FYI: This is a piece of the boulder that's been living in my mouth for far too long.

Thank you JayBee for the tiniest, simplest gesture of your fingers to your lips.

Over a month ago I obligated myself to something I never had any real interest in: I said I had so much to tell you and to watch for me May 31st.

I love this blog. I love that people read what I post here. I love that people both familiar and strange comment and interact with me through this medium but sometimes I feel obligated to write in a manner that pleases and/or addresses "you." I have allowed myself to be swayed by what I think you will think and as a consequence I have chosen silence.

This behavior has choked me and done a disservice to any of you that visit here. Here and now I revoke this action. I have said this not so much for your benefit as for my own edification. I am trying to say I respect this space more than I have shown and we deserve better.

xoxo

It would be silly to think I could summarize or catch you up on all that's been happening since May 31st, let alone January, so I'm not going to try. I have reached the shore of my one year journey. I know what I want from my life. It's tempting to say that I am thoroughly surprised by my desires but this would be false. I knew when I was a teenager - I knew the day I left home at seventeen in my 1980 Chevy Malibu wagon. I have been running from it, denying it or distracting myself from it mainly because I thought I needed something else, something more. How could what I really want be so simple? How does the source of all the heartbreak and bottled grief of the last fifteen years amount to something this uncomplicated? I almost feel foolish. Almost. It's like learning the rules of perfect grammar in order to fully break them.

I realized this year that the apple of my self never fell far from my mother's way of thinking. I absorbed her mindset and got ahead of myself in many ways, made things more complicated or more fantastical than they really needed to be. My notions about starting a business are a perfect example. I thought I needed to have this big multi-million dollar concept and the millions to achieve it. As it turns out I barely need an oven and some mixing bowls.

This idea applies to every area of my life. I no longer require mementos, keepsakes or book markers. All I need, all I want, is to hold the people I love, to feel the experience of this life in my bones, on my skin, in my mind and heart. Food, shelter, love; healing, gardening, art, family.

The best thing I could have done for myself on the brink of last year's depression was to give myself time without pressure, time without obligation and the space to see the space I require. It was so tempting to want to fill this space with commitments and to forget what I set out to learn about myself.

To seal the deal I am having a massive yard sale this weekend; there won't be any panic this time. I will unburden myself of 100's of unnecessary objects that can be turned into cash flow, burn what shouldn't be read ever again and donate what isn't sold. Mostly I'm keeping my bed, sofa and kitchen table.

None of this stuff is my life. I don't have a life with my life, I don't have a relationship with a relationship, a pile of shells or a pile of agates does not replace the beauty that brought it to my palms in the first place. I have held on to absurd amounts of objects to fend off my scarcity fears: fear of being alone, fear of being hungry, fear of death, fear of inaction, fear of failure...

All that I have, all that I am, all that I will ever be is inside me now.

In the garden I met a Dark Queen...

Navigating between bold full disclosure and leaving something wisely unsaid is a hallmark of sensitivity and strength.

(4/24) I've been trying to think of a way to tell you more about this image and the words that name it but I'm just not sure how... I will make an attempt as I appreciate the opportunity to tell you more if I can.

The picture was taken last fall while I was reading/savoring a book I have read many times, a book that I feel has shaped me in some ways, called The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between James Wright and Leslie Marmon Silko.

On this particular night I was writing myself a letter, trying hard to get my bearings in a life I could no longer discern from a dark night in the woods. The light on the bedside table refers to a concept I have especially loved in fiction and art these last few years. Perhaps you can imagine the significance of light in this context?

This is a solitary image, it speaks to solitude, is solitude. It encapsulates and reflects my need to be a hermit at times, to work out my thoughts, my desire for slowness, patience, rest and germination. In many ways my work is all self portrait: most of what I have to convey starts in my life somewhere. The phrase that I used to name this post is a quotation from a friend I respect and adore very much. I feel it is a beautifully articulate and enormous thing to say. I want to fully embody the sentiment of this phrase.

My bedroom is a sacred place, my bed is an island of repose and although I have invited this or that person in one context or another it is like a river: you never step foot into the same place twice.

So much for having the living room THIS time!

That's right. I'm rearranging it again...

I love my bed and my bed loves me! My bedroom is a sea of joy.

Workshop

Each of us can contribute to the healing of our community by addressing and inviting what is torn and broken in ourselves to heal. Using the penetrating power of yoga, meditation, and literature, we will invite in healing for ourselves, for our individually diverse communities, and for our collective community.

This workshop will combine gently active yoga practice to satisfy the body and focus the mind; restorative yoga practice to deepen the breath and allow the inner gaze to broaden; poetry and the words of others to promote a deep connection to our emotional and energetic selves; reflective journaling (Svadhyaya, self-reflection- optional) to create words of healing for ourselves; and Yoga Nidra, a form of deep guided meditation (sometimes referred to as Yogic Sleep) to allow this work to go beyond our body and mind and help us touch into our illimitable selves, where the resources for deep healing exist.

You do not have to be a writer, a yoga practitioner or a journaller to attend this workshop. It is a beautiful practice designed for all levels of students!

Please bring: your favorite blanket, a notebook or journal and pen/pencil, and a favorite poem, song, or chant.

March 21, 2010, 1:00-4:00 p.m.

This workshop is being offered in the spirit of generosity.

As we offer this workshop our intent is to spark individual resources within each of you that will work toward healing of our individual and collective communities. You may donate whatever amount you would like to, but no one will be turned away for inability to donate or pay.

Pleae visit Embodied Health for more info. Thanks Lucinda for writing this awesome post and for so clearly stating our ideas.

The Woman With The Smile In Her Voice

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?

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

up into the silence the green

up into the silence the green

silence with white earth in it
you will (kiss me) go
out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it
(kiss me) you will go
on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it
you will go (kiss me
down into your memory and
a memory and memory
i) kiss me (will go)

-ee cummings

Everyday Is A Reenactment Of The Creation Story

Groningen Moon, 2003

Belvidere Moon 1995, Self Portrait 2008

I was 16 going on 17 when I took this photograph. I'm twice as old today as I was the evening I took this picture. I could see the entire circle of the night descending. I wish I could put into words the way this memory stirs me...

I honor the ecstatic embrace of shadow and light.

I vow here and now not to give in to despair. I will not focus on the negative. Everything has changed in so far as now I know that my friend has cancer. And yet nothing has changed. I still feel a deep love and respect for the complex diversity of all life. I still feel the closeness of my wonderful friend. The profound love we have for each other is still here and always will be. Each moment is the same unknown moment it's always been.

OM TARE TUTTARE TURE
MAMA AYUH PUNYA
JNANA PUSTIM KURU SVAHA

For translation please visit:
Wildmind Buddhist Meditation » White Tara mantra

Lighthouses, Storytellers and Innkeepers

Solstice Night, December 21st, 2007

Celebrate The Dreaming
*

Join me for the Turning of the Wheel

*
Bring a verse for winter:
A song you love,
A drum you love,
A love you love...
*

I'd like to honor the longest night
by tending a kind of creative fire. I'd like to celebrate
the turning of the year by offering
praise for the soul in Dreamtime.
If we do not dream, how can we bear the
darkness of our nights? how do we build the world town?
*
I'd like to celebrate with music and poetry and storytelling...
I hope it will be a nugget of a night,
one we can all carry like a portable campfire.
As around a campfire, we share the stories of co-creation.
We respect the work of the dark, cold night...
*

Lake Superior Blue

Love Affair with Bark

TrioTrio: CherryCherry

Green is the Color of My True Loves Eye's