Sun in Cancer, for Beth, Paul, and Mom

The sun is in Cancer (this link makes me smile...)

Cancer to me has always been the sign of the mother, both personally and especially esoterically. I've had a lot of healing to do in the watery realm of cancer's energy, simply part of the mandala of my soul, what I came here with to loop through and through...My mom's birthday is this weekend, and also Cancer is the archetype of mom and all energies associated with this figure. Remember every archetype has a dark and light side~a side we revere, and a side we try to disassociate or keep in the dark. So when the sun is in Cancer we find ourselves re-visiting the primal ideas, personal or programmed, around the symbol of mom.

For me, two of my closest friends have birthdays right now. Beth is tomorrow, Paul is Sunday and mom is Monday. Wow, right? Especially if you knew the prototypes of these people~Beth is the quintessential momma figure in both the old world and new world form (imagine the tension and joy of constantly becoming that this woman whirls around and around in,) and Paul is the total embodiment of the new world man, with balanced female, or motherly, energy equal to his embodied male wholeness. It's pretty cool, especially in that I just got to deep chill with both of them and see how and where and what they each reflect back in me and make me aware of...

The best thing I've ever done is submit to the inner wild experience in order to heal my own distinct femininity. Paul and Beth, on my recent trip west, were direct parts of the apex of all that, too...

Life is a trip ya'll, and the inner mysteries have lots of keys and answers for us. I for one wouldn't trade the quality of richness and depth that I've gained by centering my life on the inner-informing-the outter for anything. Try it. Especially if you've been floundering lately.

July will do that to you (flounder flounder little fishy dont forget you can just go with the stream!) Trust me, it's part of the mystery of the ebb and flow.

In honor of my two Cancerians, and my mom, and my great deep gratitude and tender love for all of them, here is a poem. And in honor of the McMullen women, who I will celebrate and revere this weekend, and the Englar women, who continue on, and who I too will celebrate today with love~

Women's Work

Send the camaflouged men home

Ship the guns back

Let the metal rust

Defuse the bombs

Detonate the mines

Sands shifting with a new wind.

Gone! Gone! Gone are the ghosts.

Array the woman in silver

daughters of the world's Great Goddesses

bearing medicines and gruel

seeing their hidden sisters in the shadows

Hear them shout across the line

"Do you have enough to eat?"

~Lyrion Ap Tower

gratefully reprinted from We'Moon, 2010

Family

Kelly? I can practically hear his thought after this: Is that you?

I am sitting on a bench, in the woods, on the side of a trail at the park. Almost to the end of my third lap, walking and enjoying the outside. There is a long stick in my hand and I am using it to organize broken pieces of a Corona bottle in to a pile, so that no one, barefooted like I prefer or animal on a leash, gets it stuck in their foot. I should feel more embarrassed, maybe, than I do getting caught out there, alone, seemingly drawing in the dirt with some wood.

It's my cousin Timmy, he is out for his morning jog.

He joins me on the bench and we chat for a while. The winkwinky part is that I had just been thinking about how good it was that even though there are all these outofstate people now who bring this funny new vibe to Ocean City, how great it is that places like this path in the woods still exist, and how not everyone knows about places like this. So it made me happy, of all people to encounter there, to run in to cousin Tim.

I spent the day yesterday with Aunt Sue. It was so hot at home that there was a haze on the bay between here and town, so much so you could barely see the buildings of OC on the horizon. We were nervous about how hot it would be on the beach and figured on spending most the day in the water, but la mama surprised us with the most fantastic off-shore breeze. We talked for hours took two gorgeous swims and a long walk that spanned at least 40 streets. Later, I texted her I made pasta come over for some and so when cousin Mat got out of driver's ed that is what they did.

Family has always held at least a little bit of contention for me, whether the immediate one at home or the larger, inclusive of aunts and uncles and cousins and more. It's just that there is so much of it, and also that the nucleus that raised me, the experience directly of mom dad and Sean when we were young was confusing and not too consistant much of the time. But then there was always the stability of the extended family, both on dad's side and mom's. So family is a huge definitive part of my identity: dad is one of seven and with only one exception, he and his siblings live close. Regular visits are a part of our experience and have been since before I even was a kid. And on mom's side for the past two to three years I've made a personal choice to delve more in to the dynamics of she, her parents and sisters by spending time with them that historically was equal to the influcence the McMullens for so long have had on me. As result I now understand so much more about who I quietly am and how I was raised.

On Monday night, late, I was driving us home from Deck Party in town. Eddie, eyes half-closed and jammin his head along to the music (Two Tickets to Paradise by Eddie Money, chosen with holy exuberance because, of course, Ed was the DJ) and Tim and Sarah all shmoop shmoop cute in the back. My window was all the way down, my arm hanging loose out in the green and salt summer air. I was so, so happy. There was nothing else at all I wanted in the world than that moment, with my cousins, my siblings, my friends. In the morning I leave for Pennsylvania, to see baby Sananah again and cousin Chels, then to take Rt. 30 across the state to Gettysburg for cousin Sarah's wedding weekend.

It has been so rich, of such deep value to me, growing my legs and blood strong by owning the history that grew me and runs in profound wordlessness to this day straight through all of me, and lands and floats in to the air around me and guides and graces, in both blessings and challenges, the me I get to become. I am proud of it, proud of me and my people, and more than anything so, so grateful for the gifts of self and love it's grown within.

Poem. Silence.

Let us not speak
too softly yet of the outcome
of this terrible thing. Let us
not submit just yet
to the hazy blue of quiet
dawn. You have
known me, I’ve been laid down
by
within
the nativity of your two
hands. What is next?
My father held me as a child,
held me as a child holds her
parents finger, held me scared
and sweet-breathing
against his quieted chest.
Now, as I sit
unarmed on the porch of his house
unable to rest
I wonder to what else I will
have to learn to submit. What else
is in this acquiescence, nothing
which I haven’t already left.

It is not homecoming which is
the marvelous battle, not the
mere occasion of return that counts.
Rather, it is the glorious upraising
of tear-wet face.
It is how one decides
gives way and starts
again on the stairs
how the door opens—far-flung madly
or
the most delicate calm—and allows
the moving light to guide the steps
back once more
in to the house.

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.

Mash-up: Beach thoughts; and Yachats poems from the book where magical thinking goes

Living with my parents again. Who are living with each other, again. We communicate now.

We talk about it. "Communication."

When did that happen?

It's all so natural living here, I thought it would be so hard with Tim and Mary and my cousins gone, with this being our house, me mom and dad ours for the first time really since I was 12. But it's smooth, easy, and this has a lot to do with how much time I spent here last year, Thursday night through Monday morning every week through the summer and in to the fall, so long as there was sun. It's weird, why now, with my brother moving away?

---
yachats, oregon.
6.12.10.


there is only
the illusion of control
or surrender to the knowledge
of fear:
We have none
& are it, that is
we become what we resist
by thinking we are its master.
fear is the wild card inside
Great Reckoning:
coming to terms with this

---
The weather was so great today. I sat forever on the beach, floated forever on top of the sea. The water was blue-green, close as crystal for the Mid-Atlantic. There was a strong wind, it made the waves roll in peaks to the right, the peaks lifted and carried me. We played games, the water and me, hide and seek and peekaboo. Make-believe. I was smiley the wind was like its own kind of wave and the air and the sea lifted and tilted and rocked and carressed me.

Mom came she brought wraps from Southside Deli the shrimp salad there's the best around. The lifeguards are young and hot and more than once they checked me out. I'm too old for you I want to tell them but from that far away why bother, if they cant tell. Besides I'm lying anyway it feels great to also feel sexy and hot.

---

I sat on rocks in the bright sun
blue sky & sea, Yachats, Oregon, off coast 101.
The 804. Old highway leads to the rocky beach.
Mike gone last time I was here, I went close
to the gaping wide mouth of the sea, where she eats
rocks. There are birds bigger than three of my fists.
They are dark, are crows, are ready to eat
they caw at me & always are in three.
I forgot they were here.

---
The older we get
The older we get the more important imagination. The more we need imagination! The more we must shake loose convention! The more we must not shrink to seeming societal or other imaginary (get it--it goes both ways!) restriction. Imagination! The only place where the still small voice lives!

I dont tell him this, my dad, when he walks in from work tonight and sits down at his laptop and continues his already 60 hour work week at the kitchen table and simultaneously wants to have a talk. You never, ever know when this knew phenomena might arise and tonight I am trying to drink tea and write poems.

So Kel, what's the game plan? Are you going to get published now? I think he only asks because he's recently been around his brothers who like to oneup in the name of family pleasantness and looking out for each other, and I point out as much, my own coy defense, but still the truth far as I can see. Which means it's my opinion but still important, all the same.

I dont know dad? Hanging out til the fall. Then I'll see what's in my heart then. Travelling? I dont tell him I dont know dad I am writing poems. I am worshiping Nature and the cycles of life. I am listening to and connecting every day to the lightness in my spirit. All else will easily take care of itself....I have a calling to the Earth and to write a book about it but dad how am I supposed to know what that will look like?

Why dont I be your personal assistant pop? Put me on your payroll? This is followed by jokes from mom about being dad's lifecoach. It is a pretty funny thought. Deep warm fuzzies and motivational talks featuring dad and Kel.

He laughs and this trails him off. I feel the old residue of guilt for a minute but shake my head at it then watch it turn to dust. I blow it away.

---
These rocks are bed.
These rocks are a bed
made from the sea, left
over salt particles crystalize
underground turbine force solid oncemotion
of what once has been. Sea rocks big as chambers
in the jawlock grip of the sky. Sea rocks with sky eyes
hold jewels waterlocked inside. I sat on the rocks
my eyes made of shells.

Turbinado. Turbinado's a name for sugar.
Sugarmelt softener softens like clover petals
sweet but last bite stung on the tongue.
Sweet to melt, melt sparse words
of what is yet to come. What matters, a lot
when you look at it like that. When you look at it
like sand, melts on the tongue.

---
Now I do feel bad. What should I have said? I dont know dad, what do you want me to do with my life?

This by no measure can possibly even come close to the the level of bad I felt last summer. I used to just sit in the family room and cry. Cry to Tim and Mary, cry to Erin, cry to mom, cry to dad. So much letting it out. Meantime going deeper and deeper, back and back, further and further in the real work. Owning my old beliefs. Owning and naming the true real sources reasons behind my stuckness, behind my discontentedness, behind the always striving but-for-what? unseen ideas that were propelling me. The clawfanged perfectionism, the critic of me breathing down my own neck and for what? All those old beliefs, old world, old school. Old memories swirling beneath my mindscreen eager to fall out of my head. And sucking my true power, dis-abling me from being me.

From just being able to "be".

So much grief came with getting beyond all that.

In order to get to the place where I can just be. I barely know any one able to do that.

What fucking gives?

---
A couple sits, looks out at the waves.
The waves sound like waves, like handsaults
sommering on the sea. Summer-saults
instantaneous washboard the churning hellos
the tumble over ocean throws of 'you're looking at me
surprise, I can see' the sea. I am you, he thinks.
She laughs, the mirror-force look that is sweet.
His stomach pulses, hers. Her purse falls
at their feet. Lipstick offering to the sea
sea eats lips licks its lips on lipstick offering
made so crisp. She shakes a chain lock
he grimaces. They freeze.

I am alive. I am alive! You cry but do not
know you're looking at me. I sommersault
I gulp drink with lippy lips lipped jawwide
from the cup
of love
in the sea
sky. I love you friend. I will, til the end.

---
After the beach today I came home and sat on the back porch and read. I love the back porch of Ocean Pines, it's one of my very favorite places since I was a small little kid. The sun was shaking its light in little back and forth trails on the wall because of how it came through the trees. It made the wall look like a blurred screen.

The air was the softest, breathiest breeze.

I sat out there until it got too dark to see. My mom is hooked and always has been on So You Think You Can Dance and the truth is I like to watch, too, but wont unless someone else puts in on. We watched that when I came in and I did laundry, which just means my work uniforms, because I have three doubles in a row this weekend, happy holiday all you weekenders to the beach be sure you tip me well.

I love working there now. It's funny for me to have mind-scenes of memories: marsh grass before the condos went in and all the places we used to go and sneak beers that smelled like salt and wet wood. I love getting to work and look out at and feel the Bay and the sky all at the same time.

---
The only thing to gain is the reckoning~
give over fine illusion of the soul's control.
At the sea, by the large powerbreaker rock
big as a jet or the pumpkin turned carriage ride.
I walked to see. It was blue sky, blue sea.
The force of it frightened me.
I could try to wrangle it, or submit
& just let it be