I Have Been Asleep

In the front yard of the apartment building where I live is a Mountain Ash Tree. It's a beautiful tree in an awful state of decline that I feel partly resp- onsible for. I know technically it's the landlord's responsibility to take care of this tree but he's too busy/un-invested to care and I've grown attached to it. I love it's shade, it's little orange berries and the variety it adds to the trees on our block.

I've been watching it's decline all year hoping something could be done...

The part that kills me is that by late spring when it became obvious that the tree needed care I sat right in front of it and asked it what I could do, but I didn't believe the answer. I did not trust the voice that said, loud and clear: Water.

I thought I was missing something. How could the answer be so simple? Water? Surely it needed more than that, something complicated like special fertilizer or friendly fungus or more sunlight all of which I know nothing about or cannot actually control. It's really up to the landlord though, why should I even care? After all, it's not my tree. My thoughts would circle back to this stupid argument every time I looked at this tree. A few weeks later I asked the tree again what I could do to help. Again the answer was loud and clear, as if someone stood next to me saying it into my ear: Water.

I decided to leave a message or three for the landlord and water the tree a few times. I tried to let go of a feeling I didn't think I had any right to. How could I feel responsible for something that's not mine? Since it's not mine to worry about, I don't need to take care of it, right?

Where am I going with this? ALL spring and summer I've been watching this tree die feeling helpless to save it, making up all kinds of excuses why it's not my problem. It sucks. It's a crappy feeling watching a living thing die and not trusting my place in the sequence of events. So two days ago I called a tree service for an estimate to remove the dead branches. They told me it's in a "serious state of decline, looks like it's water deficient, trimming the dead branches is not a guarantee to save it."

Why don't listen to myself? Why don't I trust myself? Why does someone else need to tell me it's okay to make a contribution to the neighborhood and to the living Green Bloods that I cherish?

I know many people would say it's just a tree, it's not your problem, blah blah blah... but why on earth would I turn away from an opportunity to practice what I believe? If I can do something, anything that's within my means to do, to improve the quality of life for myself and all fellows within my realm, why the hell wouldn't I?

At what point do I decide to work for the world I desire?



*photo by sbpoet

Thank You For Hearing Me

Thank you for hearing me

Thank you for loving me
Thank you for seeing me

And for not leaving me

Thank you for staying with me
Thank you for not hurting me

You are gentle with me

Thanks for silence with me
Thank you for holding me

And for saying I could be

Thank you for saying baby
Thank you for holding me
Thank you for helping me

Thank you for breaking my heart
Thank you for tearing me apart

Now I've a strong, strong heart
Thank you for breaking my heart

*Lyrics by S. O'Connor/Reynolds

I found this on PostSecret this weekend. I've been thinking about fear lately, namely what it means to me and how it manifests in my ability to Dream of Life... This was such a relief to see; it felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off my chest. I offer thanks to the person who voiced this. Thank you for helping me put my finger onto something that badly needed touching.

2 Letters, 2 Friends, 1 lost?

I'm so sorry that I didn't call you back, I actually just remembered that I said I'd call yesterday. I've been in a pretty rough place since I talked with you, I didn't realize then that it was just the beginning of a long stretch. I haven't been working enough, Al and I are still not quite good and I feel pretty much lost in my life. Lots of crying and living in a dirty house without groceries just feeds the fire. This is a strange loop to be in, sadly it's not the first time I've been in this spot... I'm trying to undo some old energy (from what lifetime or childhood..?) and it's painstaking work. I feel very strongly that I must do this work now, I must do it this way and have faith that it will pay off in the long run.

I start a new job next week so things should even out quite a bit - that happens when basic needs are being met:) So I'd really appreciate if we could postpone for a week or so, until I get my sea-legs at the new job. Thank you for understanding and for being kind and thoughtful.

*

i love you so much.
i'm completely lost in my life; i can't see the beauty inside me let alone the beauty in front of me in your wonderful hazel eyes.
sometimes i'm sitting right next to you missing you, aching for your closeness and it's just because i don't know how to ask for, how to act in, how to embrace and welcome love.
i'm so sorry i've been so mean to you and to myself.
i'm sorry i haven't found a way to tell you what's going on with me.
i'm sorry that it's taken me this long to realize how worthless i feel and that i need to change this before i can do anything else with my life.
i love you.

A Dream, Blessings and Freedom

I dreamed last night an amazing dream I hope I never forget.

I was an angel living as a human on Earth. I was a photographer and collector of fine prints. One day, as I stood in my shop switching a photo from one frame to another, the artist who'd made the photo approached me and said that if this print was to have value and be distinguishable from all the others like it, it needed a message. She took the photo and began to write upon it.

As I waited for her to finish, I could hear a fellow angel in the room being called back. I turned to see her just as she vanished in mid-step. I recall feeling a little surprised; I'm surprised every time I see an angel do that. When I am called, I disappear gradually over the course of a few steps. I wonder, how do the others leave?

The woman next to me was showing me the words she had written but now I was unable to concentrate. I could feel her, sense her body, but the language was incomprehensible. The letters looked like children's writing. I stepped to my right, into the call, and in a few steps I was gone.

The next image in the dream is of the black-blue night sky, full of billowing dark blue-grey clouds, stars and city sparkle. The faint red glow of the city cast itself onto the bottoms of the clouds. I was in the clouds. My sense of my body was as a vast, living thing, like something vaguely more substantial than mist or the pressure of a strong wind. I was substantial only because I could feel myself held close in the body of the clouds. I felt like I was lying on cotton balls, arms and legs akimbo, in the night sky. The sky above me was clear. The place in the clouds where "I" was seemed to be a faint red/maroon tint in a crevice like space. But this is an inadequate description at best. I lay there, feeling so happy I (my dreaming self) could feel it back in my bed in my apartment. I was so happy I could feel tears of joy flash briefly through the field of clouds I was occupying. I was so incredibly light and filled with joy. Filled isn't quite right, "filled" implies that it was contained in some way. This was vast and mindblowingly wonderful; giddy doesn't begin to describe this.

For a moment I wondered if I would fall through the clouds.

Then I heard and felt such profound laughter... the kind of laughter you give yourself up to, disappear into. So consuming and healing was this laughter... What could I do but join in?

In the sweet silence that eventually followed, I could hear someone telling me that I should not worry. Didn't I know everything would be alright?

Professional Counseling

From the ocean I heard a million fish say,

"Give me a beer - quick!"

I replied, "Dears, how can that be? How can a fish in the

water want a drink?"

Well, that's how wacky things have gotten. Who else

but Maya could pull a fast one like that

and get away

with

it?

Seriously speaking though:

The fish in the water that is thirsty needs

serious professional

counseling.

*Kabir, 1440-1518

circling, circling, circling round

the sea is the sky is the sun is the ground.

Thank you for strangers at bus-stops, New Revised Edition

I am so glad for strangers, strange-to-me people, who talk with me. It's like being friends with the proverbial box of chocolates: You never know what you're gonna get, but isn't it fun?

Three days ago at work I met Peter and Laura. Each wearing their JESUS SAVES t-shirts I "knew" the moment I laid eyes on them that I was not going to enjoy our exchange. Peter asked me if I had any material in the store about our savior and Lord, Jesus Christ... Here we go I thought. I told him, no at this moment we did not have anything specifically about Jesus in the store. He began what I perceived as the usual missionary diatribe, Have you accepted our Lord Jesus into your heart? Do you believe Jesus Christ, son of God, died for your sins?

This kind of exchange has never been interesting to me, I actually find it quite offensive. I could feel many years of negative experience with zealous christian proselytizers boiling up inside me, but being at work as a fairy godmother it's not my job as an employee, nor especially as a human, to be rude or offensive. I chose to say that I was at work and did not feel that it was an appropriate topic of discussion. However, this was a cop out since at Fairy Godmother talking about God/Spirit is one of the most likely topics of conversation. Not only was it a cop out, for me it was a darn lie. I just wasn't sure how to be authentic and be a nice/kind human.

Peter said of course he could respect (which he couldn't) that I was at work and would not try to engage me further but he really would like to know if I believed Jesus was the son of God. I had to ask myself if this was an opportunity not to lie in order to avoid a perceived conflict? What the hell. I actually said yes, I do believe Jesus is the son of God. Then it was do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead to show us the mystery of God's will? As I talked with Peter and Laura I realized I had no lies in my mouth and that my anger had dissipated. So I said yes, I believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

Of course Peter and Laura were persistent but something in me had shifted. I fully realized that along with my anger had gone a basic belief that other people had any right to define my relationship with the Mysterious J. Seems basic enough, doesn't it? But at what point in my life did I give someone else the right to define my relationships? How often do I choose complicity over dialogue?

Better yet, how often do I assume I "know" what's going to happen in a given situation?

I honor the Wheel of Heaven and the Axis of Time. May I learn to carry what is hidden as a gift to others.

A few months ago I decided that I hated my life; so I set about dismantling it.

My girlfriend and I took a break. I quit my job and took a five dollar an hour pay cut. I sold most of my books, ignored every phone call and every bill that needed paying. I refused to shower for days at a time. Dishes? Laundry? Bah! I walked across the street everyday to Victor's Cafe for blueberry-mango pancakes and coffee.

I've played out this routine a thousand times in my short life for a thousand reasons. But this time, lurking in the back of my mind was an inquiry... Almost a whisper I was asking myself "Why?" Why do I hate my life? Why do I feel depressed? Why have I felt this aching sorrow and deep sense of separation for most of my life?

I've been trying to piecemeal answers to these questions my whole life. I have stacks of journals and sketchbooks, photos, snippets, book cases of poetry and art, crates of textiles somehow hoping to amass some kind of Devil's Mountain of an answer... bits and pieces that somehow represent a semblance of the whole. While these things are beautiful and sensuous and reflect my love of joyful expression they do not constitute a delightful life, a life of action. In fact they tell me more and more how much there is to do.

Maybe all it comes down to is selfishness. I hoard beautiful objects, isn't it more than possible that I've been hoarding the beauty inside me? WHY do I do that?

Prayer For Revolutionary Love

That a woman not ask a man to leave meaningful work to
follow her.
That a man not ask a woman to leave meaningful work to
follow him.

That no one try to put Eros in bondage.
But that no one put a cudgel in the hand of Eros.

That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work
not be set in false conflict.

That out love for each other give us love for each other's work.
That our love for each other's work give us love for one another.

That our love for each other give us love for each other's work.
That our love for each other's work give us love for one another.

That our love for each other, if need be,
give way to absence. And the unknown.

That we endure absence, if need be,
without losing our love for each other.
Without closing our doors to the unknown.

-Denise Levertov

Let's not have tea. White wine
eases the mind along
the slopes
of the faithful body, helps

any memory once engraved
on the twin
chromosome ribbons, emerge, tentative
from the archaeology of an excised past.

I am a woman
who understands
the necessity of an impulse whose goal or origin
still lie beyond me. I keep the goat

for more than pastoral reasons. I work
in silver the tongue-like forms
that curve round a throat

an armpit,the upper
thigh, whose significance stirs in me
like a curviform alphabet
that defies
decoding, appears
to consist of vowels, beginning with O, the O-
mega, horseshoe, the cave of sound.
What tiny fragments

survive, mangled into our language.
I am a woman committed to
a politics
of transliteration, the methodology

of a mind
stunned at the suddenly
possible shifts of meaning- for which
like amnesiacs

in a ward on fire, we must
find words
or burn.

Artemis, by Olga Brumas

Revelation

"The 'soul' is indeed a vague conception and the reality of the thing
to which it refers cannot be demonstrated.
But consciousness is the most evident of all (invisible) facts...
The physiologists are very fond of comparing the network of our
cerebral nerves with a telephone system but they overlook the significant fact
that a telephone system does not function
until someone talks over it.
The brain does not create thought
(Sir Julian Huxley has recently pointed out this fact);
it is an instrument which thought finds useful."
- Joseph Wood Krutch, More Lives Than One

Solstice Prayer

"We welcome summer and the glorious
blessing of light.
We are rich with light;
we are loved by the sun.

Let us empty our hearts into the brilliance.
Let us pour our darkness
into the glorious,forgiving light.

For this loving abundance
let us give thanks and offer our joy. Amen."

-Micheal Leunig,The Prayer Tree