Author: cborsello

Jersey Girl, born on the beach.

Breathe Peace Into It

Whatever happens today, breathe peace into it. When an event takes you out of body, breathe yourself back in. Put your feet back onto the ground which welcomes them with love. Be an Earthling for a day, admire the air for being available. Regard with attention, the life around you: avian, amphibian, ambient.

Let sovereign morning order your day. Just as the sun rises steadily into a sky ready to embrace it, let your day embrace you, offer you food, lay sustenance over you with abundance on top.

Bring forth what is best inside you – even if the effort seems false or lacking, or even a pretense.

For me, it is the habit of excellence I wish to acquire, and sometimes I need to start low while aiming high. I’d like to think it’s just a matter of skill & “beginnery” but it has been more. I haven’t been interested enough yet. I have professed interest & claimed interest & pretended it. Now is a time to practice it.

I have been alive a long time to just be finding out that I am so. I was a human being in many other life iterations just in this spacious lifetime. I was a student, a secretary, a mom, a wife, a food worker, a massage therapist. All seemed mutually exclusive, yet all were me.

Only occasionally did I choose time for self-care. Indeed, it is in my latter years that I’ve perceived self-care as a good idea. Now & here do I actually see in active tense; I observe with the intent of interaction. I admire, I enjoy, I watch, I smile & laugh about the activity that goes on in background to sustain me. I am humbled by the arrangement of the universe around my needs & my perceptions of both of these.

If I slip down a detour that looks promising & feels right for a moment, I still need to examine it for what I want to express with my life. If it does not meet this standard, I need to abandon exploration. I’m required to abandon the limiting thought for the next, better thought. In this way, I breathe my peace into it.

You get what you give. Make your habit giving & giving back. It doesn’t have to come with balloons, wine & roses or in a Cartier box. Turning over a lousy feeling for the good one underneath is enough. Smiling to refute a frown is a great beginning. Then look at what’s causing any frown. Smooth it off the surface even as you remove it from the elsewhere, wherever that is.

To tune into who you are, it is needful to tune out all the rest of it. Like emptying the lungs of even the reservoir pocket of air at the bottom of each exhale, it is scary, it can feel life-threatening. But just as the air is always there when you’re ready to replenish, your self, that which might be called your soul is always there when you reach for it. If you have lived a life in & of this country, you may have to talk it back in from a distance, or allow the organics of it to re-root in your psyche.

You need to put down the barriers & walk outside of the boundaries where you have been “saved” for so long… I minded less than others putting down my phone & turning my computer into a simple communications device. I lived a long time simmering in my own silences which are now familiar & comfortable. I am one of those old women walking along the side of the road chatting with themselves, given away by my gestures. But it’s a private conversation & I’m enjoying it. The definitions of mental health need to be enlarged to include all the tools we claim we live by, if you want exclude people like me. What’s crazier than un-inhabiting the exact speck of time you are standing in by partaking of the past that created it & the future which will spring from it, through media which is ultimately damaging to the physical construct it claims to support? In other words, when you are watching a crimson & light sunset, why answer your phone?

Getting back to some connection with Nature has been my impetus for conscious, focused improvement. I learn there is no other way to be & be self-aware. My boundaries have all shifted into another “place entire.” I am allowed now, freed from schedules. I find myself unrestrained by hours I do not arrange, to think & to be whom I have planned for all along – even when I didn’t know I was planning anything much.

Each time I breathe, I breathe peace into it.

 

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Reciprocity

I’ll Believe In Yours, If You Believe In Mine First

If I lie in the Desert

Without closing my eyes

For one whole night

Would I be wise?

If I followed each star-trail

From its home to my door

Would I discover

The way out, for sure?

But I know me better

And I know me worse

Than to think I might

Ever finish this verse.

The far becomes closer

The new becomes real

The pictures deciphered

Prove down-home surreal

So I’m in for the tall one

I’m in for the shout

I’m in till the other me’s

Say it’s time to bow out.

8/14/17

 

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Habituate Joy

Joy

I have waited a long time

For Joy to become an unconditional habit

Perhaps I needed to re-member it slowly.

Joy is entirely up to the individual

Only apparent on their terms & caught up in their constructs.

Joy is the sweet smell just before awakening, maybe yellow

Light honeysuckle air.

I need to pull out my pack of Happies

Smoke them over a coffee

Breathe them into me & again out.

I need Joy to be my default; my go-to on life.

First, I found hope, then faith, then love

Once discovering how to work these lower gears

I get to shift into Joy.

 

Clocks: damned if I do or don’t

Time has grown slippery

I no longer seem to have a grip

On my days, dripping from the calendar

Like sugar crystallizes & drips from cheap candy.

I hold my calendar with both hands,

Writing with the pen between my teeth.

In memory, time always seems to have

Been wrapped in clingfilm, making me hack

At the packaging to get to the product.

 

Off Grid: different day

I put away the electronic leashes

Just outside satellite range

Time eeled off the devices, heading for the tall grass.

 

DARK HATS

There needs to be a general Amnesty

For not having the true story all this time

But we promised to remain conscious

If it came down to bread & circus; we swore!

I find pardons each day

I bridge any gaps I find

Between unknowing & learning

 

Interrputions

I’m better at recognizing what I don’t want to do.

I recognize an initial resistance-reaction to interruptions;

I understand the value of interacting with that, though.

I act to disassemble & set that equation aside.

Releasing the knee-jerk automatic response

Artfully changes the landscape

The future is served by service

“Carpé diem” ended yesterday!

 

New Screen-Saver

Open up to grace every day

To new choices of health, abundance, re-programming

Get those icons of “fear” & “illness” off the home page

Click “awakening”

Click on “cosmic”

Double-click “divine love”

 

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Walls

As my “exhibit wall” expands, I do, too. I surround myself with what lifts me or brings me more into vibration with God.

(I write as I await the computer to return to me after faithfully reporting in to Big Brother. We are at 90% on updates, I have two pages to write in the book before it resurfaces its little all-seeing eye upon me.)

My space is not crowded, though I am finding more to put up. All of this will stay for some little while & then recharge the day I get up & take it all down to start.

The change I am experiencing usually comes in September, which has always represented a “beginning month” to me. (It’s mid-August, but I swear in my own truth it is September.)

I am more keenly aware of all not aligning with where I am cannot remain in the “energetic I” long. I think of the frame in the movie Whale Rider where she rides the beached whale into the sea after laboriously convincing him to turn around to face his own reality. When the whale sounds with her, she floats from his back, more than half-frozen, eyes closed, hands unwillingly opening. I cannot see yet at what cost, but I let go, opening my eyes now. Something in the mechanics of being alive changes profoundly.

I thought I needed to get a job & earn money. So, I figured maybe a little weekend work at the café when they are busy. The server there is many-years experienced, but I noticed she could use support work. I figured to bus tables & speed things up – maybe earn a “coinly” wage to supplement supplies. I wrote an application letter to the owners. I gathered up my mail for the post office as a via point, walked across the street & into the café. As soon as I entered, my eye fell upon the second server! Guess this was not my job. Which was as well because taking in their black slacks, stiff white blouses & natty black aprons, I realized I probably can never wear a uniform again.

I deepened other activity times, walking West in the blaze of glory which clothes sunset in New Mexico. I walk to the bridge to see how high the creek is running. This enlarges my morning walk, East, into sunrise, bracketing it nicely. And a new-again Yoga practice to devote myself to.

All of me is coming together. Even as I take the time in consciousness to slow down in my head, I pick up physical speed. It feels good. I do not have to have music or a book; in fact, I begin to recognize a more specific effect that others’ words & stories have upon me. I ask myself if I wish to participate? Cannot tell you how many books & movies I’ve returned to the library after a cursory perusal of contents. But where I once became anxious without a book on hand to dive into, I find I can sit outside of an evening to wait for whatever sounds may float by. I light my luminaria on the table & put my feet up. I psychically repel mosquitoes.

Who will emerge when the Hillsboro Chrysalis opens is anyone’s guess. The women in the West with the best survival rates have always been warriors. But the warrior I want to be carries no weapons; remains defenseless, never calls upon remorse or blame, offers only witness as the ultimate in participation. Bringing none, blaming none, bluffing none. It’s just me again, facing another door & liking the me on the other side.

 

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Addendum to Anatomy Lesson

I met up with neighbors tonight as we looked over a Creek which usually meanders but which is now taking small logs for a zip through the greenery.

The topic of Blue came up – I was told a mountain lion was caught on someone’s deck camera close to town.

Blue has been interred.

 

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Anatomy Lesson

The cat living with my roommate was born a twin. They came to this house together. From what I can gather, the kittens were named Pinky & Blue. But Blue took insult to a slammed door & wandered down the road to live with Cactus Jim. Pinky has blossomed.

Blue went missing two weeks ago from his adoptive home. He was the kind of cat cars stopped for: a peach-point Siamese. He was super-social so he would begin a conversation with everyone from a little distance away, meowing louder as he approached for a greeting.

When I lived at the motel, he often walked across the parking lot to where I was seated outside. He’d jump into my lap & settle for about three minutes. If my  door was open, he would wander through the tiny studio & wait by the back door to exit. I enjoyed his visits & his comments…

I was thrilled to move in with his brother!

Pinky, or as I call him, Couscous, (which is what I call all cats as I like its sibilance), has undergone a sea change. I believe a bit of Blue has taken up residence. The cat suddenly wants to cuddle at every opportunity. Usually, Pink was outside from post-breakfast to pre-dinner under our neighbor’s rosebushes. Now he hangs around beyond the door for a couple of minutes to see if I’m following him out with a coffee. Sometimes he will walk out the door & turn around, coming back in when I do not follow him out.

Unlike his nocturnal wanderings of a month ago, he stays indoors most of the night curled up with me. I am so grateful; I have wanted a cat for many years & I love being singled out by him. He is getting used to kisses atop his head, but rather likes his chops kneaded more.

He is an outside cat, & quite the hunter. Two nights ago, Pink brought me a baby bunny body. It was placed ceremoniously on my rag rug in the bedroom. The inner organs were clean & arranged together in the center of the tripartite display; the fur (complete with ear) & right side up, was beside these, about two inches away, also placed carefully. Another bundle of something huddled on the left side. There were no fluids involved. Now, to get this into the house, Pinky had to bring it through his cat window one piece at a time.

The precision of placement of each piece amazed me. I was not disgusted, or upset. (The bunnies have been overproductive this summer, which brings out rattlers.) I am honored to be the receiver of these gifts. I have asked “my people” to talk to “his people” about not bothering to bring more food.

I burned white sage over the remains & thanked the kit for being willing to do ceremony with me. I thanked it for being a sacrifice for love.

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Each day: a step to heaven (poems)

God-Mother / God-Father

 Bear down on me

Birth me into all You wish me to be:

Coming towards you

Coming into me

I know you celebrated before I

Was even conceived

I can see you turning spindles of names

{prayer wheels}

Until you turn my name

Into your breath of me.

My name: both appointment & anointment, I Am.

 

CoINcidence / CoinCIdence

Seems to be the emphasis can go either way, one being an

Immature Synchronicity,

The other an alignment of two paths.

 

Coincidence is not coincidence,

They cannot even exist in the same plane

Without interfering with each others’ warp & weft

Not to mention homeostasis.

 

They are, perhaps, a law of similars, called

In from the Jesters’ Universe …

After you toss your life at the wall or

Find a way to re-begin from where you are.

 

Keeping From the Eye of Horus

There are better things to do with my time

Than live in any rebellion

Past the stone walls of who I claim to be

Unilateral inner boundaries

 

Free to be the postage stamp home.

Attention does need to be paid

[Got cash?]

We can’t afford to miss much more than we already have,

Before the change of chance & chance of change

Diverge in some lonely wood.

 

In the same moment, when we cannot either breathe,

We are connected by a fiercely fiery sending:

“Watch me, Baby, just watch me!”

 

The highway of life is a toll road, indeed.

 

Cosmic Volunteers

We are the vols & sometimes it’s not to be believed:

stuck in the laundromat instead of a lifeboat.

Each episode we get to retool the set.

We arrive here curled into a fetal spiral

So well-salted, we match the ocean.

The rest of your life is the Unfolding of it.

An origami of an Avatar.

Some familiar clues / cues

(like enough for an army to follow.)

Status points for not opening the Guidebook.

Eyes Open. Tulku.

 

 Almost

Another of those words

Hanging overhead like

Campfire smoke

Aromatic, heady

Ready to clear into tomorrow

Of the deed done today.

 

You Call This A Mind?

 But everything is right there, on the surface.

Don’t you put anything away?

More likely, you put it down without thinking

(Sometimes I lose major organs that way.)

I entered this Life with a full wall of medals

Later stripped one-by-one

I’ve done my time(s)

I personally have only two thoughts left

The You

The Me

 

Here, Put This In Your Heart

All the texts

Say, “you can’t take it with you.”

You mostly get to keep some essences,

Ones with evocative & menacing overtones.

The heart is about long-term Memory

Your heart is as big as your God

Who tucked you in between the angel’s wings

With a touch to your cheek, saying

“Don’t you miss a minute! I’ll expect a full report!”

 

 Dubious Honor

I may be the only person on earth who has, yes, here it is, forgotten how to ride a bike.

 

Make This Viral

 I want to be there when the grandfathers tell their peace stories.

 

“Where Have all the Flowers Gone”

Half-light morning,

I cross the bridge over a rushing Percha Creek

Glancing into it, mid-stride.

I see three young bucks,

Heads twisted over shoulders

Rumps all twitching in time

Not till they face forward

Do I see the burgeoning racks

Still in velvet, flaring in the little light

As, springing onto the low bank, they disappear.

 

But, Really, I Love You

I conclude two Italian women cannot talk to each other

Without taking turns at being child, maiden, crone all in one conversation:

Whoever is speaking is in charge…

 

 

 

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Something Shiny

In the empire of Duality, the open door is always a Janus entity: entry & exit. The music is always swelling & falling into itself to silence. The darkness is always a placeholder for light.

In the Land of Freewill, choices are made by us in firm decision & at random whim: a right turn instead of a left can result in a drive into bliss.

Thus each moment must result in that ability of choice. It has to be more than paper or plastic when all the holy texts tell us we are unlimited Masters of the Universe. Now is the time to act like it.

Hereupon the crossroads: forgive & walk on unburdened. Deny forgiveness & you may not be given the choice of which cross you bear. We are always in the center between life & “unlife.” Every choice results in change within. Our core energy spirals up & down, in & out, upon ebb & surge. Our nature is duality, sometimes interpreted as “do-all-ity” … tho we are inclined to only do so much before the next task intervenes.

I’ve had “missed takes” in my life which amounted to classic error. I’ve incurred debt & paid in full. I’m sure there could be bestsellers written on my backlog of wrong decisions. It wasn’t just me who suffered through them; only I called it my learning process; the others suffering through these may have had a differing terminology.

If we are born innocent, are we living a lie when we learn? Perhaps this depends on the choice of learning methods. Now is the time to release all which no longer serves us, even if familiar, even if comfortable. The tide of the unknown gathers at all borders & we are chilled by it, even as we thrill to its salted bosom.

The rainbows we climb are ephemeral, slippery. Once we climb up, we must slide down tho at times we seem to fall through. I have a set of reserve wings which are gravity-proof. I can be stilled by the face of emotion & have been known to put my head down & slog on even when all the indicators say “stop right here.”

It’s all right, alright? I AM a beloved, believed-in child of God at play in the fields of the Lord. I created my life in the face of Divinity from some invisible blueprint. Is Destiny a firm destination?

In the moving away, I have constantly, unerringly moved toward. The future unwraps itself into the present & I am won.

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La Iglesia de la Virgen de Guadalupe

My summer project to earn pocket money is cleaning Our Lady of Guadalupe, a tiny church which happens to be next door to my house. (My house is more cheerful, being called “The Ladies with the Spitcurls.”)

It has been quite a trip back in time to handle all the articles of ritual I noticed as a child but was never permitted to touch. The names float up from some interior reliquary of memory: ciborium, chasuble, dalmatic, stole, corporal, chalice. The Liturgical Year floats through my mind as I uncover accessories in purple, green, red, white.

This church is a replacement building constructed in 1973. The original was flooded. Adobe does not do well in flood … the building was lost & rebuilt facing east. These days, a priest comes on first Sundays to say Mass & the street fills with new cars & old people.

I have washed & polished the pews, cleaned the medieval torture-kneelers. I have carried the ceramic statues into the kitchen, placed them in the sink & given them Dawn bubble baths. Stations of the Cross plaques are wiped & carefully rehung.

I am now aware of the total lack of joy the Church brought to my life. The “Laughing Jesus” didn’t exist until fairly recent history, although in my opinion, He must have been an Olympic raconteur to have made such a great impression on so many. I think it is one of Catholocism’s great psyops that He never cracked a smile. But, then, none of the statues look happy. Their expressions are pensive, sorrowful, unhappy, pinched. At the risk of total irreverence, I must say they all look like a dose of stewed prunes might help set up a sunnier outlook.

It’s challenging to clean all the folds & wrinkles in their robes & veils. St. Francis has managed to bop me three times on the head while I was wiping him down – those extended arms are lethal. Baby Jesus (cradled in two out of three statues) was truly divine as not one of His representations is wearing a diaper.

Today I bumped a processional crucifix on a long stick. The plastic figurine slipped feet up, head down. I thought how appropriate this was, given the current state of affairs as the world uncovers overwhelming evidence of paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church. It put me in mind of flying the flag upside down as a signal of distress.

Everyone in my family was a practicing Catholic until graduation day. Then we all beat feet out of church, shook off any residual holy water & headed for the beach. I was extremely lucky to find the Unity Movement in my life – a joy-filled, affirmative shout of individual power & personal divinity extolling humans as the sources & engineers of grace in motion, living in wellness for the highest good.

The days of a nearby convent of bustling nuns to clean up after the congregation are long gone. It falls upon me, a local cynic offered up for an hourly wage. Only my innate & residual respect calls me to honor these representations of what was once a thriving industry. A time ago, the church was a world to me: an arcane,  mysterious, dark place full of echoing silence, redolent with incense & candle wax.

Once again, the language surfaces from that same deep well: confirmation, communion, intercession, rosary, Eucharist, confession, purgatory, limbo, hell & finally heaven. All for the bargain-basement rate of $12/hour!

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It’s Late & I’ve Finished My Book

     This has indeed been a strange summer. It’s been close to roasting some days & we don’t have any a/c or even a cooler tho the fella started to fix it & then drifted off. I will find someone in August if he does not return.

The energies are changing but not changed. Everyone I talk to by email is restless in some way or another. They desire change in the same way that made Vikings leave the north for other explorations…and then be overtaken by the excitement of conquest. That will no longer work; at least not for me. I don’t want to rule or be ruled anymore.

But when the change does not happen, then people try to make it happen by rearranging their lives. I could tell them that none of these changes are the real deal. We are looking to contact God/Goddess once again. We are restless for Home but don’t think we have to die to go there. We are searching for a fulfillment in Spirit to bring comfort in a world seeming to be in a tailspin. I think I sometimes cry for a parent to approve of me & tell me, “good job, kiddo.” The Changes are taking far too long to happen.

People close to death don’t want to die as they cannot tell anymore what’s on the Other Side. We are Muggles in a magical world – seeing it at the fringe of sight without being able to participate except in the most partial manner. I know I am seeking every day with my heart – like a cellphone for the signal tower – but the beeps go unconnected & my heart remains unspoken in the emotions which count for living.

So I chase down the small things. I wish no harm. I keep my own spirits up. I serve, I serve, I serve. In this way I achieve some measure of satisfaction & gather in fulfillment. I wait for the knock at the door & watch the street and the stars equally.

A frog has taken up residence in the rain barrel outside my window. Each night he sings a song too loud for his tiny body. The barrel & the water it contains enlarges the volume. So my heart amplifies my longing. The Messiah is in my mirror & we raise hands to each other to touch only our reflections. I am not sure at all times what is real & what I have imagined. I know of no other thing to do, except that which is mine to do.

I have, in many ways, moved beyond my own life without recognizing the new one; it all seems to have remained the same. One day it will synchronize – the grace & the gross, the dream & the dross, I will move into new space & new love & know it for my own.

Love,

Carol

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