This really happened and I am still awe-struck

I couldn't figure out why the streets were chattering with that low Laguna glee but at Thalia seeing all the foot traffic heading towards PCH it hit me.  Art Walk or first Thursday was happening.  My glee was elfin and made of sea salt which I suppose is more mermaid then but if you're town bound after the setting of an orange sun you have to go with elf.  You need feet, is what I'm saying.  Hide the fins. That and also, Kelly J had an Elf the Movie quote on insta this eve so it's in my brain.

And that's my life, salt brain.  Sea-eyes.  I finally got fins and a mask and didn't even bother with the snorkel literally just ditched my towel and tossed my clothes and ran for the sea.  And it feels like I'll blow it now, trying to give words to what that was like, being finally able to see what I could feel for all these years?  To really see.  Most people it scares them to feel that large body living and breathing and pulling and pushing you all around but me I have nothing but intrigue.  It's an honor to dance with her, to be swept up in her moves. And I don't know how to make people understand which means I guess I can't which means I guess I just get to keep the smile of secret glee all to me.  Which is that I have a salt water heart.  Which means really and secretly I know the truth of the alchemy-romance between the ocean and the sun.

Holy god more than once I had to move my legs hard to get to the top again because I could've stayed down there forever-- but I mean you know, it's just--air. Because when I was far enough out above my head and dove under again and felt it, the pull--the livingness--I turned quick as I could which with fins is still awkward but I was looking for it, what I felt--and there it was and sure as I saw it well it also saw me, too--and this is the part I can't explain and you won't understand.  But the shock was enough for me to have to fast remind myself not to breathe in bc I'd a sucked sea.  Which I think I would've been happy like sorta it's finding Camelot under there, but also please don't read this the wrong way it's not like I want to drown.  What I am trying to say is there where the sunlight went under and was glistening with the water it was real, the livingness, like it was living, had presence. Was more life-full and emanating with the life-ness then the small skate that slid under me or the many many schools of corvinas I swam through.  And I knew it was real when I saw it bc I had to squelch my gasp.  Like it was animated, where the sun and water met, they made this other, this sacred precious third made out of them together.  Just like all great soul mates, that thing, their own third that is her and her or her and him or whatever combo of  two together--and the witnessing of the creation of sacred other, the Third.  Which is Their's.  Of them but not them.  Holier than as result of the combination.  Startling in its truth.

I have felt and swam and floated inside that presence, its come up and cradled me a million times so it was like for the first time ever truly coming home. To see it. Holy Sacred Third, divine created combo of Sea and Sun.  To have it react to and with me.  I am not being hyperbolic here or a creative writer.  This really happened and I am still awe-struck, in bliss.

It was cold tonight but I stayed out for a half hour or more.  I changed on the beach and laid a long time on my towel, watching the sun go down and stunned and still in stoke-awe.  I thought I'd cry.  Then dude with the blonde ponytail, the one the Coachella boys would call an old loc, he showed up and went out mask and hand boards but he took his piece.  To breathe.

And we've never met but always acknowledge each other since we often beach at the same space.  But tonight he came right to me when he got out, clearly enchanted too, said Can you even believe it out there eyes clear and wide and green-blue sparkling same as the sea.  And I had someone to share it with then, my slack jaw glee, my joy at the livingness unseen now seen.  Danny the ol loc who's been in the same spot above Taco Loco for 30 years.  Just livin and jammin on the magic out there.  We marveled over the sunset so clear you could see San Clemente Island to the left of Catalina.

I drove in circles when it was done confused by the foot traffic and bc I was thinking I'd raised Atlantis with the setting sun.  Now I am being creative.  The fact is though I had to park and made my way through my little town on its sparkle strung air by foot, greeting other ol locs and finally making my way to St. Anne's.  It was $5 enchilada night at Feast.  I had a lot to celebrate.

Like the fact that tomorrow I will get to do it again.

Amen.  Amen, amen.

I'll make good decisions and see things more whole.

Deborah sent me back to California with a box full of homemade toffee and for three days all I ate for breakfast and lunch came out of that little box.  Toffee and coffee, sugar and caffeine.  It was a cheap way, and convenient, to stay powered.  Now I'm in Eureka, old town which has been nicely revitalized even since I was here in 2004, writing. And drinking the best Americano ever.  The toffee here makes me happy because there's only one piece of it, so I'm savoring, plus it is wet outside but not too cold, so the downtown dock air smells thick with salt.

Em took me to the herb store before her and Nick split, when we were done I realized my phone was missing and probably was left in the motel.  I got back there and the woman was halfway through cleaning our room.   My phone was nestled in my winter hat on her cart. She was happy to see me so happy.  Timing.  Timing is everything.

And my timing right now is that aligned with medicine of gypsy.  I gave appropriate space for the decompression from Earth Activist Training that my psyche needed from me, on just the other side of that sat the details of living arrangements for the next few months.  So I've retreated a few days, not to figure anything out but just to relax and shake it loose and have some fun, knowing this step is part of the alchemy of alignment.  I got on the road yesterday to see Nick and Em, light and open music and floating up the 101.  We ate, danced, did our thing.  Slept in a cheap motel stinking of bleach.  Today I'm a poetry girl and am looking forward to a sweat in the Arcata sauna-steam.  All this, and knowing complete that when I get back to Monte Rio and the Cazadero hills I'll  make good decisions and see things more whole.  I'll see things all the way through.

A hike tomorrow, among the oldest and roundest redwoods, some quiet time and witnessing how they do and have always stood. That too will bring gyspy rightness.  The magic of all-good.

Poem. Requiem.

There is no destruction like this, none
other than this. I hear the mom call, the
mother talk, the feather tongue of her ink
the swirl of water in the canal
black as blood of newborn
birth, she is talking, she is
harvesting the sky
she is the wind. GO from here, I tell

you. I tell you again. I will never see you again.
Be brave. I wish you this as you set off
in to the wind. You are all I see, all I
can ever see. And to the me that sees
this: that I see me seeing only you is Thou,
the holy You, the me and him we were was silly
even if eloquently we lingered and called on it
love. We were religulous, born to the city
the excess of brick and wealth that bore the filth
and stink, the poached poverty death-rot out back
of alleys, the ruined food in garbage cans.
We were religulous, raised by rigorous, godly hands.
The eyeless infants in the streets, in the alley ways,
dripping fetid meat in their fat skeleton hands.
We were rigored infants, stinking as they come.

She is working it out, she is working at this.
I am working hard, always, to get away. I don’t
have to work at you, you come no matter what
you humm you sing stink I smell you in the sky.
You were Him once; and true this is yours to you,
man that smelled of smoke and cold clean, of black
and flesh of salt and sounded bare as the wounds I thought
were only mine. You are Him now, man that
on his knees worshiped at the liquid gates of me.
You will be every Him that ever is and yet will
never make a difference.
The mother takes Mary’s hand.
Mary’s hand is brave I tell her this and so she
sinks too when finally she comes. She listens
the mother tongue
is feather in your hands. The feathers are gone
the angel wings, I talked sullen, I talked gently
I spoke again and again. I gave you my crazy
I gave you my opus tongue, you were fit
you were fitted to me, you were fitted for me
fitted by me, around me. You laid down for my death
I never forgot that, drew you to my chest, even now
as though you cant find breath or don’t have
or don’t want, I feather you
antique grave sacred as archetype
of falling diva diving in exile sky
the matter you create, the placenta you
left behind. When did this start? It started way back
when we were twins. Twin towers I gave
you, mother’s love, mother’s knowledge
mother’s hands. What you do, what you found
to do with it since then I can hardly blame you
for you are only man. She is one, I other.
We were holy, twins, twin cities
flames shooting mother hopes
between the funny flecks of skyborn
invisible eyes. Your eyes, you were you
you planned on it, this is what you do
to die. I cant help that. I chant. This
these chants. Anyway. This be my birth.
She is my twin,
my partner now. We helplessly flail
in these spiral voids we try to temper
and leave ever-created.
City streets rubble at the sound of first breath.
I take up shovel. I will dig again.
I will pray and take shelter in the prayer
words I know you still and always will sing.

2/2011 op md

Meditation, on Time. Revolutionary Letter # 74.

by Diane diPrima

June 12, 1982
for Fulcanelli & John Lennon

There is always            the fire.         Downward it
blows our eyebrows off, blows holes
in our dusty skin.         In the crucible
it melts our faces in to knots & puddles
It melts our hearts.  And they become rock or
something more feeling than flesh.    There is
no way around it, it is         there is
always
             the fire.   Is this alchemy?   Must
the process pass thru
                                 10, 000 suns?   There
has never been a way
around
          the crucible.       Can the heat
of our love excel
                          tangible flame? Only then
can this crucible
                          replace
                                      the old.  There are
even in alchemy 'two ways' and this
our way can supplant
habits of war.        It is
                                   'the dry way'
                                                        (no blood,
no tears)     only
                          substantial presence,
my hand in yours.
                            And you are a stranger.
                                                                There are no
strangers.      Now.
                           This transformation
by the Inward Fire
                           (our heat  /  our love)
                                                            no
charred limbs, blistered eyeballs, brain
turned to steam
                        only
                               the Inward Fire,   slow
combustion  /  quick change  /  tomorrow
is already here.

Remember the Oregon Dialogue? I Get Esoteric on that Ass...

(skip down to get the esoteric highlights for the next several days!!)
Ahhhh, my dear friends.

Here's where I wax nostalgic and take us a back a mere three years ago to when Brandon and I, freshfaced and PacWest-eyed, returned home from the West Coast and sought to empower the ideals we learned and lived on the road and out there right here on the Eastern Shore, Chestertown, USA.


We began with gathering in our living road at Truslow Road--remember that joyous spot--and eventually created a newsletter around our efforts. Our "efforts" were largely principal-based, concerned with lots of potluck-inspired meetings of the minds. We were educating people, and each other, on environmental stewardship and community building. For me the substance of this always was ethical responsibility first, thus self-knowledge and personal accountability--inner development--were integral to such a movement in my mind. Likewise, the importance of the arts, of self-expression, of inner-reflection through practice of submitting to the impulse itself and then further, sharing one's experience with each another, this all was equal to me in the foundation of community building. Eventually during that time I stumbled on to Starhawk and started reading her stuff--we have a lot of the same viewpoints--(you can read her thoughts on ethics and accountability and earth spirituality here) and also met Regina at LightPaths in Centreville around that time, too. She turned me on to nightlightnews.org, where the author, Risa, gave me permission to disseminate her great esoteric insights. Esoteria to me means the hands-on walking of self-development, in other words utilizing the symbolism in various myths and messagry to apply to your own inner growth. For me, further, it has to do with an autonomous understanding of all things being universal, or divine, of all energies rising and falling and influencing and blending one with the other with the other as the ultimate reality is we are all one energy, blending and surging in chaotic harmony.


The Oregon Dialogue, our short-ran newsletter, and the community gatherings around it evolved in to the oregondialogue emails, where by I would network, invite people to community events, keep people informed of issues, and most of all share my esoteric thoughts at certain opportune, or energetic, times of the year.


Dig it: for those of you first finding yourselves opening up to this tip, let me just tell you, this self-development esoteric trip has been, in a conscious way anyhow, going on about 10 years now for me. It's so common I don't even know any other way to live anymore--like as example I don't even get it anymore that people don't know about Imbolc coming up, or the influence--major!--of Mercury Retro right now. To me it's all so natural a part of my understanding of the oneness of things--of GOD if you will--that it puzzles me to have to remember that to most people this is new, or even not true! information.

So to those with their own wonderings: I Speak To You. It's there, it's real. The transformation, the new consciousness, all of it. It's tough though, it's a step by step you being the change from day to day process. There's no wizard with a magic wand who's gonna appear in your steps all a sudden and tap you on the shoulder and say Hey, It's On!! It's a gradual thing, and we are all here to wake up to it. So if this message is coming to you, good! Welcome! Say yes! Then begin to look, and listen, to within....

Important Esoteric Highlights:
1. Monday was New Moon with a solar eclipse. In terms of inner-development: our sun is our light, think daily awareness. Our moon is our night, think mystery or unconscious, as in sleep with dreams. They come together, the subconscious to block out the regular awareness for a brief, deep jolt. Each voids the other out, then begin again together, having merged, in a dancing and magical blend--starting for you and your soul a whole new spiral of energy and light. Think DNA double helix, vibrating with not yet formed thoughts through-out your whole soul. New moon is new beginning, solar eclipse is new beginning in the physical world--remember--it's "light of day" stuff. So actual real new thoughts, ideas, opportunities etc. What newness came to you? Think about it. Woohoo!

2. Mercury ends its retrograde this weekend. Thank gawd! Hope you made no major decisions the past three weeks (at work we are changing everything!! I've had to try so hard to keep my mouth closed about it, wanting to say ahhhh!!!just wait til were out of Mercury cuz all new information will surface and change everything!!) You've been in deep, almost unconscious soul review. Running over and over those double helixes. Anicha anicha, the nature of everything, changing changing. If your head's been loud that's why. Pay attention to the messages you got. For real.

3. Most important! To me bewitched as I am anyway--Imbolc is Monday. This is the old Druid or pagan holiday of first light, benefactor of the Goddess Brigid who is my patron. Later she was claimed as a St. so if you are more comfortable with Christian symbology this week coming is St. Brigid's day, Saint of the Hearth, of fire, midwifery, and poetry. Any way it's a celebration of the first light of life--of fire, of new idea or passion or spark or creativity. For old agricultural societies it was literally time of first seed when they celebrated with the last food of their Harvest and got ready for the growth of the year to come. Also known as Candlemas, this is really archaic Christian/ancient Judaic (with clear roots in the politics of misogyny evident) in application--where in old earth traditions Brigid venerated passion, arts, fire, life, all things symbolic of fertility and creativity and the natural cycles and gifts we each embody within; Candlemas, or Purification of the Virgin, was a time for new mother's to cleanse through various offerings, including that of sacrificial animals, in order to receive the blessing and cleansing of the priest after the dirtied experience of child-birthing. Ain't mythology a trip!?!? Anyhow,

Two Important things about Imbolc. One)I have, in my own life, learned that these old energies and archtypes behind holidays are real, and if you dig the earth as oneness thing, look back to the Full Moon of January 11. This is the traditional lunar celebration of Imbolc. What new energy, new thoughts, new ideas, new passions were sizzling around in you? I just realized myself that that important moon passed unattended by me. So, retrospective learning it is...consider what new passions your soul shined its first light on for you, what is it that your deep self wants for you to grow? Two) This message from the full moon will revisit you this coming week. Because merc is out of retrograde it will seem like ahhhh fresh air. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR CLARITY. If you experience anger or stuckness in the early week these are old archetypes (see the explanation just above) that you are meant, indeed you were sent here, to heal. Go within. Rebirth, reclaim yourself. Listen. Listen.

4. There is a stellar sooper cool alignment coming up on Valentines's Day. I'm gonna be with my sistas no doubt raising up the power. Read about it here. Or, go put on that cheesemonger song from the old show Hair, This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...and listen to the words. You know, about the moon in the 7th sign and stuff. Yea. That's what's happening, literally.

5. That's all. No, it's not. One more thing from my soapbox. Ever ask your self just what the hell you're doing here? Like really looked in to your darkness, disheartened, afraid. Well this is the answer. Wake-up to your self. So we can all help all of us people do the same....

What I'm listening to (support independent music people!): The High and Low outta Cincinnati. They remind me a little of when I first realized my riotgrrrrrrl soul....

Now, that's it....enough outta me.

Cycles & Wisdom & Sometimes Getting to Know

In my wyld and at times crazed round about head there is lately an almost daily flash of new thought or insight that I am noticing floating on by.

It's always a wonder to me the way that my thought process, thus my growth goes: how I'll spiral along with these little randoms of new passing thoughts, fresh and clean as a classroom at the start of September. How they delight by my mind's eye dancing from all different slanted and quik-passing directions, til BAM, along comes one of those days when the fluid is so flow, when everything is so right that it all falls together in a tapestry of perception and oneness-of-living that it so brand new and fresh that it is clear that my soul, big and bright, and my subconscious have been busy at it making sense of things for me all the while. How on those BAM days I can be moved to tears in joy over the simple serendipity and obvious blessed harmony of things.

How I want that, all the time. What a sucker I am, you know, for feeling good...

And so what's on my mind today: how I am aware of being in one of those upturns of my own cycle right now. New growth and taking things in. And since I can see it, little flashes of original thought here and there, and have seen this before--I know that it will eventually culminate in a whole new understanding of things. Which increases my amped-ness to know what is on the way....

But then at once such anticipation also births the awareness in me of what it is to be dull: in the lax period, the time of quiet or void that feels like to me nothing but mud, to be with confusion and no dreams...and how this always pre-empts a period of great wonder and new lease, and also always follows a new level of heightened perception and increase.

This sounds manic-depressive, yes? I know I know. But the truth is I believe this to be quite naturally the cycle of the Creative. And I am heartened at how this triumph, this great seizure and breath of life itself, then the inevitable exhale and release so naturally and rythmically follows the world. The earth itself, the flux and flow of the seasons, the living and dying of every breathing detail, of even the moon. My god even the economy, the stock market, it all goes up, and, what the market-eyes will tell you: so too will what goes up come down.

It is Anicha time right now. Time of Great Changing. The time the earth dreams long of what she soon will grow. In this dreamtime is the unmanifest energy of all that you shall be in the year to come. Feel it, magic and subtle as breath passing by your hair. All artists can feel it right now. Unless they're drugged or drunk-numb...(it's hard at times to trust all that sizzle of magic! hell this I know for sure)...You're sure you feel just behind the air--it's almost like a tingle on your skin. The Dreamtime in your subconscious...the slight rush deep within.

Mercury retro will pass at the end of the month and then Imbolc will come. And then, all us earthly people so consumed with our daily lives will, if we are in a place with Winter, forget that Spring shall come. February will hit us hard with the hurt and we will forget: that our daily acts of living indeed are our only form of prayer. Trust this friends and trust yourselves, trust the natural ebb of quiet and rest for what it is--the downtime before the great release. And it follows naturally this spellbound rush then gone, rush then gone, sometimes electric sometimes Still, time of January when your soul-stuff is letting off little glimmers of all that it deeply dares you to Dream.