"More caffeine, so I can use my device faster." And other moments along the way.

I used a map to drive around Southern Oregon for 8 days.

The big creased and soft along the fold-seems paper kind. My music was tunneled, country or rock and roll. I smiled alot, the whole time, whether sun and big grey clouds or blue skies or Januaryrain.

I'd get a big meal a day, eat off the leftovers, crackers, water and fruit.

And coffee.

I drank coffee with my favorite people for hours in the morning. I tripped live and large along with them through the ensuing big caffeinated conversations. Paul, Beth, Gretchen, Jill.

I made unwitting offering to the Breitenbush, she took offering from me, sitting under the diamondbacked sky tucked around Paul and I on the rickety wood bridge in the cold, black silhouette of Devils Peak measuring our breathing and blocking out the ahead of us view of the stars. The river took bittersweet chocolate from me it fell right out of my pocket and between the boards in to the hard rushing waters of the river below, and the next day on a long hike she gave back her bittersweet gifts. She hushed us to her side, she sat us down. Then unwitting again I cried in Paul's arms, I let the past go, I dunked my head in baptism in the South fork of her before she joined the North and ran hard and high down past the spiral pools and cabins of the resident side.

I wandered in the all green forest, I sung songs of thanks and then stumbled on the fairee vortex as gold and rainbos spiraled out and around us past the veil of my common eyes.

I walked in the rain. I walked in the rain and slept deep half dreams tucked in the woods under down covers and the breath of good friend.

I ran out of gas for the first time. I came off I-5 on to the exit ramp giving a blogofriend a lift to a stop midway to Portland. I came down off my otherworldmountainhigh to the soaked fumes of petro permanent on my hands.

I soaked in Beth's bath and luxuriated with her on her couch in our comfies, doing nothing but old 90's movies on Netflix on demand while the rain made songs and laughter and loong long stories on her roof sliding down.

I kissed endangered white wolves, I got kissed and shmooped by them. I listened to them howl. I melted in my heart a little to watch the wise woman most true to me in her element, dancing and happy in the almost wild with the wolves she so loves.

I looked at pictures of Gretchen from the 70's and 80's, listened to so many stories of youth and mess-ups, of passion and memories and friends, of family and lessons passed. I went to Mill Street where I used to always go, smelled the lowtide mudflats left behind while the Alsea River retreated out to the sea. I had breakfast with Mandy and Gretchen and Jeanette on the corner in Waldport of 101 and high green trees.

I packed my camelback with poetry I found in used bookstores along the road, I packed it with journals and my camera and fruit and went out on the 804 in Yachats and laid my body across hot rocks and drenched myself in sun. I listened to the ocean and laid in green grass, tucked flowers again and again in my hair. I wrote poems with rocks on rocks at the base of the sea, let the spirit of forlorn travellers and muscle gatherers and merwoman fierce goddesses speak through me.

I followed the Oregon Coast Trail with Beth through the trees, along the cliffs. I stood in tree pose with her the other tree, I screamed and laughed with her at the startled bike rider and the peculiar cries of Crow. I birthed myself naked and clean in the Cummins Creek deep in the forest at the bottom of my old secret trail while she sister soul she is was sacred witnesser for me.

I listened to music and let Nye Beach run its rivulets of weird passion love at Mundo all through me and warmed at the love between Beth and her husband Ben.

I drove to Florence because the ache was so strong.

I stopped passed the Oregon House to listen to the crashing and the wind and let my heart beat. I stopped at Heceta Head. I stopped at the top of a dune in Florence, I fell in love with the again present sun.

I giggled at the way the yellow turned white shine dipped again and again beneath the surface of the ocean in hydroreflectionrainbowshine tripping and spinning on itself in mindless perfect glee. I fell in love with me again, again, again, in Florence on my last solo date. Eating seafood enchiladas with dungeness, a new book, and sheer crazy deliriousness of melty chocolate cake.

I laughed my ass of with Jill Brewer Bard. I laughed my face off with Jill Brewer Bard and Gretchen. I laughed with those ladies till our faces were red and lined and scrunched like fists our stomachs contorted our eyes wet and mouths dry. I laughed and part of it at least was so I would not cry.

I drove the curvey Alsea Highway with Jill and we laughed again this time trying hard not to laugh so as to ward off the stomach curvy travel wurvy feeling of wanting to puke. I assured her how fabulous 30 is, I behaved with her as fabulous women ought to.

I fell in love, I fell in love, I ached and fell in love with her daughter Laurel and talked forever, like I did before, with her amazing husband John.

I took the train. I felt strong and raw with the holy train pain of goodbye.

And then, I rediscovered Seattle.

I remembered how easy it is to blend right in with family and stood back a minute to sweat how fucking cool cousin Kate really is. I laughed, and have not stopped, with her man Micah. I am touched and continue to be at how soft he is with her, how much his walking love and adoration is shown in the little things he does. I walked the high hills with them to look out on the sound and the city from upper Queen Anne's.

I walked forever on my own.

I met Larry at his favorite Turkish spot at Pike, met Katie and ate Piroshky's then shopped and stopped and talked and talked and had happy hour at Mia's at Cyclops on 1st and Wall in Belltown.

I experienced music, I experienced music on nonstop roll at Micah's techsavy hands. I experienced music at the Seatttle Music Project, I experienced music live and in the streets. I loved how friends love other friends on first meeting, I sung with Kate as she celebrated and surprised us all with celebration for Larry who turned 33. I smiled and couldnt stop at our Friday night dinner party with Annie and Larry and gin rummy and dancing and grilling and then, late night heart sobs and truth and hugs.

I caffeinated I caffeinated I caffeinated and all the important caffeinated talks. I am, I was, I continue to be floored at how magnificent Kate is, at how funny and smart and alive Micah, at how good us three flow together. Knowing that chossing something to do for the day happens way funner when you then just fold it in to how you're being. I love and love and love and miss already my amazing cousin and friend.

I celebrated Solstice in Freemont naked bike riders and festivals and music and carny light from inside dancing in the street DIY all over the place and food that drips down your arms and wildness and permission, cuz even tho it doesnt feel it, summer is here.

And I anticipate what's next now, after Ballard today and Larry taking me to SeaTac tomorrow. I love and have, in hitting fully and completely the Karmic Reset Button, wiped clean and found even deeper acceptance and love of myself. I look forward to floating in Mama Atlantic and smiling and not doing but wholly being in the East Coast OC sun.

Happy SUmmer.

Kate, to Micah:

-God, I can't believe it's June 20th it feels like November.

-I'm sorry I'm sorry I bring you all the way over here and it's fall. Altho fall is told to be your favorite season I guess it's not fun without a summer first...

(really, it's hella crazy good fun)

~~
What we are listening to, compliment of Garrison this morning:
Jessica Lea Mayfield

Wild Women Ways: Imbolc Celebration

Tonight is Imbolc, or the festival of the Goddess Brigid, patron Goddess of the Hearth and Poetry. Celebrated traditionally on Feb 2, this ancient holiday is today recognized as Candlmas, Tu Bi-Shevat, even Chinese New Years. The point is, all traditions are moved by the same earthly rhythms, no matter what the society or culture defines it as. Now is the time of mid-winter; classified by the Aquarian Full Moon. It is the time of first light. Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year and too the return of the sun with solar entry into Capricorn. Capricorn is an earth sign, its energy is initiating, which means ushering in of change, of a new tide. So at the peak of darkness, in comes new energy in earthly--or physical form. The alchemy of the darkest time--and all the darkness peaking, bursting forth with the initiatory energy of Capricorn births new levels of consciousness within us. Now, at Brigids Day, or Candlemas, or Imbolc--emblazoned by the peak energy of Aquarius with tonight's full moon, that energy is given full light. In our quiet time, now is a powerfull, powerfull time of intention setting, prophecy, and empowering our new ideas. Aquarius is an Air sign--a mental energy with ties to our etheric or spirit selves. It is Fixed, meaning what is energized now in our spirit or ether form will between now and the summer solstice come to full fruition.

Take the time to be conscious, whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, about this!

In honor of my own Intentions, and with perfect love trust and gratitude over the tides that have flowed me to just where I am at this time of year, here is a poem. It appears in this years We'Moon, and is reprinted with permission by author Pesha Joyce Gertler, recipient of Seattle's Populist Poet Award for 2005-2006. Ms. Gertler was so very, very kind in our emailing--thank you Wise Mama, thank you!! This was the poem opposite the page of my birthday this year!

The Limping Goddess:She-Who-Survives©1983
She limps into the room
bent with the cargo of rape, battering
single-parent mothering and bureaucratic neglect
if she is fat or gay or nonwhite or Jewish
the pains multiply;
she has carried them all.

Her lotus feet have trudged this planet
for aeons; torn tennis shoes tell
how far she’s traveled. She hunches
against the winter wind, her second-hand
coat like a blanket she wraps around
her golden body. Occasionally, she flies
over buildings, lands on tree tops,
is mistaken for a fat bird.

And occasionally, she falls,
intensifying her limp. But make no mistake;
that golden skin was mined in the black earth,
her feet, though limping and calloused,
are the lotus feet of She-Who-Survives.
A broken yet shining forgotten deity
returning, and there are millions
like her, multi-colored, limping
Goddesses returning to lay down our cargo
and reclaim our own.

On a creative witchy mind

I dont know, this might be hard to relate to, but a friend of mine told me once that I am a spiritual archivist not just my own but for all of our friends. I was thinking of this tonight when I uploaded some pics onto my computer: 150 shots from Thanksgiving through this weekend. I almost never, ever wait that long between events to unload shots, but life has been hectic and I am walking along inside of it, tired but not weary, just moment to moment and wow have my moments been full.

And I do, I do: I keep track of the cycles of my self, and everyone around me. I dont just mentally acknowledge things, I mean I have a literal requiem storehouse on those that I count as tribe members, close friends and Knectors to my soul. I can't articulate this circuit board that goes on, but I am always filtering in the details, hearing their stories, processing their tales, then processing back for them the current myth or tide they are riding. I dont even realize it it's just what I do. I mark passings, and everyone's peaks and tides, by various means of traditional and non-traditional poles. Like today, the new moon, most powerfull tide passing time of year. All over the place people I know are witnessing: they are starting brand new goals; or taking pause; or hitting pinnacles in current circumstances; this is how we do, how we rise, how we flow, how we pass, how we current ever so swiftly or softly along. Somehow in my head I always easily see others big pictures for how it all easily is weaving together.

I guess what got me thinking about this was uploading these pics tonight, in that it'd been so long since I'd done so. I immediately caught myself nodding: ahhh yes, a quickening just occurred, I went through three whole weeks of straight archiving rather than also organizing and cataloging. My lens backed up and resharpened: in that time the poetry and magic and words have been flowing through me like mad. I've even been penpal-ing with someone the whole time: all of it, all those examples of capturing what is happening all around. A quickening, a quickening of the tide.

And the wind here, when it gets blowing, has been blowing like crazy just like last year on the last day of the calendar year. Winds so high the Choptank River and Elliot Bay both looked like the ocean at high tide.

Dont think it's a joke the old saying winds of change. Folk lore is some of the wisest medicine we have, yes? Everything at all times around us always is eternal reality of creative present moment. Our fates whisper in the wind sure as on the radio or in the trees.

Wild whipping winds tonight on the Eastern Shore.

Winter Solstice is coming: get it guys? Monday it all peaks, right before our closed--or if you're brave and learning to fight for it--at least half-opened eyes... What changes will come what changes are already half on their way?

Blessing of the Beans at Halloween

Well, it's here! My FAVE-orite time o year...and I am hyped to report that I am today's guest blogger over at Manbait, the foodblog run by my ol friend Kelly J. Please check her out and stop by today's post for my oldest and most heartened ritual, in honor of this New Years Weekend (aka, Halloween): The Blessing of the Beans. And thanks Kel for the oppurtunity to get to share.

fall is coming and the full moon is here

i woke up this morning after the deepest, most satisfying sleep i've had since i moved to chop. and it was only a three hour long sleep because just before 5 i awoke with a pillow hugged to my chest in the middle of an intense dream, which is the only time i can ever remember awaking on my back hugging a pillow. and i got out of bed realizing that i have been dreaming the same recurring dream since the weekend and puzzling over what it might mean. then i turned on the window fan got back under my soft sheet and in the grey morning light lay there an hour half-awake. until the next thing i knew it was 9 am and i was sleeping but waking slowly and feeling so, so satiated from my deepest depths within. like i had been wrung somewhere on my most essential level entirely clean.

and i had no thoughts of angst over work and my future, over where i am going to live next, over any of it. merely i felt complete, and settled in a way that i actually forgot is possible because its been absent for so, so long. i almost giggled out loud, and thought of the most random, exciting things: i love over-medium dippy eggs with whole grain pancakes with fruit cooked in and to eat them in front of the tv with regis and kelly. or to make jewelry because of all the different pretty colors and styles of the beads. i love fashion and exploring clothes that are just right for me. i love the quiet beach in late yellow september. i love to be in the woods, to swim in wild streams, camping. i love camping. i love to cozy cozy read books in the morning in bed when i've got no place to go....

and then it struck me, fall is here--or so i mean that on the wheel of the axis of the year, the preceding week or so has been the quickening of the tide of the change...tonight's full moon is traditional Lunar Llamas, the apex, the surge of bounty...we celebrate lunar llamas the first full moon when the sun is in leo and it signifies for all of us the passing of the year. intuitively we reassess what we've accomplished this year, what our harvest has brought to pass, what we didn't do to well at growing, where we have been fertile, futile, full of meat or just of bones.... oh god oh god life i love you so, so much!

sure as we are here people our cells, our dna move with this ever changing earth, and sure as this movement is tracked only by the sun there is a rightness, a depth of completion and union to it all in that it never truly ever ends, simply slows or quickens, and begins again. take heart, take stock...life recycles, we turn within, we radicalize, dive down deep, come to birth again....

like little bells...

i laughed out loud at me and then came my cousin's laughter a sound that since we were kids reminds me of elflight and glistens my heart like little bells. i dont have words to describe that feeling, why i even said what i said, we were walking around Canton Square the light of the night was orange from the clock glow and the neon signed resteraunt glare and all the mist from the crazy summer thunderstorm made for a haze and proved first harvest in-between the worlds magic literally was on the air. we were supposed to go see the O's in the allyoucaneat section we were stoked but then it was so wet and hot and eery out so no. we drove around the city in the rain and laughed and ate then got to walking and talking and laughing some more and it'd been a long, long time since we'd hung cuzin Ry and i and it was gold, and good, and so pure...

10 years is what I said followed by some self-deprecating remark and as always it was the self-judging that made us laugh so hard but it's not true i realized later, it's not 10 but 11 years since i've been on the shore. which is the same thing that i catch myself doing, saying i'm 31 when really i'm 32. 32!!! and how that feels not only to miss a year and then to puzzle for a sec and be like o yeah wait, that's not true, but to be an age that inside your head you have an idea about while at once living the fact that that idea isn't really exactly true. and it makes me think of martha, beautiful glamourous melancholy martha with the stories and the wistfulness that would make my heart ache when we would sit together back of the bead store nye beach, oregon, and bead and thread and talk and love. and the mirror she would use to look at the lipstick she wore and how much she still, at 60, loved pink floyd. and it made me also think

of being 19 and going to the community college my baggy shorts and hotgrl shirt and talking to the lady and saying a social worker, that's what i'm going to be. and realizing suddenly, again and again, suddenly each time, that that used to be my dream. and that that is it, that is what i now am....and how good, and hard, that's been....

and thank god for back porch of ocean pines and talking this morning with uncle tim and aunt mary the porch as always still enough, like a dream. and telling them for the first time of all those years ago when i a first year teacher with the beauracrats and how i got so screwed. and how that hurt but it was part of the job and so i learned...and now this year and how much i've learned from kim and also from my dad, but hearing the importance of what uncle tim said managers do it the right way while leaders do what's right. and it's a hard thing to learn, how to be, to really be, and at the end of the day to be at peace with yourself anyhow cuz you are you no matter what and that's what counts and too, where can you grow and where do you just rest, and back off, and accept and learn to love? and this is life yes and wow, how far i've come. and at all i've done and where i've been....and who i am.

and the city she is beckoning. four straight weeks i've run to her to feel the street at one with my flow and she is yearning and swift and i am yearning to go. and godalmighty first harvest is coming first harvest is almost here, it is the greatest, truest, fullest swell of peace i've felt all year... it started when i woke up wednesday sweetness in me a smile on my face cozy and content in bed just me....and the fabulous rustle non-stop in the trees. the whole earth alive with the buzz just like when taurus moon is above i recognized that movement come on deep inside of me: first harvest is here i thought, first harvest or lunar llamas is already here. and sure enough the moon had moved from waning to half-on/half-off and so with that i knew it was true and exalted in what one cant pretend but can only just kow and then could feel the tugging, the great turning of the wheel of the year. of course there was an ear of corn out front in the street when i went outside to take the recycling, go figure. and that night later, a black cat waited, then crossed directly in front of ryan and me. when i told him wasn't it great he got to expereince my little pagan walking dreams with me he said oh yea just great cuz then pannomined a gun to his head then quik with his other hand a splatter of explosion coming out his ear then we laughed again the tinkling bell kind cuz he's a poet and got the inner song like me and moves to the same ol tide....

and that's just it, all that ends begins again and the beginnings are just endings, in disguise.

so it goes, same ol song, silence and crashing, chaos and laughing, all life, sweetness and nothing, all life long....blessed, precious precious song

Change is gonna come

Recently, I found myself catching up with two old friends. Lindsey (see post from May 10, That Girl) was my big-eyed sister who grew up in the woods with me from the time that I was 11 and she was 10. She was home from Florida last week and we hadn't spent any quality time together in over a decade. And Mandy, who became my closest grl when we were 19 and living at the Drift hood together in OC (see post from June 7, Ocean Pines) just recently moved to those same woods where Lindsey and I used to run. Near to the end of the Real Work as I am, these visits were absoloutey serendipitous. They were so meaningful and rich, and as Clarissa Pinkola Estes puts it, so very signifigant in gathering my bones.

So I been driving the backroads a lot, see, going over the old soil of where I'm from. Summer Solstice comes this weekend. The time when the sun is most close to the earth, our homeground. She breathes the sun, our mama earth, without its rays nothing would live. Photosynthesis wouldn't occur. Without the sun baking those leaf sugars into respiration our ecosystem would have no lungs to breath. No energy exertion on the trees parts would mean all the decay would no longer feed itself into the compost for new life. Life, simply, would halt. It would deteriorate into a mass of black goo. Holy primordial funk of what we're made of, but no actual making....

Like the sun, each of us has a light of consciousness, a quiet part in our heart of awareness. That wide silent space behind the chatter where I for one like to touch down find my self-connection. If you read me regularly you know this is my own understanding of God, the Deep Within. The place where I am aware of I Am, of that power of all that is....

I've been remembering the power of that light, and of the great cycles of life and rebirth.

And this is what our cells naturally remember right around this time of year. For the past two weeks everyone around me has been in one of two states: reorginization--which for some looks an awful lot like chaos-making; or dull low slump. I myself have been back and forth between the two. In our bones right now, implicit of the very air we breathe, the sun we crave and suck up, the ocean and river waters that cleanse us, the earth that at least here on the Mid-Atlantic Coast grows greener with every passing day, is the slight-touched knowledge: deep within us speaks the energy now that lay still unutilized or unfulfilled. And on the outside a hyper-awarenss of all that we have grown.

Sometimes, says Anna Quindlen, not to decide is to decide. In my opinion too many people slumber. They carry on with there outside lives endlessly ignoring the deep messagry from inside. And yet that is where the real power, that unquenched longing so much of us are searching for, resides. Those undecided decisions show themselves at a time like this. Soo too, the blessings. The quiet touching harmony of who we are.

Take heart, take stock.

Change is gonna come.....

Solstice on the Chop

The tide of the Chop was so high this morning. Where's the moon? Teena said, a soapy bucket in her hand and spotted-winged deer flies clung to her--her chest, her forehead, her arms. She had an orange Teena shirt on, that's the color I know her for know.

She's full, that's why, I said. Er, on Saturday an Sunday anyhow. She brings the tides, right? In'at how it goes?

I figured Teena would know the old folklores and rules that abide the countryside.

She shrugged in return and sat on one of the osprey and duck-stained chairs that she'd initially come to clean. It was about 7:00 or so, she'd been up since the sun was yellow hazy and outside breaking on the land of her home. Delighting. I sat on the pier, legs dangling off water up to my mid-calves. But by now the sun was already fading, mist of grey clouds nebulous and growing, and over my shoulder I heard a dark low rumble. The sky to the west was blackgrey and spanning.

West sky steel like that means storm.

I slipped my clothes off and slid in to the river. Watched the black grow and slithered again and again under and under, and floated again and again on top. I hate how cliche it sounds, but god it was just like silk. She was just so full this morning, the Chop, and welcoming. I knew when I first stepped out the side door and saw her that my body wanted nothing more than to be with hers, melting and swimming, under and under, on top again and again contented to float.

We were ridiculous trying to pull me up and out of there. No ladder and no beach in a tide that high. We have this joke about the old guy who's taken to walking his dog every morning, right about the same time I'm out in my itty bitty night clothes on my knees herbcrafting and worshiping the morning and the sun. Where's the old guy and his dog now?! Teena cackled, throwing a towel around my clumsy nakedness, me hoisting myself chest first on to the pier, thwuck of mud saltwater and sea grass closing the void under me.

The Solstice is coming. Feel it? It was all over everything this morning: the river, the haze of sky, the air. How it all is so meaty feeling, salty, elemental: how the wind is full not just of air, but water and earth, too. Of sky. The tide is growing, meant at once to remind us of the pinnacle of things--ahh great birth and throbbing life--and so meant of course at once to tweak the longing of things, too, for even as great Life comes to peak so she is reminding us, and teaching yet agin: all things come in their time, and pass.

That longing now of what is yet undone, listen quiet to the whisperings in your soul. And be still, be still. There is lots to celebrate amid there. So too the bounties come, the seeds redistribute, all will grow up wild in celebration and thunder, and lay down in surrender to death again.

Amen, yes? Amen amen.

Beltane in the Air

O Pals.

What an exciting, deepbeating time this is. Last new moon--which would have been last Friday, from around about that time until next Friday/Saturday when we peak with the full moon--well this is the pagan season of Beltane or first-bud. I have been spending so, so much time out and about with my barefeet on the ground that there simply is no denying this alluring and delighting energy that is literally growing and ready to spill over from the inside out....

Naturally, we are part of the ecosystem wherever we live. If you are eastcoast US right now, well then you know life is literally bursting all around you in the form of wiley lawns, new buds, vibrating flowers and sparkling green leaves, open CSA's. This past Friday was the traditional celebration of MayDay, or Beltane. The old agricultural myths mark this as the fecund time of the Gods and Goddesses--and the folklore is that the old myths were celebrated by all night celebrations of first love, sex, dancing, bright ribbons decorating the Maypole and more. Allowing and affirming and enjoying all the pleasure of life! Vibrant, full, alive as it is!

Try this. When you get home from work tonight, or go out to get the paper this morning, pause a moment. Breathe deep. Breathe again. Allow your skin to become aware of the air. Ground your feet, imagine long deep colors of whatever you first see in your mind's eye to be pulling you down down in to the ground like you had your own precious root system. Maybe even envision roots instead of colors. Allow all the quickness in you to flow out in to the earth. Now pull the energy from the earth up in to you. Breathe together, in and out. See if you too cant connect easily to and sense and feel what I am talking about. We move with the energy of the everchanging earth much as it moves us.

So wear a ribbon ladies, fellas sport a dash of red or some other bright color. Get outside and play. This is well the time for your own spirits seeds to begin coming in to bloom. And check out Lisa's info on next week's full moon, eastcoast time 11pm Friday http://www.astrowisdom.com/thisfullmoon.htm. This is the lunar celebration of Beltane, peak power of creation for the harvest year to come.

I plan on celebrating by going back to my roots. There is a festival, a Fairy Festival!! at Spoutwood Farm in the PA hills this weekend and since I'll be up visiting with my recovering pap(see Friday's post), it will be the perfect opportunity to go. This is in Glen Rock. Mom told me this week that I have a great grandmother on either side of mom's folks that come from the Glen Rock area. Mom, who has often side-remarked over the years little passing comments about the 6th sense on her side that her sisters, her mom, my cousin Chels and me, that intuitive sense we all seem to have, well she said this week that this must come from the Glen Rock people. So, woo hoo par-teeee!!

Mom's friend's Liz and Mel, energy workers and massage therapists

at Ancient Arts in Ocean City. These gals do wonders for me!

Anyhow, lineage or not we all are of the same soul stuff, all us people, all the animals, all those clouds, those loving flowers and that gorgeous loving stream--it's all the same subtance-stuff. Us humans were just blessed, all us humans, with the powerfull gift of Consciousness. Which merely is choice. Or as Wordsworth said, the capacity to become

"one in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition"

Holy passion, now's the time. So try it! Get outside. Breathe deep. Feel life coursing up from within. Acknowledge, give thanks, and emPower your self!

Celebrate, with me...

Friday Reflections: Truslow Road

There were these tall pines that lined the back end of the land at Truslow. Tall, and with the sweet achy smell of the needles that make you remember a kind of inner quiet you never actually knew but secretly hope for in the woods. Tall pines, like the kind that at night blend in with sky so you are sure they are having a conversation up there in the dark with the clouds that are joking with them with their tender little caresses moving as fast as they do across the sky. Slow down slow down maybe the tall pines are saying to the night clouds, slow down and stay a while here in the dark with our sweet sweet smell.

It was November, the end, when we moved in there, to that 600-square-foot falling down asbestos run deadgreen shingled shack on Truslow Road, back of Truslow Creek edge of Kingstown, Queen Anne's County side of the Chester. A town as I always find them, without a zip code. We furnished that house with third and fourth-hand finds we bought at the local auction for $10, $7, maybe $6 the whole Lot. Once, that $7 bought me a brown banana seat bike from the seventies, a red paint-splattered stool, two brown wood foot stools, a pair of work boots and two quarts of oil. Every Wednesday for months we'd go to auction to see what we could see, neither of us having jobs or any belongings but campgear to speak of, having just ended our travelling days of living on the road. It was an auspicious return home, Full Moon night of Final Harvest, October 2005. Moon so big and pink and white it stuck us where our breath should be as it hung over watching Washington DC. We rolled in from the Mountains charging along Rt. 50 New York Avenue beside the Mall and I secretly sucked in when we got to the city and I felt the energy of the land all around of where I'm from and then, I saw the moon at once too and felt the longing inside give out Home....

Truslow wasn't planned, as so much of the big moves in my life rarely are. One day we just got sick of living with his mom. Ex-stepdad had this shitty little pad going down in the dirt and did we want to upkeep it, fix it up even, and care for the land? The land. It was November so that the land when we moved in was just one big patch of curled brown grass, but a whole-acre full, and with the tall tall trees in the back that never lose their leaves. And it had this dead-zone that vibrated to me: this huge matted mess of vines with prickers and thicket and undergrowth where some time ago some nice hedges or bushes must've been. That's where we will make this home I knew.

And we did: by February first seed we'd set about taking out that thicket just sort of stuck there in the back acre of our land. It covered a good 4 or 5 hundred square feet, almost as big as our house itself, and we worked at it, hard, sweaty in the cold February air but under the early that year sun. I wore work gloves and got tears and lines of red blood anywhere I had exposed skin and at the end of those days I felt for the first time what it feels like to cultivate something with your entire body, something sacred and precious as the eternal land. It was his idea to actually recess the fire pit we were putting in, so that the fire would actually warm from the underside of the ground. And by light/dark time of Equinox that year we had made our mark and called others in to join our Home: a community gathering advertised locally to all to join us for soul warming and music in celebration of grass-roots place-building and being true to as within, so without. I burnt a thick dried twig of sage and set a sacred circle around that fire pit as we completed it, walking three times with the smoke and the song on my breath and my heart open in love and thanksgiving--my friend Turtle Mike was there to help set up with the lights and he followed me round and round and round. It was the first night I ever met Walsh and heard her sing and of course this happened through Josh, and both of them played and stilled our hearts and many people, caught fully by the vibe we meant to capture and release in goodwill that night, had tears of gratefullness rolling down their cheeks. At the very end it rained a light light rain and this was the sign of release and blessing, and at once cleansing, which I was waiting for as omen of great harmony and success.

It was March the following year that those tall pines and that space created in honor and awe and thanksgiving at their feet called out to me again so loudly. Spring herself came quieter that year, waiting to show little peeks of her face til well after first-seed, unlike February the year before. I had been through a long winter. A new position in Adult Ed under a threatening and domineering new boss was challenging me in ways I never before knew. I gave all my energy to it, the job, because I cared about the people and so if there are people involved that is what I always do. But I was dwindling away and miserable inside. In long hours of prayer and mediation I sought to follow the heart of, to transmute with the change, that I knew on my deepest level was attempting to begin. I hated it, though knew begrudgingly that time is time and the process must run its course. And so, in those weeks of March leading to Equinox and New Year for me, I felt called out by the land, by the deep healing energy of Home.

I carried arm loads of books: notebooks and poetry, and a Christian text by Oswald Chambers I was deeply in to, out to the land moist in her pre-spring roots. And sometimes I would read, and if the words started to come I would write and write, but mostly I just laid there, on the ground. With my body feeling the waking of the land. Recognizing a fine softening between my contour and its. And I would breathe, and it was like the first time I ever knew about and tasted air. I still remember quite physically what it was like to take those long healing breaths like that, like, in fact, I was breathing in the whole of that land, of those trees, of all that pulsing of music and light by fire that still I am sure lives right now back there, back of Truslow in the roots of the one time heart of our land.

Yesterday I came home from work and the sun was high enough in the sky to still get to soak in some strong white rays. I ran in to Teena's house, got some books and notebooks, and ran out with my arms full dragging a beach chair awkwardly behind. I didn't read at all, just sat in that deep breathing place of half-eyed slumber.

That last March at Truslow it was as if a great rest had come upon me. And inside that sleep there lived the quiet seedlings of personal truth I wasn't capable yet, and so therefor unready, to be. Indeed, in the time that followed those several weeks it turned out I would need all the energy that I stored during my great and blessed pause with the tall pine trees: by the end of that month we learned that we had to move, and so the adventure continued, and the deep seeds began to unfurl, as we made our way on to Anngar Farm.

Recently my friend Susan told me one of her favorite sayings is But the hallway's hell! As in when we are waiting for the promised window to open after our most recent door has shut, waiting in the hallway sure can suck. But I don't know. Maybe the hallway can be the best part. Maybe it's like the deep reserve of air we never knew we had.

Sittin still in the prime

La luna mama at imbolc--wow

View out back the shaman shack between the bones of the tipi


front of the shaman shack

Kelly-kel sittin still in the prime

First, before I forget, today was a lunar eclipse. These occur a couple times a year, and like solar eclipses, affect us in a varied bunch of ways. For most it will go unseen, yes...but for those of you walking around today feeling like a pinpoint puncture in your consciousness happened and now for some reason you see clearly, or have "been relieved" suddenly or whatever aha experience of clarity has come, this is eclipse in action. Recall: la luna is our light in the dark, the shining into the unconscious or creative substance of our dream selves, and that light went out, briefly transmuted as it was by the perfect alchemy of the earth and sun in harmony....So this is sudden change on the soul level--the intuitive level. Sudden clarity, or riddance, if you will. Eclipses of the moon may remove something mental--the old detritus of no longer needed ideas (and how cool, too, as it is those very things that create all our reality!) in a quick quick way, or maybe the beginning of some perception come undone...

Remember, all endings are beginnings; as with beginnings an ending is sure to come.

As for me, I am choosing to stick with an old adage some friends of mine taught me once: More will be revealed. Had a chill day next to the Chop River yesterday and then at a singing bowl meditation at the Shaman Shack. Def got me some light in the dark, but I for one am quite content for now to sit still in the prime (allbeit warm!!) winter quiet and continue to witness within....

What I'm enjoying right now:

Teena's sick flippin brownies that somehow taste like toffee, too

&, the blog of this cool chic Kasey from the beach who is a foot reflexologist/massage therapist.

(this is a link not to her blog but to her wellness center in oc)
http://www.coastalwellnesscenter.com/reflexology.php

Here's her digs: Kasey can't deny it any more and ends up voicing several times a wild instinct in her heart space pulling her for some unknown reason to go to Thailand. Her husband finally remind her she's terrified of planes and hasn't travelled by air in close to 30 years. The next day an invitation from a reflexology school in Thailand invites her, expenses paid, to come teach at their institute for a month...Ahhhh serendipity. Read about her trip--she's there now--here

and to thy own self might you be true....

ahhh Perfect Poem for first seed

Poem for the day by Liāna Langa

Untitled

tares and anemones have finished blooming

under the skin of turf I, cocooned, lie, trying to understand,
where the colors of blossoms have lain, what are the steps of seeds

my casing is quiet and musical,
yellowed, rich

nowhere is the sky closer than underground,
among the roots of hyssop, the juice of dead time

I filter these along with the clay,
refusing the sparking of memory

am in opposition, vibrate, whine

becoming ready

ps friends, i blew it w the info before about the lunar celebration of imbolc, which actually occurs a week from today with the full moon--it is the full moon that occurs in the sun sign aquarius--Feb 9. Enjoy your day!!

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.

More Great-full stuff for the list

Okay, add to the list of Great Things to be Grateful for:



22. The book Simple Abundance. Which reminded me this morning of affirmations. For example, the following: Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. This was my morning meditation.
23. The fact that I know from experience that affirmations, when made in the warm light heartspace, work. Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....
24. Crazy old friends from Annapolis who always seem to know just when to call...



Thank you so much for the creative, emotional, physical and mental strength to joyfully and lovingly experience this holiday season. Thank you so much....

List 3 or Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for

So, here's the thing. My living circumstances have changed. At least temporarily. And there is no internet service out here in the boonies on the Choptank river in Caroline County aka my new home. And, my computer is frozen on Windows Media after evidently not taking the movie I was watching out correctly or something. Blah blah blah. So I am on my work computer, thank-full thank-full thank-full for it, picking up wireless for the first time here at Choptank--so thank-full for that! And stoked bc I am in touch w so many great old smiles from the past on Facebook and the likes. I wanted to, have for several weeks now, post pics on here of various friends. But as said my computer is on the fritz sos no pics...

Instead, I am thinking...The timing is right...

I am going to start a list of things that I have gratitude for in my life right now. And i dont just mean areas that i am aware of my blessings. I mean, these are the things that move me to light and a warmth and overflow feeling of joy in my chest when I bow my head, reflect a moment, and give thanks with a smiling heart.

And, for you dear reader, a challenge--

Make your own list this week. Live them. LIve the light in your chest. Learn about it's reflexiveness, how it grows when you share it, how it automatically comes back at you, too, to double. Comment to me some of your gratitude list. Let me know about your warm heart full of joy, too...

Kelly's Great List of Things to be Grateful for:
1. Cuzin slumber parties! woooooo hooooo for my cousins, who define and delight me, who are always there for me, who keep me crazy and keep me sane, who remind me about love--the unconditional kind--and who will no doubt keep me up with dumb movies and whispers and stories all nite on Friday.
2. Teena! Who fed me and listened to me that first awful week. Who got home from work last night and rode a stuffed animal horse in to my bedroom whinnying and naying all the while. Really! Who then told me since a guy laughed at her for dancing in middle school she hasn't danced in public in 45 years. How is that possible? If you are open enough to ride a stuffed horse around then dancing like no one is watching's got to be the next plunge!
3. The River. How she breathes and sooths me.
4. Amy my baby, Madonna in concert, and growing so closely with someone that 7 years feels like no time at all. that sort of says it all
5. Fresh food. so you can still taste the light in it
6. Artists friends making new records and finding life again. Ldubb that means you.
Sisters.
7. Eddie's Place reunions. hell freaking yeah can you believe it, the man the myth the legend, my old dad Ed may he rest in peace and the motley crew of family he gathered in the kitchen of (and out back!) his pizza joint back in the early nineties are all coming together to re-unite. Holy holy 6 degrees to insanity, anybody?
8. Brandon who is warmth, and light
9. Katie who is a goddess angel and keeps reminding me to be the same. and who can make out my words through lots of sobs and tears now, who's had lots of practice at it...
10. Gretchen who i trust beyond all
11. My Quiet Space. my sacred sacred quiet spot in my new room and how lucky i am to know that, day after day, it is something that works again and again
12. Tim and the other people i dont know but do through their words who read and comment on my blog. it makes me feel so good. and that is what we are here on earth to help each other do...
13. Mom dad and Sean. god i love you and love you and love you
14. Grandma, Papaw, the Englars and McMullens Amen for tribes and again, i love you i love you i love you
15. Facebook and all the old heads....
16. Josh who knows me. And helps me know me better
17. The Eastern Shore of Maryland which is my home. wow it feels so good to be connected to a place
18. My poet instincts
19. Being clean and sober for 8 whole years.
20. My job, for getting to touch people the way i do
21. Grandma's cooking woooo hooo here i come!

and the list goes on and on....and if i am able, i will this week, in the spirit of Thanks-Giving, add more and more

May you be moved to do the same.....

Mourning Moon @ New Year

It has been a long year. It has been a long year and one that’s gone by way too quick.
Always, right?

This time last year I’d just started waiting tables at a white linen in town and was devoting most of my days to writing. I was finishing/editing my first collection of poetry and sending it off to different contests for unpublished poets.

And the conference for young people recovering from substance abuse—that was just getting underway, too.

A long, long year.

Last night’s full moon was a doozy, no? Emotional, a tugging, with some sorrows sprung deep. This is normal, as it should have been—and if you are reading this and nodding your head or having an aha moment: stop denying and understand your tribe…!

Us artists and soul-learners, us instinct-led craving a deeper experience of life, we dip and rise together, and I have found at least for myself that the old moons and earth holidays that folklore kept are good to grow and to learn better my own deep tune…

Yesterday was Lunar New Year, to that affect. Mourning Moon. Agricultural societies of old new it well: the final crops are down, time to take full count of your lot. And in that, inside of that knowledge of assessing your harvest, comes too the sight of that which you lost. Or maybe has yet to come to fruit at all. It is now that the seeds for next years bounty most especially stir there quiet just below in your soul. Same as the seeds for the spring now are planted, this last week or so gives you peek at what in the coming year you would like to grow. Look well, be kind and easy on your soul in whatever language it uses to communicate this to you. For soon the seeds too will slumber, take their rest and gather strength in the landscape of the underground. And it could be long, and dark that sleep, maybe disorienting or scary.

But so too will the spring, the roots, the new blossoms come again—

Now is the time for quiet and thanks-giving…

The Many, Many Masks...

It's almost Halloween

Feel it?

Get

weird.

Retrogrades @ Harvest Time

I am still in my pajamas. I am still in my pajamas and my breath is the breath of someone who spent a day long laid-out on the earth in the sun. That sun is going down now--I am blissed and calm and mellowed beyond words.

This is good, that love affair with self I am so committed to. Not the selfish kind, but the courageous kind, embolden by solitude and knowing when to listen to your own cry. The Elizabeth Gilbert When you fill up your own skin with yourself that alone becomes your offering kind.

I sat long outdoors today, under my favorite trees. Brandon in the hammock part of that time, me chest opened to the sky and also at times chest folded over my knees. I sunk in deep to me and let the feelings of inadequacy from my new job, the fears and insecurities prisoned-up in my heart rise and pass. I read poetry til the song moved in me and tears wet-up my eyes. Seriously, for a day of doing Nothing, I got a lot done.

It is harvest time, the geese are arriving back from their summer stops. All the greens from the summer garden were today brought in--and new-bloomed fall crops, too: turnips and radishes and the last of the apples from the highest branches in the tree. Tonight we are having our friends over to feast on the season and sit by the bonfire in the cooling Autumn night.




It is also Mercury Retro right now. In her book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For Alice Walker talks about the periodic times in life that call for a natural pause. She uses the time right after college as specific example, but goes on with her own poetry to exemplify the richness in spirit, the natural ebbs and flows of the human-spirit experience as the essence of, and at once the reason for this nessecary phenom. Here is what I know: Mercury Retro comes four times a year, once always during Harvest time. This is the time to do Nothing, Nothing w the capitol letter N kind. To take, in Walker's words, the great Pause. Time to give yourself, to your Soul or your subconscious or your physical health or your mental machine or however you see you in your finer undefined essence, time to Breathe. To just stop. And watch. Maybe to gather, or to reckon. To go within.

If your running around crazy that's because your fighting your self and the cosmos and the earth's right now natural flow. Get outside. Eat a late bloom apple, drink some harvest wine. The earth in her infinite changing expressions of oneness is teaching: Your Nature is Her Nature. This I know. So get your toes and heels down on her and watch your mind go and go until it realizes you see it and it has nothing more to do. Unwind. Real-ize. That flow is of you and you are it and now it offers you a real chance to witness, and to grow.

So love a little. For us super-scared humans taking time to learn to love the passings is the least (if not the best) work we can do.....

Smile Kel, it's almost 6pm and you're still in your pj's!

Warty and Peanut Punkins & Harvest Corn Dollies

Full Moon Meditation

Last night was the full moon--or early this morning anyhow, round 5.

I caught this shot at about 6:30 am, literally as la luna was setting herself discreetly behind the clouds...

...and this other while driving north on 213 Saturday evening

Autumn Equinox is this weekend...the nights length passing over to grow longer than the day and I love the Autumn, that great triumph of space that gathers itself in a bundle, the long slow sigh of the earth. A breeze is blowing so great on the farm right now--through the windows, moving the curtains way out and making me very aware of the lines of my body. The full moon is past, but that doesn't change the spirit of a Harvest Moon in the fall.

Harvest moons bring to the surface the bounty of your year...

Look lightly on yourself now, do you like what you see? This is a strong, though subtle week. Take time to yourself, give your insides a peek--this truly is the time of year to be especially conscious of what "you're putting out there" right now. So get out there, root, connect to the deep breathing earth and the far-growing sky and try some Wonder...

Fall, oh splendid Fall

I don't know what it's like where you live right now but where we are, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on farmland and surrounded by fields and fields of dead dry corn, it is breezy and light and the mornings are cool and require soft cotton long sleeves and cause me deep and lustful intermittent aches for fall....

That's not to say that by the afternoon there isn't the glare of sweat and furrow on my brow, but I gotta tell ya, our first First Harvest Jam back on the 9th ushered in a glory of sweet cool air and long shadows, a sense that the sky was growing and stretching to send the sun back nigh to the furthest ends of the horizon almost to the all the way below...and I am amazed at this! My heart buzzing, how close and real the actual seasons are following the old marks of season's treads on cell memory in our blood currents and primal memory in our hearts and in our souls. We discussed this at our potluck the week past, how cool the night was, sweater weather and how we all remembered (except for Dykeman, who disagreed, but he was in general in contention w Sam that night, and besides, for all us humans isn't memory just a turn away from imagination anyway...) that it used to be when we were kids that the cricket air at night in August chilled us on our neck and put shivers down our back when we were done with hide and seek or private clubhouses next to the swing set or whatever. And this is true, the seasons did used to be so much more of a mild rolling, near enough that our generation of Xers on the corner of Y can still remember...

A return to this and yet a swift reminder for me: the toxic details are still all around. Dead corn, only harvestable this year are bushels of 70 or so a stand, far less than last years average of 120 and our drought last year was awful-bad. (The mild season's return hasn't done a damn thing for our lac of rain.)

(Anyhow.) The new moon is coming this weekend--the full in Leo sun was two weekends ago and this is strong strong time of year. Subtle discontent is actually your soul's way of seeking harmony, listen to the message the deep tune in you is trying to send, actually surrender to the flow of discord. Or to the glory and grace in moments of solitude right now--these are the guideposts singing to you of the unity, these are reminders to know gratitude for the cycle of all that is.

My first harvest full moon on the 16th was wowed by me--that week I returned again to quiet time and have ever since seen the physical details--material level, you dig--of my life easily and seamlessly clicked right in to place. New job etc. Harvest time, as it should be. At once too is the calm cool of seeking peace within myself again--giving over to the realm of KellyLove inside me, the only grace I'll ever need that power deep within my soul...

I feel so good to connect once again to the cycles of our earth. And happy at the little coincidences that affirm and push this connection along....Check out my new blogfriend Tim at This Being Human, I love the new techno version of sage counsel--how it comes from linking and linking and random comments to strangers to help the flow of what seems right.

Anyhow Autumn Equinox is fast coming. Reminder that all things pass us by. Connect to yourself now, get outside. Go, Be, still.

And also, check out my new favorite song which is playing on livestream right now, BenFolds and Regina Spector duet "You Don't Know Me"....