I thought I was going to post about “filters”–a concept suggested by Jude Hill–in an online study focus called What If Diaries #1. The figure below–or at least this type of figure–keeps wanting to appear in my cloth. I resist it. She suggested I use it as a filter. Filter? Is filter the same as focus? Or perhaps soft focus?
I wanted to explore that in this blog but the exploration immediately turned into a babble about non-dual reality and became so obviously NON focused that I stopped. Remember Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate” and the brilliant one-liner–“Plastics?” Well this is my non sequitur transition. From filter. To . . .
Rose Petals. Specifically the collecting of rose petals on the morning following Amma’s Devi Bhava program in Washington, D.C.
Rose Petals
I had gone to bed the night before around midnight. The program was to last until around 10 a.m. the following day. It didn’t. It ended early. I missed the grand finale but all along I was thinking about the flower petals Amma tosses down onto the people. How if I could collect them inconspicuously, I could use them to dye cloth. That was my plan.
Out of curiosity I returned to the large hall where every thing had taken place. It didn’t matter that I was in my p.j.s. Everyone else seemed dressed that way’ Devotees running huge industrial vacuums were quickly removing evidence of the night before. Flower petals were being sucked up faster than I could get to them. But a little boy, the son of a devotee, told me he would help me. He had just received his mantra the night before. He was eight years old. Precocious. Helpful. We stayed one step ahead of the giant floor suckers. And filled a gallon size plastic bag with multi-colored petals. He kept his own stash and I left with mine. These pieces of damask were dyed with those rose petals that Amma tossed down:
this piece which is only in the making, lacking clear direction at the moment, holds several spheres of the rose dyed cloth. The cloth holds the color. Holds the memories. Holds a lot of energy. And just for the briefest of moments, even smelled like roses.
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