Truth is whole and living and malleable in our hands!

Lately what's in and out of my mind?  Discrepancies. Like in character.

I was living on the road in early 2012.  Hanging out learning magic AND practical ways of how to heal the earth. At a Tibetan Meditation Institute that hosts a bunch of starry-eyed heart-fueled pagans for a permaculture school for 2 and a half weeks every year.  This is up in the Cazadero hills, Sonoma.  I was both, still am, both a peace-full compassion junky meditator and starry-eyed earth-worshipper who believes in the magic fuel of an open heart and can get down in and with the transformative power that happens when we deal with the real deal: our own life-funk and shit. 

A man who was at that training said something like, his contradictions were the best part of him.  And that's it:  Permaculture, 101.  That life thrives the most at the edge, where two ecosystems combine.  Where new life can be let in.  And that's us.  Humans.  Our light part out in the open and our inner dark, our hidden shit.  The center where they combine.

One's not more real or important than the other, which some beliefs would have you worhsip.  The shadow is more real bc it's not persona.  The persona, which can be light-touched, "spiritually" touched, is more real because it's conscious.

Ok so yea, I tend to feel more whole and rich around a starry-eyed shadow-walker than a light-filled shadow-thrower myself! ;)

But to me neither side is true.  Or maybe each is.  Each is a part of the truth?

To me, rigid definitions of our self or each other can become the end of personal vitality.

As I write this, Dead Prez's rap "the cause of your ignorance, flaws in your discipline."   And I get that, the need for discipline, particularly as it arises out of self-introspection and contemplation.  But also--what if personal discipline includes shaking off dogma, includes shaking off any adage that professes because I am this thing I also must be this…?  Meaning, isn't self-discipline about self-honesty?  Isn't that the depths of it?  Honestly looking at what's real about us, shallow or deep or in-between as it possibly is?  

And also, I don't mean just looking at our selves.  I mean making room to embody it, to give how we're feeling in our heart embodiment by being it.  Experiencing it, experimenting with what's emerging.

This is a major issue with words, by the way.  How they are symbols for something we already associate.  Which means we will read them written by others and embody our preconceived notion of them instead of allowing the thought-function to drop us in more deep.

(Pardon that interjection…)

You know Gandhi right?  Most people do, at least because of that meme  you must be the change you wish to see.  If you study him, like really try to get down with the man behind his words…Read his autobio, read the critical readings that arose from that.  Gandhi's whole point was live what you believe, live it, embody it.  AND if, as you do so, it no longer feels exemplary of your soul, change what you speak to match what does.  Change how you be to meet what's true for you.  Be the change you wish to see.

Of course, this coming from a man who lived women as second class citizens and who also believed sex and sex energy was wrong to embody…

DISCREPENCIES.  Truth is whole and living and malleable in our hands!  That means changeable!

AND we can't see whole parts of our selves sometimes!  The shit is in the dark!  That means we can't see it!  Haha the best we can do is have compassion for this, understand we are half blind groping around for light and touch.  Each of us.

I have this buddy Justin who I love.  He said in December that he was worried about me.  That my mountain was blocking out my sun.  He was talking about grad school.

That's just it.  When you can't see--you can't see THAT YOU CAN'T SEE!

Have mercy on us, each.  May it begin, within.

Last week, I walk out to the driveway to get in the car and go to my favorite place, Mermaid Beach.  I wanted to, had to, go dive under the ocean green.  Crazed Kelly zeal.  A hummingbird catches my eye and mesmerizes me in the deeper way.  I drop in, meaning, I recognize that it stirred my heart to see that little bird, so I honor the stir.  It reminds me in that moment of a time in 2004 when I was living in the national forests and wilderness in this country. I lived the reality that it is possible to be able to interact with nature and to experience nature outside as reflective of your inner nature--follow me here, this is BIG mindbendy stuff--to Know them as one thing.   To embody nature as interactive with you, as reacting to you as you too react to it.  That this can happen if and when you deprogram your ideas that that's not real.  I think all this in an instant because those years of 04 and 05 is when that was my primary lesson, and it partially started with an experience while living in the woods with both hummingbirds and butterflies.

Hummingbird is a symbol for spontaneous joy.  I think of this driving to Mermaid Beach, let my thoughts of this symbol spiral me down more and more to the heart where living truth is.  Feel jamming and alive in the moment.  Yea, dude.  My JOY'S BEEN GONE.  This feeling of life inside me.  It's been so…FLEETING. I haven't been awake to it, because you know…Dark.

Next thing I know I am laying out my towel on Mermaid Beach and here flies up this sweet little hummingbird doing horrible unstoppable spirals at my towel unable to stop bc his or her little wing is hurt.  I mean she's freaking with the panic look in her eye.  She or he lands then at my towel and I scoop her or him up in my scarf and do reiki on the little creature, singing and loving it and very gently caressing the little sweetie, bc really, what else is there--that's all we can really do.

Then when the warmth passes and I can tell it's time to put him back on the sand, I do.  She sits about a minute or two and then flies off no problems.

So I get to heal a symbol of Joy.

So now here I sit, thinking about rigidity, and dead forms of things, and how our vitality can disappear easy as that.  And old systems of self-care, and giving too much because we think it's what were supposed to do, and how this is as rigid as it gets: "supposed to".  And how we don't see, cuz we can't see that we don't, til we do.  

If you're following ANY of this, good for you.  ha

Discrepancies.  Sid Hartha, Herman Hesse.  He wrote about it.  Everything is true including the opposite of the truth.  

So yea, seeing the shit!  Dark paradise, when finally on comes the light. What will I choose (the holiest discipline there is: choice.  And it's opposite too, deciding not to choose…a half-lined choice, itself) today to make alive?  Who do I get to be?

(and will it look like a long ass diatribe instead of my thesis, Ch, 3???)

The Vintage Series.

You guys, I'm back.  YES, the Impulse Itself is vibing high and vital!  Screaming surging pulsing pressing to get out and witnessed, or at least not to just stay bubbling under the surface any longer.
Can a blog that started only six years ago be called vintage?  No haha and I am alright by that bc I dowhatiwant and also,  yes of course it can--bc in this high-wire frame of techno overdrive time blogging is as yesterday as MySpace so holllaaaa and whatev.  Who's gonna stick with what feels good anyway?

Ya.  Def this girl.

So for two years I worked out my esoteric witchy wisdom stuff over on Wild Women Wisdom.  I'm really hella proud of that project and how it informed me as a tool through which I could be self-taught.  That whole time, (and still) I was getting fed from the bottom on up by my education in depth-influenced counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute.  For the past several months I have been behind the scenes, relying on the old persona of KadadaB to work it out for me as I begin to coalese the old with the new in order to focus actively on what will yet be!  So STOKED!

Wild Women Wisdom is slowly changing into the hub of my women's coaching practice.  I am focusing on self-empowerment, whole-bodied practical day to day meeting of yourself where you're at and learning to love and live your self, through whatever responsibilities and roles are alive and real in your life as a woman.  I am happy to work with men too!  I will also specialize in The Women's Work, or the Menstrual Mysteries, which is helping women to embody their personal tides until they are no longer mysteries!  A life's work, for sure…I offer Skype sessions right now, can see clients in an office space in San Juan Capistrano, and (especially for more ritual or sacred-based work) in my home.

Ultimately--and here's the exciting stuff to me!  The seeds of what yet will be!  Woot woot--I will be incorporating--ever so slowly, my goal of doing the Social aspect of Permaculture work.  SoCIal Perm. I'll be using Wild Women Wisdom to mostly work that out but you know there's no separating soul--so stay tuned on here to learn--WITH ME!!--more about what I mean by that.  We'll learn together, since that's always how I do this jam.

The Impulse Vintage Series will be alive-- again!  Horay.  Bc sure as I am living I need a place to express all the minute expressions of the holy mundane coming through me and that I'm out there relating to each day.  In this way, I re-Christen this blog, at the season of Samhain, holy celebratory tide of reverence for the dead.  From which comes all new life.

To Poetry, as a way of being, living, seeing.  Getting it all down~  holy act of self-creation.  Amen Amen Amen.

I love you guys!  Play on~

Her true essence.

After yoga, which was with a different teacher tonight and one of the sweatiest, most energizing workouts I have ever had, my body was craving fresh veggie pasta with every vibrating cell.  I walked to Mother's and bought ingredients and came home and cooked myself a feast.  And decided I'm gonna chill and watch tv.  

So You Think You Can Dance.  It's the first time I've watched prime time in my house in Huntington but today on the phone mom said I needed to.  It makes me miss her.  This was our show.   When we lived together two falls ago she got me hooked.  I forgot how deeply dance moves me.  Good dance pangs my heart, catches my throat, covers me in chills.  Makes my eyes fill.   It makes me ache for Baltimore and home because Artscape, all that magnificent street art and dance, starts this week.

My kids are doing so well!  They are not kids by any means but some days like today when I give them a project and look up from my attendance book to see each of them concentrating I swell with something like parental pride and adoration.  In my eyes, it's true, they can do no wrong.  After school I applied for a second job.  It's a mile from my new house.  I can ride my bike, so I hope I get it.

My new house!  There is a hiking trail that leads up the canyon it starts in my neighborhood!  God I am thrilled.  Muller's coming down this weekend and Jason who I haven't seen since Kevin and I were 16 and 15-years-old.  Samba tomorrow night then Long Beach with Alison and who knows who else for dinner and dancing Friday.  Today is the new moon.  My meditation each morning has gotten more and more strong and the journaling has me really self-connected.  We were chanting in class tonight and my soul was so still, so engaged and filling up the vessel of me so presently that all I could think of was Hannah at Earth Activist Training when we did our New Moon ritual.  This was up in the Cazadero Mountains in January.  She said how connected she felt to the moon in her dark phase, when she isn't obliged to reflect the sun and can simply be her whole, pure self.  Her true essence.  That line came back to me on my breath tonight, it filled me whole with my self, it filled me strong as the two weeks of silence at Vipassana did, whole as Cazadero and the Permaculture kids.  I am feeling so sweetly quenched on the gratitude in my heart, on the walking blessings of my life, so excited to be here and on the verge of so many amazing changes.   So alive.  The checking in daily with me is paying off.

I am grateful, aware.  New moon sets a new cycle in motion, our own personal start anew.  Yes yes and thank you.

Say YES

I think this might be the right time to share something really important.

If no one's told  you today, if a song hasn't inspired it, if an overheard conversation in the bank line didn't make you raise a brow, if the sight of the sun going down wasn't just the right majesty to make your heart open, then hear this.  Please:

It is never, ever too late to follow what your heart is telling you it deeply wants.

It is not whim.

It is your calling.  Never doubt the great swiftness by which Life will align to move you exactly where you are meant to be.  Don't be stuck on the why or how.

There is tremendous courage and unseen answers that come, simply by saying YES.


Say YES.

This was all cement.

One of my favorite things is riding in the back seat of someone's car.

As most people, I am a recovering control freak.  I have several years of active recovery in this area, and one of the finest remedies for it has become a knack of mine:  I'm really good now at just showing up to the moment if other people or new experiences are involved, showing up and being open, and going with the flow.   Which is why I think that one of my secret joys is riding in the back seat of someone else's car with  no say over where were headed.  Just giving over to the moment, happy to be going wherever it is I am going. It is such simple fun. Five gypsy women, five thirty or almost thirty somethings riding in a car. Single, gypsies, funny, happy, wise.  DeVotchKa on, sun almost down, radiant plume-air and shadows of pine canopies twisting all around.

In September on a date with me I randomly found this town called Sebastopol.  I spent four hours there, in the buoyant sunshine of the market, on my knees in the used bookstore, smiling and milling on the sidewalks, grinning at strangers like they were friends I was about to meet.  Today I went there, me and four gypsies, and also me and forty-five others, to  our instructor's house one street away from sunny downtown.

"This was all cement" he said.  One third an acre is what he was talking about, tho whole of his land. All cement when he bought it, an old ratty lot.  We ooohhh'd and ahhhh'd.    Now a food forest Permaculture Neighborhood Center only three years later.  One of his six water tanks for rain catchment hold 4000 gallons of captured rain water, or the equivalent of drinking water for his family for three months.  We ate fresh veggie cob-oven baked spelt pizzas for lunch.  The awe goes on and on.

While he showed us his garden guild he paused at the nitrogen fixers and ran his hand through a literal stalk of sage.  It broke mid way down in the most gentle way, literally fell in to his hand.  He grinned and horay'd, it was white sage, what I and many other gypsy wild types love to burn for smudging.  The group accepted it to take back to camp, an offering from Eric's most amazing land.

I make fun of hippies.  I really do.  But really, we have fun and love our lives and you can't make this stuff up, so fun is more than okay.

Me and White Sage

 Cob Oven

 yummmm

 Double Yummmm

Eric in front of soil remediation, or soil bringing-back-to-life

Go here to learn more, and see the before and afters of Eric's lot.

I cheated my way through.

Math and sciences were never easy for me.  I almost failed 10th grade chemistry, to pass in the end with a D.  Geometry that same year I cheated my way through.

But put me down in a garden, have me play all day under the sun and in the dirt.  Finish it with fresh foods and songs and rituals and music around the fire.  Now teach me the names of bacterias and fungis, tell me how to worship carbon renewal.  Make bioremediationnnnn the most sacred sound.  I will learn, I will cherish, I will thrive.  I will sing.

Suddenly life, all of it, is the most primal joy and easiest thing in the world to know.

One sacred inter-connected realm

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...

Guns and whiskey.

We hadn't walked the hills all the way to the creek in a long time, most nights now we just do several laps from our cabin down to the gate.  It's more athletic that way, the steep climb.  Tonight the moon was right though, and besides.  It's my last week.

Two new guys moved in while I was away in Oregon, they are younger and the family names we gave them stuck.  Bucket and Son Won. They're from Washington in the Cascades and bring this amazing new enthusiasm combo'd with that boundless, nameless mountain spirit.  It has a name actually, I'd call it peace.

Also, Em had to leave, which hurts my heart every day.

When we got to the field in the middle of the hills and the valleys circled like a black tapestry backdrop hung in the sky we stood a long while and looked at the stars.  None of us used our headlights the entire time because the moon of course was so wide with the soft white light.  We walked to the bridge, the creek was running high and the air around it was cold and wet as snow or ice.  In the daytime here it's warm in the sun, at night next to the creek by the bridge our bodies caused steam.  At night it's winter in the hills.

In the field walking back Mo and Bucket and I stayed back and I showed them how to use their breath to open their instinct.  Their backbreath, or moonbreath, that subtle wild body we all have but dont use because we think we're higher or better than animals now. It got Mo all jazzed and talking about wanting to take survival classes, how to live in our enviroment naturally. Permaculture!  I was happy, going on to her and Buck about my earth activist training coming up in Jan.  Native plants and invasives and medicinals and eco-diversity and harmony.  We were amped, inspired, energized and grounded from the moon and breathing exercise.  How?  I asked them then.  How did we get so disconnected from our home?

Guns, Bucket answered.  Guns and whiskey he said.  And we laughed and walked up the hill past our gate, in the dark, through the woods.