Confetti of Light
I surface, as if from an enchanted slumber, surrounded by waves of light and sound. Gazing out across that endless landscape of fluid blue I watch a week brought to a perfect close slip away below the horizon.
We strolled around our neighbourhood yesterday as the sun shone brightly and noticed that many of the street trees had burst into a wonderfully abundant white bloom. As one still grappling with the notion that the first few pages of February have already been read, I was slow to catch up with my daughter’s effervescent chattering about the early arrival of spring. However it turns out that this particular snowy beauty is the Evergreen Pear Tree (Pyrus kawakamii) native to Taiwan and China. It’s a treasured street tree in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo and is an early bloomer, flowering in late January and these first days of February. If you stand under it while the breezes blow you might think you’d been caught in a sudden snow flurry or that you were in the midst of a confetti shower. But don’t try and eat the fruit, it’s not edible for humans.
I smiled as I learnt about this tree. With Pyrus kawakamii’s show date tucked away in my mental calendar, another shoot has sprouted in the soil of my connection with this environment, bringing harmony with its movement and cycles one step closer. Over the years that I have lived here I have begun to understand that such attunement can only be found by looking at the natural world, the flora and fauna and by sitting quietly with the ocean herself.
However bumping up against the tree is also a gentle nudge, reminding me of my own narrow rigidity when viewing the world. So focussed have I been on the appearance of the Jacaranda in May or June since moving to Los Angeles, that for several years I have completely failed to take note of this beautiful early flowering creature. If it wasn’t for my daughter’s open eyes I would have walked right by once more this week, gaze grimly fixed ahead. How blinkered we can be to truths which are shiningly apparent right before us.
We maybe tripping lightly through the month named after the Februalia, the Roman festival of purification, but my mind is still lingering a few weeks back. The repressive chain of events by which we have been bound here for the past two years was finally broken in early January and we were able to welcome my father to give teachings at our Buddhist Centre at this dusty edge of the end of the world. We spent a wonderful ten days with him where all things were made new again. In the wake of his departure it is as if a glowing and bright dimension has once again revealed itself. The shrine room, blessed by his presence resonates at a warmer level as we practise Chenrezik puja together and sit chatting afterwards. The wonder and power of the teachers and the teachings is of course unchanged by time or any ephemeral current events. It’s not possible to convey with words just how fortunate we are to share time with them and receive their blessings.
Otherwise we have been back in the schoolroom with a vengeance, deep in the world of Arthurian legend during our literature lessons. So many stories of all that is glorious and noble and all that is treacherous and weak in these human natures of ours. Sir Percival perhaps struck the deepest chord with me this time around. His withstanding of temptation in the face of demonic trickery and his living the remainder of his life in prayer at the monastery once the quest for the Holy Grail was completed, left me deep in thought long after our daily reading hour had flown. We could all do worse than to sit and contemplate the spiritual power embodied by such a character.
Our son departs for London this week, taking the first step on the road which will see him living in England before too long. After the past two years which have been vanished away from so many children and young people, it is wonderful to see him finally able to begin to forge his future and establish another link, light and bright between the sanghas here and there. The more such links, the more such light. Bright on light and light on bright.
