MIRACLE MILE

 

MIRACLE MILE

A few guests have arrived at the retreat, though this is not a “formal” event. The landowner invited three artists who had been here before to come and finish projects they were working on. He emailed Fiona and me saying he knew we would help create “a spiritually and creatively nurturing environment.” We both burst into laughter when we read that, because at heart we are brats and also because more and more we no longer seem to understand what anyone means by anything they say.

We imagine it means not disturbing anyone and Fiona making exquisite meals they can eat when they want, as regular mealtimes might interrupt their creative flow. The artists are no doubt filled with beliefs of being inspired by the muse and the importance of art. We made sure the cabins were all set up with comfortable bedding and plenty of necessities, including bug spray for the midges, and that they have access to camping equipment and trail maps I made, though we imagine they will mostly work in the studio spaces we set up with some help from Fiona’s parents.

There is a painter, a young woman from a trendy urban art scene who is working on plans for an installation to “wake up humanity.” A musician is composing “an ode to silence” ---- these are from the brief bios I was sent. I know how it sounds, but I’m sure I was just as absurdly pretentious back in my days as a “true artist.” And a young dancer, Ana, that I suppose you could say I bonded with when she was last here and stayed in touch with by email. She is working on a piece for her degree program that expresses the “untamable wildness of life and the way we try to cage it with thoughts.” Yeah, you can tell I’ve been talking to her.
 
We get to eat meat at this retreat, though the female artist is vegan so Fiona will always make some options for her that anyone else can eat as well. Honestly, she can make kale taste good, and if she cooked dirt, I’d eat it. But I can’t wait for the Indian seafood treasure platter and her huntsman pie.
 
The rules are a bit more lax, and silence is optional though “suggested.” I will put daily quotes on the dining hall board as I did at the last retreat, and I am putting a few of my favorite nonduality videos on a laptop in the main performance space with an index in case anyone wants to watch. Fiona notes it’s mostly videos of Nancy Neithercut reading poetry and rues that our daily habit of listening to Nancy’s poems over the dining hall speakers together will be interrupted. But no worries, we will listen in the cabin. A day without Nancy’s voice is unthinkable.
 
I also put a few word files on the shared computer---a link to Nancy's blog and her book page on Amazon, my website (shameless self-promotion without a shameless self!), and some favorite quotes from Michael Markham and a few others that aren’t too jarring (as my most favorite quotes tend to be).
 
But there really is nothing to share that isn’t already shared, nothing to create when all is uncreated and yet endlessly a creative expression of absolutely no thing at all, and dreamlings seem to appear, yet there are no others.
 
Fiona and I can go days speaking no more than a handful of practical words about maintenance or cooking or organizing, but one day when the rain was falling through a sliver of sunlight breaking through the clouds on a humid afternoon, Fiona said, in a much more colorful way with a few words I couldn’t translate, “how mad is this, I could hug you and hear your voice and look in your eyes, and I don’t see you and I don’t see me, and no one, right? No one can see what we are, what this all is…what a miracle…?”

…and we both had tears in our eyes, or maybe the rain was the tears, in this beautifully unfathomable ----though we appear to try to fathom it--- beautifully unspeakable--- though we seem to try to speak of it ---undreamt dreamland of wonder, and an impossible array of what people separate and call horror and beauty and love and hate and good and bad. Yet, when all that appears and all its definitions and interpretations dissolve into the seamless sea of dreams on this edgeless shore of love and nothing at all….well, a bloody miracle it seems indeed…

💓💓💓 aoetl (always only ever this love), Miranda


(My book, "This Terrible Love, a nonduality dreamlife" is now available from Amazon in kindle ebook and paperback at: 

https://tinyurl.com/mirandanondual