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.