somewhere"? I don't think so. That we begin again and begin again and always begin again holds the status of "belief" for me as little else does.

I discovered telesummits and podcasts around the same time, early 2014. 

Podcasts were a revelation--a neverending source of information, advice, opinion, from people whose information, advice, opinion I was already interested in, and their guests. Company for my drivetime, company when I hiked.

Telesummits were even more exciting--a galaxy of experts organized around a specific topic, the scintillating scarcity of talks  available only 24 or 48 hours.

Superabundance and scarcity both together, in an auditory avalanche for this highly auditory Ela!

I'm sitting astride a  window sill at my grandmother's apartment, the bedroom window we all like to jump out of onto sandy grass below, despite the adults' interdictions. I'm eleven years old. Opposite me, legs dangling in time with mine, my eight-year-old cousin patiently and proudly blows bubble after bubble. Eyes riveted on her mouth, I work the tip of my tongue into my own pink wad of Bazooka, trying over and over to create that balloon.

A quick Google search will tell you Einstein didn't say it.

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?