Harvest-End After-Wedding Thoughts

Really, I wasn't expecting this.

Friday night is a cross-quarter though, the last holiday of the harvest year, lunar Samhain (which I still don't get that people dont understand this stuff about life, it's so simple a part of understanding to me it's commonsensical. How can one look at something easy for example as the rising and falling of high and low tide and not get the import of movement of sun and moon?? Anyway. Not here to soapbox or vilify or happily call movement magic, but it makes me roll eyes even so...) And so be Friday what it is, this time of year isn't about a quickening as much as a great still, in order to show what is just plain TRUE: what's before me now is the truth, on every level, try as I wish to or strain as fear causes me sometimes to, in order to see or choose not to see.

I am not the same woman I was when I left last week and yet somehow deeply, clearly, I am, through and through. Sean's wedding was beautiful, out of a story book. Perfection, all the clear crisp colors of love and loyalty and friends and family and Fall. He texted Saturday morning to hug Jamie, his almost-wife, we were getting ready she calm as a kitten her dad cooking for us and bloody mary's and all the girls giddy with hair in curls and make-up half-done running around in our robes. Then he texted minutes later that he was so nervous he was puking. I called Brian ASAP he said dad was freaking told me all the last minute unravelling stuff that was causing dad his red-faced growly take-control wild barking ways which is how he loves, and then Brian said too: Dad took Seanie off under his arm for a walk. And that of course set my nerves in and turned my tears on, too. Little brother, o god my little brother this one thing I can not do for you, I was sick with a twist in my stomach and it was us again in my heart us since he was born and I was three years old him this little perfect angel I would over myself love forever no matter what and take care of and protect, and on the party-bus drive to the chapel Sean called Jamie freaking out where were the rings and Jamie cool and collect handled it and my eyes heavy with tears because this is her job now and thank you life for making her so tender and right for him, so gentle and loving and beautiful and strong. And I swallowed the tears because she said NONE! and I knew that's what she needed, peace not emotionalism but I don't do well with that, quelling my emotions so during the ceremony hives came out on me and I wasn't right the rest of the night, which was ok, because the bubble of pure and love around them was. And not only was Sean always who I vowed to protect, but in older years he was more like a dad: showing me how a man could and should and can be, and so I guess this is how I learned to let him protect me. And he knows this, my gratitude, every chance I can I've thanked him for showing such important roles to me. I love him so, I do I do. And Jamie and her family, the tenderness of it all, how beautiful she was and they all are, how touchingly real and meant to be.

And at Erin's after it was all over and before we found the dark cafe for homemade Sunday dinner, my cousin-sister she let me lay next to her and let me cry and listened to the last two months of my life...Acupuncture school indecisiveness and book-writing and unemployment denied, Josh and closing the door on all that, and Sean too and living with mom and dad and when I woke Monday morning in her bed it was alright, I was peaceful again and felt so sure of my life. I pulled to the bottom of her hill and my logic telling me to drive to Ellicot City but instead, sitting there tree-yellow and red hill with peeks of blue brilliant sky between, I turned right because it felt right and drove Frederick Road the four miles or so the long industry and ghetto-lined old faces on the street sunshine drive in to the heart of the city where it meets MLK; and every song is a love-song when you say goodbye to someone and that morning I don't mean Sean. Which was happily puzzling to me but not in a way I had or have the energy to figure out because timing is what it all comes down to--but for the first time in a long time--maybe since ever? My heart is cleaned out of the people that command it, so maybe I finally am getting to be free and have new chances of the what is really best and meant for me.

I asked mom this morning, if Baltimore is what I really care about, and I do I do I love that city, I love it and know it the way I love how my own feet move or my own blood paces up or slows down...how to explain this other than it is where I was born, not perhaps where I specifically grew up but where I was born and where I went to be with family the first 12 or so years of my life so that is intrinsic enough. But this is shamanistic, also, what I learned for sure when I lived on the road after reading about it so many times in so many different indigenous, traditional writings. The land holds it's own energies, the very elements that make up the environment, and it is this that draws the personality then of the culture and the people: either in a way that draws people to flow with it in harmony, or causes them to fight against it because they are fighting, on an elemental level, themselves, their own "nature"...but anyway soapbox again, but is it? I am suddenly re-questioning that idea of home. I've made no secrets about the Baltimore-trance hold that I've been under, but if that is the case then why aren't I there yet? The whole thing with Brooks and Mike Cades showing up again this weekend and that Warehouse dream imploding how it did...

It is all flat, laid out before me now and I in the center looking side to side, like some book I am in the middle of both writing and reading. And that is all I know to do, keep writing. The only thing. My bills will pile up and my friends will continue to call where are you Kel and Seanie and Jame will come home from Mexico and go back to Memphis and finally have some time to relax and love will sit around me like a halo or some place that is waiting when I close my eyes and dream. I'll write this book til it's done, loooord aunts uncles everyone, dont ask me what's next because right now I am content with I do not know, or at least, I will write my book til the end that is all I know to do.

First Harvest is here

Today is Lunar Lammas, the first full moon in Leo. First Harvest. First Harvest is here!

I began celebrating on Friday when the tide moved then settled on my soul like a sigh. Before my double that day I went out in the front yard under the soft quiet pines and harsh hot sun and grounded, and asked my spirit and body both what did I need? And asked too, how can I celebrate~~and the answer so clear when it came to me because it caused poignant yearn....moonlight, I need to sit under the moon.

So that night I sat on the beach with my cousin for three hours in the white moonlight on the white sand. I told her about my life, here, since I've moved in to and settled at the Pines. I soaked in great doses of moonlight, as important to the body, the mind and soul as sun, actually more important as we move forward as a people concerned with holistic experience on this earth. Moonlight is a direct vehicle for the subconscious, regulates the pituitary gland, and enters the anima through the ether at the back of the neck. It is essential to the inner-connection, to the health of our wild rhythms as humans, to sit and soak in the light of the moon. It will help too in sturdying and growing the organic connection to the earth, where sacred wisdom sits in the stillness of a breathing plant, the detritus dna in the dirt, the emanations transmitted through the sand.

First Harvest is the holiday (holy-day) that we give thanks for the abundance of the year. We become aware of our bounty, the blessings on the various levels of us that our lives have grown. Major changes will likely have shown themselves by now, so too will seeds start to show themselves towards what our spirit is seeking in quiet to cultivate for the upcoming seasons during the rest and renewal of fall and winter. And that's my favorite part of this holiday, the time out to witness the tide-changing. In reverence of the passing: summer has peaked, the growing season at its height, and from here out comes the wane.

It was important to me to soak in the moon and re-connect to nature so that the riches of my year would more easily and naturally surface for me to witness, and show gratitude for. I got alot of that tender light: Friday all night on the beach with Erin, and last night again, at the peak of her fullness (hanging out with Chrissy and a bunch of her B-more girls next to the Bay under the empty sky and white lunalight in the salt breeze at a hightop in the sand at Seacrets.) Today I sat in my sacred space, burnt my candles and made my circle and sunk deep in to me, and the blessings were exorbitant, and the seeds I could vision were so, so easy to tend. I knew exactly my intentions for the dark season, for the tide next to come.

This is a time of rest, reflection, and reverence. A time to count bounty and be grateful, but in a passive way: watching the fruits grow heavy on the vine in time for last picking in the fall. A time to see what grew well, what ought to be composted, and what fruits put off seeds for next year. Mostly just a time to be aware, to sit in the long lasting sun, see the shadows starting to grow long, anticipate life in the stillness before it rounds the circle towards change yet again. To revere, and to love, and to in stillness, with gratitude, await.....

Happy Lunar Lammas. This tide will stay around for the next week or so, as traditional Lammas is August 1. Be good, be open, be present to you~~

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.

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...!

My First Time

Suzette had this raspy voice and a laugh entirely unanticipated. It used to shoot out of her mouth and hit you in your chest then explode up your neck and down your back, cacophonous echo blast of megaphone and hot air.

She worked the Fool the Guesser one stand up from me on the Pier.

In September the tourists went home, it all sort of started when Felix came in early August which was also the time I kicked Kevin out of the house for the PCP. This left us, Suzette and me or the hot Tico Kiki who was way older which then meant like 35, with lots of time to holler back and forth to each other on our mics. Hurricane Felix was a big one and I got on the local news screaming kooks go home--the reporter was on 9th street, three up from us where the old deadhead house was, we learned from them early on where not to buy our drugs. Jerry died that summer, it was almost omen-ic: Deadheads by then couldn't be trusted a lot of them were tweakers, everybody knew. I imagine the reporters edited me out, we didn't have a tv so I never knew. We didn't even know the hurricane was coming. I got off for my afternoon break and came home for a puff or jay and a swim or some food hopefully someone had some otherwise it was soft-pretzels from the Pier for free the only place I could surely get hooked-up. Sparky was the only dude around though, he was a squatter one of those 9th street kids. Besides Black Mike and Little Kid, the only ones still down to hang after I kicked Kevin out, there was Sparky. Sparky I never trusted cuz of the deadhead squatter thing but we still hung cuz my roommate thought he was the shit. He never had anything to offer he just came looking. We had nothing though since Kevin and the boys went, nothing at all. So instead me and Sparky just took a swim and it's the only time I ever remember the Ocean slamming me again and again like a hard wood board. I swam hard but never never got to a place where she was settled and smooth so I could just float and roll. Like I said the Hurricane was coming but we didn't know. No one else was on the beach though! Mom somehow got in touch with me and said to put all the stuff on the floor up so really that just meant my books and music on the lowest shelf. The pots and pans earlier in the summer, since we didn't ever wash them, all got thrown out.

After Felix it was all different. Like I said, then it was just Black Mike who slept on the couch every night and also suggested we each sleep with a little switchblade under our mattress. Which is funny to me now, cuz like cousin Joey says a weapon will end up getting you in even more trouble if you dont know how to use it. And I for one, didn't, no one ever taught me how.

But luckily we never had trouble. Kevin moved out, he and his boys trashed our house broke windows and the outside porch lights and tagged all over all our shit, then Felix came and after that everything changed. The alleys were more quiet, there was a lot more of the large grey sky. And when the sun was out it was ethereal again, funny yellow glow. I didn't know it yet but that was the summer I first started to learn: there are tides that come and they move as one and they bring a certain power all their own, and they effect us all.

And the earth is where and how we learn.

By September it was cool already I had the greatest snaked Hoodie I lived in with holes down at the edge for my thumbs. Everyone was gone. Just 14 years ago, that's all, but OC didn't have the condo weekenders it's so full of now. Even my aunt and uncle and grammy who lived summer here were gone, they had to go home to the county to teach school.

Which meant we ditched 6th street for my family's house at the Pines, the girls and I, because it scared us being alone like that with just the beach rats who were hating on us and the ghosts that we heard again and again--no lie, the old fashioned player piano music or loud foot steps upstairs on the outside deck when for sure no one was there, or even the radios in our house that would go on without reason sometimes. Local folklore said the Broadripple on 14th, and our place too on 6th, were the original Bordellos from back in the day. It was mid-1800's that the town came to be. But Wikipedia says the original Pier burned down in a fire in 1994, which isn't true, the fire happened in the winter of 1995, winter after Felix, I remember because we drove over that winter to see. The fire took Morbid Manor and the waterpark, too; I smoked pot everyday in Morbid Manor in 95 then got to ride the water rides for free since I worked there, ran a betting game for the same guy who did Fool the Guesser, Suzette Kiki and me. And that fire took everything, all that, down. 1995 last of the Pier and the Manor, the Riptide Park and Jerry, too.

So me and Chrissy who worked Morbid Manor and loved a guy, Johnny, started hanging at the Pines. It was cool and vacant in town and I learned all at once to love September, the sheet clear blue sky, the white clouds puffy and bright as a smile. The way the water looked suddenly so navy blue. September, goddamn I learned to love you.

Suzette invited us over for for spaghetti that's how I found out she was into selling and smoking crack. She got arrested later that winter which I learned the same night as I heard about the fire at the Pier. It sucked cuz she had a little one, I dont remember his name anymore he had brown hair with flints of yellow curl, he was three-years-old. Guess he'd be 17 now hope he's not in jail. That night over spaghetti when I first found out about her drug of choice, it was the first time I ever got that gut-twisting sweaty-necked premonition-chill. It was September, the streets were flat and empty but she lived all the way downtown so the air from the inlet was coming off the water and was damp with a terrible cold. The sky was low and hung with thin grey clouds.

Addiction is a hell of a fucking disease.

In September now I come here every year weekend after Labor Day and have a reunion with old friends. Last night we were up to 3, boardwalk, dancing, talking, laughing and lots of quiet on the cool, white sand. Round 2am I walked past sixth street, Kevin is dead, I'm 9 years clean.



Everything is changed. And also, September, the clean earth and shushing sea, is just the same.

like little bells...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Change is gonna come

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take heart, take stock.

Change is gonna come.....

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....

NEW MOON WISDOM

New Moon, Today: http://www.astrowisdom.com/thisnewmoon.htm

Or actually tonight. Like Johnny Cash says what's done in the dark will be brought to the light. As within, so without. Give yourself some quiet time today/tonight to align-up. You know, be about it...

And take it from me, there's nothing you "need to do." All this process ever looks like for me is a willingness to show up to myself. It usually includes some deep breaths in order to get grounded, relaxed, and feel from within. The rest just happens by allowing my own process of being to arise. And with the sun and moon and planet Mercury in Taurus, maybe one thing you could try is get outside with your feet down on Mother Earth. Trust me, I was born with a Taurus Moon, which means I find my inner-life most enlivened by hands-on experience of the earth. Either way, allowing yourself to explore your own personal connection between the natural rhythms and tides of the outer world to your specific inner one is where the real magic is, I promise you.

Go ahead, try....!

Herbalism 101: This is What You Should Know

Hey Pals


This is what you should know: the green breathing earth is alive out there and waiting for your remergence! You know, emphasis on the merge. As in recognizing, or more aptly, remembering, the inborn harmony of this fabulous ecosystem called Life and the deep interconnection of which we are all equal part...

I am so, so loving life right now. Teena and I have yet to mow our mammoth lawn so it looks like I always wanted Truslow Road to look, like with the tiniest sparkly faces of wildflowers growing every which way and clumps of succulent grass thrusting out of the earth and smelling all fine. I counted eight different kinds of sweet little gentle wildflowers--or weeds--and at least three that I know of (though probably more) are medicinal! Which is rad since I am taking an online herbalism course offered by Angie over at The Herbalist Path. She also runs Authentic Mama, that's the sight where I won the book The Lost Language of Plants.

This past Thursday it was so blue sky clear here, and 60 degrees. The neighbor tilled a plot for me over the weekend so you better bet that on my work break I got ankle, literally ankle deep from all the rain, in mud as I lovingly sung to the land here at Chop to waken it up to me and I to it as I hoed in all the compost from the winter. I am going shopping for starts at one of the many little Eastern Shore back road country farm stands today woohoo I can barely contain myself! Here is my garden-o-gram.

Yesterday it was 70 degrees and I started the day in barefeet and my pjs and a floppy sunhat out in yard. By the afternoon I'd moved to a sundress and the dock, where muskrat hung out literally underneath my feet, chomping away on what I think is watercress woohooo! That was my second upclose--literally I mean two feet away--meeting with muskrat in the past 48 hours. if you recall from a few weeks ago, I learned that he brings spirit medicine of good omens, grace, and wisdom resulted from the seeking of inner counsel. My god if this is not what is happening in my life right now.

Delving deeply in to, and working to witness and clean out some old, outgrown emotional beliefs and tendencies has made all this room for joy, for natural quiet, for art and simple awakening. For my feet on the earth and living life connected, but more and most important, at peace with me beginning from within. And more than anything else in this life that I know from the walking it, I know that the world is interconnected(and therefor inner-connected!) and that indeed every solitary aspect of life is God--or however you define it--but that ultimately there is no separating any of it out. You are God, I am God, that air is God, that muskrat, all of it equal and interconnected and the illusion is we are separate, when in reality we are just merely playing out the landscape of God from day to day, each in various stages of waking up to this most basic of instinctual knowledge and humbling power of existence. This is magic and divinity in its most grace*full form. And I am gratefully and consciously each day tappping more deeply in to this resource and knowledge. And how delightful, as my nature deepens so too does my natural connection to the nature all around me.Whether it is marvelling at the effects, not only physically, of wild chickweed (full of sapopins which are fat emulsifiers) but emotionally and spiritually; or the ability of dandelion infusion to clear up my mysterious skin sensitivity and make me less foggyheaded after a carbs and lots of meat--I am feeling awash with inner walking awareness of the simple divine.

Intuitively, I'm talking in the very membranes of our cells, in the ancient DNA composit memory of our very life we are a part of the earth and it of us. And when we give ourselves, even sparingly at first, to the world around us, I mean feet on the earth, in the river or the concrete of the city block or the high high lawn and most especially to the people, in the form of first from our heart and then from there to theirs, this connection re-livens itself from within.

Night time dreams crispen. Daytime dreams and goals bolster and clarify themselves more naturally. Our very step gains buoyancy. The spirit awakens because we are connecting once again to our most inner and inherent roots. I believe, no, I know quite simply that any place the world is as recked a place as it has become it is because the people living on top the earth, attempting to dominate the wild naturalness of which we falsely believe we are separate from, have lost that inherent connection to the vast and natural rhythms and cycles of growth that emanate in their cells, and beyond to their souls.

Further I believe, and have spent my life to this point learning through the walking of this inner instinct of knowledge, that artists such as myself find creative vibrancy in the form of fine and acute self-awareness when we take the time to rekindle our connection to the earth and her awake and teaching cycles. The cycles of of movement, grace, allowing, letting go, and learning to grow. Thus of the balance of solidity verses fluidity. Going with the flow... There is a literal bounty of life lessons just waiting to be harvested by the heart right out your backdoor!!


So there you are gang. A public service intention for you, my hopes that you may enjoy, as I am remembering to do, the chance of your life-given urge to grow....

Seed Moon, or Wind Moon

The Full Seed, or Wind, or Pink Moon (after the shimmers of pink buds now spreading over the spring ground.)

A good time for setting new intentions or goals, identifying what is sacred and time to grow in your soul...

Mama mama, wow. I asked her after my still time tongiht to smile for this shot...

I did it my way

So, a brief little bit about serendipity, or synchronicity--just for fun. This is a term started by Jung, but studied well and introduced to common cosmology in a hands-on, follow your bliss way by Joe Campbell.

I'll start a few weeks ago, when I was home ill. I'd been feeling in a creative rut, and ethically confused. One seemed to generate the other, though I can't tell you which came first. What I do know is par for me, when my perception, or inner-awareness is changing and expanding, it always comes first in the form of discontent and break-down of the old. This is a dismantling that I am accustomed to in the winter. It's how I cycle. I think many of us creative, sensitive souls are like this. I also think we need to ban together. We are the myth-makers, out here on the periphery edge of things, in contact with the nebulous stuff of our souls. As all reality starts in this realm, consciousness of this task, responsibility to the "Underground" journey if you would, is necessary. So, winter is more than hibernation, it's coming in to creative union with the darkest, furthest out-there obscure parts of us.

I love right around February--whatever your myth--when first seed starts to spark in the subconscious. The first inner quakings, the first inside longarmstreches of bliss. For me this year there was a great inner conflict going on: I manage enrollment for GED students and students of English as a Second Language for two counties around where I live. I interview, assess, resource manage, advocate for and place all of these individuals. Roughly, that's well over 300 students a year. The toll of the economy, intensified by the clear line between those who come from middle to upper class backgrounds verses someone from working class or poor roots and the opportunities, and/or lac thereof, AND MORE, the narrow-view of bubbled reality that most mid to upper class folks live in was beginning to sicken me. Partly because my own awareness of myself as a well-meaning dogooder, but all the same an ignorant dogooder, was increasingly clear. But I've been a social radicalist for a long time now, ever since I was 14 in my purple riot-grrrl boots, to be sure. So yet again I was sick, outraged. And extremist in my initial solution-thinking, as often I am: I will quit my job because it is inside the system and the system is broke so it aint, ultimately, worth a hot damn and I will commit myself full-fledged to wild woman life, living native and self-sustained off the earth and practicing and learning and learning and practicing healing wisdom and sharing this naturally with whomever I am meant...

And also, amid all this: WHERE?! WHERE is my tribe? Where are the people of my generation, my peers, with the like-minds? Not just the hippie veggie growers or the long hair or tattooed musicmakers, but the activists? And not the DC urban game-players either, I mean the real street-pavers, the ones out there, too, in the funk? And well, don't you know, I was blog-rolling, and decided to look for Earth Path/Wild Women blogs. And there they were. To paraphrase my friend Kelly J: There is no separating out my spirituality from my activism. (Starhawk often has great and similar thoughts on this, too.)

So that's what was happening during my first seeding. Lots of revel around Power. The filling your self up from within kind, extended into a deep craving to extol this right for all people, for all humans: the right to self-empower. And the various -isms of humanity that keep you, or me, or whole groups of us at once, from doing or being able to do so. As result of my sickness, (and looking at the micro of my macro indications--that is, recognizing in my own life where I was giving my own power away) I decided to start treating myself with love and gentle, nurturing care each and every day. So began the synchronicity...

It started with recognizing that message in my illness, and then finding correlating information on a favorite website. Just a day or so later, one of my inner-rants about humanity's
-isms partially made it in on to one of my blog rambles. Later, that very same night, I got an email from a co-worker, Carolyn. She asked me to check out her daughter's online newsletter. I did so, but was far more intrigued by her daughter's webpage. And her youtube clip, (which seriously you must watch, I have a hellofa time embedding shit on here, my bad) which virtually gave words to what I was unable to articulate on my blog that day.

A few mornings later I was lying in bed journaling. I was, as now, in the middle of this perpetual move off of Anngar Farm and so trying to take it easy. After some time, I quieted. Then asked my wilddeepjoyme what do you need sweetness? And the answer from within came clear and resonating, Gardening. I smiled and whispered an intention to be given what I needed to make this bliss real. Moments later I was standing in the kitchen in Ocean Pines with the strongest feeling to blogroll. The first, first blog I clicked on led me to a link, which led me here, which led me here!! That very night I posted about the importance in my own life of using the inner, or higher power. When I turned my phone on after that post, I had a message from this women I've never met about reading poetry at a reading last Friday. I was hesitant, and Friday during the day was a bad, bad day for me. But I went that night and did it anyway. And more doors opened in the form of new connections. But most of all, the poems, once collected, clearly had a theme. And in conversation with Teena, my roomie, late that night we expounded on the glory of said theme: women uninterested in the priority of partnering for the long-term. Like romantically. After that conversation I wound up receiving a text from, then chatting on myspace with a friend entirely coincidentally, about the same exact thing.

Wow oh wow very cool. So. All I've ever wanted out of my life is to look back and say I did my soul's way, authentic. In-bliss. I am loving the serendipitous nods lately, affirming such connections.

A February State of Mind

Friends friends friends

Some thoughts on where we be right now.

First, a definition: by WE, I refer to the collective We. And by collective, I refer to those folks impacted by current western seasonal/societal associations--yes, those of us hearkened by a deeper winter sense.

I am noticing a trend as of late, let's call it a case of the February's. Everybody I know is rushing around, myself included! allstrungout and agro, with far too much to do and fumbling and bumbling all over the place trying to get it all done. The word frenetic comes to mind. And indeed the stuff-to-do seems to be in the genuine form of responsibilities, within those areas of our personal lives that call for attention no matter what.

I've been witnessing the people, the WE, friends of mine, peers, family, work folk and other varieties of associations, all increasingly more tired and harried, simply put: exhausted, stressed out. And believe me, I speak for myself here.

I will share thus:

In my mind, my heart, my spirit, the wild nebuli longings of myself, deep and nameless as they are in those creative unbound mists and surges of the me to come I can feel my new aspects awakening. They haunt me, delicious, in the night--peaked spikes of quiet gleaming there at me with their long lean teeth. But when I go to create I am flat, dull, exhausted by the call of the common things of this world. So I am finding day by day a growing but subtle creative tension, this dark yearning in me to rebirth pitted against the world and its mundane measures that daily I must fulfill: work, family, friends, duty duty duty. And so it is on our final leg in the dark: when we meet upon the Devil, when it comes right down to that point by which we have to call him by name. This is the tenderest of tender times friends, and those duties that drag us and drain from us right now are indeed meant to weather us, yes; but only so that we might own the strength we've grown through out this long winter in the dark. The duties demanding your attention, those which drag you down, this is the final fight--the outter-world You meant to take You, the inner-wild creative and authentic You, down in the dark. Don't let this dis-owning, this shallow sucker punch, be the end. It's kinda like being on the crest of a great crashing wave: ride it, enjoy the ridebut may you not fight it, so that when you end up clobbered with a face-full of sand you still have the sensibility to dig the stillness there found in the rest and retreat. Remember why you were riding in the first place, dont let that crash suck or stun the light right out of ya....

And so too is there a greater fight going on right now, make no doubt about it. Each one of us individuals, should we so choose, might step up to the battle with love in our hearts and seek to be the change. With each passing year the world and all its temporal callings steady tries to take from us those wild-longings, that bit of magic and mist left in the morning still in your hair. Each year "time" speeds up and the pace we are "expected" to keep greatens.

You see it, whirling in madness all around you. Heck, if you are anything like me you barely see it because you're spinning so fast yourself you can barely slow down! It's ok, spin spin spin. But may it not take you, closed-eyes, unconscious, down the spout.

The most courageous act you can do right now is to keep your inner still amid this affront. And it's an action you can take, you have to take, in private, see: give time to your inner-process, these last few important gasps of breath to labor forth your new self are the difference between the life of imagination and dreams versus settling for the frenetic standards of Mr. or Ms. Stressy McStrungTheHellOut that life all around you seems to demand. No, you are not crazy. Yes, the answers are still in the quiet within. But the challenge--to stake your claim, your right, to go in there right now after them--is the most important thing there is.

Look ya'll, we got midwifing right now to do.

DONT
GIVE
UP---