Category: Posts

No Matter the Dream

Did I really mean this life?

broken … but they all say that’s how the light gets in

so I don’t really mind at this age, this stage.

I wandered as if in God’s Maze

my life unfolded like a treasure map

one state after another

of mind, of heart, of locale.

Each a singularity of itself.

I had a purpose once,

I think.

It decentralized as I began finding meaning all over

in the darndest places.

Could I combine the moments,

like some hybridized montage where I’m a central character

I would take the love of the men I shared mine with,

the jobs where I shone, accomplished,

the mornings mirrors were kind, jeans fit, my cheeks had color

I would take the triumphs & tuck them into my bag,

slinging them over my shoulder to ponder later.

I know I’d be kinder, sing more, take less umbrage

but these go without saying. Wouldn’t we all rewrite a life

leaving out anger & sorrow? Just for the hell of it?

I learned from it all but these moments now,

ah! this now is like no other

this walk finds me resting more in the scenery

observing with old eyes all that I see around me new.

There seem no shiny destinations

when each day has a fold of glitter to shower over me.

I never got the pony, or the little red wagon

Or the kind of love I could understand before I

declared it over & done & begone.

I fled so many lives – relationships as well as timelines.

I skittered across the universe, a pinball played by the hand of God

Pinging each bumper, racking up points like a pro

Winning Him prizes, the kinds found in CrackerJack boxes…

Now I feel around in the drawers, pawing old glories, faded triumphs

Brought into the folds I peeled off to get to the meat of the matter.

Now I get to the place where everyday is so routine I must love it so much

that I know it by heart.

No matter where I journey in dreams, I wake in the same body

the same bed, readily living

the same day

Ready to bring it to life once again, to make it a li’l bit different.

There will be one so perfect it will signal an ending

A rightness to wander off from all I know

Into the palace of wherever it is Next to Be.

For me.

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Watering Flowers in the Desert

I have times of crushing exhaustion. Too tired to even swipe my face free of makeup, I head to bed, catching myself at the last minute to head right instead of left, to enter the bath instead of the bed & clean my face. I sometimes am not as thorough as I want to be, but I do what I can so as not to wake with bits of mascara or smears of eye pencil which I so love to wear.

These times occur mostly after meals, healthy or not. The food, which should energize activity & move me to take on more – or at least finish what I’ve started – knock me out instead. My eyes close over the book & sleep wells up so I nod over the pages. I “lose time,” returning to activity depleted more – the nod-out not even restorative. I nap at 6, wake at 8, returning to the bed at 10. The good news is by 4 I’m back & setting up coffee, brushing Hanna Bell, writing notes to friends… By 5:55, I’m gathering purse & water bottle, heading to they gym to push & pull, to walk & lift, to swing & balance. I come home to fruit & flax cereal, setting out once again for work by 8.

I’ve been blaming age, the heat, my use of a lifelong right eye dominance. It’s difficult, channelling an entire universe through one orb. Tiring (that word again!), enervating. And it’s a lifelong pattern, this losing speed & spunk with darkness. Perhaps it is simply the light inspires me to activity while darkness sets upon me like a succubus. I don’t hear the stopper pop, but the well of energy drains away.

Lately I feel the years settling upon me like a colorful cape fading somewhat. I am exalted by the number I’ve achieved & fearful of losing to them as well. Where this me will go is unimportant. I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, the influence I’ve held. I haven’t built cathedrals, but there are many tiny shelters for hiding away in, there is much nourishment stored in the words I’ve put together, the paragraphs planed from formlessness.

Once a seer asked me if I’d like to know who I’d been in the past, assuring me I was world-famous. Once another assured me I’d have that fame once more but “posthumously.” I live by the sea now; I know tracklessness. I’ve lived in the desert, too, where a footprint can last a thousand earth-years.

That I wink in & out of time & timelessness is appropos to my years. That I may spend more time on one side of the veil than the other is a balance more delicate to navigate when I hold the edge of the bureau to pull on my pants. I once heard a fellow say, “The older I get, the farther away the floor seems to be.” This is a truism as well as a grin.

If the only one I’ve made happy is a random reader, it is enough. If my life satisfied one whim, one promise, one wish, it is enough. If I cannot measure in full any longer, oh well. I’ve built none but stone cairns & buried much beneath them. I’ve made myself happy & had others laugh with me. I’ve taught the light a few things & carried darkness to the outer edges of my life, far from direct experience, leaving it there for the kind of jackals that gnaw this fare to feast well. I am amazed constantly in my ability to move forward when all I want is to turn back, make a pillow of my past to rest upon.

I have no symphonies gathered in a trunk for some child-genius to happen upon, no recipes to feed the masses, no prayers to bring on salvation, except in the personal. My life is an excerpt, a condensing, a draft & a draught of what a life should be, can be, & in my case, is.

That will have to serve.

It is past 10:00. I close my eyes again & pull up the covers. If my life is only a dream: it is Enough.

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Dawn Fingers the Sky

I arrive before the light – just sayin’

the air so fresh it has no scent at all

the gulls still on the water

which is pale green with a ruffle of bubbling white wave

under indefinable sky.

I commandeer the lifeguard station steps

Stiffly sitting, fumbling for the camera option…

It’s early March & a chill 68

Yet a young thing in an orange sundress

Poses for her senior pictures, in just-visible light

Her friend in a heavy jacket, boots up to there

While Barefoot girl smiles & combs back her hair.

The world between us – me in wrinkles, she in burgeoning sun.

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If the Buck Stops Here: Make Change

Having a mixed-up, shook-up day. Feeling stupid & poor & jealous & all the emotions I dislike the most in myself. I’m doing a cleanse & I thought it was physical or would be so, but it seems to be emotional & spiritual instead.

The good thing is some new thoughts are coming in. One that I had in church today listening to all the platitudes about Father’s Day was that I could simply let go of all the really old, grotty resentment of my dad about his fencing me so fully from his life – so wide I can’t get around it, so tall I can’t get over it – you know the song.

This is quite disturbing & I’m sure it will be liberating when it roots around & finds its soil to grow. It is, after all, a New Thought & you know by now how much I look forward to these.

My dad. Got to see him once a year & sometimes twice in the same year. Once he bought me boat shoes, stylish little slip-ons which, with a Buster Brown Enforcer of a Mom, was just the bee’s knees for my cross-eyed, pickety self. And actually, that’s my only memory of him. Nothing else is in the vault.

I know he was a Libra like me. I know he liked his beer with the guys after work (he painted the huge fuel storage tanks for Sun Oil before it became Sunoco.) It’s purported he had an affair with the town bad girl which forced Mom to divorce him & move as far as the taxi would take her & the kids. Since that was to the beaches of New Jersey, it made for an enviable childhood which did not seem that way while I lived it.

Oh yes, he bought me my Bike. I called it Blue Boy & it was a 36″ high bike while I was a 30″ high kid so that made for some interesting perspectives & a lot of time sailing up & down the boardwalk. My lonesome habits continue to this day, tho not the biking part.

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this. Just been a emotional coaster of a day for me & I’m where I am, digging out but the walls keep caving back in.

Ok. Later on it’ll be tomorrow & everything will change.

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Reminder: Storm Heaven

So, this morning driving to work, the thought floated from the 8-Ball that is my mind: “You can’t storm Heaven & then complain about the rain!” I pondered this the eight miles to work. Along the way I noticed my car screen had – for the first time – mimicked my phone screen. Except there was a button with an icon of two fingers crossed, labeled “Reminders.”

Thinking to remember this thought, I hit the button. Google roused herself enough to blurt (in a kind of, ‘you wake me for this’? tone – “What do you want me to remind you about?” Well, heck, I thought it was a, like, memo pad where I could record my wonderful Thought. I blurted out “Storm Heaven!”

GoogShe asked me, “When do you want to be reminded?” (I could see her checking her electronic manicure…) I glanced at the red light & said, Tomorrow! She replied, “What time?”

Oh for heaven’s sake! I had not intended a conversation. I said, annoyed, 8 a.m. She noted this & put the music back on (to shut me up, I’m sure!)

By 8:00 tomorrow, I must come up with something to Storm Heaven about.

Any suggestions?

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Bookmarks

I begin with endings. Don’t we all? Doesn’t everything? Something ends in order for another something to begin. Sometimes we cannot go back to what was before although we thought only to put that on hold.

I listen to ‘massage music’ today. All the befores: Dean Everson, Peter Kater, Steve Halpern, Aeoliah…flow from the player, soothing & calm. And familiar. With each one beginning, the muscle memory of folding down a sheet, placing my hands onto a smooth back, rolling down the sides of a spine in a long stroke – effleurage, petrissage, double thumbs. I feel my etheric body leaning into the stroke, fingers rolling along low back, just at the border of the sheet. In the music, I feel the placements, the strokes. I anticipate the change in position, the cover-up, the uncovering. How many of my reactions are simply familiarity asserting a remembrance of posture? After all, I’m sitting in a chair as these play.

I started the day with my favorite activity. In the 4 a.m. time when I wake sometimes a project will surface: I must do this today. When is a good time? I fix my coffee, ritualizing the filter atop the cup, the scoop of coffee, the hotpot burbling to frenzy. Hanna Bell stretches on the coffee table – her new summer-cool spot – she has already said good morning when I came from the bedroom. She’ll chirp until she sees the brush in my hand & I apply it to her smooth, colorful coat. She will emit the tiniest of vibrations, barely that which can be called a purr. She’ll bump her head against my arm & accept the kiss I place between her ears. Sometimes she’ll lie back to accept a belly brush, stretching her paws & flexing them, claws in, claws out as she kneads the air.

This morning I sorted thru a box of cards bought at thrift. I pulled out the “Happy Anniversary!” cards – I know of no anniversaries. I separated the “Congratulations on the New Baby!” cards. Ditto on the blank of new babies. None of the seniors I correspond with are preggers. I stack the “Get Well’s” – keeping some of them. I put the Sympathy cards back, these are the most likely of use along with the birthday greetings. I put the handoffs into a small black bag to return to the thrift which will sell them for 35 cents each. I’m happy these at least have envelopes to turn in too!

I am doing a parasite cleanse which is returning just a shiver of taste & smell to my senses. I notice: Is that cinnamon? Yes! I am smelling cinnamon! I read this might happen. Grateful.

Off to market at 8:00 when Publix opens. Beef bacon – a brand-new tryout. Two jars of pesto on sale. Lately what I do taste is sharp, peppery, pungent, so I indulge.

Today us a no make-up day. An enjoy-the-quiet-Sunday rolling out in front of me like I rolled out the erector spinae by touch. A long stroke of a day, too hot to go outside. A nap-at-one day, a second-cuppa-coffee day.

I keep filching CD’s from the huge book of sleeves holding them. I float. Today is a bookmark: a return to start-point day. A holy day.

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Memory Day

How does memory interfere with change? Am I trying to accomplish a similar situation or evoke a same-satsifaction response when I ‘threaten’ to change? I want to think I’m into new thought & new ideas but all around me are memories – mine or someone else’s.

I kept my bureau full of bowls for two years. They are lovely to behold, handy to put odds into, it’s easy storage & access. Two days ago I rounded the Goodwill & Dollar Store to effect a different look & now my bureau is a different tableau – a meditation on familiy instead as I dug out the few photos I have of my people & put them up: the Dad I never knew, my dead sisters, my dead Mom, some former me’s & others purported to be on the planet (rare of contact & lacking in content.)

I attended Unity in Venice. Yes, I know I said I’d never go back, but Memorial Day & all that. It was a beautiful Memorial Day service & the head of the school for 19 years was treated to a slide show of many memories, the grown children she had cared for there with hugs & balloons.

All of this seems to have chugged my brain into contemplating change. One woman I met was trying to sell her house but the market is dead sluggish here. Her lament included concerns about how her dog would deal with it. This took me one more gear lever into how much some of us enjoy caring for others or feel so responsible to hold them in stasis where we also are held.

Routine is boring, but comfortable in its way. Yet still, we need change, different, new, other, movement! I am wanting to be about changing my behaviors. I am impatient with those who will not to change. I see people wearing down a groove they settle into & then bitch about for the longest time. Of course I do it too. Don’t you?

AIthough I engage in behaviors requiring sameness – I need to engage in being alive. Sameness only ensures existence.

This Unity did not offer any new thought or any sentences that evoked a jump-up-&-run-to-do-it response. It was “nice.” Tradition is “nice.” It’s no longer what I am after or what I want to be about & the bestirrings of change are restless in my gut. I feel them. I will obey them. I must, or I will rust in the fields of my comfortable life, content, not contending.

This is how beginnings manifest for me: that rumbling in the distance I take for thunder, the darkening of what is already here – a light piercing through of a quality as yet my eyes cannot perceive. Here it comes again.

Soon it will be ‘here it is’ instead.

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Meditation Return

I understand meditation as a discipline. I find after years of “knowing thyself” that I don’t do discipline well. If it is self-imposed, & on certain topics, yes, it appeals & then I’m kind of ADD about it. I was that way once when I wished to change my life. I sat in morning meditation at a small table, in a jack chair, a single candle & stick of incense lit, a specific theme to revisit.

I had amazing experiences as my cats wound around my knees & begged attention: I was sitting stilll! Why was I not petting them?! Then they would settle & watch. I’m sure my flickering aura was enough to entertain them.

I would stand after reading my prayer, sitting with it awhile, writing on it. I would dress & walk out onto the golf course I lived on, to a specific tree along a fairway. I would dance my Qiqong Five Dao Yin Prescription Exercises there using the tree as focus.

After a year, I left Nashville & headed southwest in a changed vehicle, with my new puppy, camping & finding beaches & taking lunch breaks for odd foods. My adventure.

I plan changes again in about a year, tho the only specific one at this moment is likely leaving Florida & likely returning to New Mexico, but north this time, near Questa Valley.

Recently I was asked about a bucket list & I had nothing to say. Since that gathering, I have revisited all the shoulda/coulda/woulda’s: I want a house of my own, I want a beagle (a beagle?), I want to go on a writer’s retreat & explore doing nothing but writing for hours & days. I want a place to dream in color.

I no longer have the jack chair, so I sit on the Kokopelli pillow. I fold my legs which, later, will take focus & concentration to unfold. I pet my cat who says the very same things: You’re sitting there doing nothing, Pet Me! as she threads around my knees & under the table I am folded in front of. I write bits of prayers & realizations & somehow do not think of breakfast. The Qigong has not yet found a tree although there are hundreds here & I live across a parking lot from a jungled mass of greenery.

My Circle has not yet formed up. The faces are not yet clear. tho some approach to check out the setting. I may need to change shapes from a circle to a star.

As you can see, ironing out needs to occur. But there is a tall palm tree just outside the door & my garden just under the steps. The light breaks the same. The silence invites re-entry. The changes need to be made.

It is time to love change enough to invest in it.

Cha-ching!

1

Post Midnight, Pre Daylight

This Brand New Day

Tho we are older than we know how to be

our minds constant in childhood

in Wonder & Wholeness,

tho a blank sheet of paper tingles with expectance,

while swinging our feet from bed to find soft slippers 

brings our entire system into alliance with energy…

The years have shaved our dreams

with thin shivs

potent in airing out poofed-up problems.

These will come-round again no doubt

worries are sparkly-somethings-shiny

we follow into doubt.

And all below the bone & gristle,

in between the white & red cellular composites

Our eyes record, our ears take note

our feet tread familiar paths.

We pick up used dreams & lay them once more down.

—–

The seldom rain arrives

there is so much moisture here that to have it 

fall from skies above is an elemental excess

yet one we so enjoy: the quiet it draws over the land

panting in heat exertion

the plants so open to light open even more for moisture…

Each leaf a cynosure – how is this so?

the light, so bare & bold & bald,

so daily in presence

takes its upstage position

watching the scene change, darken, wash itself cooly

with wet.

that slippery place where life bursts

from the sweet stupor of heat

the dimming blur where secrets

unfold & seeds soften &

we start from new once more.

—–

We women cannot run from blood

for life is bold with it, rife with it

nourished & depleted in balance by it

Blood moves through us & sometimes from us

in cities & colonies of both growth & dying

We bring blood with us to everything we do!

Indeed, keeping company with blood is all we have

being such avid containers of its living, breathing presence.

It pains to bleed but then from blood we bear our secrets out & they are vivid in disclosure, obvious & quite disconcerting.

Concerning.

We bleed from our thoughts but bear our births with stoicism or screams

The either/or of choices.

I bleed no more of body

but Blood’s rich mystery still carries me into entryways where birth is mine to repeat,

Depend upon it!

—–

Faint voices carry through the open door

Unlike the rain which keeps itself to itself

Falling apace in a steady, focused fashion

A known mission & so fulfilled.

The voices thread, words indiscernible

Mood unknown

I cannot bring them to understanding

As these words grow on the page in their own shy sigh,

Blossoms upon blossoms, a Florida flower

Which, just when you cannot think it to bear one more petal, brings out a tiny white star to share.

0

Good Morning, My Friend

I am musing on what we do for life: what we will do for life. On what it means to be a human, to have talents unexpressed, to live a betrayed life where our air is tainted for money, our food the same, our housing untenable, our transport distilled from earthblood. We live where every pleasure has a razor edge of profit scraped from it, profit lining another’s pocket. I see them grinning like the comic long-jawed jester wearing a herringboned cap with two points topped in bells. That simple smile becomes a grin, a rictus, the teeth sharpen to incisors of serrated & saw-toothed ivory.

I feel the jaws close about at times; I am shaken like a dog-toy, by emotions: people suffering hurts me, too; people sick make my hands twitch to reach out & erase pain; bloody bruises weep & mew for salves of crushed herbs, cool & soothing. Howling children grasp empty hands, eyes crusted shut.

We give ourselves to life eagerly, bones bared for chewing through to the marrow. We are walking appetites, voracious & calling aloud for satisfaction. We want. We want. We do not even quite understand, but we want. We whine for love, we are numb with its lack; that longing fills us like music, we choke on it, but we breathe it in with a frisson of eager satisfaction. And even in that tiny satisfaction we are sated, We think we have returned to balance, we sign our names in tears to the contracts we agreed to keep.

I turn, I don again the body almost erased by sorrow, fled of its shadow of grace. I flex my mind, presuming feathers & wings & claws for feet. I wriggle in, & the claws become toes, the feathers skin, the wings bone.

This is what I do for life. This is my fate, my borrow, my bond: the reason I exist, the words I eat for breakfast, leathery bacon & silken eggs, tangy salt. The day remorselessly forms up around me: work & play & movement; air & earth & sky.

I am deboned & then restored. 

The morning is music unheard, the sun forming lyrics unsung. A beautiful day emerges from the formless night-dark promise. The day is a  purse of riches I may spend or save & jingle with a thought.

My heartbeat is thunder, & if I am still enough, my eyes pulse in its rhythm. 

I live. I endure. I am.

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