Archive | June, 2013

peek into the crystal ball where this too shall pass

30 Jun

lifting_of_the_fog_by_anjougoth-d4anks7

the future – maybe it never comes – but at times i see glimpses into its misty shores – i see another me standing on a distant beach.  she waves across the fog.

she loves me.

i admire her –

She is telling me that all will be well.

The past two days have opened up the old, patched over cavern of suffering – not me directly, but suffering as close as a child can feel like the ache of another is inside me.

I cannot fix other people’s thoughts or pain.   I cannot grow two heads and give what this girl thinks a father would/could be giving her.   I cannot make him say or do what she believes would heal.

The thinking has spiraled down again for this child.  I am nursemaid at the door, knocking to see what I can get, offering to fluff pillows to heal a broken heart – helpless.

I take a step back and remember my creative powers.

The power of creation of the human is immense.  Staring into the problem keeps us stuck.   I am able to hold some open space finally into something different.

Space within exceeds the boundaries of this house, street, suburb, city.  I spread out across the ocean from the still point within me.  Canvasses from younger years and new blank ones are all laid out…Spreading paint around  changes the very air we breath into our organic shells.

Stepping into the space, Eden picks out  childhood paintings  and arranges them in the kitchen – she raises the rooftop and lets the sun in, just a bit.

kitchen flowers

kitchenart

kitchenart2

We do not step into journeys of perfection – we do not come here for that.  As a parent, the inclination to wish it were different or try to make it all better is a mighty pull – and an incorrect thought.

All these sorrows will pass.

I see that soon my life will be very different than it is now.

Perhaps like a  glimpse of the flags at the finish line – we are given peeks into the crystal ball to give us strength to go on –  I can fall down in exhaustion soon, after I cross the marked end; I can pour the whole jug of water over my head in just a bit – and just knowing that helps me keep putting one numb foot in front of the other to get there.

 

what do we do with our gifts?

29 Jun

 

 

hope and fire

 

http://benjaminprewitt.com/2013/06/27/another-daybut-not-today/

Excuses, excuses:  the mantle is tall; I am a bit small as humans go, and i am not able to capture the true beauty I see in these paintings with my camera.

Do you love them?  Hope and Fire?  – unbounded gifts from Benjamin Prewitt, my friend.  I hardly imagined they would actually arrive, and when they did, i  went a bit out of body.  All seemed like a game.   I played along and here we are.   An earlier version of myself would have said…thank you so very much for the offer, but I couldn’t possibly accept.  Am I  flowering in the moment of now with blessings on my head  – saying YES, AND… to whatever crosses my trail?

Benjamin’s paintings stir the nameless within, his words touch the heart, and the accounting of his walk with PD stiffens my resolve daily .  The colors, composition and textures alone would be enough, Dayenu, but the archetypal themes, abstractions, divine feminine and humor –  all roll into a happening.

Is there time to express ourselves in these little life spans?  What are the gifts we are given?  How do we flow with the gifts, allowing them to develop and express, and still survive?  I know a million people who have swallowed whole the person they wish they could be.  I have walked (and perhaps still do, at times) hiding my light under layers of shame.  I’m embarrassed at times to even be a human being – when I forget who I really am.

Finally I got to a place, I could not go on – living to die – walking slowly not as me at all toward the next thing to dread, dislike, get through.  I’ve been there.  I remember the way that felt.  Sometimes from a single thought  which I might grab hold of as it flies by, I will be sucked down into the dank…who are you to do anything? – there are always better than you – why bother?

In this process of  forgetting and remembering, somehow the eyes get ignited with an accelerant, the shine comes out from within, and the soul laughs and says I don’t give a damn what car you rented for this journey – lets go out for a joy ride and spread our candied smiles and whoops of joy out the windows as we go by – let’s get out that pen, that pad, that paint, that flute, let’s dance down the aisles of familiar chores, let’s sing to the bank teller, let us drop our dirty shame blanket and shimmy!

People have gifts and the sharing of these gifts seems knife on bone close to the whole point of what we are doing here.  I cry at recitals, I am touched by effort – I am blown away to be here – receiving – alive with the wish to create and return.

Tangible joy makes me wanna pick up a Ukulele!

A thank you wholly inadaquate to Benjamin Prewitt – awakening me again this week in ever growing ways to the joy of being alive.

Tags: , , , ,

life of luxury

26 Jun

pickney plantation

Tucked around the corner from the  concrete oven, strip mall superstore  lies a plantation full of grass and weed fields, spanish moss hung trees, circling red-tailed hawks, virtuoso mockingbirds, and shapeshifting dragon fly fairies, as captured by my friend Sheila.

dragonfly

Sheila led me into this place, though I had driven by it for years, never stopping.

I am here on my yoga mat on a strip of grass under a tall tree with a few thoughts like the billowing clouds – just passing through.

You could tell me of my worries, but I am not hearing the words clearly.

Here is the space to stretch out away from worries, between duties and just be.  The TO DO list checking – pick up here, drop off there, get these things off this list at these stores, make these phone calls –  that follows such a stolen moment in nature flows with a new sense of  spaciousness.

Remembering lingers amidst the matrix flow.

I am still participating for all to see in the way society, family, survival demands of us here in this world at this time.

I am learning of the small windows of space I  can create while still seeing the insanity in live action on the big screen or hearing conversations of plastic surgery and social judgement while my hair gets a trim.

I am nothing.  I just have ears and a current of electrical charge which seems to flow from an invisible cord ascending up.

Stretch out with me here, cradled in the arms of something really big.

Tags: , ,

the ever-increasing crevasse between presence and distraction

20 Jun

Crevasse by Wendy L. Gonick

Crevasse

The Verizon Guy couldn’t believe I wouldn’t take the free i phone  when I had to stop by to activate an old phone for my daughter.  My decision seemed insane to his world view.  I wonder if I will continue to have a choice to stay unplugged from the WWW in my walking life.  I want to turn off and drop out.

Do you have people in your life who are present, but not there at all, except for brief moments?

Hanging out with humans has taken on a new layer of disconnect from over-connection; even though, I am much removed from the new normal level of connectedness most are experiencing.  I’m practically choosing to be the last year’s model of human.  The constant reporting and updating from life, texting, looking things up, checking email, posting, etc. causes people to never be where they are for real, often missing much they will never know they missed.

Is the polarity gap showing up in the technology?  I do have friends who have iphones and pads who keep them out of sight except for a moment here and there when the connection is helpful or illuminating in the moment.

Also, some, while they are physically present, can be seen to be creating a Facebook slice of life for the life they are experiencing in the moment; the picture of the meal, the friends in an instant group picture, the look at me here now, while not being here now at all.

Constantly creating an image takes one out of just being, just living in the moment.  I have found myself taking mental pictures with blogging in mind and pulled back to remember, I am in this moment, my eyes are just seeing, my being is connected with all right now in a truer way than any writing or recaptured moment through story-telling can convey.

I heard this Red Ice Creations podcast years ago with Henrik Palmgren and Neil Kramer:

and instantly related the topic to so many I interact with, care about, share history with.

Often I feel like I am standing on one side of a strange land, looking over a crevasse to the other side of people existing in a different way.  The large screen tv’s seemed to bring in a ramped up level of fear and identification with the body to hypnotize the human animal to such a degree we started to look and behave like different creatures altogether.  We joke about sheeples and zombies, but there is some truth behind the humor.

Sometimes in stores or daily public interactions, I have sudden eye contact with another being, which is unrelated to appearances or exterior identity, in which we acknowledge WE ARE HERE.  WE ARE PRESENT AND ALIVE TOGETHER, unrestricted and present together.  And then I look back to the sea of people who are listening to an inner voice of their small identity.  I can recognize and relate to that – it isn’t gone from me, either, but I know I can pull my head up above this sea of confusion and take whole gulping breaths of the fresh air of a clear mind.  Once that air is truly tasted, how can I ever go back to the sea of confusion for good.

Beyond just the distraction found with many who are walking around mostly unconsciously, riding the wave of the benefits of the interconnected public life of projected imaging outward onto platforms for solidifying identity, there is also environmental and health related issues to consider.

There are only two outlets where the wireless can plug in for our new house.  The one most hidden and practical happened to be behind my bed.  I have not slept well since the move.  Today, I wake again, much earlier than needed, and find myself figuring out how to move the wireless device.  I would remove it all together, but I am teaching online.  How do we dance this dance with change occurring so quickly?  Our bodies are being used as Guinea pigs for absorbing the brunt of waves we barely understand.

This film, which I think does not wish to be embedded, raises important questions about the effects of such technology.  If they disable, the film is Resonance, and can be found on Youtube.

 

Tags: , , , ,

the greatest fall

18 Jun

falling-down

Talk of spirituality can be such a turn off.  I know that feeling of squirm inside when someone speaks about spirit.  Squish and uck!

Such a personal and internal thing – the soul beneath the experiences – the self in a cave behind the waterfall flow of life.

When it is spoken of, pointed to, preached about, proselytized outward, sung across the mountain – I turn into goth girl, sarcastic and cynic – blue about the lips.

I apologize for bringing it up if it makes you squirm.

In my journey, the floor has been yanked from underneath me over and over again.  Just a few: the death of my brother when I was 14, loss of religion, loss of the conditioned aspects of life – roles – and a near death experience that brought me to a brink and made me choose to live.   When there was no ground beneath me,  what helped get me back into a body, back into the journey?

Voices and words of teachers that I found on my own had a place for me.  Every teacher is just a pointer, showing his own way to a deeper thread, which he himself will tell you is unknowable.

I was just finishing typing this post and the doorbell rang.  Some lovely southern ladies with hats and dresses came by and gave me a pamphlet for a convention about their religion.  Hello.  Didn’t even know the doorbell worked!

 I hold gently the words as I gradually begin to relax and float down the stream, dissolving little bit by little bit into the water.

Today I get to meet my friend visiting from far away for a downtown Charleston bimble and explore!

Today I choose to live.

Sometimes people say they can smell freedom.
They say they fall more and more into the embrace of That which is unspeakable.
And I have to acknowledge that this is not merely an intellectual thought or conviction.
It is a deep inner thing; a felt experience in the Heart beyond words and thoughts, and yet I have to tell you that what you are falling into Is and was already here—unchangingly.
It is what you already are and no distance is involved.
Has anyone ever heard of a falling where there was no distance?
This is the fall where there is no distance.
It’s the greatest fall; the falling away of delusion.

~ Mooji

10th of June, 2013

Tags: , , , ,

moving day

15 Jun

the_art_of_moving_on__by_whipp_oorwill-d4kzjej

I wonder what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw away.

Some objects stir memories and upswells of sorrow for the life that was known before.

A heaviness asks why do we live this life at all,  visitors of the ideas of having lost so much, of struggle, of  responsibility beyond my abilities, of peddling frantically while losing ground…

As soon as these thoughts are allowed to just come and sit, invited for tea, they are on their way again.

Joy floods in so soon after sorrow;  this body is such an amazing instrument for playing the music of the emotions.

While In this real acceptance of whatever is, I also am able to see the teenage girls here with me, who stop for hugs and comfort, amid the stress of change.  Brave, these girls and I, switching out  roles of helper and the being helped; today this is so.

Hallelujah!

I am one of so many walking around this planet learning that:

Life is a contact sport – there is no hiding away – I show up.  I show up.  I show up.

What is the game?

another day, another location.

Here is to

the stories of who we are told with our whole hearts, making the unknown known (and felt).

Hitting it!

Tags: , ,

smell this

12 Jun

magnolia blossom

Lemon, clean, slight vanilla, green:  an ivory snifter as large as your face.  Magnolia Blossom.

The Camellias are raging,  along with the Hydrangeas.   Where have I been?  Indoors, really?

Time suddenly is soft enough to spread around the moment, moldable, malleable; I am a sculptor up to my elbows with the muddy clay of flow – I ooze it out between my fingers into any shape I want.

I drop Chloe off at dance and head out for a walk in Hampton Park.   A storm is building in the west; the light goes from bright day to eerie green; rumbling rolls in.  I walk fast along the trail, listening to the pounding feet and breathiness of the runners when they overtake me.  The rain begins so gently.

The Citadel cadets shout together over the edge of the trees in the unison of  solemn joy.  There is a timelessness of young men shouting in military song – I imagine them marching into battle.  At dusk the trumpet plays Taps – but it is early still.

The spaciousness of grace tingles within and without – through porous skin.

Magnolias are messy in their leaf dropping ways and butchered by neatnik lawn keepers despite so readily wrapping their arms around this world.  The blossoms hug their petals around whole human faces and cast spells to pull us all into the roots.

I have put too many words through these fingers already. What I wish to share is the scent of the blossom under the eerie light of an approaching storm.   Bathed in my own sweat and raindrops – the outline of the everything we have known seems to shift  – everything is the same in an completely new way.

And at the end of this, Eden walks in, and says, “Oh God, you’re blogging,” and walks out…haha…writing is so silly!  Stretching the moment into words is laughable.  Someday Eden will either do a stand-up comedy routine in which I am a hilarious joke, she already does a great routine about me, or tell it to psychiatrist for big bucks.

Tags: , ,

now for something completely different

9 Jun

I refuse to make myself a resume,

As much as the mind continually wishes to do this.

A pulsing of life in a body moves from experience to experience.  Even if it choses to stay in bed with the covers to its neck, the experiences come – through the light in the window – through the thunder outside, the mosquito in the ear, the pounding at the door –

All of the moments can be stitched together in such away to make a story – an attractive one – a funny one- a pitiful one – all still story.  The story adds layers upon layers which the deepest part of you knows is false.

dancing in  this world of ours of falseness – of suffering projected out into judgement of others’ worthiness – no one takes me seriously!  really?  why should they?   What has that to do with a thing?    Wanting others to view us in any sort of a way is all the act of resume building.  This conglomeration of bones tissue blood memories preferences achy fingers bruised shins sagging breasts twinkling eyes – is nothing.  In this realization of nothing lies great freedom.   There is no charge – no combustion – there is no thing here to get a rise out of.  My back may rise, yet know the hissing is just a fun game of pretend.  Look at my claws, meow.

I have taken the daily beating of the worst sort of sadistic suffering guards – and I learned to shower them with love.  If you expose your pain to me – even if you think you are wounding – I kiss it.  I know it.  I give because I need no reason – I am an empty vessel tapping into the thing greater than me – empty out the identity and you can know the universe and secrets within – and have no wish of personal gain from that.  Others think they kick me while  I could tell them wonders that I see in their buried parts – I can read the iris of their eyes and the lines on their palms, but they know not.  I kiss the bleeding wound, dank with infection and sully my lips none.

You can take and are a taker – this trait is obvious for all to see – has been all along – and in your peek upon my breast, you reveal your own.  In your wrath and prickliness, you reveal your soft underbelly – and desire to transcend your animal nature by diving deep within it – go on in head first, I shout.

I am coming to see the irony of the artist’s journey – the desire to be something to do something ties you to the flesh and to your experiences and to your pain.  Trust the alchemy of this – and know all are accepted in the lap, all are allowed to suckle – there is no shame – there is not wrong but an infinity of choice – to engage or to provoke or to accelerate or to stagnate for a bit – matters not – free choice –

All water flows to the amassed mysterious sea – or evaporates into the hot air, to be rained into the sea, again and again.  the games of who is good or who is talented or who has read enough to be deemed intelligent or who can name that line, “east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet,” in 30 seconds at the drunken literary dinner party – only to realize all is lost in the haze of chest beating and booze, let us fuck on this couch while my wife sleeps in the next room – she is hard of hearing – bravado.  if inspiration is borrowed, that is taking too, without permission.   And one says it sucks, one says it speaks, matters not, but that it was a choice of how to pass the time.  we are all floating in the same mind space oblivious and sharp edged – for now.  some awaken and merge and care not where one begins or another ends,  who creates or who absorbs,  or who is top or bottom; the merging is deeper than the mind can fathom.

* I feel the need for a disclaimer – All poking is at me or versions of me – boring, safe, predictable.  I allow myself to push publish as I flow into different spaces.   I find the format of a blog, which allows for free expression, also becomes a confine of identity at times.

Tags: , , , ,

glory be

7 Jun

sunrise over ashley river

in the middle of the night – it all becomes so clear.

Sleeplessness can be the same as sleeping.

I do not know what is on television,

I have no news except the sky – a storm arrives

without

a name known by me.

I can easily escape this bed, this house, this little body shell –

I am as big as my whole city, silent

watching the clouds roll in on eye level.  The lightning

illumines the billowing mass insurgency of storm.

wind whips – I have no body, yet I am here.

sky dome cracks in two, crashes down,

the vacuum of space sucks out all the filth of man-

who cares where it goes now.

A night can pass this way.

Clockwinder, I see the mystery of

Birds awakening before the light.

Why now do I shrink?

Back in this woman body,

listening with human ears,

the rattle of the shutters,

the bending of the trees;

glory be.

Thoughts knock on every door;

one little crack and in they rush,

silly men in suits.

I do not follow them,

or read from their notepads.

The meeting at eight is cancelled, you know,

Loosen the ties, get thee to the beach.

Choke yourself on salt and surf,

and let the rip tide take you out.

Tags: , , ,

nothing left to lose

4 Jun

Just now, I sliced a purple onion to put in my garbanzo bean salad – have you looked at one of those lately?

– How utterly beautiful they are –

Red_onions

But the slicing brought a deluge of tears so strong, that I shut my eyes and continued to cut by feel only, slice, slice slice, above the whoosh of the dishwasher.  The tears stung and cleaned me out – even if onion induced – nothing feels better than a good cry.

Now I have those onions carmelizing in the pan; will that be good in a salad?  I don’t know, but I will try.

I am moving forward without so much definition of just what exactly that means.

Moving is such an opportunity for release and reinvention.  We are only going 8 miles or so.  Boxing up, throwing out, I am seeing what it is that constitutes our lives; all of this activity gives perspective.  We are a collection of stuff.  We are a collection of shared experiences.  We, my daughters and I, while away a bit of time together – and then things change – some so gradually you hardly notice, and other things disappear overnight.  AH!

I found some old journals full of anguished thoughts.  I visited my dear younger self in her sorrow.  These sorrows in that time, as well as joys, did pass.  The self I visited  then is no longer the me of now, and the future me will look back at the me of now with loving tenderness.

past future selves

The journey is important, but not in the way the mind wants to make it so.

Getting the sticky parts out can be a bit uncomfortable and embarrassing to the self that can be embarrassed.  The real self recognizes there is no shame in the journey.

I forget.  I expose my shadows in the mirror of my experiences.   I fall down mind spirals that I no longer think are possible.  When I return, what is left?

Nothing left to lose.  It is insane to believe in loss.

The world of self-esteem,  Own it, girl, strut your stuff, I’m all that 🙂 has a hard time with some of these ideas.  The loss of identity in some ears sounds like the opposite of a healthy outlook.  Funny!

Stripping down to the real thing is the opposite of adding on or building up  –

what is here is all that

Tags: , , ,

%d bloggers like this: