Yesterday morning at 5 pm the day started, and it began that early because of my kittens alarm. A kittens alarm is when two young kittens communicate their needs and desires by circling the apartment faster and faster until objects get sucked into their wake and start crashing to the floor. I've been growing a variety of tiny succulents in little bonsai pots that are only 2 inches by 2 inches big. The plants grow slowly in such small containers and need almost daily watering to be alright. I love the robust miniatures that grow after a couple of years in the tiny pots. I water them every other day and keep them on the windowsill above the sink. It's a kind of discipline, staying conscious of this little beautiful thing that depends on my remembering to care for it so that it can flourish.

Yesterday I had the experience of listening to the creatures around me from a limited perspective, the experience of imposing my agenda on their growth and my timing, or reasoning, to their life. I was doing this according to my own calculations of readiness without really listening to them. I wasn't listening by watching and feeling and sensing for the clues to their readiness, I wasn't listening to their own agenda and growth needs. So at 5pm they let me know as clearly as they could without words that they were ready to go outside. They did this by starting a small hurricane in my apartment. As my tiny bonsai succulents got caught up in their wake and crashed to the kitchen floor I woke up angry, but then I woke up to their needs, expressed the only way their little bodies could tell me, or get through to me, by pulling a crescendo of objects crashing to the floor. My estimation of their readiness was in my head, but their actual readiness was clearly spoken and exhibited in their behavior. It dawned on me that they were ready to go outside!

I'm fortunate to have a place where I can let them out. The little patio outside of the back double doors leads to a front yard that I've been gardening in for the last 4 years. I've had to move all my plantings recently because a house is going to be built there this winter. It's been a real drag to dismantle all my work and move the plants to new places, but I'm lucky enough to be living at the end of a dead end street overlooking the green belt between us and Elliot street down below. I've terraced off some of it to create a garden there also, so I just expanded it to include room for the plants from the upper garden. This is the garden where I had my experience of listening to the little plant deva's that I spoke about before. So I "listened" to the kittens, and let them outside. I had to face all my worries and fears and start a new negotiation with the universe. This is where I talk to the life at large all around me and try to make a deal. Doing this is revealing. I can hear all my worries, my concerns and my hopes as I'm doing it. I sat out there with the little ones, Pinto and Jasper, and while they explored and played I negotiated. I also followed them around keeping an eye on them while I was doing it. It was a deep conversation, and it put me in touch with how much I rely on a relationship with living world. Outside the doors of my apartment I have to contend with life, all the living beings that are busy doing their own thing and that I need to somehow get into balance with. My motivation was the little brothers I'm raising as part of my family. While I'm trying now to listen to their needs as expressed quite clearly in their behavior, in the same way I was listening during my negotiation to the life all around our back doors, having accepted, as my little bonsai's crashed to the floor, that I can't simply impose my schedule and expectations on a living system full of living beings.

I've gone on long enough this morning.... I'll pick this story up later as it continues to unfold. I'll tell you more about the deal I struck and the hopes I have and the voices of life outside my patio doors, but for now I need to be out there, in the grass with my kittens and the plant deva's and all the rest because I'm part of it too, this little party of life in the yard outside. Today started at 5 am not with a crash, but with a question, are you awake Papa, because the big yellow ball is in the sky and we really want to go outside. It's 6:30 now and we watched the sun come up together, all of us feeling that message clearly and responding in our own ways to the call. I'm being trusting and brave by writing to you here. I've taken my eyes off the action outside and I'm extending my trust, not that life will go the way I want it to, but that If I listen carefully I can dance with what's happening and open the door in time to the beating of little hearts before they drop another bonsai on my head. :)