in a fog (literally), and sandplay

When I woke up this morning it was slightly cloudy and 59 degrees outside - the lowest low we've had this summer. It really felt like we'd entered a different season! I sat down at the computer to check email and when I next looked out, only twenty minutes or so later, the world had gone foggy.

So much so that I initially thought maybe it was smoke, and I went out to check. But it's a huge batch of fog that rolled in, silently:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

-Carl Sandburg


I was going to take photos, but can't find my camera!

On other fronts, I've been working in my garret upstairs. My sandtrays are all set up, and I'm unpacking miniatures. Slowly, the garret is filling up with my collection, and it's hard to explain how it feels to have it here at home.

Each of the pieces is something I added because in some way I was drawn to it, or felt it would be important to a client to use in the sandplay work. Most of the pieces have, by this time, been used in many trays over the years. A number of the pieces were important to clients, and were used repeatedly in trays, and others were used in final trays, representing the shift to wholeness.

In some ways the unpacking process feels like handling those little bottles in the last Harry Potter movie - the ones that held memories. The miniatures carry a lot of energy, and it's almost irreverent to unpack them too quickly. I feel I need to handle each one with an open mind, before placing it on the shelf or surface in the garret. So it's taking awhile to do, but it's special time and a good way to let the garret stretch and absorb.

Once I have everything set up, I'll do a tray to initiate the new space.


Returned To Say


When I face north a lost Cree
on some new shore puts a moccasin down,
rock in the light and noon for seeing,
he in a hurry and I beside him

It will be a long trip; he will be a new chief;
we have drunk new water from an unnamed stream;
under little dark trees
he is to find a path
we both must travel because we have met.

Henceforth we gesture even by waiting;
there is a grain of sand on his knifeblade
so small he blows it and while his breathing
darkens the steel his become set

And start a new vision: the rest of his life.
We will mean what he does. Back of this page
the path turns north. We are looking for a sign.
Our moccasins do not mark the ground.

-William Stafford