Full Circle : Finders respond

I found this magical surprise nestled on the ground near a bench. It was the end of a 5 night silent meditation retreat with Adyashanti and I was doing my last walk among the trees of Granlibakken.

These seeds will grow with my meditation practice, sending peace and compassion to all beings.

Found this bottle 2 years ago, and I did not give it importance. Recently, stirring through the drawers, I found it with a friend, and we decided to search the webpage.

I am very grateful I was "chosen" to find it.

"Vaig trobar aquesta ampolleta fa 2 anys i no li vaig donar importància però ara l'hem trobat amb una amiga remenant pels calaixos i hem decidit buscar la pàgina web."

"Moltes gràcies per ser l'escollida."

Note: Bottles #69, 70, 71 pictured above and below, were placed in Venice. Finder Laia did not specify found bottle number. 

Nature and travel make my heart sing!

I work in the library and discovered the bottle on one of the tables when I was making rounds on the 3rd floor-- when we find things that look like they've been left behind, we pick them up and usually put them in our lost & found. I opened the jar and found the origami crane, seeds, and scroll of paper, but I didn't have a chance to visit the website. I completely forgot about the slip inside but last week, when rearranging the furniture in my office, I reopened it and realized I'd never submitted anything to the website. I likely found it within a few days if you placing it in the library.

Windward Community College, Kaneohe HI, 2015

We stumbled upon this jar, on top of The Beehive mountain between two rocks, as we hiked in Acadia for the second day in a row. In our own attempt to take photographs of the fall in Maine. Get out there, find yourself.  Photo above: Tom Flint and Heather Greene

Photo below: Susanne Aurich. Bottle placed by Susanne Aurich and Jonathan Harrah

This is a picture of Yosemite in fall. It gives me peace and happiness because it is nature.

Also a picture of my cat because she is good company and makes me feel happy.

The picture of Yosemite we found on the web.

 site photos of the bottle placed in tree on Oct. 2, 215.

I brought this little bottle to Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the US after finding it in India October 2016. I work as a nurse practitioner overseeing all the clinical activity of 5 villages including Kaktovik, Point Lay, Wainwright, Atqasut, and Nuiqsut. The North Slope is one of the most remote places to live in the US. This is the home of the Inupiat, known for their whale hunting. There is a high rate of suicide, alcoholism, isolation, and chronic disease up here in the North Slope. The Inupiat language is also becoming extinct, but thankfully organizations like Rosetta are working to preserve it and the tribe has reintegrated the language into school curriculum.

I will leave bottle #135 Here in Barrow, soon to be called Utqiagvik, as a prayer for the Inupiat people--may their culture and people continue to thrive.

 Bottle #134 as found in Go...

I found the bottle near my office, it was​ a surprise. When I can help poor people and patients I will be happy. Being a medico (medical practitioner) that's what i like to do. I don't take the things as magical to me or maybe I did not notice like that.

bottle #134 on shelf near office of Dr. Firoz with ayurvedic medicinals

My heart sings when I find wee bottles inviting me to be a finder, when I witness kindness, when I sit in nature, when I listen to my deep, wild self, when I dance, when I run, when I yoga, when I mother and when I take the time to just be.

It would be hard to say the most magical thing : I've had a magical life. From communing with trees as a child, to knowing an angel was with me once, to falling in love on an airplane, to being guided by the universe to my current home to being honored with motherhood - how can one choose one magical thing? Finding this bottle was pretty magical.

I hope that I contribute to the well of human harmony when I take the time to know myself, choosing consciousness over habit, working to come from my highest, truest self. As well, I share the practice of yoga with youth at risk and the incarcerated, in the hope that this will be...

"These are my friends. They mean everything to me"

photo by Elbel

For three years now, I've been stockpiling images and short videos in a file full of pictures of my friends. It's on google drive in a massive digital pile and I've never really looked all the way through it, When I graduate high school this year I think I'll go to a Costco and print them all out so I can put them in a scrapbook that will hopefully never be opened, except to add to it. I put them all there just in case I ever get really down. It's a fail- safe I suppose. Hopefully, it'll only ever be used to laugh and reminisce.

Every time I open it, it's sappy, but I really can't help but smile. My friends are all the best. They're a group of the most entertaining and adorable nerds and the best times of my life have been with these guys, surviving high school one grin and bad pun at a time....

I am deeply in love with comfortable uncertainty

Major 7th chords

Unresolved final notes

Dissonance

The superposition and entanglement of quantum particles

Theories in pure math that have yet to be proven

Far-off galaxies

Cosmology

When things are smooth, round, when we understand them perfectly, then there is nothing left to learn

All I want in life is to not be bored

My worldly karma
Not yet used up--
no hammer striking
emptiness.

​

I live and work at SF Zen Center where I found your bottle on our notice board. The enso caught my attention. What a magical thing to do!

​

Drifting on a lotus leaf,
resting in loving awareness --
Zazen mind.

Then I find a poem from Lew Welch on your home page. I'm the administrator for his page on Facebook and a big fan. It's also coming for the anniversary of the day he walked into the woods and was never found again (May 23).

The message in a bottle also reminds me of my other favourite poet, Paul Celan. Here's his wonderful quote:

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A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the—not always greatly hopeful—belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: t...

Knowing that you are somewhere 

under this sky that I am looking up at now

I cannot be any happier.

今私が見上げているこの空のどこか下に

あなたがいることを知るだけで私は幸せです。

photo above:

a sunset in Mt. Koya. I thought the movement

of the earth relates to your project (circle) :)

I love how, upon arriving at this website, I realize that I know one of the people mentioned here. Small world huh? 

I found this bottle in North Carolina, and I am going to take it with me to Portland next month and re-hide it. I love finding hidden treasures like this... geocaches, hidden love notes to strangers, etc... It goes to show we all want to connect more, and more deeply, than we are sometimes brave enough to admit. 

Cheers to the creators of this project for reaching out with heart and creativity!

My heart sings when I ride my bicycle. I rode a bike today for the first time in 5 years. Feeling the air rushing past and the danger of crashing and burning was so exhilarating! I got to ride with my friend too! This little bottle has made a difference in my life. The crane is so carefully made and the idea is wonderful. Thank you for taking the time and the effort to bring people together!