Riding the Light –

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  • When Friendship Sails Away

    2 a.m. Thoughts

    I am words melting from the pen

    A soul setting out upon journey alone again

    Watching for sinkholes in this new present

    & tsunamis in this new future

    On a horizon that quivers with change.

     

    Life can be a lethal dose of hurt

    Delivered to internal organs

    Like the heart & liver

    Like the lungs & sinus cavities

    Like my wobbling brain you label “stupid”

    You, someone I thought had my back

    & a blanket of forgiveness to wrap around me

    When I’m dragged from the floodwaters

    Gasping

     

    I didn’t answer the open-ended question rightly

    “Do you know about the base?” she asked…

    Well, I know where it is & some of what it purveys

    In its deathly business-as-usual way…

    But I didn’t have her answer. Nor wish to take up

    Her standard of battle.

     

    I didn’t remember a name out of context

    So a blade of Damascus steel I’d not time

    To parry was thrust into emotional vitals…

    In aid of what? Why can there be no slack

    Among old friends? Why does my perfection

    Or its lack matter so much you must pull it from

    The pole I had such a time erecting?

    Does it serve you to trample it in front of me?

    In your knowing, holy way…the priestess of

    Right, the princess of who you think I should be.

     

    I have held back so much from you of

    Your perceived imperfections, in feeling

    These thoughts would serve no purpose

    But to wound.

     

    Your definitions have no such compunction,

    Eroding into attack, I must so deserve

    For all I cannot do rightly.

     

    You say to guard my inner child as you

    Push her into an exposure beyond deserving.

    What did I do to you?

     

    I know. I know. I’m trusting in an almost comic way,

    Like Peanuts trusts Lucy to hold the ball.

    I sink for the third time as you remonstrate with

    Me, while clutching the life ring, “You should have learned to swim

    before you fell overboard!”

     

    It’s ok. My heart has been renewed before.

    It’s just an unexpected wound & hard to treat

    With my limited edition first aid kit. Attack from

    Any quarter can be unexpected, but this one caught me blind.

     

    I wipe the raveled sleeve of care across my face

    And tuck it under my head to sleep.

    I wake from my own sighs,

    To find life lost & love ground into

    Such fine dust, I have no way in this moment

    To render it to life.

  • Seeing the Unseen

    Wake up to the grave every day

    Wake up to radical choices

    Of health

    Prosperity

    Abundance

    Because these are what the world wants us to have

    And know that no other reason is needed.

    If fear or complaint is your home page

    Click on the menu called “Prayer”

    Watch for the submenu “grace’ to use as a

    Superglue

    Eliding all extraneous borders into seamlessness.

    Stretch for something you can walk forward upon

    Something solid, not heavy like pavement,

    But supportive & gracious to feet

    Think on how long the wood speaks to us

    After trees are made furniture. Think how it

    May have longed to be a bureau or a stair.

    We can no longer afford to waste even this

    Intangible energy breathed at us…

    Awaken to only THIS day, for none will ever be so again

    Put out your super-natural antennae

    Listen for hoofbeats, watch for omens

    If you’re one to create your world, plan it for good

    ›_______________

    I watched a short video accompanying a longer article about Jesus. In the video, He is shown as a man in white robes striding towards the camera. I am directly entranced by this video. I bookmarked it to watch again.

    Towards me

    I have a framed picture on my bureau:

    A magazine cutout purporting to be Jesus

    In a white robe with a red sash…

    Walking towards me.

    And this is where it will get strange for some people,

    So, if you are even the least bit strange, stop reading here, please.

    I knew this image to be so familiar for I had seen it in real life.

    In my waking reality, once upon a time,

    I saw Jesus striding towards me,

    Pacing up the road ahead of any entourage

    Eager to arrive at a home, to table, clean & at rest: a meal.

    I knew that Jesus sent His essence out ahead of Him

    I knew the first image was His wish to be with us

    And that I still had time to prepare

    For the moment He would fill His shadow

    At my door,

    Smile up at me, from my table

    All of us, Arrived, at last.

    ›_____________

     

    I’ve waited a long time for JOY to become my habitat.

    I needed to recall that Joy is set up beyond earthly constructs

    So as to be accessible at all times.

    I needed to remember Joy is entirely individualized

    Apparent only on those terms

    Entangled in these constructs

    Enabled by fearlessness.

    Joy is light, it smells like reflected sunlight

    when you pass through high grass, tasseled & be-stemmed.

    Don’t waste a bit!

    Always put it down in the exact same place…

    Or set it up as your default state.

    You see, first you get through Hope

    Then Faith

    Then Love

    to Joy.

    (Once you’ve Joy, all else drops away.)

    ›___________________

    I declare a General Amnesty for myself!

    I did all of it so far & didn’t even have the full story

    (Conventionality wears off early

    If you’re set aside young.)

    Recovery isn’t to be trusted,

    Fitting in doesn’t feel “organic”

    Comfort = Alone.

    I find my pardons along the roads I travel

    And I’m open to bridges.

  • Mind-Slip

    In the last days of this year’s August, the world’s energetic disposition became stronger. Some would even say stranger.

    For me, it became clearer. I mean a personal, scintillating clarity. I am becoming someone other than my working title, “Massage Therapist.”

    This kind of personal clarity works startlingly well at my age when so often my eyes want to glass over at the repetitive conversation, the total lack of discourse.

    I walked the “up” route one day. I had my dictation unit with me & I recorded my thoughts as I walked. I was lost in the new-minted daylight that moved all around me in a dance of its own making. I made a left where I usually make a right, hardly believing I was taking on another hill, this one in town.

    As I reached the crest, I recorded, “A poem is like a communion wafer, moments on the tongue, drenched in Divinity that needs to be told.” This portentous but predictive thought trailed off as I reached the top of the hill. Standing to just the other side was a slender man in a long robe. He stood with his hands behind his back, looking at our Union Church (built 1892) with the fiscal help of our [then] local madam. (It was not to occur to me until I reached home that this was Sunday morning.)

    Sometimes here on the backroads of New Mexico, a pilgrim will pass through town. One rainswept day, I saw a man pulling a red, white & blue crucifix with a wheel mounted on the bottom, head down, striding along the shoulder of Highway 152. In the roads near Chimayo, it is not uncommon to see bare-chested men flogging their backs with whips. Or men with thick knee pads “kneeling” their way along the road to the small miracle Church.

    In the moment of starting downhill, finding & turning off my recorder, focusing on this man’s profile, I lost all rational thought. I took him to be a holy man passing through, leaning over a wrought iron fence to study an old Episcopal Church. When he turned to face me, I realized in a rush: “he’s dressed in the vestments of a priest.”

    He walked forward to greet me, hand outstretched, a mild face overtaken by glasses. He remarked how nice it was that the weather had cooled & he was comfortable in the ceremonial layers. He mentioned he comes up to Hillsboro on Sunday to say mass at the old church. I admired his dedication as the only way to achieve a goal. We discussed what volunteers bring to lives. I lifted my index finger mysteriously & played him the poem just recited. He asked if I wrote it (a common question tho one would think too obvious to be anything but a conversational gambit.) I nodded, smiled, as free & open in conversation & aspect as I have ever felt in my life.

    There was somehow a purity in this introduction, a sharing of what is divine to each of us.

    As parishioners came up the hill, I impulsively grabbed the hand so recently shaken & kissed the back of it before saying goodbye & walking on.

     

  • Local Roads

     

    I feel like a solid rock sometimes, the indissoluble solid, mid-creek. Every once in a while, karma … or grace … approaches with a large lever & sets me into motion.  “The Lever” frequently is preceded by the sound of metal dragging across rocky ground: It foretells change.

    I let this Lever upend me to where I live now. I moved from the ocean to live in the elbow of Percha Creek. In the running stream of consciousness that is my life, I taste everyone else’s. As they taste me & mine…it’s something Biblical (at least for me.) So, as it is with water, I am everywhere, as all of us are.

    Books can be a Lever, as can movies & other creative works. For me, it’s been serial walkabout which has most changed my life. When the wind spoke in one ear only, I knew it was the way to turn when time came to leave.

    Right now, I hear birdcalls, water running over rocks too big to put in my pockets, I hear the metal stanchions of the bridge quietly flexing.

    With nothing but these in my awareness, I now also hear faint chimes of bells & bamboo, footsteps crossing behind me & a dog panting. These are bleed-throughs from a parallel time-stream, the “when” that these happened not mine to directly perceive. Yet they swell my awareness. So much is possible over magical running water.

    Straight ahead of me rises a wall of sheared & shattered rock, sliced by centuries, a southwestern sculpture garden in the vertical.

    To believe this now-miniature creek – Percha Creek – wore through this eternity of rock jumble is farcical, fantastical! Yet, since the glaciers left long ago, since the ocean formed & filled & fled, this creek has had full charge of wearing out the walls I look at, wearing them smooth & carving these edges. If there is a song from rock, there is only a chant in sharp whispers here.

    Vegetation is sparse & spiky, clinging to a dust of soil & worn-down pebbles with scrabbling roots. Along the ridgeline, the yucca plants display their seed-stalks, like so many feathers in a headdress. The mesquite provides some variation to already roughened texture.

    As I sit, balanced on a tiny chair & leaning one leg against the fence, lap desk astride, the sun beats down on me. The sun is the reason I am out here, as well as some sweet isolation & nature quality time. September offered itself on the breeze in last night’s windows. I want to be brown again for my birthday, coming soon.

    Elsewhere & everywhere, the world wears itself into existential frenzy. Friend’s ships sail in different directions, one to sea & one to land. But here & now, I am aware of only the love that created this earth & this water to bring them to this harmonious co-existence. The shapes all interact & indwell with each other far from the tiny world of my perceptions. I am not of centuries; I am now. There is only this moment.

    I’m ready.

     

  • 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.

     

  • 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

     

  • 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”

     

  • 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.

     

  • 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.

     

  • 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.