No Better Way

…This is actually a commitment to joy. When you feel momentary happiness, or you want to burst out laughing, or you smile for no apparent reason, you are glimpsing eternal reality. For a fleeting moment the curtain has parted so you can experience something beyond the illusion. In time these moments of joy will begin to knit together. Instead of the exception, they will become the norm. There is no better way to know that you are growing…
~Deepak Chopra

Adult Education: Little Explosions OR Beautiful, Amazing

Ok. So here goes me, keeping my perspective. I walked in to the middle school tonight where I was scheduled to do intake and the teacher of the fifth grade, whose room I use, must've had her students paste stickies on the wall with examples of metaphors. She was a great potato of a woman jumped of a post-it on the wall right at me and made me giggle. She was a great potato of a woman. Lumpy? Full of starch? Little eyes all over her body? What?


Here I am, same place I always am third Monday of the month. It's been a slow day--slow on new student intake for the GED program, lots of no-shows and actually even a couple of open time slots, which is nice, and also not normal. I am used to kicking it in to overdrive when I am on the clock for my job: going so fast that it's like a dance, muscle memory, peak experience. Rolled in to one. But today, well today has been lagging. Laborious even, with the clock on a slow honey roll.


Which is kinda the perfect description of my life since I finally completed my move off the farm. Slow and gentle, rolling ever so easily, taking it carefully with me. And I've been so aware of being in the middle of my process. It's as if there was this outter life that I was steady keeping up, and at once also this inner one that only I, and like a couple close friends or so, were truly aware. And basically what's been happening is I've been watching the inner life slowly moving up and out, and the outter one, who I thought I was or at least used to be, is sort of dismantling and fading back in to the surface, sort of composting and disappearing, like the water leftover when a wave crashes, how it seeps with a gurgle and a bubble in to the land. And this weekend I had nothing but quiet time to see the process, to really with open-eyes walk along and be so aware of it all unfolding.

About mid-day today I got some news that I was expecting, that in my soul I sorta new already, but it still made time, and my breath stand still. Like the silence after a bomb when you can see everything blown to pieces but are aware of your own inner silence, and at once of each and every piece. There was a moment of great stillness, which in turn made me even more hyper-aware of each moment that came after it, right up til right now. Which is good, cuz the old me would've ducked and run.


Since none of my students were showing, I decided to sit in on GED class for Jason's lesson on elements and the periodic table. Dig this. Everything, everything in life comes back to being calm. Or what I mean is that the deal with atoms, see all they want out of life is to be content which in atomic terms means neutral. In its natural state an atom is perfect in equal positive and negative charge. But bang an atom with the same amount of protons up against a different atom with a different amount of protons and therefor different amount of electrons--and they're gonna start matching up, all those on and off charges, banging around against and reacting to one another, seeking neutral but likely causing chaos until they can separate back out again and be calm, be one again and natural in who they are. Because in the atoms most natural state, and compelled by the finest fundamentals of life, it is a perfectly equal number of protons and electrons, or positive and negative charge. And all of life is compelled by the fact that they always seek to return to that neutral stasis.

Edward Carpenter said All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your nature so specially fits for you--that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It surely will come to you. Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference. Therefor do not begin that game at all.

It is thunder, and lightening out right now. At our most base substance is perfection, and the elemental code for chaos. It will all go and go, compelled by those most basic and fundamental charges. Amazing. Beautiful. The life of a potato: Saturday I put under the ground these spuds with eyes poking out. Eventually they will grow crazy mats of roots and great breathing leaves with fine white blossoms of flowers glowing atop the brown ground. And all that too, all that wild disruption of growth and life too will eventually fade back into and under the soil. Chaos. Peace. The hyper states in between.

And the process: getting to see it all....

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....

Long Dirt Road

Signs that I am getting better, # 1:

I was driving home tonight and Feist came on the radio. Pardon me if I am late with this, but I love this woman...and tonight, or this evening dusktime in farm country with the returning ospreys low swooping and the black trees against the mute orange and greys of the sky--Mushaboom came on. To say I was obsessed with song may be rather mild--indeed this past summer it was on constant reply in my head, an antagonistic message I couldn't quite grasp. (The words may indeed tip you off as to why, gentle reader, that is if you are at all a regular follower of these here words/this here life.) But I've never heard this song on the radio before. Well I lately only listen to pop music, silence or talk radio in the car because the slippery thin line between depression and real life for me is so subtle~~so fucking subtle but so MAJOR, you dig? And guilt, shame (which I've learned to re-identify for myself as self-judgment) and pity for me in the months since I moved out are a torturous landslide of boundary-less-ness, much like a brutal watercareening mudslide in a mean torrent of rain. There's just no way to tell once I've slipped over the slope and am stuck swirling within, no land to grab in sight. So tonight I'm driving along and on comes Mushaboom, contextually a song that would call up that ol tramp Melancholy and give her reason to let it rip. But tonight I drove along aware--aware you guys!! of the outline of my heart! You know, like blissing along with the music, aware of the tenderocity of life, actually feeling little tweaks in my heart but sure as those tweaks were one with the song they were one with the trees and those birds and that farmhouse over there, too. My sweet blessed broken healing heart, widened now and once again, even more softened at the edges. And thank god for the edges--that they were there and it wasn't just nebulous, patterned pain... If you have a minute visit this youtube video of her singing Mushaboom it's a trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZwThM7vAg
People do not do near enough choreographed dancing! I mean, cmon, I came from the eighties, you dig--the apex of MTV and the step step step kick and up, down and hands through the hair seductively and step and kick and again! Thank god for that, and thank god for dancing in general--which is probably sign # 2 I am getting better: I am doing an awful lot of bad pop song car dancing lately...

Anyhow. I read two excellent posts tonight, Serendipity number 6 zillion and twenty-two and 6 zillion twenty-three. The first, here, is a fascinating succinct read about body energy/the earth's energy, found on flip flopping joy. It took me a third of the way down to realize it was written by a man--there shows my clear gender bias, but his instinct on feminine/divine feminine patterns and injuries is so, so well done--and a full half of the way down to realize it was written about sex!!! Which just goes to show I am not always good at reading the titles. The second, here, is by my first writing mentor's husband, Jeff, and is in tune with my own recent re-discovery of the bliss of the great Mystery...

I have laundry piled up, literally, to my head. Time to go be a grown-up.