At Buddha camp we couldn't look at each other. Or speak, or read or write, or even for that matter eat after a certain time of day. We just meditated, from 5 in the morning til 9 at night. And in the evening watched lectures from a grainy vcr and old tv.
When I went back the second time it was as a volunteer, out of service, to cook for first time attendees. That time I could speak, thankfully because the most important part for me turned out to be the community of consciously-minded attendees all back for their second or fifth or twelfth go-round. It warmed my heart, does to think of them still. To find people who really got my heart.
Now I am at Earth Camp, and the people here believe in the earth and communites and Nature as I do, all as one sacred inter-connected realm. It's such a joyful, fun atmosphere among these like spirits! Earth-worhsiping tree-huggers. So many sacred smiles and light reverie. I thought California was a place with minds and spirits like mine, that was before I came here: I could never imagine such a similar-spirited tribe! Men and women, old and young. Tonight we were led to recall the feeling in our heart of the moment we decided we would come here.
That was 2005, late fall, in the red and orange living room at Truslow Road. I was desperate, certain I was on the wrong path. On the stolen internet of one of my neighbors, I googled as I so often used to the words wild, and women, and wisdom. That was when I found out about Earth Activist Training.
I've wanted to study with Starhawk ever since then. Her books are pure muse to me. And now here I am, finally. Seven years, a full wisdom-cycle it took me, but that decision from back is finally coming true. My next two weeks, here in the redwoods of Cazadero, Sonoma County,CA. At EAT. For my permaculture certification. Camp for Wild Women at a Peace Institute run by Tibetan Buddhists. And oh yes, for wild men, too. Wild Men! My path, it circles back time and again.
And already such a long inspired journey it's been...
Showing posts with label Earth Path. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth Path. Show all posts
January 7, 2012
April 14, 2011
On the road. Bear's Rock, WY. July 5, 2004.
It is nighttime here at the campground at the foot of Bear’s Rock, or Devils Tower as we know it, Bear’s Rock as it has been referred to for far longer than 1906 when this strange rock protrusion became the first US National Monument. Brandon wanders the prairie off to my left, the sun not a shadow in the grey & foggy night. There are 2 deer that edge the perimeter of our campground, just close enough to be curious but safe. There are also a number of tipis set-up here, on this long-held sacred spot of ancient and todays native’s land.
I am writing to overcome my complacency, to capture some memories before they become a final & swift blur & because I feel artsy & cramped & need to commune with myself.
The west has done some kind of # on my head. Left me far more perplexed than anything else—all while in such deep admiration of this country—literally: of the great & beautiful, exploited or rescued, gawked at instead of honored LAND. The question, nagging, ripping me up with its insinuations. American. What does it mean?
Back east we have the legacy of slavery that still smacks its physical presence, a generally unacknowledged & quiet pain all around the small towns still segregated. I claim open-hearted and mindedness but can’t, on some days, walk own the street in Chestertown without tromping along my own self part of the sludge of the violent & belittling white mans past. It is what happens to my mind without my consciousness—on days when I am unable to see and instead note the color of a person’s skin or the unchecked assumption of where they live. I, immobile in the vestiges of a history that continues to blind and bind our present day, terrorized by the truth of people still subordinate, suffering, deprived & most of all, unheard or seemingly unrecognized.
In utter disbelief of me of who I am I try unsuccessfully to break out of the sludge I challenge myself what is it like to be in the heart to have the blood of someone here who doesn’t have white skin.
Ahhhh, then to come west. First, the effigy mounds after crossing the Mississippi out of the charming pleasant Galena, Illinois original home of Ulysses S. Grant. An effigy mound, Ancient mounds built for honor and ritual by long ago native peoples, these relics some of which dating back to BC time and destroyed, many, by the settlers who thought A) Indians to be too primitive & savage to be capable of such construction & B) felt land to be much more measured by its profitability that its juncture of Still=Sacred. On the Big River scenic drive in Iowa there is history, some mounds still in tact, and me, this is me, part of My History. And all this, all this after the long drive across Route 3 in southern Canada, the truck stops every 5 to 10 miles Oh Ontario and your oldskool Americana your 50’s diner food, all this after the strange majesty of Niagra turned so cheaply in to plastic-replica amusements, cardboard-packaged preservatives expensive tourist toys and plasiticine goods. These mounds, my Americanism, I American Witness, American Aggressor of the cruel destruction, cultural obliteration, ohhh plastic-sided homogenization my Free Heritage, my all powerful all-American Hands.
From Michigan through the heavy traffic outside Chicago & the touching urban sprawl of a melting pot in procession on 83 & finally onto 22 where we stopped for a small time farmland carnival in the middle of the fields of Illinois. Onward across Iowa.
And camping in Crystal Lake off Route 9 & the gorgeous headwaters of Iowa’s great rivers against the fertile green rolling grounds. Effigies: beer can empties, candy wrappers, diapers and paper towels. Little lost wishes all about the campgrounds, at the far end a group of farm boys in jacked-up pick-ups, blared music, drinking beers, leaving their trash on the ground all through the night still there in the day times telling light.
We got in to South Dakota, Siox City that evening on 52. I treated us to Mexican in celebration of being out of Iowa. Out of Mitchell next day and now we switched to 90 highwaying it over the prairie & private ranches and now we were West. Grand sky & rolling country far as the eye could see. Rolling land, rolling America rolling American me. South on 83 to lesser known 44 W across the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Small badlands, yellow & brown now began to replace all the vibrant & rolling green.
And to know the land? TO KNOW the LAND is to be a true Native. True American, I take my nativity by the hand.
Paha Sapa the following day & late in the afternoon in awe tears on the faces of Brandon & I, a herd of Buffalo grazing Buffalo National Grassland, at one time this country was home to 60 million bison, lifelines of all native peoples, today as we witnessed they occupy national parks in the west at numbers of about 160, 000, national parks in some cases which were established primarily to have sanctioned land on which to slaughter buffalo, Grant when he was president leading the task force to disparage the native peoples of their source of worship and food. Onto the Black Hills, sacred land to the natives until gold camps like in Deadwood were set up in the late 1890s to tear apart the inside of these sacred hills dark with ponderosa pines, with coyotes & bison & pronghorns & deer on the outside, whole cherished ecologies living on blood, whole American footprints of God, the Voice of all the lives made to be brought up from the land, us people only ones with consciousness to be her Voice, oh~ America~! American…Land…General Custer park with your namesake, here in the state with more racial profiling on its indian peoples than back east on its blacks.
And last night, me, we, us Americans so blessed—watched a privately funded fireworks display illuminate the rocks of Rushmore in celebration of our National Heritage, our Independence Day, Day of Religious Freedom We Finally Won From England. The fireworks display ignited not just the sky but the hills, the black ponderosa’d hills beneath Rushmore above Herney Peak where Black Elk saw his vision Everywhere is the center of the Universe, the hills of this America set on fire from the fireworks, smoke and fire burning the land on the fourth of July.
I am here, center of the Universe foot of Bear’s Rock, Wyoming. Tents, deers, tipis and me. My land, my people, my American night, my America dream…?
I am writing to overcome my complacency, to capture some memories before they become a final & swift blur & because I feel artsy & cramped & need to commune with myself.
The west has done some kind of # on my head. Left me far more perplexed than anything else—all while in such deep admiration of this country—literally: of the great & beautiful, exploited or rescued, gawked at instead of honored LAND. The question, nagging, ripping me up with its insinuations. American. What does it mean?
Back east we have the legacy of slavery that still smacks its physical presence, a generally unacknowledged & quiet pain all around the small towns still segregated. I claim open-hearted and mindedness but can’t, on some days, walk own the street in Chestertown without tromping along my own self part of the sludge of the violent & belittling white mans past. It is what happens to my mind without my consciousness—on days when I am unable to see and instead note the color of a person’s skin or the unchecked assumption of where they live. I, immobile in the vestiges of a history that continues to blind and bind our present day, terrorized by the truth of people still subordinate, suffering, deprived & most of all, unheard or seemingly unrecognized.
In utter disbelief of me of who I am I try unsuccessfully to break out of the sludge I challenge myself what is it like to be in the heart to have the blood of someone here who doesn’t have white skin.
Ahhhh, then to come west. First, the effigy mounds after crossing the Mississippi out of the charming pleasant Galena, Illinois original home of Ulysses S. Grant. An effigy mound, Ancient mounds built for honor and ritual by long ago native peoples, these relics some of which dating back to BC time and destroyed, many, by the settlers who thought A) Indians to be too primitive & savage to be capable of such construction & B) felt land to be much more measured by its profitability that its juncture of Still=Sacred. On the Big River scenic drive in Iowa there is history, some mounds still in tact, and me, this is me, part of My History. And all this, all this after the long drive across Route 3 in southern Canada, the truck stops every 5 to 10 miles Oh Ontario and your oldskool Americana your 50’s diner food, all this after the strange majesty of Niagra turned so cheaply in to plastic-replica amusements, cardboard-packaged preservatives expensive tourist toys and plasiticine goods. These mounds, my Americanism, I American Witness, American Aggressor of the cruel destruction, cultural obliteration, ohhh plastic-sided homogenization my Free Heritage, my all powerful all-American Hands.
From Michigan through the heavy traffic outside Chicago & the touching urban sprawl of a melting pot in procession on 83 & finally onto 22 where we stopped for a small time farmland carnival in the middle of the fields of Illinois. Onward across Iowa.
And camping in Crystal Lake off Route 9 & the gorgeous headwaters of Iowa’s great rivers against the fertile green rolling grounds. Effigies: beer can empties, candy wrappers, diapers and paper towels. Little lost wishes all about the campgrounds, at the far end a group of farm boys in jacked-up pick-ups, blared music, drinking beers, leaving their trash on the ground all through the night still there in the day times telling light.
We got in to South Dakota, Siox City that evening on 52. I treated us to Mexican in celebration of being out of Iowa. Out of Mitchell next day and now we switched to 90 highwaying it over the prairie & private ranches and now we were West. Grand sky & rolling country far as the eye could see. Rolling land, rolling America rolling American me. South on 83 to lesser known 44 W across the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Small badlands, yellow & brown now began to replace all the vibrant & rolling green.
And to know the land? TO KNOW the LAND is to be a true Native. True American, I take my nativity by the hand.
Paha Sapa the following day & late in the afternoon in awe tears on the faces of Brandon & I, a herd of Buffalo grazing Buffalo National Grassland, at one time this country was home to 60 million bison, lifelines of all native peoples, today as we witnessed they occupy national parks in the west at numbers of about 160, 000, national parks in some cases which were established primarily to have sanctioned land on which to slaughter buffalo, Grant when he was president leading the task force to disparage the native peoples of their source of worship and food. Onto the Black Hills, sacred land to the natives until gold camps like in Deadwood were set up in the late 1890s to tear apart the inside of these sacred hills dark with ponderosa pines, with coyotes & bison & pronghorns & deer on the outside, whole cherished ecologies living on blood, whole American footprints of God, the Voice of all the lives made to be brought up from the land, us people only ones with consciousness to be her Voice, oh~ America~! American…Land…General Custer park with your namesake, here in the state with more racial profiling on its indian peoples than back east on its blacks.
And last night, me, we, us Americans so blessed—watched a privately funded fireworks display illuminate the rocks of Rushmore in celebration of our National Heritage, our Independence Day, Day of Religious Freedom We Finally Won From England. The fireworks display ignited not just the sky but the hills, the black ponderosa’d hills beneath Rushmore above Herney Peak where Black Elk saw his vision Everywhere is the center of the Universe, the hills of this America set on fire from the fireworks, smoke and fire burning the land on the fourth of July.
I am here, center of the Universe foot of Bear’s Rock, Wyoming. Tents, deers, tipis and me. My land, my people, my American night, my America dream…?
February 2, 2011
New Moon. Sleeplessness.
After crawling around the city of my bed rolling over its soft hills getting stuck in its hard concrete and pausing in the quiet sweet creeks of rest I kept almost starting to find, each time thinking this is it I can feel sleep right on the other side...I am up. It is pointless for me to try to go to bed at 9 or even 10 even on nights before I have to get up at 4:45. What good did it do me? Three hours of sleep tonight and upupup by 1:45. Here I am.
I got my phone to use the light to make it to the kitchen thinking water would be the trick and there facebook was all lit up with its little red star notifications on the plastic electronic face of my friend blackberry. I hate you blackberry you are not my friend. Sam posted the funniest awful picture of me from what I guess is back in the day. 2005 doesn't seem far away enough to say that about yet. It made me realize: all things move on.
It is a new moon tonight--I mean now that it is Wednesday that were talking about. She peaks at her void by 6 this eve so that is what the sleeplessness was all about. It is Brigid's moon, the new moon of first seed or first light--when the sap quickens and the seeds are sown or first start to yawn and awake. All that river of life waking up from deep deep inside. And all the things you want out of your life buzzing you humming you aching you awake. So the tide flat there flat as the dark moon sitting there her dark eye on you rises after tonight rises a little bit a little bit more a little bit more at a time each passing day from tonight on and winter will take its last rotten lunge at the sky--sorry winter after tonight moves on nothing you can do to beat the changing tide...and spring shall come...
In the meantime it is raining here as if it never rained before as if all the years of all Time that time was ever Time was kept on a great check board bulletin of life and decorated in country gingham and purple sparkles and timeless gold on a great big polka-dotted wall and suddenly Time itself said no! No more high-falutin fanciness for me lets get back to the basics pleaaase and so translated itself in to rainwater--all that time passed all that water and yesterday it began to fall, same as it fell last week, it falls and falls while all around the rest of the midatlantic they get snow and ice. Our ground here is moist and muddy. My heels sink three inches in.
On Friday I grabbed Sam girl Sam at Java Bay not boy Sam with the history of me and funny awful old pictures that aren't really too too old and I said come on I will show you the third sign of spring. I led her to the front door where across the parking lot you could see all the many blackbirds making feasts of the lawn. There had to be hundreds of them. The day before that when I was sitting in my longjohns and sweatshirt and cords and gloves and hat on the back porch in my beach chair under my blanket and snuggie getting late day sun and lusting over the pics in Vogue, I wrote a poem it was a short quick one and came from all the sun confirming what I already know, what Brigid's moon by the wise woman ways used to be used to tell--how close spring is, how soon it truly is on its way.
there are, & have been:
squirrels chasing each other thru the woods
over fallen branches and across canals
filled with water
swelling preparing readying almost
to move~
I got my phone to use the light to make it to the kitchen thinking water would be the trick and there facebook was all lit up with its little red star notifications on the plastic electronic face of my friend blackberry. I hate you blackberry you are not my friend. Sam posted the funniest awful picture of me from what I guess is back in the day. 2005 doesn't seem far away enough to say that about yet. It made me realize: all things move on.
It is a new moon tonight--I mean now that it is Wednesday that were talking about. She peaks at her void by 6 this eve so that is what the sleeplessness was all about. It is Brigid's moon, the new moon of first seed or first light--when the sap quickens and the seeds are sown or first start to yawn and awake. All that river of life waking up from deep deep inside. And all the things you want out of your life buzzing you humming you aching you awake. So the tide flat there flat as the dark moon sitting there her dark eye on you rises after tonight rises a little bit a little bit more a little bit more at a time each passing day from tonight on and winter will take its last rotten lunge at the sky--sorry winter after tonight moves on nothing you can do to beat the changing tide...and spring shall come...
In the meantime it is raining here as if it never rained before as if all the years of all Time that time was ever Time was kept on a great check board bulletin of life and decorated in country gingham and purple sparkles and timeless gold on a great big polka-dotted wall and suddenly Time itself said no! No more high-falutin fanciness for me lets get back to the basics pleaaase and so translated itself in to rainwater--all that time passed all that water and yesterday it began to fall, same as it fell last week, it falls and falls while all around the rest of the midatlantic they get snow and ice. Our ground here is moist and muddy. My heels sink three inches in.
On Friday I grabbed Sam girl Sam at Java Bay not boy Sam with the history of me and funny awful old pictures that aren't really too too old and I said come on I will show you the third sign of spring. I led her to the front door where across the parking lot you could see all the many blackbirds making feasts of the lawn. There had to be hundreds of them. The day before that when I was sitting in my longjohns and sweatshirt and cords and gloves and hat on the back porch in my beach chair under my blanket and snuggie getting late day sun and lusting over the pics in Vogue, I wrote a poem it was a short quick one and came from all the sun confirming what I already know, what Brigid's moon by the wise woman ways used to be used to tell--how close spring is, how soon it truly is on its way.
there are, & have been:
squirrels chasing each other thru the woods
over fallen branches and across canals
filled with water
swelling preparing readying almost
to move~
December 14, 2010
Good Morning, I love you.
It was cold when I left and cold when I got back and winter, with a shock that felt like jaws snap-clamping together, I get it, you're here.
I've always avoided you before. My muscles would start to clench before I even got out the door, my body on frigid lock-down against the cold. Shivers would start the second I felt the air. I guess I just figured if I squinched my eyes tight enough I could somehow will the weather away.
I dreamt of a hispanic man it was weeks ago he was short like most my favorite hispanics are. He was helping me my mom and dad remodel the house I lived in and he took me aside and said you know you are a mole, this is your medicine. I looked at him and said thanks, I looked really deep at him so he'd get I meant it. Then I took his pretty hispanic girl to my side and hugged her til her heart was well again which I did by looking third eye to eye. I didn't know her heart was bad but in my dream I felt it as soon as by my eye to eye hug it was made well. This I did for him as thanks, then I walked back to him and said please come to me when I am not asleep and remind me of this mole medicine. I woke and not long after remembered that dream and mole medicine is intimately connected to the earth and really needs fresh air. We know the truth before it ever is seen...
So now winter, whatcha gone do? I relish you, I go to the ocean or the woods everyday now and I walk and I breathe. I dont shiver, I am awake. In the morning when I open the shop as soon as everything is ready I step down on to the docks and I breathe the fresh air. Good morning, I say. Good morning, I love you. And winter there's where you're a show off, if you were a man I'd a left you a long time ago for that song and dance so dazzling it's almost boring, so old. Trying always to impress me like that. How you poke your light through the grey shadows or flurries of snow. How you wash the river with so much longing it is all I can do to not dive in. I guess I am lying, huh? Because show off as you are you still get me, everytime.
I've always avoided you before. My muscles would start to clench before I even got out the door, my body on frigid lock-down against the cold. Shivers would start the second I felt the air. I guess I just figured if I squinched my eyes tight enough I could somehow will the weather away.
I dreamt of a hispanic man it was weeks ago he was short like most my favorite hispanics are. He was helping me my mom and dad remodel the house I lived in and he took me aside and said you know you are a mole, this is your medicine. I looked at him and said thanks, I looked really deep at him so he'd get I meant it. Then I took his pretty hispanic girl to my side and hugged her til her heart was well again which I did by looking third eye to eye. I didn't know her heart was bad but in my dream I felt it as soon as by my eye to eye hug it was made well. This I did for him as thanks, then I walked back to him and said please come to me when I am not asleep and remind me of this mole medicine. I woke and not long after remembered that dream and mole medicine is intimately connected to the earth and really needs fresh air. We know the truth before it ever is seen...
So now winter, whatcha gone do? I relish you, I go to the ocean or the woods everyday now and I walk and I breathe. I dont shiver, I am awake. In the morning when I open the shop as soon as everything is ready I step down on to the docks and I breathe the fresh air. Good morning, I say. Good morning, I love you. And winter there's where you're a show off, if you were a man I'd a left you a long time ago for that song and dance so dazzling it's almost boring, so old. Trying always to impress me like that. How you poke your light through the grey shadows or flurries of snow. How you wash the river with so much longing it is all I can do to not dive in. I guess I am lying, huh? Because show off as you are you still get me, everytime.
November 28, 2010
What's Rad: Alone in the Wilderness--Dead calm and zero degrees....
Dad and I are flipping back and forth between the Ravens game and Public Television, where they are showing Alone in the Wilderness. It's a movie made of footage that a retired man named Dick Proenneke took in 1967 when he decided to move in to the remote mountains and hand-build a cabin and live for the next 35 years. It's phenomenal, peaceful, reverent in its simplicity. So much lately--as I've risen each day before the sun to go in and open the new coffee house here at the beach that I am helping create--I stand in the clear cold air and smell the trees and see the stars and I think about being outdoors in the fall, living on the road in the tall deep forests and high mountains. How touchingly pure and wondrous that time of my life was, waking up in the tent, frost-covered, seeing my breath, coming back to life each day with the sun. I hope Brandon knows about this film. God did we have an amazing time living out on the road... Anyhow Alone in the Wilderness is rad, the footage stunning and inspiring and the timing impeccable, as if meant to help me celebrate the wild spirit in me so happy to be outdoors and free to roam...
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August 27, 2010
Spontaneous Download
Who am I writing to if not ever to me? It’s been a hell of a year. A hell of one. A long one, one that negates any prior necessity of predisposed positioning (there it is again, that garble tongue defense mechanism keep them in circles and you can get out before they even know they’ve been spun) and just tells you one day: there you are, here I am, and most of all: Forget it all. How the hell did this happen.
I don’t know what I want to say. Poetry comes out used to only to him. The ovulatory time gets here and I am caught up on some man, every time, and all my thirsty creative energy goes out the door in long timeless bouts of headtrip and daydream. This is better than it going out on Adult Ed? I tell myself. But it is true, I am only third cycle in to my new life…had to get him out of my system last go round and it worked, it really did he is not even with no power now but simple and straight, not there, and that is the first time I ever wrote that scared as I always was that it would jinx things. That somehow without him the ovulatory release wouldn’t come again? And yet it did, it does…and it scares me the difference it really does. And makes me smile because, what else can I do? And chill Kel you are the one of all who always has to tell others—so this time just tell yourself: accept yourself all of yourself for where you are this moment and do not judge. It’s ok if there is always some man. I just remembered a dream I had last night, a large house in the woods on a corner of the ocean, on an island it reminds me in my aftersight of Vinyl Haven. It reminds me of Todd. I’ve been drinking coffee like mad not for all the work I am doing but for the late night fun I’m keeping, so even my sleep feels buzzed and sort of live-wired. It is light on the back porch, light air, light noise in the trees. One time a long time ago I used to sneak out from here out the side window of Tim and Mary’s bedroom and sneak through the secret patterned paths through the woods. Todd’s house Kohuts Lemers and more. Even longer time ago before that I used to go bikeriding just before night in the dusk to explore all the different side roads that led to more and more undiscovered parts of Ocean Pines. I hate it when things don’t make sense, a month ago they did, I was on fire, I had a book to write and so much poetry and little projects and pictures to make and send to friends. Now I am confused again, so much unknown, it is retrograde time before the equinox, time of the great review and rest before the shift. And what is happening to me is hard to pin down I hate it, hate it when I am not in control. Witness witness that is all there is right now to do… That is the great secret of me, the one that only the truest friends know. My free spirit is only free because it's the result of the last great opposition inside me. I WANT TO BE IN CONTROL. So I challenge myself, even, especially, finally, with that….
The other thing is that to be honest scares people. People exist and function in their categorized boxes: to say I am confused, equivalent of this in people’s head she is not happy. That is funny, lacks the process and any semblance of the grand picture, so myopic all about meeeeeee! Reflex reflexivity. Shows zero intuitive capacity, no real sense of the mystery or even a thumbprint idea of the design. I am more than happy, so happy it makes me giggle to think about my life and also makes me smile. I am an ace the ace and the wild card, able to be happy in whatever circumstance I am given to roll in because that is life and I want to live all I can while I’m here. Center in the moment and open to exactly what is in front of you happening right now. What else is there than that? It’s just that living sometimes, living the moment is being full of unanswers, and that is hard, but hard only means process, not bad. She tells herself. If that doesn’t work get some sleep. Sunshine, or water. Ahhh this very long year I don’t even remember who it was I used to be…Mercury retro scrolls like this it is tough to contain, it is tough because you are in limbo hanging there in the water and the water is a ripcurrent and you’re afraid if you go under there is no air. On Sept 12 we will come out, the quickening will occur then and then—equinox onthesamedayexactly as the full moon!!!! O people, if you only understood. If only you took a minute, looked over your own order to the Ordered Nature of things, easiest way to it just go sit outside a moment on the lawn. Listen, listen to the noise, elemental, of the days. Listen to the trees sway, listen to feel the airbreathbreeze. Warm your blood in the sun. The answers are there, nothing else, no need to run. It’s been a long year, PS, I love you, says the moon, the sun, the trees. And me.
I don’t know what I want to say. Poetry comes out used to only to him. The ovulatory time gets here and I am caught up on some man, every time, and all my thirsty creative energy goes out the door in long timeless bouts of headtrip and daydream. This is better than it going out on Adult Ed? I tell myself. But it is true, I am only third cycle in to my new life…had to get him out of my system last go round and it worked, it really did he is not even with no power now but simple and straight, not there, and that is the first time I ever wrote that scared as I always was that it would jinx things. That somehow without him the ovulatory release wouldn’t come again? And yet it did, it does…and it scares me the difference it really does. And makes me smile because, what else can I do? And chill Kel you are the one of all who always has to tell others—so this time just tell yourself: accept yourself all of yourself for where you are this moment and do not judge. It’s ok if there is always some man. I just remembered a dream I had last night, a large house in the woods on a corner of the ocean, on an island it reminds me in my aftersight of Vinyl Haven. It reminds me of Todd. I’ve been drinking coffee like mad not for all the work I am doing but for the late night fun I’m keeping, so even my sleep feels buzzed and sort of live-wired. It is light on the back porch, light air, light noise in the trees. One time a long time ago I used to sneak out from here out the side window of Tim and Mary’s bedroom and sneak through the secret patterned paths through the woods. Todd’s house Kohuts Lemers and more. Even longer time ago before that I used to go bikeriding just before night in the dusk to explore all the different side roads that led to more and more undiscovered parts of Ocean Pines. I hate it when things don’t make sense, a month ago they did, I was on fire, I had a book to write and so much poetry and little projects and pictures to make and send to friends. Now I am confused again, so much unknown, it is retrograde time before the equinox, time of the great review and rest before the shift. And what is happening to me is hard to pin down I hate it, hate it when I am not in control. Witness witness that is all there is right now to do… That is the great secret of me, the one that only the truest friends know. My free spirit is only free because it's the result of the last great opposition inside me. I WANT TO BE IN CONTROL. So I challenge myself, even, especially, finally, with that….
The other thing is that to be honest scares people. People exist and function in their categorized boxes: to say I am confused, equivalent of this in people’s head she is not happy. That is funny, lacks the process and any semblance of the grand picture, so myopic all about meeeeeee! Reflex reflexivity. Shows zero intuitive capacity, no real sense of the mystery or even a thumbprint idea of the design. I am more than happy, so happy it makes me giggle to think about my life and also makes me smile. I am an ace the ace and the wild card, able to be happy in whatever circumstance I am given to roll in because that is life and I want to live all I can while I’m here. Center in the moment and open to exactly what is in front of you happening right now. What else is there than that? It’s just that living sometimes, living the moment is being full of unanswers, and that is hard, but hard only means process, not bad. She tells herself. If that doesn’t work get some sleep. Sunshine, or water. Ahhh this very long year I don’t even remember who it was I used to be…Mercury retro scrolls like this it is tough to contain, it is tough because you are in limbo hanging there in the water and the water is a ripcurrent and you’re afraid if you go under there is no air. On Sept 12 we will come out, the quickening will occur then and then—equinox onthesamedayexactly as the full moon!!!! O people, if you only understood. If only you took a minute, looked over your own order to the Ordered Nature of things, easiest way to it just go sit outside a moment on the lawn. Listen, listen to the noise, elemental, of the days. Listen to the trees sway, listen to feel the airbreathbreeze. Warm your blood in the sun. The answers are there, nothing else, no need to run. It’s been a long year, PS, I love you, says the moon, the sun, the trees. And me.
July 5, 2010
Zeal-force vitality or loudass TV
This is it, this is the energy that had me so Bmore bound in the fall, in the winter, in the spring.
Driving to Mandy's, talking to Erika, chilling with Erin, crashing at my brothers.
This zeal-force vitality that comes with being in the swing, in the flow of my life.
WISDOM of Wildness~tell the people this, the ones who dont get it or dont know: our lives crash and throttle along, this is time of flow. Our lives too ebb like a far emptied flat mudbed dry of any current, this is time of rest and letting go. Too we go by our own Nature of things and STRESS comes from fighting your nature, meant to meld with Nature, so it is writ all things~Divine.
Time between summer solstice and first harvest is funny time of great friction stuck in void: it is peak growing season but the natural force-energy's begun to ebb. Stored sunlight for energy it is now especially that the winter, and how you cared for yourself or didn't then, will manifest and come to fruit in your spirit, your health mental physical emotional and more.
Maybe I'll go to Philly Wednesday? That would mean I'd miss out on hanging with my new 21 year old friends at Macky's tho tehe ha ha ho ho. Today I am going to the beach with Chrissy Shulka of Piezano's on the boardwalk 1996 history one of a million grrrls folded in to the mix back then of beach boys and the Crofton days. She has a baby now and I knew it but wasn't even thinking about it when I texted her deck-party Monday night? Got the little one with me she answered so even better, beaching it with an old and true grrrlfriend. Timmy and Ed and Tim's girl Sara and I will hit the deck party instead, and how funny is this, me 33 single girl in OC writing poems and putting pieces together of my novel and being an artist free spirit sunhead naturelover and for the first time in my whole life truly not giving a fuck?
Except for those few things.
I have a list of things to do today call Erika is number one, only behind opening a bank account. The small town local Chestertown one not gonna do for me no more. She said 12 whole years later what a relief, what a funny dream.
My landlord from Easton hasn't sent my securiyt deposit back. I'm in a wedding this weekend and my new baby neice-in (which is neice and cousin morphed as one) Savanna is already so old and I've already missed so much.
Beth and Paul live in my dreams. Like Josh did and does and now Micah and Kate and funny random people too, like Dominic and Jessica and Ms. Fran. But Beth and Paul speak only sweet allowance, o sacred air of deep soul breath breeze.
O life, and all your funny little schemes.
I tried to force myself in to sleeping but 33 hours of work in 3 days will keep you charged and get you awake by 7am. That, and dad's loud tv.
My favorite thing in the world is writing or reading in bed though, so the time is right, my nature is upon me, so here's to allowing it. To be.
Driving to Mandy's, talking to Erika, chilling with Erin, crashing at my brothers.
This zeal-force vitality that comes with being in the swing, in the flow of my life.
WISDOM of Wildness~tell the people this, the ones who dont get it or dont know: our lives crash and throttle along, this is time of flow. Our lives too ebb like a far emptied flat mudbed dry of any current, this is time of rest and letting go. Too we go by our own Nature of things and STRESS comes from fighting your nature, meant to meld with Nature, so it is writ all things~Divine.
Time between summer solstice and first harvest is funny time of great friction stuck in void: it is peak growing season but the natural force-energy's begun to ebb. Stored sunlight for energy it is now especially that the winter, and how you cared for yourself or didn't then, will manifest and come to fruit in your spirit, your health mental physical emotional and more.
Maybe I'll go to Philly Wednesday? That would mean I'd miss out on hanging with my new 21 year old friends at Macky's tho tehe ha ha ho ho. Today I am going to the beach with Chrissy Shulka of Piezano's on the boardwalk 1996 history one of a million grrrls folded in to the mix back then of beach boys and the Crofton days. She has a baby now and I knew it but wasn't even thinking about it when I texted her deck-party Monday night? Got the little one with me she answered so even better, beaching it with an old and true grrrlfriend. Timmy and Ed and Tim's girl Sara and I will hit the deck party instead, and how funny is this, me 33 single girl in OC writing poems and putting pieces together of my novel and being an artist free spirit sunhead naturelover and for the first time in my whole life truly not giving a fuck?
Except for those few things.
I have a list of things to do today call Erika is number one, only behind opening a bank account. The small town local Chestertown one not gonna do for me no more. She said 12 whole years later what a relief, what a funny dream.
My landlord from Easton hasn't sent my securiyt deposit back. I'm in a wedding this weekend and my new baby neice-in (which is neice and cousin morphed as one) Savanna is already so old and I've already missed so much.
Beth and Paul live in my dreams. Like Josh did and does and now Micah and Kate and funny random people too, like Dominic and Jessica and Ms. Fran. But Beth and Paul speak only sweet allowance, o sacred air of deep soul breath breeze.
O life, and all your funny little schemes.
I tried to force myself in to sleeping but 33 hours of work in 3 days will keep you charged and get you awake by 7am. That, and dad's loud tv.
My favorite thing in the world is writing or reading in bed though, so the time is right, my nature is upon me, so here's to allowing it. To be.
April 27, 2010
Lunar Beltane
...tonight! She peaks at full at 5:18am on the EC. First full moon in Taurus is Lunar Beltane. Taurus is a fixed energy in the earth element. I love the energy of right now its so healing, it's like if we could hear the spheres of heaven and the mountains and trees all singing that is what we are soaking up right now. Under Aries last month we had all that heat and fire to initiate new ideas. Think of the sun that was busy heating and busting open all those new buds and seeds. That's Aries, pure new life force. Now Taurus is all about the earth--look around! Everything's in full bloom it is just absolutely alluring outside, breathtaking. Taurus full moon is the apex or peak of fixed energy, of lifeforce-into-matter fertility everywhere. Beltane also is traditionally a time that celebrates the union of man and woman--or in Jungian application, animus and anima energies. We all have each within and they strive to compliment our inner and outter lives.
That wonderful earth energy is energizing us from within right now--magnifying what we are growing or manifesting in our own lives, whether spiritually and emotionally, creatively, in relationships, finances, homes, business, etc
It is a time internally and externally that our year's intentions are beginning to manifest. The moon is in Scorpio tonight tho, which is a water sign. The moon she rules our inner-lives, the inside us we are less likely to show the world. It is spiritual in scope and not ruled by personality. So we could be feeling overly sensitive today especially, and mercury is retro so all that watery emotional energy is peaking at the same time with the internal review of whatever issues we are evolving through since our last retro ended in mid-January. If suddenly you are finding yourself revisiting something you thought you'd resolved it's Merc, who rules our mental energy, showing where there is still restlessness surrounding that issue.
The other thing to pay attention to: the Holy Days on the Earth Path are when people, all people, benefit from added reflective time. Visions and insights are more likely. I like to actually sit under the moon and bathe my spirit in the light. I believe we need moonlight much as sun--in older days women ovulated under the full moon because it so directly affects the pineal gland. Interesting stuff, huh?
Be well, be whole. May you take time enough to appreciate the world, the earth and her flow and cycles, around you.
That wonderful earth energy is energizing us from within right now--magnifying what we are growing or manifesting in our own lives, whether spiritually and emotionally, creatively, in relationships, finances, homes, business, etc
It is a time internally and externally that our year's intentions are beginning to manifest. The moon is in Scorpio tonight tho, which is a water sign. The moon she rules our inner-lives, the inside us we are less likely to show the world. It is spiritual in scope and not ruled by personality. So we could be feeling overly sensitive today especially, and mercury is retro so all that watery emotional energy is peaking at the same time with the internal review of whatever issues we are evolving through since our last retro ended in mid-January. If suddenly you are finding yourself revisiting something you thought you'd resolved it's Merc, who rules our mental energy, showing where there is still restlessness surrounding that issue.
The other thing to pay attention to: the Holy Days on the Earth Path are when people, all people, benefit from added reflective time. Visions and insights are more likely. I like to actually sit under the moon and bathe my spirit in the light. I believe we need moonlight much as sun--in older days women ovulated under the full moon because it so directly affects the pineal gland. Interesting stuff, huh?
Be well, be whole. May you take time enough to appreciate the world, the earth and her flow and cycles, around you.
April 25, 2010
Reminiscing. Play it Again Sam's.
The door of the CoffeeCat is heavy wood and you have to push it in the center of the handle with a certain amount of compact umph for it to swing easily open. This morning and without any anticipation upon the push of the door I got struck in the gut with the most endured sense of wistful longing, an immediate and aching clutch on my heart the moment I stepped inside.
It was the tunneled noise of the milk-steamer that did it. And the warm bouancy, from all the rain outside, inside on the air.
I scanned the room for a recognizable face and there was Liz, the barista I got to know first when I started coming here last year. She is in her senior year of highschool and an athlete so I rarely see her anymore.
Just that little familiarity added a certain tweak to my heart.
Sometimes, with the least amount of expectation or warning, this happens to me. I am struck by sudden and complete awe for life. For its fleeting passing. For all the little moments that are all the time sliding us by.
This morning it descended upon me in a memory so physical I could've stepped back in time. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Chestertown my senior year of college. 2001 and most of 02. Mornings in the winter each step on the cold earth I'd pound closer to downtown my breath would grow more severe--I'd clutch whatever thin little sweater I was wearing harder across my chest and see my knuckles redden by the chill. It seems it was always gray that winter. The door, when it pushed open, rang little bells and my glasses immediately would cover in steam and my nose fill with the most alluring savory smell of the homemade muffins, Comfort Food, that Natalie Comfort was busy baking. One of the other baristas, almost always, was already at work steaming themselves a morning wake-me-up drink.
I dropped out of college twice from drugging and booze--the second time it was in order to get clean. The year I worked as a barista, my senior year, was the only year I was clean while in school, and it's really the only year that I remember with any sort of clarity. And they are sweet, specific sensory memories. The inborn joy that bubbles out of Katie that would jolt my heart every Thursday afternoon when we would meet and walk in to poetry class together; the tweak of enjoyment seeing the new outfit or wig that Libby would have on when I would turn the corner on High Street and see her in front of the coffee shop on her smoke break; the peace, inherent, of the way Jazmine moved across our apartment--the way one person's nature can wordlessly inspire you to want more from yourself. Dear God did I relive the collective experiences of that time in a mere instant this morning~and oh did it make my heart cry out in longing over what used to be.
It made me think quite instantly about other times in my life that are no more than memory~other times and whole other groups of fabulous, wild, hysterical, ridiculous people that are actively no more to me today than, if I am lucky, a facebook status update. Crofton, the pizza shop, 6th street, Ocean Pines Beach Club, the boys from the beach. I guess what ultimately this experience did was force me in to the reality of what I've quietly been witnessing and coming to terms with in the past few months: that too, Chestertown, the people there and memories, Play it Again, Andy's, Truslow Road, Anngar....all those too will pass away. Have already begun to, and how the aspects of this have hit me with a surrendering that is much like grief.
There is no other way to put it than that. I am looking forward, in great joy and enthusiasm, towards this next unwrit chapter of my life. It thrills me to no end the great, raw power in this~of choice and faith when mixed together. The pure alchemy of it. Yet the picture would be incomplete without the other...the saying goodbye. I have learned that all things pass, and yet somehow come again~that this is the thing about life. Most experiences merely change form, whether they are relationships, aspects of our selves or each other, the work we do, the family we spend time with, the ways in general we spend our time. There is at work always a greater thread that is weaving us and nudging us and it is part the tapestry--and part our choice of the stitches me choose to make, that make up all of life. I am lucky today to still have close, amazying friends that span all parts of my journey, and too grateful as hell for social sites like Facebook because even if we dont actually talk or see one another--knowing for example that Jess Singleton is happy and has a dog and a job she enjoys out someplace in Arizona, or that Ryan Muller is surfing and chilling in Florida gives me infinite peace.
I am in the Coffee Cat right now, preparing to work on my book. A warm-up as Erika would say. Sweet sweet Erika from all the way back chorus and basketball practice at Arthur Slade.
In less than a month Coffee Cat will no longer be my regular haunt. Once, my senior year of college, the poet Li Young Lee came to speak to our Contemporary Poetry Class. He was asked about faith, and his belief in God. He could not answer specific to a godhead, or even to faith, but what he did say was that LIFE is in this moment, and this moment is also always changing and passing on by. I make practice, he said, of centering myself much as I can throughout my day and then in that centered moment, reminding myself by saying Thank you, Goodbye.
Ahhhh, reminder to be present. Thank you, good bye.
It was the tunneled noise of the milk-steamer that did it. And the warm bouancy, from all the rain outside, inside on the air.
I scanned the room for a recognizable face and there was Liz, the barista I got to know first when I started coming here last year. She is in her senior year of highschool and an athlete so I rarely see her anymore.
Just that little familiarity added a certain tweak to my heart.
Sometimes, with the least amount of expectation or warning, this happens to me. I am struck by sudden and complete awe for life. For its fleeting passing. For all the little moments that are all the time sliding us by.
This morning it descended upon me in a memory so physical I could've stepped back in time. I worked as a barista in a coffee shop in Chestertown my senior year of college. 2001 and most of 02. Mornings in the winter each step on the cold earth I'd pound closer to downtown my breath would grow more severe--I'd clutch whatever thin little sweater I was wearing harder across my chest and see my knuckles redden by the chill. It seems it was always gray that winter. The door, when it pushed open, rang little bells and my glasses immediately would cover in steam and my nose fill with the most alluring savory smell of the homemade muffins, Comfort Food, that Natalie Comfort was busy baking. One of the other baristas, almost always, was already at work steaming themselves a morning wake-me-up drink.
I dropped out of college twice from drugging and booze--the second time it was in order to get clean. The year I worked as a barista, my senior year, was the only year I was clean while in school, and it's really the only year that I remember with any sort of clarity. And they are sweet, specific sensory memories. The inborn joy that bubbles out of Katie that would jolt my heart every Thursday afternoon when we would meet and walk in to poetry class together; the tweak of enjoyment seeing the new outfit or wig that Libby would have on when I would turn the corner on High Street and see her in front of the coffee shop on her smoke break; the peace, inherent, of the way Jazmine moved across our apartment--the way one person's nature can wordlessly inspire you to want more from yourself. Dear God did I relive the collective experiences of that time in a mere instant this morning~and oh did it make my heart cry out in longing over what used to be.
It made me think quite instantly about other times in my life that are no more than memory~other times and whole other groups of fabulous, wild, hysterical, ridiculous people that are actively no more to me today than, if I am lucky, a facebook status update. Crofton, the pizza shop, 6th street, Ocean Pines Beach Club, the boys from the beach. I guess what ultimately this experience did was force me in to the reality of what I've quietly been witnessing and coming to terms with in the past few months: that too, Chestertown, the people there and memories, Play it Again, Andy's, Truslow Road, Anngar....all those too will pass away. Have already begun to, and how the aspects of this have hit me with a surrendering that is much like grief.
There is no other way to put it than that. I am looking forward, in great joy and enthusiasm, towards this next unwrit chapter of my life. It thrills me to no end the great, raw power in this~of choice and faith when mixed together. The pure alchemy of it. Yet the picture would be incomplete without the other...the saying goodbye. I have learned that all things pass, and yet somehow come again~that this is the thing about life. Most experiences merely change form, whether they are relationships, aspects of our selves or each other, the work we do, the family we spend time with, the ways in general we spend our time. There is at work always a greater thread that is weaving us and nudging us and it is part the tapestry--and part our choice of the stitches me choose to make, that make up all of life. I am lucky today to still have close, amazying friends that span all parts of my journey, and too grateful as hell for social sites like Facebook because even if we dont actually talk or see one another--knowing for example that Jess Singleton is happy and has a dog and a job she enjoys out someplace in Arizona, or that Ryan Muller is surfing and chilling in Florida gives me infinite peace.
I am in the Coffee Cat right now, preparing to work on my book. A warm-up as Erika would say. Sweet sweet Erika from all the way back chorus and basketball practice at Arthur Slade.
In less than a month Coffee Cat will no longer be my regular haunt. Once, my senior year of college, the poet Li Young Lee came to speak to our Contemporary Poetry Class. He was asked about faith, and his belief in God. He could not answer specific to a godhead, or even to faith, but what he did say was that LIFE is in this moment, and this moment is also always changing and passing on by. I make practice, he said, of centering myself much as I can throughout my day and then in that centered moment, reminding myself by saying Thank you, Goodbye.
Ahhhh, reminder to be present. Thank you, good bye.
March 17, 2010
Nature and Will
Last night in the middle of the night at like 4 I turned the light on I was awake and the only thing I can say is that I was anxious, but in an excited way with an alive mind that I think was anticipating the weekend. I blog-rolled and looked over my own blog reading recent posts, which is something I am neurotic and narcissistic about every so often, and thought to myself I dont know I think I am going through one of those times when I dont have much to say. I realized that what has been on here on my blog the last couple posts is about tidying up the remnant hurts that still are left "at home." And I think I've about wrung that free of all there is left to say.
And now it is now, and I am here, and that is the untruth: because as often as it is about my voice and the capturing, it too is about just downloading and processing and getting it out. Which is when I most feel sorry for you Dear Reader for reading when the truth for me is sometimes like today I just need to blabble spontaneous download and it is an exercise in futility but then, isn't that what all art in some slants of thought is? I am writing literally to bring myself in to the day or really, just to clean and charge my mind.
I fell back to sleep around 6:30 and was bumming when I felt the blanket of rest flit finally over my consciousness: it's going to be late when I get up now...and it was, it was after 9, I wanted to be in the office already. I am meeting with my writing partner tonight, and spending the night at Mandy's after so we can late night catch-up. It is golden sunny out, the little blue speedwells are popped out everywhere and the air smells so stank of wet earth and high-nostrilled sweet salt cooking from the creeks and muddy riverbeds that all I want to do is wander in to the woods and hug armfulls of pineneedles and wet lacy leaves to my face and chest.
I have data to review and submit.
Ah, poor me, no? I am so silly with my Will. I've been thinking a lot about nature, about one's nature and the larger, macro Nature of things. How in that fabulous magic double helix way of manifestation One's Nature, and the larger Nature, are convergent in the nebulous with actual Nature as well, with the elemental base of all things. Through which we get to act out project on to and portray this walking dream. I have a couple women who are hella close to me, who I've grown up with over the last decade or so and we coach and mentor each other through life. Three of the four of us are Aries, and I was thinking about this because it's come up a lot in our recent discussions--our impulsiveness, our fire, our Will. Aries is just about upon us--the Equinox is Saturday!! and after all this mutable rain--all this watery washing away of things--now will come the harnessing of change. The worst thing one can do is fight their nature, I believe that in the dance of Wills, inside the limited human understanding of morality and religiosity and ethics and Free Will and submission, there is the beautiful meeting place where the seeds of what we want birth the potentiality for the highest possible example of how and who we could be. Where Free Will and High Will transmute and are one and the same. Ahhhh, Magic! Doubt, and fighting these impulses, are the truest sin? In meditation under the last full moon I was long and quiet and then the trance slipped on, and my medicine Owl came to me and I had a brief but clear reminder of the importance of Intention, and aligning our truths and not fighting what we want. And, too, owning clearly what we dont want "because when we ignore what we dont want this becomes guilt."
Woah, well it is St. Patricks Day I guess in the fashion of this tradition (O mama Brigid my first and true rune) what was meant to come out today was some good olfashion Celtic esoteria--Nature Wisdom for all of you.
Yea so. I was all amped about this weekend in the middle of the night, for my little fancy dress and dancing and celebrating Saturday night. I didn't sleep well in excitement and allure and wakefullness aligned with the Nature of things. The sun is shining and so I will go now, get dressed, and walk to work. Be well be well be true to you...!
And now it is now, and I am here, and that is the untruth: because as often as it is about my voice and the capturing, it too is about just downloading and processing and getting it out. Which is when I most feel sorry for you Dear Reader for reading when the truth for me is sometimes like today I just need to blabble spontaneous download and it is an exercise in futility but then, isn't that what all art in some slants of thought is? I am writing literally to bring myself in to the day or really, just to clean and charge my mind.
I fell back to sleep around 6:30 and was bumming when I felt the blanket of rest flit finally over my consciousness: it's going to be late when I get up now...and it was, it was after 9, I wanted to be in the office already. I am meeting with my writing partner tonight, and spending the night at Mandy's after so we can late night catch-up. It is golden sunny out, the little blue speedwells are popped out everywhere and the air smells so stank of wet earth and high-nostrilled sweet salt cooking from the creeks and muddy riverbeds that all I want to do is wander in to the woods and hug armfulls of pineneedles and wet lacy leaves to my face and chest.
I have data to review and submit.
Ah, poor me, no? I am so silly with my Will. I've been thinking a lot about nature, about one's nature and the larger, macro Nature of things. How in that fabulous magic double helix way of manifestation One's Nature, and the larger Nature, are convergent in the nebulous with actual Nature as well, with the elemental base of all things. Through which we get to act out project on to and portray this walking dream. I have a couple women who are hella close to me, who I've grown up with over the last decade or so and we coach and mentor each other through life. Three of the four of us are Aries, and I was thinking about this because it's come up a lot in our recent discussions--our impulsiveness, our fire, our Will. Aries is just about upon us--the Equinox is Saturday!! and after all this mutable rain--all this watery washing away of things--now will come the harnessing of change. The worst thing one can do is fight their nature, I believe that in the dance of Wills, inside the limited human understanding of morality and religiosity and ethics and Free Will and submission, there is the beautiful meeting place where the seeds of what we want birth the potentiality for the highest possible example of how and who we could be. Where Free Will and High Will transmute and are one and the same. Ahhhh, Magic! Doubt, and fighting these impulses, are the truest sin? In meditation under the last full moon I was long and quiet and then the trance slipped on, and my medicine Owl came to me and I had a brief but clear reminder of the importance of Intention, and aligning our truths and not fighting what we want. And, too, owning clearly what we dont want "because when we ignore what we dont want this becomes guilt."
Woah, well it is St. Patricks Day I guess in the fashion of this tradition (O mama Brigid my first and true rune) what was meant to come out today was some good olfashion Celtic esoteria--Nature Wisdom for all of you.
Yea so. I was all amped about this weekend in the middle of the night, for my little fancy dress and dancing and celebrating Saturday night. I didn't sleep well in excitement and allure and wakefullness aligned with the Nature of things. The sun is shining and so I will go now, get dressed, and walk to work. Be well be well be true to you...!
February 27, 2010
BURNT UP
The first thing that happened is I chose to let my house start to go.
By that I mean my apartment, of course. But it's the first time since I moved in and got unpacked that I stopped picking up after myself at least every third day. And I watched in a madness that was rimmed mostly by delight as the order around here, bit by bit, started to whittle away.
I knew all along. This is a need to have some control: when it gets real bad, when it's real bad I'll know and then I will open the windows and go gangbusters in here and get to clean up and feel like I have some sort of power over this place.
I have poems accumulating again, lots of them and I have started to want to post them, but I wont. Bc there are some things I get about myself now, about my voice, about how I write. And to post them would mean to change the formats, and the formats are good because they are intimate to me. My artistry. I am 33 woah no I'm not but I almost am--I am soon 33 and have been writing poems in spiral backed books since I was 14. I am 33 soon and I know me now, know my voice really for the first time and I've never before now felt good about that. I have been writing as my first religion since the choice I made on the steel-posted squeaky twin bed I fell in love with Brandon with at Libby's old pad on Wash Ave: This is it. This, writing, this is what--no matter what else--I will do. "This" to quote my fave line from a poem back then, This, all I ever had to fall back on. So I am for the first time in my life secure enough now, secure in my style choices--affect on the rhythm and cadence of things--in voice choices for reasons I only just recently fully got are political to me, in content and theme that arent choices but that compel and create and are simply born of me much as I turn to and motivate them.
And so it is February again, that bone-haired last week of February that always singes me to deadened discretion on the inside. I am an assault pariah when it comes to that silly toss of the head term Winter Blues. Blues aint the half of it. But I keep going I keep going I keep going the words take me there and write me all the way through. And I refuse to substantiate the society claims, the impartial explanations: it's just chemical, merely the result of lac of light. Of course! But we dont get what we mean when we say that because most of us dont get IT'S ALL LIGHT. IT'S ALL, AT OUR ESSENCE, ABOUT LIGHT. This is soul stuff we're talking about. This is the twinkling nebulous of mythos that glistens on the inner wall of tramps and blue bloods alike. What are your darkest secrets, those rat-teeth gnaws that have you crawling the walls of you in there, especially when the Great Everything with preened deliverance is making us all East Coasters--where the deep blood of societal injury cellularly and in the very earth remains--sit still from snow again and again? Think not of dead-ends but reasons--those are the motivators: The Divine Hungers. The ashes that linger are deceptive, we forget they are reason and once were bone tissue and scars and are meant to feed the later-coming new life of things.
Take medicine or get drunk or stoned or mean fucked-up, or, the best, lie to your self lots and all you want. I'm booted at this now--a soldier who knows the cadence of the diligent rhythm ellipses of her own soul. So I know the truth of me this time for sure: I am burnt out. Going over the same exact chart of this same exact time last year--when my ailments manifested truly in dis-ease. I literally remember standing in the back office at a family support center this very time last year, way out in the country looking at all the bureaucratic broke ass stuff I was required to do, feeling so hopeless and powerless, Haitian refugees literally crowding the door in the shy way they do when they dont speak the language and also dont know you yet. And being on the phone with someone else from work and her laughing about all the excess: the numbers of numbers of students out in the sticks we are responsible for/to. And I felt that same thing break, and it happened, the same thing but not nearly as deep a break or elemental, again this very week. My job is one fit for a liar contented on kicking the ashes. So much of society stays content on this, on the look-down at your feet neck-stuck cramped stare. There are eyes I suppose that must stay most-way closed because to open them up, and I know this, takes a lot of willingness and mostly can be an awful, awful lot of pain and grief. Dealing with reality, at first, often is...
But my eyes are opened, and have been.
My voice, carrying crying laughing learning loving seiging destroying but all the while leading me through, and fighting for my own ability to trust in it all along, is the reason why.
By that I mean my apartment, of course. But it's the first time since I moved in and got unpacked that I stopped picking up after myself at least every third day. And I watched in a madness that was rimmed mostly by delight as the order around here, bit by bit, started to whittle away.
I knew all along. This is a need to have some control: when it gets real bad, when it's real bad I'll know and then I will open the windows and go gangbusters in here and get to clean up and feel like I have some sort of power over this place.
I have poems accumulating again, lots of them and I have started to want to post them, but I wont. Bc there are some things I get about myself now, about my voice, about how I write. And to post them would mean to change the formats, and the formats are good because they are intimate to me. My artistry. I am 33 woah no I'm not but I almost am--I am soon 33 and have been writing poems in spiral backed books since I was 14. I am 33 soon and I know me now, know my voice really for the first time and I've never before now felt good about that. I have been writing as my first religion since the choice I made on the steel-posted squeaky twin bed I fell in love with Brandon with at Libby's old pad on Wash Ave: This is it. This, writing, this is what--no matter what else--I will do. "This" to quote my fave line from a poem back then, This, all I ever had to fall back on. So I am for the first time in my life secure enough now, secure in my style choices--affect on the rhythm and cadence of things--in voice choices for reasons I only just recently fully got are political to me, in content and theme that arent choices but that compel and create and are simply born of me much as I turn to and motivate them.
And so it is February again, that bone-haired last week of February that always singes me to deadened discretion on the inside. I am an assault pariah when it comes to that silly toss of the head term Winter Blues. Blues aint the half of it. But I keep going I keep going I keep going the words take me there and write me all the way through. And I refuse to substantiate the society claims, the impartial explanations: it's just chemical, merely the result of lac of light. Of course! But we dont get what we mean when we say that because most of us dont get IT'S ALL LIGHT. IT'S ALL, AT OUR ESSENCE, ABOUT LIGHT. This is soul stuff we're talking about. This is the twinkling nebulous of mythos that glistens on the inner wall of tramps and blue bloods alike. What are your darkest secrets, those rat-teeth gnaws that have you crawling the walls of you in there, especially when the Great Everything with preened deliverance is making us all East Coasters--where the deep blood of societal injury cellularly and in the very earth remains--sit still from snow again and again? Think not of dead-ends but reasons--those are the motivators: The Divine Hungers. The ashes that linger are deceptive, we forget they are reason and once were bone tissue and scars and are meant to feed the later-coming new life of things.
Take medicine or get drunk or stoned or mean fucked-up, or, the best, lie to your self lots and all you want. I'm booted at this now--a soldier who knows the cadence of the diligent rhythm ellipses of her own soul. So I know the truth of me this time for sure: I am burnt out. Going over the same exact chart of this same exact time last year--when my ailments manifested truly in dis-ease. I literally remember standing in the back office at a family support center this very time last year, way out in the country looking at all the bureaucratic broke ass stuff I was required to do, feeling so hopeless and powerless, Haitian refugees literally crowding the door in the shy way they do when they dont speak the language and also dont know you yet. And being on the phone with someone else from work and her laughing about all the excess: the numbers of numbers of students out in the sticks we are responsible for/to. And I felt that same thing break, and it happened, the same thing but not nearly as deep a break or elemental, again this very week. My job is one fit for a liar contented on kicking the ashes. So much of society stays content on this, on the look-down at your feet neck-stuck cramped stare. There are eyes I suppose that must stay most-way closed because to open them up, and I know this, takes a lot of willingness and mostly can be an awful, awful lot of pain and grief. Dealing with reality, at first, often is...
But my eyes are opened, and have been.
My voice, carrying crying laughing learning loving seiging destroying but all the while leading me through, and fighting for my own ability to trust in it all along, is the reason why.
February 12, 2010
New Moon Meditation, in great enthusiasm, of the Future yet to Come!!
'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'
~W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'
~W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition
February 5, 2010
From Letters to A Young Poet
Man, I just wrote the longest post ever, the kind that made me feel turned-out from the inside, flexed, stretched, fully-expelled with the hairs of my capillaries outreaching for a dance in the sun. Or the snow storm, as it were.
Guess that's all that really matters, hmmm? Since it got erased when I tried to post it.
That's only happened one other time, a long esoteric post from years ago when I was still on the farm, all about LSD the Merry Pranksters etheric wounds and generational vibrations, and acting our destinies unconsciously from our DNA. Too much witchywisdom at once for one hot shot to the blogosphere!? This post I just lost had secrets that maybe I wasn't really ready to give out...
The snow just started in Easton. I am at the Coffee Cat, writing. In my car is a home-made blueberry pie from the Amish Market. People there, unlike the Acme, or Foodlion or Wal-Mart, unlike the streets of downtown, were mellow, smiley, moving slow.
I am not going to include the links, thoughts and intentions that my post-lost-to-the-ether included. Instead I will give you this, from Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. And I will say also that the Mama told us this, if we were listening, about the snow. Back September when Fall first got here, under the moon. Farmer's Almanac too says it will come and come through March. Mama says it just cuz we need a good deep rest, lots of time to listen. Which means come Equinox and tide-changing in March, there will follow lots and lots of time to grow....We'll either be prepared, or not!
Fine by me, I'll be writing!
You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must ," then build your life according to this necessity...
Guess that's all that really matters, hmmm? Since it got erased when I tried to post it.
That's only happened one other time, a long esoteric post from years ago when I was still on the farm, all about LSD the Merry Pranksters etheric wounds and generational vibrations, and acting our destinies unconsciously from our DNA. Too much witchywisdom at once for one hot shot to the blogosphere!? This post I just lost had secrets that maybe I wasn't really ready to give out...
The snow just started in Easton. I am at the Coffee Cat, writing. In my car is a home-made blueberry pie from the Amish Market. People there, unlike the Acme, or Foodlion or Wal-Mart, unlike the streets of downtown, were mellow, smiley, moving slow.
I am not going to include the links, thoughts and intentions that my post-lost-to-the-ether included. Instead I will give you this, from Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. And I will say also that the Mama told us this, if we were listening, about the snow. Back September when Fall first got here, under the moon. Farmer's Almanac too says it will come and come through March. Mama says it just cuz we need a good deep rest, lots of time to listen. Which means come Equinox and tide-changing in March, there will follow lots and lots of time to grow....We'll either be prepared, or not!
Fine by me, I'll be writing!
You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must ," then build your life according to this necessity...
October 16, 2009
Starry Like Me: Meditation on the Final Harvest
Hoooooray!!!
Pagan New Year is here, or, at least that is according to me. And if you'll mind me just a while I'll explain (otherwise scroll all the way down!):
I was born a good Catholic girl from blue collar, solid working-class roots. We went to St. Rose of Lima in Baltimore with Grammy and the Mc's when I was a little little girl, and later, to St. Athanasius, literally the church at the end of Church Street where Grammy lived in Brooklyn Park. I still remember the hard concrete feel of the church steps out the side door when I would sit awaiting the adults and look out over the bay to the Key Bridge. And I remember the sound of Grammy, depressed from the loss of her husband, Pop, the Colonel, as she literally started crying with joy on the phone when I called to sheepishly tell her I got awarded one of the scholarships to Arthur Slade Catholic School in the fourth grade. I grew up in uniforms that showed my knees and thighs when I got too tall during pre-puberty growth spurts, and later in uniforms that I rolled at the hip to show the edge of my boxers or thigh-high socks.
It was around that time, high school Archbishop Spalding knee-high trouser socks and maryjane doc martens that the witchy sense kicked in. Mom had it all along, would beg me not to go out certain nights because of a feeling in her gut, only to have me come home escorted by the cops, you know, arrested or car-wrecked or in trouble for smoking weed or some such thing. When it started, that sense, to arise in me I took it for granted, blamed it on the weed or LSD. In general at a young age I thought it separate from me, outside of me--as I'd been taught God to be. Which, ultimately, is how you learn to fear something. If it is separate, other than, or outside of your self.
I was "over" the Catholic thing by puberty (I had no room at the time for a system with such harsh dictates. I was a riot grrrl, and doing lots of experimentation that was "sinful" then, tho it's clear now that what was actually happening was my aversion to anything dogma or stringent institution beginning to show form.) I was a firm and dedicated "aetheist". Which is a lie I was telling myself.... I mean my earliest memories are swept gold at the fringes: mystical marvelling in the basement at Grammy and Pop's, or at our townhouse before my brother was even born, in the backyard at New Cut Farms where we moved when he was an infant. Memories of being stilled from the inside, then revelling in wonder over a deep and boundless inside sense that I remember choosing to just call Jesus back then. At 16 I read Tom Robbins for the first time, this correlated with my teacher, Mr. Keisling, introducing to me Joe Campbell's work on mythological thinking and the Hero's Journey. Acid was making me want to believe in a world magical and within. And specifically Robbins rambled on in such delightful boundless and resonating ways about white people in the Western World, who settled over everything indigenous and natural with a conquering mentality because we were severed from our true roots: of agricultural, pagan ancestry. I really, really liked this!
So it makes at least a little sense that, at age 17, in late October, with little other information than a head full of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Keisling's ditto run-offs on Joe Campbell and the purpose and necessity of myth, that I would get out of my car late one night, feel a sense of breathing or life coming out of the woods, and proceed to mark a four-cornered square off in the drive way by walking to and nodding to each corner, than placing myself within the square. I remember clearly daring myself--to trust what I was doing and to further trust that the woods, or presence of them, wouldn't make themselves known to me unless it were meant to be. And that is it, the one thing that as long as I can remember has been part of my make-up--what I used to call Jesus when I was little. An ever present line of peace and sweet that, tho not always available to me, is still somehow always there. A simple and real ground within that can only be described as I know.
I dont know when or how I fully surrendered to this path, but the thing is: it is mine. I take little bits of info from wherever I go, I take what fits, or what challenges me, because that too is a piece meant to fit--and leave the rest. I subscribe to no specific belief system other than the oneness of things at the base level--energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changes forms--and this is enough for me. I pray to Jesus because I believe archetypes are real, which is also why I find peace in the inner-realization exercises taught by the Buddha, and the reason I pray to the Mama and sit in the wisdom and light of her moon. Mostly I joy and revel and trust fully and wonder in the Great Unknown. I talk to trees and the earth and the wind and fire because of dakinis, or orishas, or elementals, but mostly because I believe archetypes are real. I worship the patterning of things, and at the end of the day beleive my only true Calling is the Hero's myth of my own and my own Divine Becoming as Joe Campbell teaches. The entelechy of potential. Being of service to others entelechal value through this. I believe in patterning, in entelechy, because as I said if I believe in the oneness than I believe archetypes are real. I believe in the power within and getting quiet to captivate and access this power. And I believe poor is the man who cant sit a while, or sees no value in doing so, amid the presence of his own self. The only thing he can know for sure...
Which brings me to pagan new years, or the last moon cycle of the harvest year. I doubt you'll find what I am about to share anywhere else, and that is because I have taken some generalized teachings from astrology, esoteria and paganism and applied them to my own personal experiences in life. I spit them back out know as much for you as for me because teaching/writing is how I better process and learn, how my path continues to open up before me. The New Moon is tomorrow and to me this is the most powerfull moon of the year. Traditional pagans celebrate Samhain, or New Years, at Halloween. It is the time when the "veil" is the thinnest.
In my own life this "veil" correlates to the waning amount of sunlight and the circadian effect it has on sleep and subconscious levels. Which for me, as an artist/writer/poet/shaman/witch is important, because the subconscious level is the place where my dreams happen. Where the details of life, especially that 90% that my brain is busy registering while I'm unaware and just doing my ol thing, get processed and integrated. This is also where Jung believes the reign of archetypes exists in full, our collective unconscious or memory. And so now we have greater access to this place. Likewise, new moon is when literally, the nighttime dark is darkest. So to me, and in my own life again and again, when the dark place comes it is the time of pure subconscious, a time to watch dreams AND especially what issues or joys, what fears or little nags surface in the day to day. Esoteric astrology teaches that a seed thought is dropped during the new moon--at the darkest part of the night the subconscious place aligns too with a archtype, or pattern, meant in an etelecholigical way to grow out of and become you. By the light of the following full moon your subconscious will have brought this seed or pattern more in to fruition in your day to day actions and expereince, and more to the light of your mental awareness.
Agricultural peasants of Europe took advantage of the extra light at October/November's final full moon to crop the last harvests and to put up the seeds that yielded from that year's produce. Rituals were actually harvest times in the field! This is why it is pagan new year: the end of the agricultural bounty for the year, thus time to look forward, to larder up the pantry and batten down the cellar with the bounty for the cold time to come, and as well anticipate next years harvest rounds. Also time to give thanks to the pantheon of Gods, or archetypes, that ruled the fertility cycles of the earth. I believe in our collective unconscious, as well as in the DNA memory of our cells, we still rise and fall according to the the tide of these old agricultural patternings. Later, we came to call this imprinted tradition Halloween.
Personally I have, again and again, experienced it to be true that the new moon preceding the Final Harvest Full Moon is that time during which I can glimpse the fruits of my entire upcoming year to come, because hints of them are so close to the surface of awareness within me. It is such a fabulous time to celebrate our yeild!!!!
So friends, take heart, take stock, be joyful and with gratitude and may you, this weekend, seek the quiet guidance of your Own.
As for me--my little bro's coming down the beach tonight with his beautiful fiance. We are having a fire for his bday--which, AUSPICIOUS auspicious hooray hooray--is also on the holy high day of last harvest new moon!!! What a year my bro must have to come, Woo hooooooo!!
And may you be blessed
and your blessings endings
that circle back to begin again
by this moon may your blessings enlarge
and circle for you this
holy cycle of samhain
harm to none &
blessed be!
O life. I love you.
Pagan New Year is here, or, at least that is according to me. And if you'll mind me just a while I'll explain (otherwise scroll all the way down!):
I was born a good Catholic girl from blue collar, solid working-class roots. We went to St. Rose of Lima in Baltimore with Grammy and the Mc's when I was a little little girl, and later, to St. Athanasius, literally the church at the end of Church Street where Grammy lived in Brooklyn Park. I still remember the hard concrete feel of the church steps out the side door when I would sit awaiting the adults and look out over the bay to the Key Bridge. And I remember the sound of Grammy, depressed from the loss of her husband, Pop, the Colonel, as she literally started crying with joy on the phone when I called to sheepishly tell her I got awarded one of the scholarships to Arthur Slade Catholic School in the fourth grade. I grew up in uniforms that showed my knees and thighs when I got too tall during pre-puberty growth spurts, and later in uniforms that I rolled at the hip to show the edge of my boxers or thigh-high socks.
It was around that time, high school Archbishop Spalding knee-high trouser socks and maryjane doc martens that the witchy sense kicked in. Mom had it all along, would beg me not to go out certain nights because of a feeling in her gut, only to have me come home escorted by the cops, you know, arrested or car-wrecked or in trouble for smoking weed or some such thing. When it started, that sense, to arise in me I took it for granted, blamed it on the weed or LSD. In general at a young age I thought it separate from me, outside of me--as I'd been taught God to be. Which, ultimately, is how you learn to fear something. If it is separate, other than, or outside of your self.
I was "over" the Catholic thing by puberty (I had no room at the time for a system with such harsh dictates. I was a riot grrrl, and doing lots of experimentation that was "sinful" then, tho it's clear now that what was actually happening was my aversion to anything dogma or stringent institution beginning to show form.) I was a firm and dedicated "aetheist". Which is a lie I was telling myself.... I mean my earliest memories are swept gold at the fringes: mystical marvelling in the basement at Grammy and Pop's, or at our townhouse before my brother was even born, in the backyard at New Cut Farms where we moved when he was an infant. Memories of being stilled from the inside, then revelling in wonder over a deep and boundless inside sense that I remember choosing to just call Jesus back then. At 16 I read Tom Robbins for the first time, this correlated with my teacher, Mr. Keisling, introducing to me Joe Campbell's work on mythological thinking and the Hero's Journey. Acid was making me want to believe in a world magical and within. And specifically Robbins rambled on in such delightful boundless and resonating ways about white people in the Western World, who settled over everything indigenous and natural with a conquering mentality because we were severed from our true roots: of agricultural, pagan ancestry. I really, really liked this!
So it makes at least a little sense that, at age 17, in late October, with little other information than a head full of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Keisling's ditto run-offs on Joe Campbell and the purpose and necessity of myth, that I would get out of my car late one night, feel a sense of breathing or life coming out of the woods, and proceed to mark a four-cornered square off in the drive way by walking to and nodding to each corner, than placing myself within the square. I remember clearly daring myself--to trust what I was doing and to further trust that the woods, or presence of them, wouldn't make themselves known to me unless it were meant to be. And that is it, the one thing that as long as I can remember has been part of my make-up--what I used to call Jesus when I was little. An ever present line of peace and sweet that, tho not always available to me, is still somehow always there. A simple and real ground within that can only be described as I know.
I dont know when or how I fully surrendered to this path, but the thing is: it is mine. I take little bits of info from wherever I go, I take what fits, or what challenges me, because that too is a piece meant to fit--and leave the rest. I subscribe to no specific belief system other than the oneness of things at the base level--energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changes forms--and this is enough for me. I pray to Jesus because I believe archetypes are real, which is also why I find peace in the inner-realization exercises taught by the Buddha, and the reason I pray to the Mama and sit in the wisdom and light of her moon. Mostly I joy and revel and trust fully and wonder in the Great Unknown. I talk to trees and the earth and the wind and fire because of dakinis, or orishas, or elementals, but mostly because I believe archetypes are real. I worship the patterning of things, and at the end of the day beleive my only true Calling is the Hero's myth of my own and my own Divine Becoming as Joe Campbell teaches. The entelechy of potential. Being of service to others entelechal value through this. I believe in patterning, in entelechy, because as I said if I believe in the oneness than I believe archetypes are real. I believe in the power within and getting quiet to captivate and access this power. And I believe poor is the man who cant sit a while, or sees no value in doing so, amid the presence of his own self. The only thing he can know for sure...
Which brings me to pagan new years, or the last moon cycle of the harvest year. I doubt you'll find what I am about to share anywhere else, and that is because I have taken some generalized teachings from astrology, esoteria and paganism and applied them to my own personal experiences in life. I spit them back out know as much for you as for me because teaching/writing is how I better process and learn, how my path continues to open up before me. The New Moon is tomorrow and to me this is the most powerfull moon of the year. Traditional pagans celebrate Samhain, or New Years, at Halloween. It is the time when the "veil" is the thinnest.
In my own life this "veil" correlates to the waning amount of sunlight and the circadian effect it has on sleep and subconscious levels. Which for me, as an artist/writer/poet/shaman/witch is important, because the subconscious level is the place where my dreams happen. Where the details of life, especially that 90% that my brain is busy registering while I'm unaware and just doing my ol thing, get processed and integrated. This is also where Jung believes the reign of archetypes exists in full, our collective unconscious or memory. And so now we have greater access to this place. Likewise, new moon is when literally, the nighttime dark is darkest. So to me, and in my own life again and again, when the dark place comes it is the time of pure subconscious, a time to watch dreams AND especially what issues or joys, what fears or little nags surface in the day to day. Esoteric astrology teaches that a seed thought is dropped during the new moon--at the darkest part of the night the subconscious place aligns too with a archtype, or pattern, meant in an etelecholigical way to grow out of and become you. By the light of the following full moon your subconscious will have brought this seed or pattern more in to fruition in your day to day actions and expereince, and more to the light of your mental awareness.
Agricultural peasants of Europe took advantage of the extra light at October/November's final full moon to crop the last harvests and to put up the seeds that yielded from that year's produce. Rituals were actually harvest times in the field! This is why it is pagan new year: the end of the agricultural bounty for the year, thus time to look forward, to larder up the pantry and batten down the cellar with the bounty for the cold time to come, and as well anticipate next years harvest rounds. Also time to give thanks to the pantheon of Gods, or archetypes, that ruled the fertility cycles of the earth. I believe in our collective unconscious, as well as in the DNA memory of our cells, we still rise and fall according to the the tide of these old agricultural patternings. Later, we came to call this imprinted tradition Halloween.
Personally I have, again and again, experienced it to be true that the new moon preceding the Final Harvest Full Moon is that time during which I can glimpse the fruits of my entire upcoming year to come, because hints of them are so close to the surface of awareness within me. It is such a fabulous time to celebrate our yeild!!!!
So friends, take heart, take stock, be joyful and with gratitude and may you, this weekend, seek the quiet guidance of your Own.
As for me--my little bro's coming down the beach tonight with his beautiful fiance. We are having a fire for his bday--which, AUSPICIOUS auspicious hooray hooray--is also on the holy high day of last harvest new moon!!! What a year my bro must have to come, Woo hooooooo!!
And may you be blessed
and your blessings endings
that circle back to begin again
by this moon may your blessings enlarge
and circle for you this
holy cycle of samhain
harm to none &
blessed be!
O life. I love you.
September 2, 2009
list: random thoughts and change
- i'm working A Lot these days it is fall semester re-enrollment time and all i do is get new students registered hola hola bienveindo or how are you welcome i'm going to test you but it's so i can help dont be scared. last week i passed my one year anniversary at this job.
- bob dylan keeps singing to me i feel a change coming on. in life, this is all there is, change. perenial as the breeze.
- i haven't written anything all week, except for friday poetry day the day i spent in pjs with books all day because the night before the calling moved in me sudden like it does which is when i so love it the most. so thursday night after i worked late i came home all charged and pumped and just kept moving got tea climbed in to bed, in to soft, cool, happy bed my sweet little nest of me pillows and softness and my precious sheets, my arms full of books my heart with the illustrious light. this little poem that came out of all that meat i come to bed carrying arms full of you and i love you every one, we will make love, arms full of us, all night, in the morning i will prop up and revisit you with a smile And how good that felt to wake up and do just that, and it's only a few days later but i haven't been writing or on the net at all, so i had to come here, and just let some of it download out.
- it is fall out, how i love to lie still in the quiet air in the morning. i got home tonight and mat and pat or else ruth or the wacky neighbors to my other side were having a fire. o smoke smell that i love...sweet prayers that linger but go eventually above. and the air coming off the river is cool and with no balm. the peepers speak loud to the deep clear night and tomorrow is september's full moon. have you heard it, the first geese calls?
- i want to blog about this, about passings, the earth walk, the time outside and our connections. i want to blog about my grlfriends and how they save my ass again and again. i want to blog about classism and seeing from the bottom up instead of the established and oft unquestioned view of the elite out, or down. i want to blog about memoirs and starting again and again and writing even though it makes your heart hurt. i want to blog about spiders and flowers and how that is the saddest part of fall when the flowers start to disappear. i want to blog about change and the difference one year can make, about last year this time and all that longing spent staring at the corn, hearing the paper stalks shake, seeing the fall sky spread, driving and driving the yellow backroads in the dry afternoons. how different it all is, how much has, and so of course how little has, changed. i want to blog about how i still cant believe and keep forgetting that i am 32.
- the desiderata has been showing up again, and again, to me. it is so good, it's own magnificent prayer.
- i'm taking a lot of new stuff on. creatively. it all lives in me and is always there, like air, even when i dont see it or cant remember it.
- i'm tired of my job, there is no joy left in the chalky burnt ruin at the wick of me. the people that i work with i am posting pics of them to remember that before we are workers we are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, lovers, friends. they are shining stars.
- i work hard. i try to do good work. we all do. and like me, we all let people down. we are all unique, and ascending, and all also so very much the same.
July 20, 2009
Reminder Kel
kim just called, just like in my dream. take solace in this: every one who you encountered today is grappling with the same things. what secrets in their darkness lay. tomorow is new moon, final dark seed before First Harvest. Of course. Winter Solstice i look at you at the seeds dropped then, where i have been wrong, where have i been true? now is the time that these come so intuitive, if painfully, in messagry to you dear soul. i am looking, we all are, at what we are beginning to reap now that the harvest is half way through.
July 6, 2009
Baby Steps
So, maybe this'll sound weird unless you know me. I was walking up the front steps of the porch a day or so ago at Ocean Pines and looked down and had this random thought: I need that picture of my foot to put on my blog. Then the part of me watching me is like, whaaaa? First, I barely have been blogging lately and second--my foot?? Well. It's true that feet have been something of the basis of a life metaphor for me lately--Feet dont fail me now, practicing Standing in my truth, as in sit or stand, dont wobble, and also I have been grounding a lot lately, a meditative practice that has to do specifically with the focus on the feet. Sooooo......(....sorry dear reader you know me and how i digress when it comes to serendipity...)
Earlier this eve I was enjoying an impromptu din-din with the neighbors. They have this killer spot of peace in their backyard. We were sitting in a triangle under a great shade tree watching lightening bugs and sharing sorta sad tales when surfergrl Pat heaved in all big and loud then yelled Check out the moon! Which was alive and lovely there over the sea reeds and us with the startled stuck place in our throats which happens when you forget for a second about life going on all around while you're all busy living....
Which reminded me, tomorrow is our full moon. I came home and checked out astrowisdom's moon messages to hear what medicine mama luna has for us all right now. And all I can say is holy serendipity...The past 48 hours have been a crash test for me in humility. All in the love department. That's all I will say about that other than to express once again gratitude to LIFE and LOVE which are GOD to me for affirming through the moonwisdompage that all is just as it is meant to be. Serendipity has a way of saying When....and after two long days of that experience myself, I read her message on there and felt my spirit go ahhhhh. And most of all, the part about baby steps stood out. And self-love being active, not just an idea. It was a good affirmation, a nudge and nod about how loving ones self means owning all of your self, the good and the not so good stuff you dont want to see....
Be well dear friends. Beeee happpyyyyyyyy. Be luna-lushous.
I'm so blessed. So are you. Read about it and see in to your soul. Then go out and get a soak in the moon. And practice your own little footwork towards love and truth.
June 9, 2009
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.
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.
June 5, 2009
Full moon
Full moon Sunday around midday, which means tomorrow night (Saturday) she's at her apex:
Learn more:http://astrowisdom.com/thisfullmoon.htm, and more importantly go outside and take a moon soak. The rain's should be gone by morning and it's so, so good for your soul....
Learn more:http://astrowisdom.com/thisfullmoon.htm, and more importantly go outside and take a moon soak. The rain's should be gone by morning and it's so, so good for your soul....
May 2, 2009
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!!
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...
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...
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