dear kel,
you can do this.
said eddie when he picked up on the road.
said joni when she handed you stevie instead.
said grace, and lc, when they said the same on fb.
said you to erika, when you gave her permission
to hold your letters.
said grammy that one night on mt. vernon
& grandma later that cycle in arizona.
and for christ's sake, said uncle tim last week--
said uncle fricken tim.
you can do this,
you are meant to
& this is love, from me to you.
love,
gypsy goddess. gypsy goddess you know so well.
Fleetwood Mac - Stevie Nicks - Gypsy
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July 31, 2010
July 30, 2010
I dance sober...
(and swim naked...)
When I was in Oregon travelling around my active witnessing and intention-setting involved figuring on how to take the wide open travel-ready willingness, the heart-open magic that leads in such even serendipity when one is on the road, and harnessing it in order to live with that same trust and openness, that same easy reliance and inner sanctum of softness when I returned home.
The thing about harnessing is that it always involves a period of traction.
Travelling brought me naturally in to my self in a free way: I knew the easy, steady peace that no matter what my needs would be fully and richly met, and so they were... I returned home wanting so badly to know how to or to just be able to get to continue that reliance. I stepped off the plane and got stomached by the knowledge that my brother was going to move. Him, my always present one true man. Then I immediate began the reality of living with mom and dad. It all floored me: the impact, suddenly, of the reality of my family. So that quality I was determined to arise from within, that trustfull willingness, I had to act as if, to submit to the stillness inside of ground zero, to await the rising and the merge by riding the ever-present rise and fall.
I ran around in the moonlit surf last night, doing cartwheels, wilen crazy throwing beachmud them timid at first than in total running heaving abandon laughing and allowing and ducking under and crashing all around, tossing each other under, us chasing and running and turning the running back again at the water and the wind, me twirling and twirling loving the spin head up arms up sea at my knees wind in my open mouth til the stars and the sky were one. Falling backwards, going under, submit submit plummet and arise again and again again. And cartwheels! O the cartwheels and the precious solid steadiness of packed wet sand. And laid out on the beach stand when it was all done. We were soaked, wet from swimming in underwears or bare flesh or Michelle in her dress, but then quickly dried again and sleepy salt-covered bellys full from bad junkfood on the late night car ride home. This morning I could feel the fresh open breeze mom invited in through the screens. Flowing and dancing all through our house and I think it was that magic, the fall in the trees and the whisper rustle speak, that had me so early up...I was counting on sleeping in today, but that damn sun's in Aries and I woke, literally, smiling and so ready to get started on my day. It is Friday, and I am off!!!! Imagine! A day for poetry and counted on expectation of miracle and love and total in-moment goodness yet to be seen!!
And that is it, I opened myself, since coming home, to every experience I could have. I sat in stillness, just surrendered to the sudden newness of myself as much as I could and when possible I've said yes, yes yes again and again~willing myself to stay in openess to as many moments as possible, practicing the steps of trust and showing up to the day even if I wasn't actively engaged because I've learned the alchemy of action: showing faith in the harmonious belief. Choosing to embrace the spontaneous magic of the day because why not? And it has worked, I am ten years clean, I am alive! I'm alive, and free, and in-choice and the present quaking moment. Sober on August 5 having taken my last drink here in this beloved angel loving demon town in 2000 that last grand summer I lived here in my family's house. I am spending my nights out and about, dancing and shmooping and howling and hooting and being wild as I am without any provocation or substance other than the pure life force nature of me, talking and snuggling and late night secrets with young people in some cases half my age. I am riding boardwalk rides, eating boardwalk fries and my car and bed are covered in sand. I am dancing my heart out and loving men: young guys wise ones also and friends, and women and crazy grrrls, too. I am delighting in cousins and aunts and uncles and allowance and trust in love. There is this renaissance that has happened for me because it is what I chose to put myself in to...
I am so, so thankful for my young friends. 16, 17, 19 some of them! For being there to keep me connected inside to me to the freshness of life. To, strictly by their presence, pull me up and out from deep inside myself, giving me enthusiasm from that wild ageless place within to act as if until I settled again...My life is so good, I am blessed I am blessed o lord mama I am blessed.
And of course so too will all this triumph pass again in to of and with the wind...
...The crickets are here. That fine, fabulous wonderlusted yearning inner place of feeling so stuck, of being so amid the awareness of inbetweenplace, of being in the void at the center of the balance, so dripping heavy on the vine as the full moon of Lamas arised, so gradual and having again again again to give over to the ease of change, it has passed: I talked with Erika finally and last night too with Brooks and of course am ready now to begin what I must do. And the energy, thankfully, is changing. I am or at least had been so empty, so void of any pretense that I stood at the passing point, pregnant as I'd ever be with pure creativity thus brimming over I was so damn full. And so now, fall in the air as the crickets are here, leaves on fifty Worcester county some already changing yellow and red, me to Maine next Wednesday for a week to then get back and see all my new friends begin to depart, their young lives off again to colleges or hometowns and next adventures to which they will so easily and naturally return...Ah yes now it is time for me to harvest and pick and release grain from the shaft and cut crops and spin and spin and spin, now it is time for me to make gold.
O blessed sacred seiging wistful change comes with holy merge. O sacred whimsical so serious stillness of pure soft action-in-submit mystery of ever lifullness guide me unto me yet again, and amen...
When I was in Oregon travelling around my active witnessing and intention-setting involved figuring on how to take the wide open travel-ready willingness, the heart-open magic that leads in such even serendipity when one is on the road, and harnessing it in order to live with that same trust and openness, that same easy reliance and inner sanctum of softness when I returned home.
The thing about harnessing is that it always involves a period of traction.
Travelling brought me naturally in to my self in a free way: I knew the easy, steady peace that no matter what my needs would be fully and richly met, and so they were... I returned home wanting so badly to know how to or to just be able to get to continue that reliance. I stepped off the plane and got stomached by the knowledge that my brother was going to move. Him, my always present one true man. Then I immediate began the reality of living with mom and dad. It all floored me: the impact, suddenly, of the reality of my family. So that quality I was determined to arise from within, that trustfull willingness, I had to act as if, to submit to the stillness inside of ground zero, to await the rising and the merge by riding the ever-present rise and fall.
I ran around in the moonlit surf last night, doing cartwheels, wilen crazy throwing beachmud them timid at first than in total running heaving abandon laughing and allowing and ducking under and crashing all around, tossing each other under, us chasing and running and turning the running back again at the water and the wind, me twirling and twirling loving the spin head up arms up sea at my knees wind in my open mouth til the stars and the sky were one. Falling backwards, going under, submit submit plummet and arise again and again again. And cartwheels! O the cartwheels and the precious solid steadiness of packed wet sand. And laid out on the beach stand when it was all done. We were soaked, wet from swimming in underwears or bare flesh or Michelle in her dress, but then quickly dried again and sleepy salt-covered bellys full from bad junkfood on the late night car ride home. This morning I could feel the fresh open breeze mom invited in through the screens. Flowing and dancing all through our house and I think it was that magic, the fall in the trees and the whisper rustle speak, that had me so early up...I was counting on sleeping in today, but that damn sun's in Aries and I woke, literally, smiling and so ready to get started on my day. It is Friday, and I am off!!!! Imagine! A day for poetry and counted on expectation of miracle and love and total in-moment goodness yet to be seen!!
And that is it, I opened myself, since coming home, to every experience I could have. I sat in stillness, just surrendered to the sudden newness of myself as much as I could and when possible I've said yes, yes yes again and again~willing myself to stay in openess to as many moments as possible, practicing the steps of trust and showing up to the day even if I wasn't actively engaged because I've learned the alchemy of action: showing faith in the harmonious belief. Choosing to embrace the spontaneous magic of the day because why not? And it has worked, I am ten years clean, I am alive! I'm alive, and free, and in-choice and the present quaking moment. Sober on August 5 having taken my last drink here in this beloved angel loving demon town in 2000 that last grand summer I lived here in my family's house. I am spending my nights out and about, dancing and shmooping and howling and hooting and being wild as I am without any provocation or substance other than the pure life force nature of me, talking and snuggling and late night secrets with young people in some cases half my age. I am riding boardwalk rides, eating boardwalk fries and my car and bed are covered in sand. I am dancing my heart out and loving men: young guys wise ones also and friends, and women and crazy grrrls, too. I am delighting in cousins and aunts and uncles and allowance and trust in love. There is this renaissance that has happened for me because it is what I chose to put myself in to...
I am so, so thankful for my young friends. 16, 17, 19 some of them! For being there to keep me connected inside to me to the freshness of life. To, strictly by their presence, pull me up and out from deep inside myself, giving me enthusiasm from that wild ageless place within to act as if until I settled again...My life is so good, I am blessed I am blessed o lord mama I am blessed.
And of course so too will all this triumph pass again in to of and with the wind...
...The crickets are here. That fine, fabulous wonderlusted yearning inner place of feeling so stuck, of being so amid the awareness of inbetweenplace, of being in the void at the center of the balance, so dripping heavy on the vine as the full moon of Lamas arised, so gradual and having again again again to give over to the ease of change, it has passed: I talked with Erika finally and last night too with Brooks and of course am ready now to begin what I must do. And the energy, thankfully, is changing. I am or at least had been so empty, so void of any pretense that I stood at the passing point, pregnant as I'd ever be with pure creativity thus brimming over I was so damn full. And so now, fall in the air as the crickets are here, leaves on fifty Worcester county some already changing yellow and red, me to Maine next Wednesday for a week to then get back and see all my new friends begin to depart, their young lives off again to colleges or hometowns and next adventures to which they will so easily and naturally return...Ah yes now it is time for me to harvest and pick and release grain from the shaft and cut crops and spin and spin and spin, now it is time for me to make gold.
O blessed sacred seiging wistful change comes with holy merge. O sacred whimsical so serious stillness of pure soft action-in-submit mystery of ever lifullness guide me unto me yet again, and amen...
July 27, 2010
I'm warning you C-town, this one's sad...
Under a flat white box labeled in the corner love notes and other crazies 91-95 there is a plain shoebox. It just says cards/letters. What I am looking for is pictures.
I know my self enough by now to check through this box, it's just my style to shove pictures and movie stubs and what else I can only begin to imagine--quotes scribbled on the back of menus, parking tickets, wristbands from all-ages shows--amid what I would otherwise obliquely label cards/letters.
It's not Fannon I find first tho, it's Molly. And it takes my breath away. But that is for another story.
I am in the attic and it is hot. I dont come up here, ever, to look for anything. I packed this chest up in 2004 when I went travelling, and I have not been in it since 2007 when I added the box I was looking for today. It's for my keepsakes. Memory Lane: I used to expert in memories, swill them like Boones Farm and get all pissy drunk on them like a 15 year old does on cheap wine. But in 2004 I sold all my shit and downsized those scraps. Kept only what fit in this chest. I have now become an expert in this: letting go. Letting go letting go letting go.
And Fannon, you're the one who started that.
Ten years is a long, long fucking time. But so short. Today, ten years ago I was sleeping off a gnarly hangover in my old windowless room here at the Pines. I'd been arrested, again, and had called Jess up to celebrate my big last night out before I cleaned up my act one more time in order to get my family to shut the hell up. How arrogant we were in our youth. How thoughtless, and unaware...I'm pretty sure, Fannon, you changed that, too.
Cuddy called, and that was that. I didn't believe her at first. When I told Jess she started puking. It wasn't until I got Mudd on the phone though that I knew it was real. I could hear it in his voice, the way that sometimes, once, twice, three times in your life, a person can sound exactly the way you've always dreaded having to feel. I had to tell Jeremiah. I had to fucking tell Jeremiah!! He was on base, still in the Marines. So Cuddy, I always understood why you couldn't look at me after that. It took Jere two years almost to look at me again.
I know my self enough by now to check through this box, it's just my style to shove pictures and movie stubs and what else I can only begin to imagine--quotes scribbled on the back of menus, parking tickets, wristbands from all-ages shows--amid what I would otherwise obliquely label cards/letters.
It's not Fannon I find first tho, it's Molly. And it takes my breath away. But that is for another story.
I am in the attic and it is hot. I dont come up here, ever, to look for anything. I packed this chest up in 2004 when I went travelling, and I have not been in it since 2007 when I added the box I was looking for today. It's for my keepsakes. Memory Lane: I used to expert in memories, swill them like Boones Farm and get all pissy drunk on them like a 15 year old does on cheap wine. But in 2004 I sold all my shit and downsized those scraps. Kept only what fit in this chest. I have now become an expert in this: letting go. Letting go letting go letting go.
And Fannon, you're the one who started that.
Ten years is a long, long fucking time. But so short. Today, ten years ago I was sleeping off a gnarly hangover in my old windowless room here at the Pines. I'd been arrested, again, and had called Jess up to celebrate my big last night out before I cleaned up my act one more time in order to get my family to shut the hell up. How arrogant we were in our youth. How thoughtless, and unaware...I'm pretty sure, Fannon, you changed that, too.
Cuddy called, and that was that. I didn't believe her at first. When I told Jess she started puking. It wasn't until I got Mudd on the phone though that I knew it was real. I could hear it in his voice, the way that sometimes, once, twice, three times in your life, a person can sound exactly the way you've always dreaded having to feel. I had to tell Jeremiah. I had to fucking tell Jeremiah!! He was on base, still in the Marines. So Cuddy, I always understood why you couldn't look at me after that. It took Jere two years almost to look at me again.
We drove to Keith's, Shannon had a little boy walk in on her when we stopped at the Taco bell bathroom in Easton on the long drive from the beach. Ashleigh and Maura were there, and Hupman. I just walked over to Hupman and fell in to his arms and we did not say a thing. It helps to tell, to talk about it now. Last month I saw John again, all these years later, at least 10. And this time as soon as we saw each other we just started to cry...
People dont talk about death. Dont talk about how sudden, unexpected, and especially the untimely ones rip your muscles out, tear apart your very flesh. Seperate the tendons of your self, so that ever after the very beating substance of your self you become wickedly aware of. Like one day you dont know about that, the fabric of yearning and skin and blood and tissue that makes you up, then when it tears so violently and it's all you're left to contend with, well then what? Then you know forever, and from now on it's your job, your choice: am I brave enough to re-mend? Do I have the strength and courage to start to sew? But how most of us, in the aftermath, dont even know that's our choice. We just let the scar tissue build up, and stay numb in that quiet little section of our life...
Fannon we loved you so, so much. You were the fiber at our center, did you know that? You were the one who held us all together. The late night creeps by your house. You'd still be up, watching infomercials, eating nachos or popsicles and bottled sodas crazy ass paranoia eyes darting side to side. You always knew where the party was. The card games, spades and high stakes at Listro's or under your back deck. Parties in the basement at Michelle's, or back of the pizza shop just to say whutup. Backroad driving in the tinted windowed lowrider--remember the time you got stuck in the mud on that farm? And Hupman tried to get you out? And like everyone showed up, just to hang out there? Chilling in beach chairs and shit? How bout all those late ass nights we kept up my mom? My poor, poor mom! The time we told dad, in town for one of his weekend jaunts, that we were having a couple people over to say goodbye to Maura when she switched from Spalding to Arundel and we packed my basement full of heads? And blunt smoke, and dad didn't even know (cars were to the top of Tall Timbers for christ's sake!!!) until Davis showed up at the front door with a thirtypack on his shoulder. Back door dumbass, it was a backdoor party duhhhh. What about those field parties, what the hell was that place called remember the bonfires we had there? The six-foot bong? It was that one summer, no weed anywhere just acid I'm telling you it's a wonder any damn one of us are even half-sane. Wow and sixth street, and the years after that. Bass bass bass thug thug thug. The morning you were STILL UP, after Jess and I got kicked out of Dave Swann's at 7 am for waking everyone up and we came to your place and you were like, Truckstop? Hell yea!! And on the drive you randomly busted out with a deep alto version of Strangers in the Night! Sinatra dude? God damn you made me laugh. I have so many memories, so fricken many. I covered them up though, got clean that year for good right after you died and resigned myself to never looking back. Thank god for Facebook tho, and I guess, shyly, self-consciously, all these years later--thank god for time, and a little bit of growing up.
You ever hear this saying? I sure loved the good ol days but I'm sure glad there gone? I think it's a lyric. Whatever. I agree, mostly. But I think in general naming any time period as the best ever, or even the worst or whatever isolates it so you cant really integrate the blessings of the you that you used to be--and therefor praise and enjoy the you who you are today. The me of today, developed in strong, awesome ways over the years happened by looking back on a crew of amazing, wild, funny, nutty characters who still live in me, and who are guideposts to a time back then of innocence and wildness~~when I lived in the bliss moment unafraid. That sweet fresh time of timelessness when it's all possible, when you dont know about the fragility of your heart yet cuz your so busy wildly living out of it. Right out of its center. Life is amazing, there's so much, there's just so much to get to do, to be, to live and experience. And you lived an amazing time with all of us, and also started me on that tip of appreciating my life Brian, first by closing my heart, but more importantly, in the last several years, by forcing me to re-open it, and investigate the secret treasures I had hidden there. The old bones of who I was, they actually have led me wholly and fully to the kick ass woman I get to be today.
I just wish the hell you were still here to get to be the man you could've been, and to see us all kick ass as we still are now. I miss you Brian. I love you, I know I speak for us all when I say we all do. Here's one last memory: You had long hair, to your chin. You were a pizza boy and it was closing time and you had to mop, and Scotty put on Pink Floyd. And you picked up the fucking mop and started playing it like a guitar. Which was funnier, your hair flopping all over the place or the fingers of the wet mophead, sloshing water everywhere? I still pray for you brother and I'm thinking of you today.
People dont talk about death. Dont talk about how sudden, unexpected, and especially the untimely ones rip your muscles out, tear apart your very flesh. Seperate the tendons of your self, so that ever after the very beating substance of your self you become wickedly aware of. Like one day you dont know about that, the fabric of yearning and skin and blood and tissue that makes you up, then when it tears so violently and it's all you're left to contend with, well then what? Then you know forever, and from now on it's your job, your choice: am I brave enough to re-mend? Do I have the strength and courage to start to sew? But how most of us, in the aftermath, dont even know that's our choice. We just let the scar tissue build up, and stay numb in that quiet little section of our life...
Fannon we loved you so, so much. You were the fiber at our center, did you know that? You were the one who held us all together. The late night creeps by your house. You'd still be up, watching infomercials, eating nachos or popsicles and bottled sodas crazy ass paranoia eyes darting side to side. You always knew where the party was. The card games, spades and high stakes at Listro's or under your back deck. Parties in the basement at Michelle's, or back of the pizza shop just to say whutup. Backroad driving in the tinted windowed lowrider--remember the time you got stuck in the mud on that farm? And Hupman tried to get you out? And like everyone showed up, just to hang out there? Chilling in beach chairs and shit? How bout all those late ass nights we kept up my mom? My poor, poor mom! The time we told dad, in town for one of his weekend jaunts, that we were having a couple people over to say goodbye to Maura when she switched from Spalding to Arundel and we packed my basement full of heads? And blunt smoke, and dad didn't even know (cars were to the top of Tall Timbers for christ's sake!!!) until Davis showed up at the front door with a thirtypack on his shoulder. Back door dumbass, it was a backdoor party duhhhh. What about those field parties, what the hell was that place called remember the bonfires we had there? The six-foot bong? It was that one summer, no weed anywhere just acid I'm telling you it's a wonder any damn one of us are even half-sane. Wow and sixth street, and the years after that. Bass bass bass thug thug thug. The morning you were STILL UP, after Jess and I got kicked out of Dave Swann's at 7 am for waking everyone up and we came to your place and you were like, Truckstop? Hell yea!! And on the drive you randomly busted out with a deep alto version of Strangers in the Night! Sinatra dude? God damn you made me laugh. I have so many memories, so fricken many. I covered them up though, got clean that year for good right after you died and resigned myself to never looking back. Thank god for Facebook tho, and I guess, shyly, self-consciously, all these years later--thank god for time, and a little bit of growing up.
You ever hear this saying? I sure loved the good ol days but I'm sure glad there gone? I think it's a lyric. Whatever. I agree, mostly. But I think in general naming any time period as the best ever, or even the worst or whatever isolates it so you cant really integrate the blessings of the you that you used to be--and therefor praise and enjoy the you who you are today. The me of today, developed in strong, awesome ways over the years happened by looking back on a crew of amazing, wild, funny, nutty characters who still live in me, and who are guideposts to a time back then of innocence and wildness~~when I lived in the bliss moment unafraid. That sweet fresh time of timelessness when it's all possible, when you dont know about the fragility of your heart yet cuz your so busy wildly living out of it. Right out of its center. Life is amazing, there's so much, there's just so much to get to do, to be, to live and experience. And you lived an amazing time with all of us, and also started me on that tip of appreciating my life Brian, first by closing my heart, but more importantly, in the last several years, by forcing me to re-open it, and investigate the secret treasures I had hidden there. The old bones of who I was, they actually have led me wholly and fully to the kick ass woman I get to be today.
I just wish the hell you were still here to get to be the man you could've been, and to see us all kick ass as we still are now. I miss you Brian. I love you, I know I speak for us all when I say we all do. Here's one last memory: You had long hair, to your chin. You were a pizza boy and it was closing time and you had to mop, and Scotty put on Pink Floyd. And you picked up the fucking mop and started playing it like a guitar. Which was funnier, your hair flopping all over the place or the fingers of the wet mophead, sloshing water everywhere? I still pray for you brother and I'm thinking of you today.
July 25, 2010
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~~
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~~
July 21, 2010
What hungers you. In quiet.
I can not count the good people I know who to my mind would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers... (M.F.K. Fisher)
Dawes is up there singing.
Dawes is up there singing.The only thing scarier than dying is not dying at all.
There is wetness on my eyes, I have been in a place for the past two weeks of protection and keeping close ties on my heart, trying to be with it as it goes through its ups and downs, and now I am delivered. I am in my heart again, of it: the drum pounds the bass keep my beat and courses out in my blood all the way through to the nerve endings, the guitar's my spirit stretching out past my body. Taylor Goldsmith's totally American boy singing is finally giving me words.
It starts to go through my head, it's just a muscle. The heart. To this I can submit, I can revel in the beating wonder of getting to feel it. To just feel it, the greatest gift of all. This is wisdom: to know I'll look back on this time with gratitude and reverent longing.
My girlfriend whispers to me during set break. She tells me after her last relationship she'd completely lost all of her music interests but didn't even realize it. Her man criticized, or at least disapproved of the indy stuff that turned her on...so she let it go. Who knows how that happens? Silently, in little increments. That's how you give you up your soul. How you turn your self off. Piece by piece. Until you're so absent that you're used to feeling like your taking part but not really, only just a little. Dull, sort of looking in from the outside.
The band is less than five feet from us and I am relishing the show. I forgot how much this spot defined that time for me of naming, of recall. The time just behind me in Easton, in my first and only glorious space all of my own, when I called myself, bit by bit, detail by detail, hunger by blessed sacred hunger back to myself. The Nightcat, its black high ceiling with the exposed beams, the way the air runs in light circles back there, the red lighting. I was grinning all day in anticipation of seeing Sonia Leigh and Dawes, but I forgot how gratifying the venue is. How important place. The intimacy of the fifty or so of us having such visceral experience together. The catalogue of signed indy CD's, the pictures, I have to show for it. How much music is was and continues to be a map that's drawn me back to my own life.
In the parking lot I hugged my girlfriend goodbye and stayed extra long in my cousin Collin's arms. It was cool out but still so you could feel the weight of air. He is mind-blown, totally, by the show. Earlier, over dinner, he told me that he wants to move to Brooklyn Park where our Grammy lived, where his grandparents on his dad's side still live. He's been canvassing on a political campaign there all summer, dust and sweaty and I envision him, freckleface, blond and golden, is he in a button down? I am reminded of our hike in the fall, me and him, and talking so fervently about the GED and English students I served. About the unquestioned nature of class that so securely underpins racism. About my belief that many of our GED students I was certain had undiagnosed learning disorders, because the money for those resources just wasn't there in their neighborhoods when they were young. He said to me then that though his major was government he was thinking of focusing on education policy. Because when I talk about government I have to think about it, but when I talk about education it just comes right out of my heart. I remember my footing when he said that, stepping over the wet dark dirt, feeling my heart bottom out over the wisdom of this teenager who I've known since literally birth. Last night he talked about moving to Brooklyn, impoverished, crime-ridden Brooklyn. Brooklyn, because that's where the people connected with his heart when he bangs on their doors. They are the ones who made him feel equally fired-up.
When I left Collin and my girlfriend I met the girls from my old work for a late night catch-up. It was already 11, but the server at Applebees let us close the place down. We literally stayed til 1, cackly screaming laughter, the greasy food, couple of tears, the updates on Adult Ed and on my own life (I read a lot, I sit on the beach. Poetry--big self-conscious grin at this--I'm writing a lot of poetry. Tomorrow I will sleep late. My stresses include I wonder if my table needs more rolls...Coffee? Coffee here? And hmmm do I have another little black dress as sexy as the one I wore last week?) It was all put wholly, and gratefully in perspective for me. But I realized too how passionate I was for Adult Ed. It was a justice thing for me. Making opportunities available where they weren't before. It turned me, greatly, deeply, on.
In all things there are tides, and I for one am quiet and amidst a tide of great still. Life's cycle right now is on the long slow retreat and how I so love this time of year, the thick buoyancy, the savory greens, the dark yellow slanted light. The shadows in contrast. The feeling of heavy breathing that makes you so aware of the intermittent shafts of air to highlight the stillness. I have been submitting to it, which is not easy for me this Aries full of fire and passion and heat. Humbling myself again and again to the larger nature of things, allowing the silence, the stillness, trusting towards the inner-listing, the tiny hungers, to in stillness eventually speak their fisted minds. To become the palm, flat-opening. Allowing. It is hard. But that sweet unanticipated space, that wild curve within, fleshless and still, is there. And this is as beautiful as anything else: this does not mean what hungers one is missing. It means only that in full satiation there is quiet in the bliss. There is message in the silence, when one surrenders to wait and hear.
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