Swan Songs

Maybe Dear Diary isn't enough anymore. Maybe sentences scooped into bowls of twenty cannot tend the inner, let alone the outer. With the exception of dialogue and poetry, everything begins to peel away like a 1970's yellowing veneer. Even music. Yet, as long as the willingness to sit and write exists, I will mine these veins until they collapse. I guess what I am saying is that these tracks are getting ugly, beloved.

Another ice storm is looming. My family thinks I take these warnings a touch too seriously. Firewood, batteries, food arrangements. Lex says, “we're not in Kenya anymore, Mom.” The things we fear versus the things we trust, and why.

The sulfuric tang of riled skunks hangs in February's swan song air. Monica and I talk at length about swans, consciousness, and plants. Inherent in the conversation is the idea that whatever hurdle or problem we are having, we are it. It is us.

Maybe all we can do is write our story. Who really cares what I think about sex or war or consciousness? Little by little, every day, I'm just here, figuring out the story.

Syntax, Swans and Songs – all swimming away from silence.

Finding the Horizon

Laura Kerr, an artist and teacher of mixed media and experimental art, talks about the theory of the horizon and how it is important to all kinds of work, including aviation, navigation and art. The bone structure of land must always meet the sky at some point, and from this place, at least for me, that is where the art decides if it is going to try landing or flying. I don't have it all worked out but it seems that the mind wants to fly and the body needs to return to the ground – not only in death but in life too. Mind and body tend to go together in this world but they need not. To separate these two is to find the horizon and disappear.

Very few things are as soothing for me as watching steam rise from tea in morning sunlight. My earthly eye is an embodied device. It is my mind which creates and so it is my mind I should heal and change, not my body. I am beginning to move from dense footsteps in the snow towards the unadulterated light dazzling in all directions. One's eye can look around the world and see the defilement of all that is sacred, but it is possible to immediately look towards Atonement instead. The spiritual eye sees Love. I can see Love in all things. But first I must look at that which has been desecrated so that what is true and eternal can correct the tainted vision.

School shootings – unspoiled snowfall in sunlight – stitches marching across my finger like little black ants. Time to correct.

M. spoke of all the animals coming to her in shapes and colors like those represented in indigenous totems. So many eagles. So many talons. The mushrooms are speaking even before we meet. In a dream they asked me to gently wait; so I do.

Martyr Spikes and Butter Knives

A patron asked me about books on exploring. I could smell cigarette smoke seeping from her tired jacket. She said she was on an adventure from Oregon, to which I said, “Oh, Oregon! I'd love to see it someday!” She corrected my pronunciation and as she walked away, I wondered if she would find what she was looking for.

My teacher exhausts and elevates. I begin to dismantle in the unrelenting gaze given for the Greater. There is a negotiation between silence and speech, awareness and coherence. Wordly urgencies re-situate. This gets my everything now.

Elliot Smith croons gray winds to sleep. His music lends the feeling of back eddies, reversing the flow of rivers for a few moments. Later, after everyone had gone to bed, I accidentally cut my ring finger with a butterknife and needed to go the Emergency Room. I kept singing a Wheezer song in my head because I thought one of the lyrics said something about cutting the heart with a butter knife. After midnight when I got home, I looked up the lyric to find that I was way off. Cut my heart with a martyr's spike....

I find irony (or is it paradox) in almost cutting off my wedding finger with a butter knife, then finding out the lyrics to an important song from my past, which facilitated a bit of healing from time to time and even last night, actually say something different than I thought they said. The plot thins, not thickens.

Morning comes again and with my bandaged finger, I consider the syntax marriage and Wheezer lyrics. I am aware . . . but maybe its time to attach less meaning to all of it.

Whipped

Wild wind writhes and howls, hurling debris against house. It reminds me of sheltering in the furnace room, sitting on the cold, damp concrete, waiting to feel a mouse crawl over summer's freckled legs. The image of not being able to control the wind arises, and with it, poor Icarus trying to find a safe landing. Control. Power. Freedom. Peace. Is it too much to ask for it all?

We ended the call and I knew the breaking had begun. Truth leaked out and somebody lied: it's not all light and rainbows.

But it is Love.

And suddenly I saw the Crucifixion in another light. I saw Jesus on the way to his death, tied at the whipping post, losing the flesh of this world in order to reveal Pure Love.

God didn't need Jesus' death to cover any lack or sin on our behalf. God needed us to understand that the body before you is only a shell of the Person in truth.

The wind whips all the dogs in the neighborhood into a barking frenzy. I need headphones to write, to quiet the storm. Pu'erh tea leads to other leaves and a beautiful trip. Mary Magdalene shifts her hips, lets her hair swing back a little as she gives an elegant little wave goodbye.

Worth a Try

Fried egg over roasted red peppers and lentils. More tea, less coffee. It's worth a try anyway.

On my walk with Kora, two crows heckle from their perch. Small piles of snow linger in the day's shadows.

An invitation falls like lightening out of thin air. Should I stay or should I go now? A language I've always wanted to hear electrifies in my ear. Yet I still sleep on the threshing floor at night. Lord, continue to winnow me.

snow and moss –
October leaves itself
beneath winter's feet

Tell me how to arrive, beloved. We gave up on maps long ago, therefore we travel this dampened, dirt road by scent into spring.

These myths; these stories. Are they not simply faff added to the ethos of a journey we are not even taking?

Geese call overhead and the westbound train to Chicago exaggerates a long, slow moan.

So I am the not storyteller and neither are you. Are we rudderless on the River Styx?

I'm tired. The best ending for all the stories would be the one where you teach me how to bake bread, breaking it, and sharing it with the others. It's probably the last real thing I need to learn.

Like the First Morning

Morning breaks and suddenly it's Cat Stevens hymns all the way down. Frost glitters in this attention and I'm here for it. It has been weeks since we have been able to strip ourselves of the despotic gray belt. Today is a naked day.

Lately, more exploration of myth. Lessons from the Greeks abound, yet neither the Greeks nor the myths explain anything to you. Instead, they deepen, tantalize, provoke and confuse in order to take one beyond that which can be explained. Myth hints at the eternal and it will not be co-opted by church or state because myth isn't only in words or song. Myth is in the actual soil from which all things consumable emanate. Myth is in the living – the storm and sky – the blackbird singing like the first bird.

Woodpeckers have begun their mating drum. The rolling sounds like staccato breathing high above the tree crown. On the dawn walk, the smell of fertility and new beginnings cuts through biting cold to sting the eyes.

All in one month, K's young daughter has brain surgery, her father breaks his leg, has a heart attack in rehab, and begins his death fall. Her mother passes away unexpectedly and now K. walks around her parent's empty house in her mom's house slippers. She feeds Janet, the stray cat her mom fed on the sly, and drinks the only alcohol she can find in the fridge, a Bud Light Seltzer.

Meanwhile, rainbows dance around my entire room while I meditate in complete peace. This world isn't at all what it seems and I'm not really sure what to do about it.

The answer is Love and so is the question. At least this much I know.

Time

Sometimes I am happy.

I nuzzle the back of the corduroy couch from my quilted chrysalis. Sunlight comes through the window touching the small of my back as I begin to doze. Nothing lacks and therefore, only peace dwells in that moment. If Death came, what care would I have?

Unseasonable rain begins to file down February's bite. Pondering this odd addendum to winter I suddenly remember my first wrist watch as a child. It had red bands and depicted Strawberry Shortcake with her cat, giddy over a basket of berries. Almost as instantly as that memory flashes, I recall the Kenyan maxim: mzungus (white people) have watches but Kenyans have time.

Time as a teacher, but only for a time. We are working towards something else.

Coffee – candles – clementines.

In the last 15 minutes of writing time before work, Kyle sits down near me with his breakfast. I put on my headphones and try to ignore him but his eating noises penetrate the safe-zone of my work. It takes the concerted strength of Hoover Dam to uncurl my fists to make a suggestion. If he wants to have breakfast together, he need only ask and I can make time for that time. Glibly, quietly, he gathers his coffee and food, and floats downstairs to leave me complicatedly alone.

Time as a tool, teacher and weapon. I wield it all like a golden sword, knowing one day I must lay it down. Please, let me work a little bit longer.

Heart-shaped Hips

4 a.m. winter
assertiveness melting
in this dark throat

I recently saw a painting titled, “The World Moves on a Woman's Hips” by Rebecca Mercer. In bold, rounded form, the subject carries a child on one hip and an empty laundry basket on the other. Her hips are voluptuous, almost making a heart shape as she strides forward in purpose. The painting is vivid with primary blues, greens, and reds, the exception being the child wearing a purple shirt. Behind her is a yoni shaped opening in a swirl of fabric. It is beautiful and I'm drawn to it but also, I am struck by the choice of child and laundry basket on the hips, as if “the world” is childbearing and laundry.

Men working on the septic situation in the side yard tossed jackets over the skinny dogwood branches at the corner of the house. It is oddly something so mundane and yet, I've never seen it before now. As a woman, as me, I wouldn't have done that. Perhaps I would create a painting of me, with my full, heart-shaped hips, removing workman's hoodies from delicate dogwood branches.

It is morning now but still very dark and gray. I sit in the corner of the L-shaped couch, staring at out jacket-covered tree crotches, thinking I might be at a crossroads. The problem before now is that I have been trying to work through and eliminate fear, as opposed to focusing on the mastery of love. There is an infinite supply of fear to either conjure or ignore because I am the one creating it all. What if I just . . . didn't? What if it is truly enough to simply avail myself at all times to love?

Returning home from work last night, I realized I am menstruating in conjunction with a brimming moon. Ruddy fullness hangs supported in the trees and I can feel its glowing heft bearing down in my womb. My body readies a place to nurture something new. And I think thats how the world truly moves.

Thresholds

Tree root remnants tossed atop dirt mounds look like giant inverted octopi swimming away from the light. Everything underground groans. I'm not sure I belong to this place but I do feel like an integral component of the hole in which I am standing.

Birds ride rivers of air, dropping an invitation to see things another way. Perhaps flyers of all kinds – wax, metal, feather – are not seeking escape from the earth. Maybe they simply long for the release from the tyranny of distance. Could it be that flying actually brings another level of intimacy with and to earthly places? They must always be aware of what is above and below. Though they might forget themselves in a few moments of ecstasy or delight, at some point they right themselves in the knowledge of earth and sky.

Thresholds on the periphery. Can we make life more simple? Can we strip it down? Something inchoate is emerging.

Talking about mushrooms is like having birth pangs: 'if' changes to 'when.' The baby is coming. Are we there yet?

On the threshold, there is a certain intimacy – a clarity of sonic details and breathing which affects all the senses. With every halting step I am finding trust and returning it ten fold before the next move.

This metaphorical life.

These slow sips from the seep.

On Breathing

On exhale, she joked about how tattered her peace flags are as of late. On inhale, she told me about winter sowing. Breathing as a game-changer.

In those moments of entering the flow of changes I can make, a new and different peace arrived. It will soon be intolerable for me to live outside of that peace. It is then that the disco rainbow light from everything you have been trying to tell me cast its colors in the perfect spot. Your way to peace is not my way to peace but the peace itself saves, heals, and covers everyone.

The machines dig ten feet into the ground and pull up three different colors of soil. The process is more gentle than I thought it would be.

Attention as inhale. Attendance as exhale. This is the prayer trail now. I see your flags on the path; thank you for marking the way.

Ground, house and windows all tremble in unison with the dig-work. I don't know what the land will look like in the spring – how the sun slant will sweep the dirt – how the old oaks and pines will wave differently absent their expunged neighbors. When the workers left, I knelt in the piles of cold, calico dirt to sift it with my hands. I had made my peace with what is happening here so it was surprising when the damp, earthy, perfume of life took me to an immediacy of place, both now and into moments of sorrow in the past.

There is an wordless intimacy with the physical earth which activates an entire kaleidoscope of connections and longings, pleasure and pain. These interactions become conversations through which I am both consumed and released.

And in these dialogues
death is overcome
by the welter
of breathing
for real

Wings, Water and When

moonset
night light falling
into dawn –
two crows embrace
scorched earth

I crowned someone king which meant someone, or lots of someones, were not chosen to be king. This was an error. For I have no king.

Days lengthen minute by minute so I begin to dream of Pleiades. Her hot blue stars claim the nomenclature to sail. Harmony in the heavens, yet water, always water. Water always gets through; it just may take some time.

He called me a “beguiling siren for the power of good,” carrying those with wings down under the surface of remembering for Love's sake. And I was like, “fuck off” but then I was like, “yeah, I guess.” I don't know man, can we just say it plain?

If so, it would sound like this:

everything is fine
we know what we are doing
simply be aware and ready
of the chance to fall, jump or step
helplessly into
Love

I was born in a place called Sparrow Hospital in a Great Lakes state in October. Wings, water and when matters.

Muted by Atmosphere

Subzero temperatures expose starlight in another way. Is the view more honest? I think about a radical authenticity whereby nothing in or of me lacks agreement. Actions can align with words easily enough but it is more difficult to bring each thought in congruence with the next thought and so on. How many times do I contradict what I am thinking? How often are the stars muted by atmosphere?

When we don't tell the truth it is because we don't trust Cosmos or our place in it. The cost might be too great. The fallout, too devastating. The lack of truth creates conflict within ourselves which spills out onto others as projection. I am guilty of robbing peace from you and myself.

I am swimming down, down, down to see what is at the bottom and so far, it looks like something unblemished.

Grandmother isn't eating after hip surgery. Uncle Bill has called the 12 siblings down to Florida to spend time with her as the end comes into sharp view. This matriarch, my matriarch, is the superintendent of a vast clan. The world will shift upon her passing. My father will grieve in a way that is foreign to himself. For him, no woman was higher than she. None deserved his respect or admiration as she.

It is for my father that I swim towards honesty.

It is for us all.

Taking Us to Sea

Steam from my tea mirrors the wood smoke rising from the neighbor's chimney. These lofty moments; these messengers of heaven. After a day of handling and shelving library books, even the weight of tea causes aching in my wrists and hands. Thank God poetry calls today. I cancel everything to answer. My muse is a dialogue of light, seen and unseen, known and yet, still a bit uncharted. These words say the same thing a million different ways and I have no idea why anyone would read them. Enter me and tell me why.

Lately my ability to both defer and suspend the literal puts me dead center of a quickly rushing river. No longer do I feel like I am world building. I am tearing it all down and letting it all go as I keep my chin above water.

I wake beneath pine, oak and maple, all adorned in the countless glistening crystals of winter. In this place I consider how my spiritual practice arises from and is bound to a particular place. I wonder about the Desert Fathers and Mothers – their mystic, monastic practice taking shape and being informed by their place. They wove inner and outer worlds together into a wholeness espousing the ability to heal, cure, and nourish.

It is an act of love to see deeply into things: steam and smoke rising, the heft of borrowed books, rushing rivers taking us to sea. I think this contemplative call reminds one of the shared heartbeat of man and place. I think it is my call.

Keeper of Golden Rings

At dawn, January's janitor sweeps the glittering holy places. Sunlight appears for a few hours and though there is no detectable breeze, glitter glides from upper branches unto its pillowy rest.

Withdrawal is a voice speaking for consolidation's sake. This sing-song chime has something to do with joining One Mind. I no longer have any choice but to put distance both emotionally and mentally between myself and that from which I should flee. It is not difficult to re-channel impulses when the sun finally cracks the leaden cap over long, dark days. Yet in grayness, it is tempting to bend or strain towards any potential pathway or likeness to luminescence. Prisms – falling snow in subzero temperatures – glitter gilding the fantasy of “what-if.”

True unification means only one action: remembering. In one instant, wedlock falls away and the betrothed simply becomes the keeper of golden rings.

Coffee doesn't fix how tired I am, nor does green smoothies or going to the gym. I want to sit on the couch, reading and watching wood smoke rise from the neighbor's chimney. I haven't seen a cardinal in weeks and it breaks my heart a little because it might have something to do with the missing trees.

In another dream this morning, I discovered orcas in Gun Lake, and I accordingly became terrified to go in the water. Somehow the boat didn't make it all the way to the dock and I had to swim in to get home. A farewell party was happening at the house and when I finally walked in soaking wet, I had to compose myself to say an intentional goodbye to a man who was going to end his own life the next day.

Cannabis gifts me dreams and also makes me cry. It causes me to wonder how I have been holding back my true feelings and by extension, my true self. Embrace vs. projection, indeed! Lessons abound.

Come to the House

The cabin sits on the upper lip of a bowl with a mosaic view of the frozen lake. Remote and pristine, its winter ensures a choiceless quietude. I make coffee early before anyone wakes but the machine is loud, sputtering and gurgling like a happy little troll bearing gifts.

It's complicated – this gathering, these friendships, and the expectation to somehow fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. My experience is strained and forced, uncomfortable, and a lesson in giving up control.

Coyotes – bears – too many pines to count. The landscape is a powerful calibrator at the moment. What if my community is not the community I want? And, what if wanting instead of accepting is the actual issue?

Lately I only want to quietly sit. Last night in my dream I was in a huge sports stadium. Something was on fire and I had to make my way to the exit before every one else figured out what was happening. However, my 99 year old grandmother with a broken hip was somewhere in that building and I knew I had find her before the mad rush for life. I didn't find Grandma but I found a note from my mother saying, “I have Grandma and she is safe; come to the house.”

Back home, back to the grind. I hurtle toward the need to stop time and it is extremely unpleasant. Eight inches of snow falls overnight and the sky remains as a dark sarcophagus lid.

But then Monicat asks me to join her in visiting an alchemist specializing in archetypal journeys. I'm not sure there is an easier “yes.”

The Sound of Women

Jack Gilbert mentions elephants from time to time but I cannot tell if he knows about the importance of the matriarchs. As Mom would say though, he “sure as shit” knows about beasts bent on grace. Essays, poems, tomes for the living. The deeper seas of wording the ineffable will never not be interesting or life-giving to me.

I wake from sleep with a rainless mouth, giggling at how unsexy snoring is. New snowfall, like a light blue blanket, is visible in the dark. This morning is reading eponymous almanacs and wondering about place, perspective, and depth. Sometimes looking down is equivalent to tipping the chin to heaven. There is a difference between the ideas of land and country.

Love sits with me on the warm side of the window, watching dawn whisper secrets to a withdrawing night. This morning I am alone but not lonely. Pines hold and see my secrets; they know my name. Gilbert asks: what is the sound of women?

What is the word for
that still thing I have hunted inside them
for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy,
the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still
in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper
down where a woman's heart is holding its breath,
where something very far away in that body
is becoming something we don't have a name fore.

Yeah, maybe Jack has at least walked a mile with the matriarch.

Who walks with me; who waits. Who prays on behalf of my soul. All I know is that the matriarch goes before me — surefooted and alive in wisdom.

Constellation in the Sea

The Water-bearer's journey in winter.

Before any signs of spring, you gird the pure landscape with stability and adventure. I've held your chalice and sipped. Silver on the outside, gold interior. Resplendent from all angles, but in the tipping of this cup to the lips, one understands which is more precious. May I walk with you to the river? May I help you carry the load? You literally overflow.

Your constellation lives in the sea and leads to Egypt. I followed Ra's path to the Nile and when you dipped your jar in the river, it flooded. One day's destruction is also a lifetime of fertile remnant. I walked there and enfolded. I watched the sun set into the desert just beyond the river's lush lips. Her sands kill or save you, and when her grains found every pore, they led me to thirst for what you bring.

Brother of Ophir
Bright Adieu -
Honor, the shortest route
To you -

(Emily Dickinson, #1462)

Because you were born, I can thank you for the remembrance of God.

Newly Naked Neck

Slow-fall snow quiets Sunday dawn.

He turns off the hallway box fan, knocks on her door, and enters to kiss her forehead “goodbye.” Her sleepy voice is like her little girl voice. I hear her coo and emote for her father. Such tenderness; such blessings.

I have had a tendency to believe in any given relationship that I am special for a little while, but after sufficient exposure, I become less so. The origins of this are “daddy issues,” but then again, why dehumanize me like that? This trope became an ouroboros around my neck – fear eating itself for every meal. Someone cared about me enough to break this spell. They pulled the tail from the snake's mouth, showed it a better meal, and kissed me softly on my newly naked neck.

The Way has always been inside and with me, but how deliciously sweet to discover this from dialogue with another. The horror of always looking outward in avoidance or fear became the redeeming gaze that eventually permits the birthright of peace that has been and eternally will be both inside and shareable. Paradox abounds.

This new landscape is pure and peaceful. I'll need to shovel the drive before too long, but even that act can be a composure of reconciliation. A harbinger of salvation. A map to where Love resides.

A sweet, snowy chickadee bobs along the pine branch; thank you for the song of true friendship and Love.

Filling Empty Bowls

Impressions of dawn are barely detected through solid gray. A few less pine trees means less green to subdue winter blues. Squirrels dig at their leisure without the hindrance of deep snow. I haven't seen a cardinal in a few weeks; maybe less green means less red. In this larger space, I consider how bodies hinder true intimacy. Yet, it is within the structure of bodies that we transcend what we think we know.

A skiff of snow covers the roof and collects like alms in October's empty bowls. M. calls to invite me on a road trip.

See a medium, get a drink, go to a plant store near the capitol.

We discuss MDMA, cannabis and psilocybin as a therapeutic modality. Together we dream aloud about how to partner in healing.

Another beautiful woman reaches out with this quote:

“Everything is a challenge. You have to answer challenge with creative effort. That's all you can do.” — Isamu Noguchi, Japanese-American artist, sculptor, designer, landscape architect (1904-1988)

At this age, these people. How did my life become so rich? Take me closer to the bone, beloved lantern!

Turn up the sub.

I am ready.

Keeping and Kept

Northern Flickers visit my dreams while it rains instead of snows. January allows a taste of spring months and I am not ungrateful. I have beclouded myself but that is ending.

In a very hard lesson, egocentricity masks as humility. Empathy parades as projection.

When trees on the land were cut down, my grief partly arose from projecting humanity onto and into the trees. Instead, I consider the recognition of the plant-ness of the trees in me as opposed to my human-ness in the plants.

Are dreams simply reflections of old learning patterns? In the Flicker Dream, I am my sibling's keeper, and I also happen to be kept. The god of trees says the minutiae is all cared for. It is time to see what abides in the vanishing. Now I know: to care for an other's soul is to care for one's own. Someone did this for me when I didn't deserve it. May I now reflect the Love it took to see it as so.

The neighbor's circular saw whines at an excruciating pitch as it cuts through siding. The recycling truck's brakes screech at every stop. Less trees means less barrier between man's clutter and clank. At least there is more light and room now for wildflowers and herb gardens.

The ice melts off the lake and I am left to swim and learn in a sea of opposites. It's working.