Monday, November 30, 2009

A little fall down...

The bitterness of real cold begins to seep in, and with offended surprise we pile ourselves into sturdier attire. The days a play of peaking gold against steely cover of cloud; the nights all too swift in the coming, with a waxing moon to keep us company. Haul it all in, the work and growing of the year, and festively explode into good cheer and giving, until absorbed in good feelings, we forget the longest night ahead. I’m tenuous as the season; nerves humming in a new pitch, wanting to give yet hunkering down, remembering Light in a stormy dark in my own mind.

I see myself balancing between self destruction and pride; faults keeping tenuous equilibrium through a battered about world. When the one out weighs the other, watch out, for tidal wave of hurt, anger, loathing, fear and false pride hits a shallow shore of being. Self destruction seems to be at the heart of so many matters of my heart. What brought me to the Grail Message, what did I find there? I found the answer, which was, that I have to keep living. I have to keep living. I’m not off the hook despite my raging self-violence, I’m still a worthy piece of humanity somewhere, inside where that little piece refuses to die. Trying my best to wash away myself, I failed, and wondering why I was still alive, why I couldn’t forget that piece of me I still loved, I grabbed for the Grail Message. I’m alive, and I’m meant to be, and I have to carry on, I have to be a better human, and get out what’s inside me, for the good.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Recede

As the life recedes from bough and limb, the forest kindled down to the bare spaces in between, the hills return as dearest friends. Stretching this way and that, our view now clear, they embrace our little life upon their slope, and with delicate, dignified gaze, remind us of those forces unseen yet stronger than ourselves, those which surround and support us always, and of the great Love those forces harbor.

We enter, as Nature exits, the festive season. Throwing the Thanksgiving turkey into my car, I sidle a bottle of Japanese green tea and a bar of Austrian chocolate into one hand. I throw the keys into the ignition and a Celtic blast ignites the ride home. I’m jangling through a traffic of cars like a lightening bolt on my custom suspension, forking to the rhythm of elation and jive, speeding to the joy of my own existence. I’m an American; burdened with the duality of knowing what is means to struggle for the impossible and to be constantly catered to. Proud and lonely country, set against its own vastness, falling down in a beautiful sunset, waving in a stiff, unending breeze. Pride is a sin after all, and we have fallen for it. Against the backdrop of our spacious land, our wild forests and giant skies, our pettiness is in ever greater relief. At a standstill without anything to stand on, remembering a dream that we assumed was accomplished long ago, always trying to go back.

When life turns away from boundlessness, the quiet realization strikes that not every option is open to us, not every summit climbable. I remember now the deepest jewels in my treasury, those a little nicked but burning with an inner fire of their own. Rubies like lingering oak leaves, emeralds steadfast pine, and diamonds like the stars of ever-lengthening night. Look to the aspects that out-last a fading, and find hope.

Photo - Lonely Sky

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lingers On

Day ends so quickly; before we know it we’re prostrate once more, hitching the covers over our shoulders. In certain tender moments in the afternoon, when chores and bustling are finished and when the sun tilts gently toward the fall, it is what we engage in that can define us. I used to fall asleep for at least an hour; smeared person hidden under what thin comfort sleep could bring. Then I plunged for a while into painting. Now I chase around a depressed donkey, knit a present, watch some strange supernatural anime; just be quiet.

New energy emerges from a dying sadness. Forceful, determined, pumping etherial iron, running laps of new discovery. Claim a little self-assertiveness, wrap fingers around a little steely grip - tighten up. This little upsurge of strength is need to pry open the doors I’ve slammed as I fumbled down the hidden passageway to my secret dungeon down below. Instruments of my own undoing lie there, piled in disarray, heaped in the untidy order they sprang from my psyche. I do so many things backwardly - the effect and the reason are opposites. People mean a great deal to me, so I shun them. I feel more open and at home as the crowd increases; more willing to share myself, my talent.

November brings the quiet for all such things to come to surface, bobbing on the still dark lake of my being like cold Autumn stars. Words a little slow to form themselves, time a little too short to enjoy the day, evenings a little too long to make the working feel fulfilled. So what remains when busyness must take a back seat? Down in the bottom of the box, hope. It’s that we want which makes us human, it’s what we want which decides what kind, and my confidence is growing that at the end of the day, at the end of the Summer, I’ll want what’s good. That I’ll want Light, and stars, as Night descends, as November lingers on.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Together, Alone

Leaves skittering in the trees on a starlit walk home. Woke up feeling all broken promises and raw nerves; pulled sinews and sad reclusiveness. Bandied about like the threatening snow flakes on a November wind: “Is it time, am I meant to be here, what was I supposed to be doing?”

Sometimes, I miss my friends. The old ones I fell in love with at age ten, the ones who worried with me about getting into trouble, the ones that came paired with a mom you couldn’t avoid if you wanted to see them. I love the memory of those friends like the cat on my lap, and curl the soft spots around my fingers as the recollection purrs into life. Still feeling connected to girls from long ago, tied at the belly, while sharing experiences without each other, like turning on the same music miles apart. She’s there like a first love, pocketed away in tenderness, the little pains she may be feeling tingling down the wire to my own fingertips. Little mystery in a person I’ve been without for eight years. Happy to still know her, somewhere.

I don’t seem to want to make something so terribly dramatic anymore. More interested now in humanity’s communal, half-conscious struggle, the connectedness between our vastness - we’re all answering the question, one breath at a time, what is the meaning of life? How regular is existence, yet how fraught with possibilities. Potential, hope. I put hope in the hope of men. Pray we all embrace the help to fulfill those hopes, whenever it may find us. Choice, awareness. I choose the power of choice. Pray we all use this power, in self-fulfilling awareness, to better the life we are given.

Never alone, though skittering and rattling on boughs of our own making. Shaking in the wind that must touch us all, remembering the memory of ourselves, buried down deep in the sap of another. Blessed are the little mysteries we’re meant to learn from each other; happy we can all be, if we can forget to feel alone.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Steadfast

November came with brown and deep black, with resting pine and steadfast oak. She came with veiled stars, a pensive waiting, a mist between the peaks of the valley. I heard a deep story, so low and poignant the language escaped me, though I cried all the same. I meet this month wanting to give more, wanting to understand more, wanting to be more seed than hope, more waking than dreaming. Even the flowers are more fixed in their resolve, and mums turn curly pleasant faces to the hammering frost. Buckle down all, and look to what remains, and there find the strength of bones, tenacity of roots, the nourishment of unfrozen waters far below.

Catch a message from a flying crow: Thinking and talking about the Integral Way are not the same as practicing it. Flow has flowed; a tide returning to the greatest of seas, and leaves bare the ankles of those who played in it. If I am indeed a part of this world, there is no need to mourn a waning creative burst, because it is already who I am. Where can I apply myself? Most likely in the place least expected, in a job I feel ill-suited to, one I am unprepared for. I’ll grow through this task, proving to myself in the deed that I am not quite who I’ve decided I am. Often as blind to my gifts as to my faults, I’m held up on each side by equal unconsciousness; yet courage enough to continue walking, love enough to be true to the better me living in another’s heart, loyal enough to want to remember God first. Wanting to give more, wanting to understand more, wanting to sing louder and dance lighter. Like soft foot falls, like a pulsing heart, remember just to keep moving forward, stride by stride.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Well-remembered notes

Moonrise over November, when day escapes us as soon as it’s matured. From growing morning to dimming night, we are in constant transition, shrouded quickly under the curtain of darkness, giggling underneath the newness of it, as a child in the playfully stolen coat of its father. When you’re little, you feel good as a matter of course, and only disturbances do you encounter. As an adult, it’s so often the good you encounter on your daily disturbing course, so you chase after it and around, under self-pity, back to childhood, past beloved occupations and into spirituality at last. Sometimes I feel like the reanimation of Billie Holiday, singing away with all her might in her single octave range. Irrespective of beat, there’s a song to be sung here, and I know these notes almost as well as I know my life story, maybe better. So I’ll warm up once more, and try again, the little tools at my disposal perhaps sharper than the last time.

Just realizing now that there is a difference between expressing oneself and displacing oneself. Expressing empties the cup, so that it may be refilled again in greater, more poignant vintages. The other buries the brightness in outwardnesses, refusing to acknowledge the reality of its imperfectness, as if it were an illegitimate child. I am my imperfections, and I am changing, as they do; changing partners in a great dance, spinning round the same room until all steps have been conquered, and nothing remains but to head home. There’s a full Moon tonight, and November’s not nearly so cold as the next few months promise to be. A fine night for walking, for chasing happiness, for singing out loud in familiar keys, for simply expressing.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

World in Peaceful Brown

November’s coming, and with it the irrevocable change. Gone are so many of the landmarks of beauty we have depended on since blossom’s first opening. This saintly, hollow beauty remains, a scattered, blurred collection of the bones of growth. We can reach so far now into the once electric forest, see so vastly into the bare shoulders of the valley. The leaves, quietly moistened by an icy rain, broken over by a few frosts, linger limply, clinging to path bends, jammed into rock wall crevasses. Goodbye to the sparkling Autumn, so easily sliding us away from Summer’s long soft embrace. Welcome in the quiet brown, the deep peace of a reflective long night.

Inside, I’m simmering down like the countryside. I used to wear my cause on my forehead, now it’s somewhere deep in my heart. Out of the throat, and into the living, values become as the word implies: valuable, a treasure for life, a jeweled pair of speckticles through which our heart peers. The flagrant, creative energy hasn’t stopped, nor my new fisthold on life, but the trees are barer, the explosion quieted. Whittle away a Winter, he’s on the tails of this peaceful bare-knuckle time when only oak remains clouded in dull orange and barely red. I’ll be okay; the growing season, though tempestous, was fruitful in the end, was giving to me rather than taking from me all along. For that, I am most certainly grateful.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Life in Flat Colors

The sky shifts from sapphire to mortar, and we look sideways at the lingering cadmiums; longer than last year, most certainly, we’ll just have to wait to rake the rest. I’m painting life in flat colors these days, outlined in bubbling sections like hillsides of Fall foliage. I’m painting in watercolors, and learning to let go, powering up like a ninja kid, and remembering first emotions, maybe even wanting them back. Did I squander them then? Or am I simply freer now than then, and cyclically returning to a place of opening creativity and enthusiasm.

So there then, a 15 year old playing in the leaves, not worried down with the craziness of before, just all of myself running to meet Time in non-linear fashion, only now.

Again in the flat colors of adolescence, I’m reaching out in energetic grasps to people I care about. Someday, though, I’ll have to stop crying for those I want to save. I go so far as to think that I’m not one of those who would sacrifice themselves for another, when really I’ve sacrificed such a large chunk of existing to hoping, to believing in others; my family. I’ll have to stop crying about it one day, and just help, and just plain help. Maybe I could just admit that I’d miss my father if he died. I’d sing him a song, I’d tell him good bye in a way I’ve never been able to. There are those who I feel safest around, those who might get lost, and so I fear for them. They’ve given me a little home on earth with their company, and I want them to get out alive, I want them to be all the happy things I feel in them, to experience their own goodness, and take joy. Little family of dreamers, sometimes sitting in the dust, terribly loyal, resigned, but pulling on the plough of change anyway. One furough at a time, just don’t get lost, just don’t cry away your part to help them, just get stronger ninja kid.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

On turning leaves

Almost bursting, flying through life in eager anticipation of the next meeting of hand to paper. Art has come back to me, and this time finds a well of happiness and eagerness to grasp all around me in conceptual beautification.

Crow woman, I’m calling myself from within, who have you now become? They linger along the roadside of our lives; ever present, unaffected Nature, testing out the frail limit of our reach. What are you trying to tell us all? That God is ever-present, even when we least expect it. That we have a job to do, if we only look for it. At the gate of a new beginning, and watching the progress, I see standing a crow. They watch without displeasure or happiness, just keenly fixing their awareness on the happening, only hopping away when threatened. Patient, piercing eyes; remembering the steps we take, recording silently the choices, as we disregard them - those who who are not afraid to live with us in the tangled nest we made. I’m now meeting my crow, and unstopping the cork on possibility; a little afraid, as any facing the turn of Fall. Listen to the trees, though: Forget fear in the laugh of beauty, and unleash, sing along with her a trembling scarlet praise. We have been given life! It has been housed in the leaves that now wither, and thereby endowed us another year’s growing. We release them, in a singular chorus of praise, and glitter every hillside in warmth, love, and rejoicing.

Life has so quickly become a barely escapable tremble of creativity. I could stay up all night, just giving. I can’t remember ever feeling this way; not back in art school, when pain seeped out from each twist of charcoal or blob of paint. Now it’s seems just time to let it out, and be happy.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Prologue


I’ll be okay one day, when the back and forth of my weaving has settled into more reasonable limits. When talent can find its clear channel, when I can’t be oppressed by the nature of others, when beauty’s all I know. I’m working again on a collection - little scraps of happiness, little eruptions of quirkiness, morsels of sweetest clarity and thankfulness. Start another page, another canvas, another paragraph, and when a library tall as the oak trees is finished, I hope only to have found my real self in the process. When a collection begins, so suddenly does all life have meaning, but can excitement cloud my vision? I think I fear that all I surround myself with will blind me to some simple Truth waiting on reality’s plain stage for my gaudy curtains to rise. Without trust, though, my journey can never really begin, and once more my ramblings have led me to the point where I must recognize the omnipotence of Creation’s Laws. Should the path stumble down rocky crevasses, whatever I then reap will tell the tale, and I pray I be awake enough to hear a warning cry. Back and forth, gallantry and modesty, expressive and reclusive, fool-hardy and world-weary; find the middle, find happiness. All you have to do is what you can, all you have to think is what can be better, all you have to live is what you are now, and keep flying.

Drawing: The other side of my heart - hellobaby

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Wearing away to Happiness

Dried corn leaves skittering across the road. It’s Chester County, the hills are small and undulating, the corn a formidable fortress between winding road and distant farm. The trees seem taller, the leaves entities with life of their own which one could easily mistake for fluttering crows or wriggling voles. One has a relationship to the roads here; like a member of the family, or a life-long next door neighbor friend.

Ash tree, growing in a Pennsylvania forest, from twin roots to an open palm of thanksgiving to the Lord. Ash tree, who can’t help being tall, though it cries spinning tears each end of Summer. Did you think yourself beautiful once, long ago, before rough soil had to be broken to accommodate growing roots? It wasn’t really beauty when I checked off all the boxes of experiencing and needed a bland surrounding to make myself seem bright. When I sacrificed reality for happiness, and real love for what I could comprehend. It’s not really living till you don’t have all the answers, not really you without a few dead branches, a lichen covered trunk or an uprooted stone or three. The trees survive by reaching for the Light first, then become themselves through the trials to such a goal.

When I let go of all that came to me in this life, who am I? I’m starting to see a little clearer. The ability to forgive this life, and myself therein, would bring such happiness. There is such wisdom in clouds, so much grace and majesty in Sunlight, in trees and air that all which seems to torment us is banished by the louder singing of their great song: God has made us, and He is infinitely perfect.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Day is just Beginning

A brown, bronze and purple Fall, and I’m wanting to start out again. Seems strange to want to begin new journeys just as Autumn sets in, and then I remember Frodo, setting out on his great adventure on his uncle’s birthday, September 22nd. So, it turns out I’m a little behind, after all. A shooting grass stem when bent around, reveals each fragmented tangent, each broken start, and yet retains the complete arc. Are lives made this way? Uncontrollably whole, though we try our best at times to break them.

I’ve learned that even when I have plenty to do, I still gnaw myself to pieces. Never wanting to let myself exist, I now find myself situated in just such an environment as to challenge this notion, to throw it into relief, so that I address it. If I can allow myself to live here, than I can find a little space for myself just about anywhere. This doesn’t mean I should launch a virulent defense, throwing caution to the wind, or an open rebellion. It means finally setting out on the journey I’m meant to take, the one I long to take: the journey to my happiness, the one I can’t even really name yet, which seems to be a quality of all great adventures. God exists, and I am a woman on a path to find Him. This is all I really have, what The Grail Message has given me, and what I sense to be at the heart of the matter.

I’m so easily confused, always asking for permission to exist. With each step, a scary past is hemming the progress, and fear is tightening the ligaments that should send me forward. Strangely, I don’t want protection, just freedom; not safety, just peace. But even saintly leaves get tossed about in the wind, and they don’t loose their purpose, they never relinquish the vital job they fulfill. Growing leaf in me, unfurling in a stormy Spring, where do you point? Upwards, to drink in Light as if It were purest water, to right and left, for new perspectives, and downward, in earthy humbling prayer. Little leaf, don’t loose your way, the day is just beginning.

Painting: Unwelcome Return - Alan Lee

Friday, October 2, 2009

Dream we can Evolve

The kitchen drawers are almost filled with things. Little pieces and scraps of maybe’s that all too quickly swallow what space I allowed for them in the early days of kitchen planning. I remember being fascinated by my mother’s church clothes as a child. The smell of them, the itchy texture and secret relief that I didn’t have to wear them. The delicate prospect of one day wearing jewelry, of sliding fully grown feet into tan sensible heels. The great mystery of panty hose. Somehow attracted to tiding myself up, to buttoning away the awkwardness, the wildness, the strange pieces that didn’t really fit. Buttoning away love, controlling my sensibilities, I would know what to do, I would be at peace. I would have traded the uncertainty of my strange little self for a scratchy waistline, for paste pearls, for what I dreamt maturity tasted like.

The woman she was before our mother is so tantalizingly close when we are children. Her clothes even remain in the back part of the closet, the part the folding door hides as it opens. She made the choice to have you, she made a choice she couldn’t have expected would affect her so deeply, and she left a path thereby, one she had been forging since her own parents loosed their hold. All my mother’s old things have the same smell, and a similar imprint of her thoughts. She was making the same mistakes I’ve made; she was choosing a life by trying, too. Forgive me, then, for being so angry with the self I see in your eyes. I tried so hard to be different by your experiences, I tried to prove we could evolve, and leave our daughters with a bit more. My clothes are different from those you used to wear to church, but my heart fell down the same hole, tried to button itself away behind that which is ideal.

Let’s set up a mini-wish, along the way: healing my relationship to other women. For a while now I’ve simply avoided the question, and made a little womanhood on my own. But what does womanhood mean in the larger sense? What could be possible when individual efforts meet, when one plus one equals three? I don’t want to be a threat to any woman, and I want us to heal, to collectively preserve the glory lent to us, in each shining point of light. I want to forgive this womanhood, and I want it to forgive me, too.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Catch the changing note

Fall seems to happen before we recognize it, just like a little Libra, who springs adulthood and outward-looking compassion on us. Before scarlet can register in our mental palate it scampers of. Before realizing what has happened, layers of clothing take their superlatives: shirts to the 3rd power, skirts squared, and whispers of sandals to the 5th. I'm baking apples today, freezing meat, sewing dresses; a mini eruption of store-away instinct. Warmed now by what lies inside my being, rather than what radiates to me, I'm watching Nature peel away and recede to the secret places just beyond reach.

I think it's not so strange a thing to want to be asked, not so strange either to want to give, and probably terribly sane to want to feel safe. Even now I'm sighing at the relief these three admissions grant. As things are kicking up around me, I suddenly remember Athena, and old friend. Her cool, calm eyes, her steadfastness, her blend of valor and femininity. I see her helm resting on piles of curls, and her spear at the ready, and I hear a little call, a change in note from the one that helped me blaze a new path through the thicket. Understand mistakes, and forgive yourself, for there is always Justice, and It operates in the most beautiful way. Remembering Athena, a wise woman who vigilantly watches, who is ready to defend good choices made.

Statue: Myron Athena, Photo: Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Collection of little things

It feels like a Fall night out there, a little Libra waiting behind the tree limbs, ready to replace the green with scarlet with irreproachable charm. The wind played tag through the tree tops, even delighting in a quick burst round our heads to ruffle hair and newly arranged coats. Around a table occupied by the first serious stew, I put down my stake for a new way of life, a new chapter beginning, one where I explore my compassion for my fellow men. That night, a familiar dream came, though a bit altered. Once again loose teeth were removed, and three sets came and went. It feels almost like a personal version of the seven fat cattle and seven lean cattle dream of the pharaoh; get ready Little Fish, things are about to change.

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” This rung in my heart today, as if now it was time to pose the question to myself: what have you given to those who need it most? I have a little dream in my heart, and this has outpaced the pain, has flavored the living in a splash of rose water, has tidied down the little ship of my being for sailing. A little dream; all I could ask for.

Where I hope to grow, I have to let others grow, too. Where I want help, I have to give it first. It’s sometimes hard to remember when a protective fear would like to build barricades around a little happiness; like a miser, like a dragon laying on his hoard, burying the treasure deep within his skin instead of spreading it for help and beauty. First sow, then reap, first give, then receive, first honor what is positive around me, then build a little dream of my own.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Three paces through the Room

Open up the windows to let in the bristling Fall air, newly arrived on the wings of a most unusual Summer. I’m breaking for Virgo as the Season does, relinquishing and allowing. I feel a change in the air as strong as the weather, and as exhilarating.

I saw a painter in wanting for a woman, and the wanting so intoxicatingly close to open awareness. Woman, by not fulfilling, had tricked him. He had gladly taken the cup of their beauty, drinking in furtive drafts which ranged in depth from lust to reverence. But the real meaning of a woman escaped him, escaped his models, and he was left with one terrifyingly sincere call, as gifts and talent loosed the chain and disembarked towards doom in hope of Camelot. I felt ever more like the Lady of Shallot today. In my recent psychic wanderings away from the loom. As she commits herself away from the mirror, she dies, and I recognize the agonizing call, through a distant past even, as she travels irrevocably down away from her work and safety. I even remembered the desire to pierce something, standing in the Tube, and understood the desire to show openly a belief that all this isn’t real.

A restlessness has crept in, and I don’t know how to satisfy it. A gate stands just over the crown of my head, and I don’t know yet where to opening leads. A wind has tripped over the little valley, shaking leaf and bough, cat fur and new fringe. I feel more present in my body, and more foreign in my surroundings; a little time capsule of awakening woman, a little remembrance in a tumbled about world. I feel ragged and clipped at the edges like the grass, and still growing while my time permits. Still trying, trying to find the balance between willing and following, between what I want and what is best. Imagine a life, Little Fish, imagine happiness; watch, pray, and keep swimming.

Painting: The Lady of Shallot - J.W. Waterhouse

Monday, September 14, 2009

The City and the Season

Written September 13
We left London today, early enough to catch remaining stars, and second guess the dawn for the orange smear of city lights. A whole different part of the body, of the consciousness is used in a metropolis, in a place bashed with the heavy concrete stamp of humanity. I’ve heard more languages than I can recognize, and the anonymity of it feels so strange. Each little human pocket, allowed to flourish as far as individuality’s restriction’s let them, like separate container gardens all thriving with the same gaudy exuberance. Dependent, really, on the excesses of unnaturalness, so many souls surviving on what should not be, like algae blooms in polluted waters.

I love to watch the airport ground crews, and imagine the moment they left their beds. Always dressed to accommodate the weather, they stand like little oasis’ in a desert of reality defiance. I’m disturbed by my surroundings, but no better than them: a streaky fuselage window, a work-worn woman steering snaky trolleys of luggage, the woman who boards looking exquisitely fashionable, the woman we boards suddenly awkwardly self-conscious of her white sneakers and clean, flared jeans. Maybe we’re all a little mood music sometimes; just a bland effect on our surroundings, just a hint of something nicer, but not really carrying a melody at all.

Reaching down to land on New York, the landscape smeared with the yellow rouge of goldenrod, I still felt a little out of place. This passage through London was so necessarily timed, like a little boy catching a falling pear before depositing it in some intended basket. I’m still not sure where I’m being taken, how far I’m hindering or helping my progress. Fall is breaking here, but the Season hasn’t changed, not yet, the Sun still lingers in prominence over Night. And so Summer stands waiting in me, waiting to bring into fruition that which will sustain me for the next change

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Just wait...

Time pulling slowly at the hem of things, and when emotions charge and dance for attention in a rattling rave the cocktail ever ends up tasting like depression. A little confused between harboring destructive feelings and teasing out the new direction my path is taking. How valuable then is inner peace in the middle of all things, is trust, is a gentle allowing..What we don’t see, those are the things that in the end destroy us, and what we don’t expect or plot, those are the things that define our future and happiness. Happiness is never as I could have expected it, most likely because it’s realer than my imagination is capable of producing, because it has a life of its own and couldn’t be the result of a well-executed endeavor. I feel like a little listening girl again, not wanting to get too excited about the material things around me, and yet enjoying them with a relish warranted by their ephemeralness. I think I do live in a little insular world, and maybe that’s not too terrible a crime, just a reality I’ve traveled into, and remain inside through an ever increasing consciousness.

Yet I’m chancing the idea of going out and chasing happiness for a while, to see if it leads me right back home. And maybe giving up reaching for the ideals, and instead just being who I am, honestly. I’m find this to be the best policy as of late; course and floppy, but honest, and able to shine forth the stronger for it, as the channel clearer of the obstructions I placed there in a thought for my improvement.

Oh Lord, what wilt Thou have me do? And an answer is always given, and for now is the same as always, and I am grateful for it, realizing once more its necessity and benefit. Back and forth and around I swing from excitement, frustration, despair, without ever nudging the immovable reality of the present. If only I let myself, just for a moment, delight in the sweetness of now, to forget happiness as a kind of goal, and swim along in it as it passes all around me. Then, I think, already so much would be easier, so much would have been accomplished.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Down from the Tower

Full face of the Moon tonight, and tomorrow, the smart witch starts no new business until he is hidden away in two weeks time. Tonight I mostly feel like the disappointing picture of a princess, when revealed to be a sad little thing, confused, and ultimately unpossesing of the qualities which make her great. They hang around in the air, and occasion virulent swats when frustration catches a dainty hand off guard.

I see a little well of violence and wonder if came with me or I nourished it along the way in some deep-down payback for being such a sensitive little bug. Samurais and Shield-maidens, all spun up in a confection with notions of heroism and honor, duty, skill, and personal sacrifice. I think I want so badly to apply myself, to plummet my being against a plainly diabolical cause, to use all of myself, the muscles of the spirit and the full range of my devotion.

When not a warrior, I’m an imprisoned damsel - the sort with flowing ripples of hair an indescribable hue, and a far-away heavy-lidded gaze. I’m terribly ashamed to have attracted various knights, well-meaning vessels in need of the fountain to be found in a beloved’s eyes. But a damsel wants or needs to be rescued, and I can’t admit to truly entertaining either. I think I’m a different sort, the kind with ruby slippers, the kind with wings that want stretching, and I have come to see that what I was really searching for was the Truth, not bliss in love. What I’ve really be waiting for was the energy to move forward, on my own feet, and a way to go besides. A home to strike out for, a love which brings peace rather than excitement, and a greater force to belong to. Freedom, in fact, is the many splendid thing that has waited upon my lips to be uttered in a declaration of achievement. And where does freedom begin but in giving up all that is safe yet comfortable, and in relinquishing allegiance to the self for that of something higher, almost unattainable on Earth. Almost, like the improbability of flight, until we try.

Painting: Boreas - John William Waterhouse

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Moon and Fall Sunshine

Feels like Fall sunshine out there. A numbingly chilly morning to Augustine feet, who are quickly plunged into cob webbed slippers. Shining down now at greater angles, the sun pierced under our eyelids, coming down to a conversational level, when once it stared down forebodingly, in all her Cancerian resplendence.

The thousand points of light, the little mercies of a day, the scattered hope of living. I feel at last at a dead end, and strangely freer for it. Now I begin to imagine, not concrete forms, but simple wishes. What would I simply wish for in a life? More simplicity, and better freedom, a freedom that is not a running away, or a hiding seclusion. All the things that once interested me, like dissipating water tremble and evaporate through my fingers. The taste of them remains, on this I linger, waiting as in a darkened theater for the feature to begin. There’s something different on the air, as it sharpens toward indomitable Autumn, as the Moon whispers toward fullness. I can feel trust again, and I can feel happily waiting, unraveling and peaceful.

Later, the Moon burns a hole in my curtains. Accompanied by some beautiful celestial sister, they take in all there is to be revealed on a midnight farm. Little heart of mine that’s just stretching, flabby round the corners, but lithe by nature, just waiting to be released into resplendent activity. Activity with out thought, if you please, just natural taking up of the offers stirring within, those offers that so readily provide nourishment, like little nuns laden with soup, waiting at each turn for a dusty vagrant to bestow upon. Moving onward now, and trying, through the stones along the way, not to forget to look up, and accept charity, and accept kindness, for kindness’s sake. When it’s for my sake I can easily refuse, and take comfort in the sacrifice of a little material comfort for a little freedom. But where am I meant to be? In anguish so often is the question raised, with choked voices, hot tears, or shaking shoulders. But I find now it can be asked in such a nicer way, in a way that engenders peace, for it allows my life to be as it will, to be as it is Willed.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Rising Moonlight

Sundown over a strange day. Where will the moon leave me tonight, as he slides through the sign he once tip-toed on, as my little body took its first breath? Terribly hard to do the things emotions stand on the way of, and also so difficult to be interested on a day with a clean floor, little to do but what I’d rather not, and the sick dizzy feeling wandering around behind me. In the larger, more natural scope of things, it all makes sense, but navigating the rocky troughs of water between such shores of inner arrival is almost enough to make one want to rent holes in the barge, and end the tediousness of speculation. Another short-coming of the mind in practice: that of only possessing the capability to focus on one thing at a time, one reality at a time, one place at a time. Like a long and dimly lit gallery of paintings, the mind arranges reality in pieces it can remember, in encapsulated feelings it can readily access, and analyze cooly. What else am I looking for in this expanse of duty and work? It all seems so silly. Better maybe to just live another day, and embrace the ups and downs that will take me along a path that I trust and know has good reason. Self honesty is, after all, maybe not as difficult as self-realization, the one naturally following the other. But I sometimes feel like I’m hitting every bump in the road to the first, and a worn out being stretches out for relief in solitude or sleep or nothingness.

There are a few things to remember though, little beads to count when the going gets tough. I am, as ever, ennobled by what I can give to others. Freely, and from the urgings of my heart, as well as the gentle proddings of intuition, I’m left feeling not so alone, and not so deaf to the world I’m occupying. There is wisdom in Nature, and I can see the imprint of my own hand in her so clearly, thereby recognizing what still needs refining in myself. And lastly, most importantly, the Truth exists. It calls unceasingly, singing in cool, bracing tones, waiting with sharpened sword when I stumble towards It covered in the brambles I can’t remove myself. In It is a Love I can’t even rightly comprehend, even though I live by It’s Grace.

How silly again I feel, but not so despairing this time. The Moon has taken stage, cradled by saffron colored clouds and attended by stars in the East. Sundown over another day closer, another attempt, another mirror into the state of my being. Strange day indeed, but not so bad after all.

Print: Village in the Moonlight - Shotei Hiroaki

Friday, August 21, 2009

Something in the middle

Sort of feel like an interminably lonely creature, an anonymous daughter, a little fragmented womanhood. Like transparent petals, or brittle grasses, or stones that lose brilliance out of water. Wandering from beauty pool to beauty pool, existing by the grace of evening sunlight, or kind orange cat, or out-bursting thunder shower. On the tips of living, maybe dabbling the toes in the icy art of being, shimmeringly shy and hardly relaxing, save to write a line or more. Passing clouds take all day to arrange themselves accordingly for their sundown repose, and in the fleeting beauty give such thanks for their existence that escape me as yet. They don’t seem to mind the day-long stretch to beauty, or the tediousness of tree, rock, Sun, land, night. Pieces of indomitable humility, the little vessels who empty themselves, and are graciously replenished day after day.

The walnuts always seem to give way first, relinquishing yellow leaves in forewarning of the Fall that awaits us. In little bits, in our own manner, we too give way to what seems inevitable, be it for joy or sorrow, and thus temper the oaken side of our humanity, which never releases hold until the very foundations of an existence break down. Don’t give up too soon, in a quixotic defense which strives to sacrifice what is most readily available to defend the tender inner reaches of spirit. Don’t hold on too long, in some effort to be proven right through out-lasting, in some misunderstanding of real strength. Little Queen Anne’s Lace bedecking the humblest places, tell us your story of working dichotomy: how delicate, multi-faceted, and ethereal are your blossoms reaching toward the light, and how humble, rugged, and nourishing the knotty primeval carrot that roots you in the Earth.

Up, down, East, West, water, fire, strong, flexible, and something in the middle, something yet beyond all cardinal directions, something in the third dimension, something outside of the meandering path we wander, something that inevitably guides the way, because it is the way, because it is the Light. My little self, nodding in the breezes of this Earth like ripened Elderberries, ready to give of what I have, and yet so small in the greatness of the universe. May I be just as I am, ever nobler, ever more dutifully fulfilling the little niche I have to offer, ever more gracefully singing in the little space alloted to me.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Reflecting on my generation

A ladder rung up from our parents, who challenged and set alight so much that was already decaying on its throne. We live on their successes, material and psychic, yet we loose ourselves in them as well, swirling into the comfort of amiable home and the platitudes of over-education tempered with over explanation of all our inner woes. A tribe of people gifted and heart-broken, reckless and yet self-fascinated standing on the shoulders of a revolution against that which was all too obviously egregious. Where are our battles? On the inner landscape we all choose sides, and crowding together, collectively forgive one another our differences and descend ever onward into either deeper pits of self-reflection, or more fragile glass houses of success than ever our forebears imagined.

I see the best minds of my generation everyday, on their facebook pages. Happy just to craft themselves, happy to be free of the responsibility that comes with crafting the future. We are outside our professions, mainly, and exist to see one another again, and feel whole thereby. This sad little episode in humanity, this terribly deep upward striving, this happiness that urges ever to be let out, this peace that only knows the reflection of itself. All our arts are tired from the struggle, and we find beauty only in the admiration of each other; the diamond in my neighbor’s eyes is the crown upon my head, if only I had the courage to posses it, to be responsible for it, to tend it toward good or ill. Not yet are we forced to develop ourselves, and we are left with gifts of the heart that remain there, and beg to be released, stumblingly, in heart-wrenching episodes that leave us too tired to try once more, too exposed to live in totality as we are. Our last chance, I fear, is coming, and I fear because I am as guilty as everyone else, and I fear because it is almost just about too late. We all have the capacity to achieve so much good. if time still remains, if only we try.

Painting: Jacob's Ladder - William Blake

Friday, August 14, 2009

Recalculated investment

The mist is finally breaking over the valley, and here upon the western-facing hill the tenderest of blue escapes an ever-present silver. Comforted by tea and piled library books concerning European history, the kitchen washed and the sunflowers just holding back against fading in their vase; a quiet picture of life is painted, and I allow myself the morning’s vacation. Things feel all the safer when the Sun has risen, yet the sound of crows brings forth regret; as Summer passes we all too soon forget the misery of heat and flies and remember that we never did accomplish what could have been in the lushness and splendor it provided. What to do with a Summer? Like a precious jewel it beckons us along through cold and expectation. It smolders around me, and the expanse of greenery and life almost too much to handle, yet gone too quickly.

How do I escape it, then? The cycle of up and down, good days and bad, lost expectations and joy in being. It’s probably meant to be like this, and most likely the churning pulse of this sort of living is slowly and surely polishing away, milling me down to the usable fruitful corn, and sending all shaft to the wind. Maybe I place myself in the sandstorm in a lingering fascination with all that is pulled away. That I felt something deeply seems to be reason enough for me to linger over its departure, and everyday almost I say a long farewell to former friends unreturning. Watching myself change seems to be the hardest part, for fear, most likely, of loosing the tiny pearls of self-understanding that have lasted through all previous shifting.

Like the pang of regret when an imperfect tooth is dentisted back to unnoticable compliance with the rest of mouth-life, or when irrepressible harried-looking meadows are severely mown back into tidiness, so I wince a little at the release of tired old emotions, so I sigh a little as the little corners of me are cleaned. Maybe this is a long lesson in prudent investment, and just like the rest of the country I’m watching sacred stocks plummet because, as it turns out, they were based on something false. So we all wind down to the harvest. A little patience, a little detachment, and by and by, I’m sure I’ll be provided for, cared for, and prepared for whatever next stage of living awaits me.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Letting go the watch

Washed the breakfast dishes and the compost pot, then watched for a moment the cheerful turning of the second-hand washing machine, and re-examined its broken latch. I find ever again the challenge to find joy in what is placed before me, not what I have dreamt up and reach for unsuccessfully. I’m sitting down with the concept of identity to find it so easily linked with joy, so closely paired with one another, as the latter is generally recognized as the sure road to the first. I doubt the veracity of this notion, and yet can’t deny it totally. The house will have to be cleaned, and all my towels are spinning away in the mechanized suds downstairs. A little feeble, and unresponsive, yet the prayer forms ever softly: please, let me not be blind to the joy of this moment, simply because it is not as I thought it should be, because it is not as I planned, because it is not as I imagined happiness and fulfillment to look.

And then sometimes it’s all set aside, for brief moments which last an eternity, and all that can be thought and experienced is “Oh Lord, thank Thee”. Then I want to be as a sleeping battle maiden, awoken by the call in times of great need, already dressed in perfectly crafted armor, rescued from slumber by a daring knight with a gifted sword. I’m lost in images of castles, of struggles, of heroism and purity, and the tininess of present life is forgiven, along with all clinging sadness. I form the wishes for myself later, in reflection: may fierceness be forgotten for valor, may disinterest and withdrawal for the enthusiasm I recognize as uniquely mine to give, and may loyalty rule over all. A little Valkyrie I’m harboring in my heart. Plunging these particular fingers into another sink of dishwater, I hope I do not hid her way, giving into despondency when I cannot hang her battle shield across my drying rack or dust pan for all to see. To see myself in all I do, I think, is to forget myself; to find true my identity, I’ll most likely have to let it go, so that it can come back to me, in the most unexpected and the most honest and trustworthy way.

Painting: The Valkyrie's Vigil - Edward Robert Hughes

Monday, August 10, 2009

Loosening hold

I watch the Sun sink slowly down in bending light and eat honey with my bare fingertips. Horsetail grass is calling my name, as are chamomile and baby mulliens. The heat reminded us it was Summer today and my sweated form remembers a form of sensuality; a curvy, rounded enjoyment of the temporal, a bare-footed, tousle-haired thick Sunlight. I love the smell of corn, of misty moisty mid-Atlantic forests, of bee-dappled sunflowers. August is now upon me, and, as every year, I wake up to the reality of Summer: in perception almost past us, in reality only just now reaching its height.

How strange to watch my surroundings as some sort of cinematic lecture, pouring out in strange shapes that which is needed. How strange also to feel lonely and harried at the same time. Just tousled about and empty; bloated and still hungry. How sad I have become and yet I how much that feeling has replaced one of stiffness, a strict hold on living. Given the choice, the decision is easy. So much is already given to me to take care of, so much would I waste by bashing it into concepts my limited understanding could grasp. Like relinquishing control over the Summer garden, simply to hold open hands to the fountain of tomato and broccoli gone to flower. All the sunflowers know what to do, and I look to them in admiration: when the swelling energy of life becomes so all-embracing and uncontrollable, turn your face upwards, and calmly follow the Light.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The garlands woven

And then there are days like this, when good works spills from the fingers like water, and good counsel and cheer are found in the most unlikely places. A storm threatens to open up, but the free air it brings is worth any worry, and I walk here and there in the green grass with arms swinging.
I’m as tall as sunflowers today, and as fragile as the few pole beans that made it through the weeds. I try to remember what it means to be a leader, but slip erstwhile into reveries of a flowered fantasy, where all is simple, solemn and pretty. Here’s pansy for thoughts, a white chrysanthemum for Truth, dandelion for a rustic oracle, yew for sorrow, eglantine for poetry, water willow for freedom, magnolia for a love of nature paired with the yellow violet for my rural happiness. A diverse bouquet I offer out, while crowned with lupines for imagination. And yet I hold back two small blooms; a sprig each of Maythen, which the Normans renamed Chamomile, and of Marigold, for the changing tides of energy in adversity and despair.

Ending episodes of pain is like waking up. New eyes see what has been forgotten in the dreaming, and a newly freed mind spins into hurried work to amend the lax. Shame can lead unfortunately to wounded pride when others take notice of you have not, and not wanting to admit the real reason for the disappearance, I scramble about, half wanting to tear up, and make right in bursts of morning sunlight that which has been revealed to be missing. Renewed joy and freedom all too quickly sucked away with the startling obligations of the material world. The grass is still green, though, and the few hours I may pass in search of myself are in the end well spent, even if they feel stolen at the time.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Dove flight

The little dove, rescued in a pre-dawn hour, would not take flight on the upswing of my releasing hands. She sailed down to the grass with a thud, and after a moment of sickening pity, took to her wings with a familiar pulsing call, and disappeared into the night. How similar I feel to this poor creature, rejecting aid from fright, hitting bottom on her own, to erupt into flight on her own.

It’s scary, really, the thought of actually changing oneself, of permanently setting aside those dark little friends that have been made from my faults. A fear maybe of the vacuum that threatens to open up? Or of no longer knowing myself after so long a study in hurt feelings. Despair is like a tumbling shoal of rocks, new worry and strife taking up the breakneck pace of the pebbles first set into motion. The avalanche has been let loose, and although I deeply recognize the its futility and meaninglessness, the thought, the feelings, like a great descending swarm of birds, or a familiar heroically bombastic aria drowns out sensible feelings and living.

I would go to sleep, but there always seems to be a tractor running at such times, and this is most genuinely a blessing.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Duty to Give

Mown into shape, a high Summer bounds along. I am Earth splattered, Sun baked, remnants of morning dew still clinging about cuff hem and sandal-buckle, and all the while knowing that although each moment is vital and precious, this feeble life-time stands so faintly small against the scope of Time. Up to Light, racing to meet the Book of Time, trees stand steadfast, and throughout their centuries of existence not one moment is wasted, one episode without meaning and worth. What story could I write that hasn’t already existed, that would be better and purer than what is already possible within the Laws of the Father?

An aspect, long simmering beneath those more easily recognizable, has at last found its time and place to come upward. Shifting again I see and nearly shudder to have it crystallized and exposed. A deeper part of myself, something I’ve never found outlet for, though I felt it and its presence pushed swollen against the confines I placed around my living. But, then again, we are all rock stars in the private arena of our minds. Such qualities as excite and surprise me are only what is my duty to give, my bill to Creation. In the garden I find a similar reality: plants do all the work, really, turning soil, water and Sun into life, we just make a little way for them and deserve not really much credit.

I feel how close Purity and Simplicity are, and from them Valor so easily springs, so naturally ignites. A little cleaning inside my being, sweeping slowly away dust until the pattern of the floor can be seen, laid with a design so close to what I had already hoped through much trail and decision-forming. How essentially happy living is, and how terribly beautiful.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Changing paces

There’s a black and white cat wandering in the hay field. Through mismatched piles of hairy fodder, he sounds some strange primeval call: “This is new, this is all new. I can walk here now, right toward you! Silly humans, take notice of me, I am at such ease!” I love the hay, the Sun who torments any who dare to linger in the physicality of the task, the grace in repetition, the fertile light-filled smell, the memory which takes over and teaches these particular hands just the right movement. In my thoughts I’m riding horses again. A happy trotting, moving briskly on some not-too-urgent message. Where am I heading? Not sprinting away like other times, not narrowly escaping danger. Now a long season of refusals comes to a close; many paths foundered, many directions aborted. Have I chosen wisely?

Now a little sister is born to my usual set of feelings and I come to face it: anger, a sensation I have carefully side-stepped for so long. Never deigning to actually manage such feelings, ever finding the watery way around such states. Now too many pebbles break the peace, and I cannot continue as I always have. Even in the garden it is the time for the beetles to gnaw away. Great hordes piles on the sweetest of flowers, and we must react to the invaders without vengeance, spite or viciousness. Addressing honestly what beleaguers us. How I wish sometimes to paint myself openly as I experience myself inwardly: frail, whithered, and often hopeless. Is it really Love then that forges such feelings into a language unrecognizable to those around me? Letting them not take hold on my ever-present theory that I am essentially broken. I am unconscious still of what others provide for me, of what I mean to them, but ever closer to a truer understanding of friendship.

Again, I’m inclined to assume that all things take figuring out, that peace and deep thought can solve anything. I am ever guided, though, and helped though I tend to feel so alone. Just listening to the cues now can be my greatest strength. Where am I heading then, on my mission? May the Lord grant me a clear path, for I feel ready as ever to ride.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Evolving

At the end of the day, most things are alright. The evening sky is ever beautiful, solemn, and forthright. The stars ever speak of times to come, times that were, when the little imaginings of our present world are infinitely far from sight. Hope springs in every grass blade, and love in every opening blossom, and poetry revels itself in the dusty corners I have forgotten, the ancient memory of the sprightly, solemn personality I can’t escape.

We come to the haying, the first inkling to put aside for darker times the bounty and light unfolding before us. We watch tentatively the crops that are meant for winter storage. The crops we know will not survive the frost we measure and test now, ever with a mind to meet the finish line. Like waking up in late adolescence, realizing that life takes effort, and gathering up the scraps of cultivated individuality, so we intake a little breath, and look to hoes, rakes, and mason jars.

As if still in last night’s dream, I awake to the building warmth a little ineffective to my surroundings. I could lie down in the meadow, the flowers and grass growing over my peaceful form, if it wasn’t time to mow such places clean, to rake, pile and order the growth. Ever Nature asks “what do you wish to become?”. A little seed ripening, an evaporating dew drop, a steady trustworthy little bee. All such things move ever forward, dance always in happiness, change continually themselves and their surroundings. At the end of the day, most things are different. They have evolved, they have endured.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Anticipation in joy

Dawn broke in the east, standing the hemlocks in dark contrast against the pale promise of light. In the south, a moon just past full poured his radiance past a friendly star and into pools of milky softness on my bedroom floor. So Summer days are started, leaping in on one another in eager anticipation of what adventures will come. I love soft gusts of wind that feel more like welcoming friends than elements of nature, Summers that linger on the doorstep of heat, and chicories that out-blue the sky. The Sun set under a roof of thunder clouds now spent; a slanting light reaches each dewy morsel in the meadow, setting life aglow.

I feel sort of at an end to things, not sure what’s to come next, or how I should go there. Deep thoughts of despair, and a cloud of disinterest hang over eyes that would glimpse a beautiful Summer. What will happen next? Maybe this is a shade of a feeling once before, on the crest of Eowyn’s wave, utterly dark before her feet. My husband and I are probably very much alike: speaking too quietly and requiring too much effort in the listening. He’s burdened down with work and unheeded, I’m swallowed up in strange waters, as what I remembered of myself slips away. It will have to change, somehow.

As a child chasing butterflies, so I chase happiness. And when it rests upon my outstretched fingers, so often my peals of delight send it flying away once more, and loosing sight of my treasure when eyes were shut for laughter, the song dies away in my throat, and each step forward feels feeble. Maybe I'll tire of the game some day, and looking around me for the first time, regard the happiness inherent in all Creation; the joy in being which remains so elusive to feeble humanity. In anticipation I fumble awkwardly through life, hoping for the sweet relief of acceptance and home right around the corner. If I could only just solidly convince myself that home begins in my own heart, and that only acceptance needed is that of myself, perhaps all at once I will find myself at work, and in joy.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Arrival

We have arrived in Summer. No longer can a blushing June lend cover to the heat, the lushness of verdant Summer. The first raspberries hint to ripeness, the currants hang heavily on feeble, wispy stems. Amid all the fullness, I feel as juices running dry; a wrinkled raisin me weaving through daily chores between the burst of life. I see how emotion clings to the coattails of perception, haranguing clarity with a centrifugal force of whatever’s in season; be it woundedness, fear, despair, or dizzying elation. Simple thoughts can be easily clouded, clear recognitions sullied by a wash of imagination. Learning to latch on to what is not forgotten, in moments of clear remembering, in moments of prayer. Then so few questions remain, the one outlasting them all: how may I serve thee better, O Lord?

And then I danced again for the first time in years, and was shocked by heaviness vanishing, by swiftness returning, and by the flutter beats of heart and feet. How wonderful it felt to bypass intellect, to learn through play and unlearning, to laugh at the walls a mind builds around the existence it’s used to. Three little points of light in the darkness, as shimmering stars before a night’s journey: Clarity, Naturalness, Simplicity. I found them in the instances of a weekend, now I seek them out in the everyday, like tender seedlings to weed around, to bring furthering light to.

Start first by cleaning the house, by moving into the new kitchen. Remember the deep work that women weave: not just a home on the earth, but a home for the heart, where peace may be found, where the spirit may feel safe to unfold itself, where a beauty that springs from personal experiencing clings to corners like shining ivy. Wanting it so long, and coming to realize how important it is to me, has been the slow steady work of Winter and Spring. No sooner I can hold back the ripening Summer than deny this work before me. The last leg of a turn of the path; may weariness not overtake me, may I remember always the longings which outlast all feeble doubt.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

By chance, by choice

I’ve been on the path with my husband now for 5 years, which feels more like 5 decades. A little sliver of Moon greeted us with a patient smile behind his walls of reddening clouds. The tenderness of Summer arrives at sundown, and we forget the tribulation of heat and storm to walk with easy steps in grass of the most beautiful shade. Chicory appears; an ephemeral burst upon ephemeral stalks, challenging us with her unmistakable beauty by roadside and ditch. Life is also in the spaces in between, the moments we hurry past. Like cats lingering before opened doors, the wildflowers call to attention the middle grounds, the unexpected unfulfillment of human scheming, the unpickable preciousness of living wildly. And so I’m out in dewy fields, remembering the rhythm of picking kale, remembering the patch we weeded together, when I knew that I would be his wife.

And amid the splendor I stand a bit apart, contemplating my miseries. But perhaps this is the left side of Cancer, the right being the happiness of home, of nurturing the earth in blessed motherhood, of carefree expression. I begin to wake up to falling-shorts, where I have lost the way of my potential, have turned away from paths that were so clearly lined up for me for my benefit. For fear, I believe, the usual suspect; that and wounded self-pride, what little of that still lingers in dark corners. Therefore the fiercest kind, the last kind, the most solidly wounded because it has fixed its reek to the cavern walls for so long, through so many trials.

But I am here; by choice and by fate I have made my way to this moment, imperfect as it is. The strength of human volition astounds me, all the more for understanding that it is the merest spark of a reflection of the Power that lights all Creation. By will, by choice, and by what must seem chance, a little earth living is done; ever in the direction we ourselves choose, for good or ill.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Cancer rising

Midsummer Day and the elder blossoms remain only promises. The strawberries begin to loose interest in their own reproduction, just as we begin to loose interest in their consumption. How beautiful, the unripened currents, who dangle in plump choruses with their gently blushing comrades.

The heat descends upon us. The animals meet it with a long belly stretch upon the cool slabs of the patio; the humans with befuddled agony. Cancer has arrived to lend the Sun pinching claws to take us by surprise, and to lend precedence to the home we cultivate around us. Working is slowly taking over living, even as Sun is over-taking her zenith. Stooping and hilling, we work against beating rays, and remember life as it once was, when earning life was all of life; that and making better what already existed, the simple art of improvement in all facets of living, humble or grand. A little blister bubbles up where hard working has surprised the unaccustomed flesh.

A starry night awaits the patient listener when day is done. The twinkling light reflected in the beating pulses of fireflies in the darkened surround. Would that we could be the same, reflecting back a shade of that Light which permeates our whole existence.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Catching breath

Summer Solstice, when everything comes to fulfillment. Our dreams of roses are now blossoms, our memories of tender strawberries are now abundance in excess. Everywhere is green and good, and ravishing in the plentiful rain. We see today, the longest day, under cover of cloud, and yet there is no mistaking the brightness. Summer has arrived, beaming, her hands laden with gifts.

I guess I always wanted Love to be an emotion, the better to understand and grasp it, being myself of an emotional nature. I was waiting around for it, an empty vessel waiting to feel, and thereby became all the more confused and injured. What one can feel for another is indescribable, it is as close to real life maybe, as we can get. Or is it? All along the path I’ve been sorting out spirituality and Love. Seeking for the real Truth as I seek for the true application and depth of Love. How does it really feel? asks the girl whose almost entire being is feeling. Love, I think, transcends feeling, and here would be the point where the trauma arises for me. Can I find a way to understand, no rather, to recognize, that which defies feeling? Like a fish asked to understand the furor of a volcano. Yes, possible, but out of their element, and only plainly visible as an aftermath. But what about the present? I’m struggling to understand it as a present happening, to recognize it as it occurs.

Gusts of wind today, things are opening up. New life takes in new breath, and the air is always the first ingredient.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Finality of form

Gemini always rushes past, with everyone equally eager for its departure for various reasons. I’m feeling this side of frivolous, recently, and seeking out little moments to verify my system. Last week’s peony still leaves a willfully wonderful scent in the bathroom. Sam’s silent, worried meow through the glass door. Lives like dried leaves floating in the waterfall; swirling around then back upon themselves, then forward, before freedom over the unseen edge. Last firefly, holding out and still burning in the downpour. An all-to human attempt to comprehend the details, the minutia of living, in order to choose correctly. New puffball stretching to the wind suddenly expands and disperses when I remove the sphere from its central stalk. Silvering trees and misting rain speak of a day inside, staring at the green that leaps toward me through the window.

As a child I wanted adventures and a horse more friend than transportation to be with me as I conquered unimaginable feats. Alone as I felt, I wanted not friends, but infamy; a special outsider, a wanderer with unknown history and powers, a stranger that would shape and change lives before disappearing once more. Now that I’ve settled on a different sort of adventure, I find myself struggling with the image I so carefully painted. I can stay, and this intrigues and unnerves me. My faults I’ll have to share with other people, my triumphs will be not mine alone. I’ll have a home beyond the back of some mystical equine traveling companion. Scary, really.

Once a blossom opens, the petals continue to grow, continue to spread out until the entire bloom is complete. It would be good for me to remember that growing is not complete as soon as the next phase is entered, that it takes continual effort to realize finality of form.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Under tree and Sun

The familiar players on the stage of self-aggrandisement take position. I do battle by looking away and upward, trying to remember the simpleness of my smile, the way to feel at home both in my body and in society. I long for the combination of freedom and security than only that which is Light can bring.

Feel like I’m taking a bit more control over “destiny”, stumbling a lot, but more actively forming and shaping the life I want to have, the impression I wish to guide people on, what I wish to give to them. It turned out to be a jolly sort of day. Why haven’t I spent more time in certain meadows, under the trees and wild brushes of the raw land? I’ve rather stayed indoors, curled unhappily on my blue bed-spread, enjoying the unconditional company of cats. After brief moments under the whispering shelter of twin pines, I’m revived. Resilient enough to bend away the working, to laugh openly, and stretch etheric fingertips towards those around me. How often I recoil away from others, as if they were walking hot stoves. There is immediate strength in happiness, in knowing your path even a few hours ahead, in forgetting to feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

The daylight now lingers until the nearness of 10pm approaches. Under the strengthening Sun ever more of myself is laid bare. Little faults like little weeds between the plants eeking toward maturity; soft, pliable and generously fertile soil piles up under the eaves of the tiller like a richness of being I’m beginning to savour. The Earth spins toward her zenith, toward her state of ripening motherhood, and I relish the taste of sunlight.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Last whispers of Spring

The numbing resonation of lawn mowers, pitched into harmony with buzzing insects trapped indoors wraps around me as I lay under covers. A sad sick feeling again, one I can’t seem to escape. There is comfort, however, in long grasses, in the smattering of various mushrooms that punctuate soft places in the earth. I’m patchy like the shedding coats of donkeys; almost down to bare skin, the freedom of their summer hide awaits a tedious and shaggy undertaking. Pieces of me are lost in sleepless nights. Tossing about on strange mental planes, and encountering whispers of some troubled past, I’m sent from aggravated waking back to nightmarish dreams. And the sun sets on another sleepy day. She sings her final song of red and crimson, the burst of life and beauty before relinquishing her path to starry skies. It threatened to rain all afternoon, and the promise has as yet remained unfulfilled as evening takes its dreamy stroll toward night.

I think about the happiness of mushrooms, existing peaceably in a group of all stages of development. Like silent, immobile herds of elephants, with tiny mushroom-calves protected around the heels of their mothers. They all have a little smile to share, a little triumph over decay, a little secret about the happenings of a wet June night. These are the things I wish for my own community; the happiness, smiles, triumphs, and secrets. These are the things I wish for myself.

Looking in the mirror I seem a bit worn, a bit more elf-like than usual. Sometimes I second guess the new direction I’ve taken; did I sacrifice something valuable and terribly needed in the world? I’m actually feeling like a certain kind of teen again. Sleeping and waking, I trip, dance and plod through living, forgetting some passages of the music, changing beats, striking up different verses to complicate and enliven the heartbeat finding its own rhythm within. I hope the good choices have out weighed the bad, and I hope I can learn to be true to the gifts bestowed upon me, everyday.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Shooting arrows with the Moon

Home is still a place a little unknown, hanging on the fringes, nestled between blades of grass. I'm happy and sad to be back in familiar rooms, back in familiar dialogue, thoughts and behaviours. Around a crowded table I wondered again if this was the life that I wanted. Under a nearly full Moon I felt again that this was the place I belong.

High Summer again, full of ripening fruits, long sundowns into short nights, and the whispering of fully leaved trees. A chorus of insects is intoxicating; the singing of birds, the heaviness of the air, and the sweetness of each puff of breeze have all come together again under this newly full Moon. I enjoy family; I dislike ever greater the sound of "no". I send out dreams again of what I wish to become and they find gentle places amongst the tendrils of my hair, between the crevices in my toes to take root and remind me of happiness. That walls around the way forward have been broken down like the carefully tended order of the garden. An abundance of life expresses itself in an abundance of weeds as well as vegetables; paths are faded against the greening, and the descernment of vegetable or foe falls to the ancient memory of intution. I once had a rebellious streak, and maybe saying "once" is only fooling myself. Summer brings the space for such emancipation, and I feel a rebellion stirring inside me, a rebellion not so much against, as toward or for. A rebellion for happiness.

Still on the human journey

Written June 3, 2009

The sigh of the ocean, like the escaping breath of one who has found his way back home. Pieces of earth and sky comingled with the fragments of animals and plants, all colliding in peaceful harmony, and all wrought with sensitive meaning. I travel home with a pocket full of shells.

All thoughts are dwarfed on the beach. Impressions carried home, sprinkling the mind-space they occupy with sand, are fleeting; paler than remembered by the great sea, as fragments of shells.

Ebbs of creativity have been released, as if some secret is revealed that yes, I really do love being alive. A tired body and a gurgling, bubbling spirit I am possessed of this trip, and all eyes look forward. To release such tender miseries of old, such things that have never been given the comfort of open speech is, to me, as rejuvenating as hours of sleep. For it proves once more that I am merely human; a living, breathing, feeling and emoting human that bears upon its unseen skin many, if not innumerable, tattoos and badges of experiencing. That I can still feel vividly certain emotions after many years is no longer alarming. Rather, I see it now like a testament to a living happening, one I would embrace the sweet closure of.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Thoughts on the beach

Written June 2, 2009

Already I've gotten myself thoroughly soaked. I want to charge into the ocean, so as to be in closer communion with it. And it charges back, changing from ferocity to gentleness, laughing waves with deep-seated wisdom. The sea is ever moving, never tiring, always changing its environment, always being affected by what comes to it, and yet without giving up its inherent nature. I can be exhausted by it and enlivened by it. I don't think we as a people grasp the sacredness of water. The same percentage of water constitutes our bodies as our planet; somewhere between 70-80%.

So many are drawn to it but, this place feels odd. Though the ocean can't be tamed, all the life has been scrubbed clean away so as to make this spot more like a pool than a place of the earth. Dunes remain, clinging to the element of sand between those of water and man. Birds more like silent, spoiled and neglected children punctuate he vastness of multi-colored humanity; cawing in remembrance of their wildness, sounding notes between the heavy staccato of babble. Houses with an emptiness, clothed in bleached pastel hues, knuckle down together leaving no space save that which is allotted about their peired ankles. I imagine trees; brushwood, brittle tufts of grass hiding secrets of living. Was there a rocky ledge? A place where human feet nearly stumbled and where human eyes suddenly reeled at the sight of open sea?

The air is unmistakable. Unrivaled in its complex aroma. A taste and feeling so vivid it defies feeble memory and waits upon its home threshold to be discovered anew. With the rising of a beating sun, I retreat to home, the beach too filled with the images and feelings of an existence now quite foreign. With nightfall, the ocean will buck off those sensations, release itself from human expectation, and dance with a fierceness and beauty that belies the wisdom of Nature we so easily forget to be a part of.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Opening

With Nature primed, we wait for the outpouring of Life, for Summer to ratify our dreams of development, for the choices we have made to be proven wisdom or folly. A new little green fruit am I, fresh hope clinging thinly yet powerrfully as the rind around my juvenille core. The little lessons of life, the delicate leaves smiling with their freshness of green, soon to be replaced by stoic and resplendant tones. All is close to hardening-off, all have left the fear of terminating frost behind, all straighten up rejoicing in soft rain, soft breezes and soft sunlight.

I ask myself if I continue in good faith the path I set out on; the path I chose willingly as one who dedicates her life to God. Do I keep the way? In all things, living and breathing, do I earn the blessings of life? My fellow men I focus on; I see kindness so easily dolled out, and selfless service given. Untiring it can seem to me, who so often seeks an independent solitude, and seeks not to trouble others. In the balancing game of taking and giving, do I starve myself of air through this desire not to be a bother?

Now finally, I seek to take responsibility for my life in a new way. Beyond what is fulfilled through material means, beyond accepting what is graciously given by those around me, I want to bring into being those images of happiness and beauty I carry within. For another season we are granted life, we are granted the chance to develop, we are granted the strength to go forth.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The leaving and taking of Home

The newest of crescents hanging overhead like a spangled earring from the edge of the sky. A quivering in my chin won’t let me go; I’ve come face to face with plenty of personality hitches last weekend, and I’m a bit shaken up by them. I see myself again, the me I left home with eight years ago, the me when I loved living so dearly that I forgot to notice the spinning amalgamation of a human being beneath my skin.

I see how I can hold people hostage; under the gun of a dramatic reaction, of a black mood, of a knowing that another person is unhappy in their company. Strong, yet unknowable rules built to shelter a fragile existence, one that needs peace so badly it can sacrifice all connection to its fellow men. Peace and a home of my own; a real home, perhaps, and finally, now that home as the physical place I grew up in has all but disintegrated. My sister and I wonder, where is it? Its here, beneath the trees that are growing, on the grass that renews itself each year, amongst the wildflowers that whither indoors. We surface, two strongly alike and vastly different people, riders on the same disoriented bus, sculptors of the same unbalanced work, still wet, still in progress. We feel a guilt we can't express, a resentment also that seeps into the relationships we surround ourselves in to feel trusted and loved. Standing knee deep in the yet rippling water, we hold fistfuls of love; sometimes crushed under the pressure of our grip, sometime wriggling free despite ourselves, but ever ready to be dispensed, ever seeking its home and its place to do good.

My sister and I have a sort of home in each other. In our solemn and ridiculous, unspoken and gushing way, we cannot help but strum a tender and well-worn cord whenever we meet. In this cord is trust, which I realize I do not dispense easily, and which does not need to be dispensed with her, because it simply is, whether I will it or not. The things I forget to notice come ever dearer to me now, for I am slowly discovering that they form the greater part of me, that they make the better part of me.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Alone, together, beyond

Gemini on the rise, and I’m longing to travel. I follow deer paths into the woods to be lost in the greening. Today the land was friendly with me, and I felt blessed. Calling out to the dearest of the trees, resplendent now in delicate green, just the whisper of the pride that will come with Summer foliage. How different the trees look when clothed; full of life the expand outward to meet my gaze, secrets replaced with expression, impression with radiation. Who is this shadow in front of me, walking jaggedly between emerging grass? The hair I recognize, the twining fingers and slouchy gate. Beyond this I need know nothing more when immersed in greenness; just that I exist is plenty, just that everything around me exists is plenty more.

I feel like there’s a dam in my heart. What put it there, I don’t know, but it’s quite possibly me. Somehow I haven’t let it all out, yet. Somehow I’m tied back from letting the back flood of emotion flow forward and out, flow to some, and away from the pool gathering ominously around my being. Some days it breeds unhappy things, some days it’s calm and peaceful, but ever am I carrying something gathered behind a clamped valve.

It’s been seven years since I set out on my own; the seven years of living. I took my first step into a Philadelphia row house on a heroin-dealing cross street with four roommates. There was a goth band in the basement, gender-bending partner swapping, drugs, and schizophrenic delusions. I broke out to live out of my car with my boyfriend. We traveled up and down the east coast for a month, following our favorite band. We lived off animal crackers, peanut butter and jelly, the charity of strangers, and our sense escapist fantasy. All that remains from then is my cat, Bean. I had taken a big leap into the deep end; feet first, and arms flaying, I waited for the bottom to reach up and take me home, as it always had done before. Instead, I started on a path that lead me here; recovering, and finally learning to let go of the feeling that something must be inherently wrong with me. Let go of this, and life seems livable, lastingly livable, like I’m at home here after all.

I feel the bond between my partner and I, one that runs deeper than emotion, deeper than circumstance. Though places change we are together, paired as we ought to be by threads of tender beauty. He loves me, and part of me reaches out to pity him, but is halted by the greater part that loves him, too. He cannot hide it, nor should he, it gurgles irreproachable against the surface, like surging water hiding under the faintest of reflections. We share a common movement, and when it’s time for anime we both agree, tentatively at first so as not to burden the other, then with all clear gusto as we realize a new experience to be had together. Even if I were to try to ruin it with thoughts, I cannot deny the life we have to lead together, the help we are meant to give to one another, the earthly work, the inner deepening. Where would I be if not his wife? Out in the world, searching for what he can give me, taking it in pieces from Nature, friends, family and my own heart. A gift is marriage, and an undeniable fact, a reason for living, a chance to become something that would not otherwise be.