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.