running free on wilder shores

d a n g e r o u s ~

2012-01-29T21:03:00.000-08:00

feeling dangerous. quite invigorating, really. at a certain point, the general insanity of it all edges past painful... and transforms into ludicrous. its then, perhaps, one can best glimpse the tiny little boxes we allow ourselves to inhabit, and that so much more is possible.

i think about this regarding 'spirituality' a lot. i wonder how sanitised our western notions of spirituality have become; and how much life has been crushed out of it by centuries of religious oppression. i hope the gods are far more interesting than our silly human pea brains can even fathom; and they chortle in glee when we do something truly outrageous. 'oh! there's a live one!' they all laugh in delight. fantastic.

'hurrah!' they cheer in the OtherWorld, 'somebody broke through! somebody got really crazy there! High 5!' and they all nod & guzzle some rainbow Kool Aid or pass around the amanitas.

i worry about this.

it would be more fun, clearly, to simply DO more outrageous things, than worry about the issue... but i'm getting there.

spirituality, to me, is so deeply personal & experiential. and the diatribes by which people chose to rule their lives seem so arbitrary. what is hailed at the ultimate in spiritual devotion in one school... is heresy in another. so, ultimately, you lean into your own core, and search for answers that actually feel right ~ head, heart, gut, body ~ from there.

there's nothing wrong with the missionary position. can be quite wonderful. in a kind of limited horizontal way, depending on the depth of feeling between two people & the mood. but its only one position. and if vanilla is one school; and rough sex is another; and kinky kink or BDSM another yet... what about spirituality? has its equivalents, no doubt.

so it is
i find myself wondering
how much of our own incredible wildness we miss
as we search to fit ourselves into tiny little neat boxes ~
squeeeeeezing into the rigid pews of the little white Presbyterian church in the Nantucket of the mind ~
when ALL THIS OTHER SPIRIT WANTS TO BE LIVED & EXPRESSED TOO.

reading a book on Celtic shamanism last night, which grooved up until a point, and then got sadly proscriptive. apparently, in order to begin, i needed a 'shaman's blanket' ~ the first & most important tool of the shaman's kit. i don't have one. nor do i have a drum; bells; whistles; or face paint. the author had the OtherWorld neatly divided in ranks of Upper, Middle, and Lower, which smacked suspiciously of western hierarchichal thinking. and though i've never identified my elevator floor when i've travelled on my own shamanic journeys... i've journeyed all the same. felt the experience wholly. & seen the results of the journey afterwards.

an iconoclast, through & through.

yet still, it amazes me how i catch myself ~ again ~ tearing down the boxes, ripping aside false curtains, sweeping my arm wildly across the table, equipment crashing to the floor, clearing space; and in the space, finding the only home worth having.

for * the * interim * time ~

2012-01-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems witheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

John O'Donohue
To Bless the Space Between Us

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

2012-01-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

can i crush something with these hands?

saturday night, solo, wrung out... despite ALL precautions & extreme self-care.

staggered
intelligent
compassionate
attuned steps to better health...
& still no better health.
what gives?

one horrific week; on top of least liked season; hard on tail of homicide trial; not impressed.

so far,
this week,
great joy of:

1. cancelling my first at home party in 10 years ~ due to illness!
quel surprise.

2. attempting to host it later in the week ~ wrong move ~ while monitoring heart palpitations, shaking legs, stumbling over my own feet, nose-diving focus... & falling into bed afterwards, freaked out. way past limits.

3. to wake up to... surprise "you're being auditted!" letter with 3 days notice to prepare EVERYTHING.

4. & the next day... World War 3 breaks out with relations. about to be disowned.

5. glancing out window to discover Maine Coon's owner loading truck... and moving away. ugly furniture, cat & all. goodbye dear friend. i will miss you immensely.

6. cancelling another (much-longed-for) lunch date. too sick.

7. being billed for book i supposedly damaged... but was conveniently not told about till 5 weeks after event, when no proof existed of my part in it. nice.

8. best friend's first-born diagnosed with autism. major concern all around.

9. five more nights of broken sleep, sleep loss, & no Dreaming.

it appears not only are my finances in question;
my family status is in question;
health & sleep & dreams continue to elude;
but the furry monster that amuses me endlessly through all this garbage has left for... SaskiBush???

i am completely, utterly, totally, not in one tiny little bit impressed. at all.

so
happy saturday night
i wish i were screaming eeby-jeeby improv poetry in NYC
& scaring the shit out of the neighbours
& haunting all-night diners
talking art
with
other
freaks

photo punk poetess Patti Smith

s o l s t i c e * e l v e s * d e l i v e r ~

2012-01-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

experience has proven xmas gift certificates for bookstores yield huge orgiastic blossoms of joy; at a well-timed delay from the difficult day itself; & this year's did not disappoint. i am rejoicing ~ even as i struggle to type, i'm so deliriously tired ~ over these new inputs to my studio & processes.

i particularly like Dunn's layered approach to densely building up images ~ richer, deeper, more saturated, with skittery overlays of expressive line drawings. mmmm.

stumbled across Gaubert's book online, deep in a craft blog search, & cheered for its inventiveness ~ pushing boundaries of small quilt design in sharp, crisp, snappy-fresh ways. i've tended to stick with the Civil War era for small projects, or Japanese sashiko, but this promises a dose of pure child~spirit delight.

* w * h * i * m * s * y *
&
*s * e * r * e * n * d * i * p * i * t * y *
are
the
order
of
the
day!

today i want to be that fox, tucked into my own custom-made quilt pocket, attentive artist friend at side... i will make do with Facebook.

& lastly, i adore adore adore the saturation of watercolour explored in this book, its predilection for abstraction. a bit Kandinsky? a bit Klee? very playful & supremely inspiring.

studio!
ready the creativity stations!
i want to make Big Messes.

w o n d e r ~

2012-01-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

illustration Anahata Katkin

to sleep! to sleep! perchance, to dream!

2012-01-26T13:01:00.001-08:00

hmmm

sleep continues to elude, fairly major problem for a fatigue-based illness. i feel like a 3 year old who MUST get 50 'just so' factors lined up pre-sleep... only to come up with a new crisis just as he drifts off.

here at Camp Fatigue we begin with low lighting; fresh air in window; television OFF; quiet soothing music; light reading; gratitude journal. that's for starters...

generally, i rely on L-Tryptophan supplements ~ the factor in turkey that makes you so dopey after Thanksgiving dinner. an amino acid, the direct precursor to serotonin... seems like a smart thing to take anyway.

if that fails me, as it can do, i shift to Motherwort, Passionflower or Vervain tincture.

* motherwort ~ sleepy making, like a warm hug

* passionflower ~ lightly relaxing, with added bonus of inducing vivid dreaming, kind of fun really

* vervain ~ also relaxing, but can make things a little tooooo trippy, if high dose taken. definitely felt QUITE bizarre last time i took it.

if both the supplement approach & then the herbal approach fail...
its onto the Big Guns. a short half-life pharmaceutical sleeping pill that leaves no groggy hangover; but does seem to sour my mood every time i use it. noticeably. bit of a trade-off there.

the real confusion seems to comes in with coordinating:-

a) blood sugar levels to last the night
b) temperature regulation (i freeze & boil equally fast)
c) cat

by the time this is all in hand, i fall asleep... only to wake up every single 2 hours to pee. lovely. i try not to drink anything after 8. i still pee. ga.

so it is
i arrive on the shores of today
sifted
sore
rough at the edges
&
ever so slightly * p e e v i s h *

image of lolling Pre-Raphaelite beauty
Millais? Waterhouse?
i'm too tired to remember...

s o l a c e ~

2012-01-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

sol·ace/ˈsälis/

noun:
comfort or consolation in a time of distress or sadness

:: bland walls, bland music, & fine asian broth ~ aromatic & steaming ~ in large china bowl

:: hugging the giant Maine Coon with extra fervor, scrumbling his great ruff vigorously, holding his enormous front paw as he tries to sleep... blinking tolerant love eyes at me, anyway

:: smooth blue tracing of Bic ballpoint on recycled bond sketchbook

:: 'Everything Is Free' crooned by Gillian & David, over & over, in the dark dark

:: the electric hum of a taxi i can't afford, for a soul that can't afford another day spent home

:: the unfailingly kind, engagingly articulate owners of the Button Boutique ~ safe harbour of beauty on some stormy days

:: my oldest friend, listening ~ never with judgment, always with incision & blunt outrage

:: white mohair in stockinette stitch

:: puttering through thrift stores with no aim at all ~ simply Turn Up Stuff-ing a la Pippi Longstocking, as the sheer materiality of life's abundance soothes mind & emotions

:: encapsulation in a white Prius on the long coastal highway up to Tofino, mj at the wheel, the immense aural infusion of Beethoven's 6th as the rain & mist surround in softest low light

:: my favourite once-3 year old boy, asking 'can we have a bisit?'
as he twists his hands & opens his eyes super-wide, in hope

:: one 1 litre Mason jar ~ washed with soap & vinegar till glass sparkles ~ filled with glacial spring water, the pure sensation of thirst blissfully relieved

image from Jane Campion's 'The Piano'

f u r y ~

2012-01-24T10:25:00.001-08:00

fu·ry/ˈfyo͝orē/
noun:

wild or violent anger.
a surge of violent anger or other feeling.

valediction * forbidding * mourning ~

2012-01-23T18:31:00.000-08:00

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

John Donne

painting Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1835

s o n n e t * 116 ~

2012-01-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare

w i c k e d ~

2012-01-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

joan was a wicked woman. mostly, of course, she was desperately unhappy; but she allowed her unhappiness to make wicked decisions for her. fawning & solicitous as every newly-vulnerable woman arrived, she cooed & plucked tearful confidences from them. tete-a-tete with joan on the couch in her office, she would lean forward entreatingly, filling out the paperwork ~ gleaning the details of each woman's circumstances, circumstances leading to their arrival at the women's shelter. all smiles & assurances, she filed these details away; and for a while every newcomer was her new best friend. extra favours, charming acknowledgements, solicitations to the other women ~ the less recent women ~ to make the extra effort for the newcomer.

it never lasted long.

by christmas, 6 women-in-need had fled the shelter, fleeing her abuse. the confidences shared at that first vulnerable interview, later used as ammunition & leverage, shilled out to others to gain new currency. one by one, she made each of our lives intolerable, with her vicious temper, her endlessly whining manner, her back-biting duplicity. with slightly hunched back, enormous zippered dressing gown, protruding watery eyes & cheap slippers, she moved like a large ominous bug. one by one, we all fled.

but not before we struggled. not before we paid the price. her own pitiful lack of self-esteem propped up temporarily by this position as 'house manager,' barely concealed her own desperate straights, her own desperate need for housing.

the house itself was poison. they didn't tell you that, not when you applied. it was only once you'd moved in, your welfare cheque in their fists that you learned of the catastrophic water damage, the gutting, the 'renovation' of a house that ought to have been razed. black mold behind the dry wall, paint fumes & synthetic carpets & bargain laminate flooring that outgassed constantly, cheap formaldehyde-soaked kitchen cupboards & the most toxic of chemicals on twice weekly cleaning brigade. when i moved in, she made motions towards baking soda & vinegar, with a nod to my extreme sensitivity. by the time i left, i swear she enjoyed Mr Cleaning & Super-Cloroxing extra often; just because.

20 years her junior, slender, exotic, and as flamboyantly pigmented as a peacock, in wildly expressive gypsy clothing that always turned heads, i must have rubbed something the wrong way ~ some long embittered corner of her own sad, neglected femininity. she also immediately hated my friend on sight, barking at him for trying to carry a heavy box into the house. "NO MEN ALLOWED!" the words curdling in her throat, shooting eyes of outrage at us. every night i'd go out. every night she'd stay in, hiding herself behind a flimsy shower curtain for door covering, watching middle american tv re-runs. the room ached with loneliness. i fled, usually downtown, into the night circus for hours at a time. anything, anything rather than that toxic house, that toxic woman, that much pinched misery.

upon return, i'd lie alone in bed, face by the wide open window, sucking in fresh air. midnight. lying still, i'd send out silent heart entreaties, willing him to call. 'come,' he'd croon, 'come. i want to sleep beside you. don't worry about the cab, i'll pay. just come.'

call the cab, be outside waiting when it arrives. exit a block from his house, walk the last 200 yards in on foot. a basement apartment entered by the back door, his roommate a surly security guard with a penchant for chain-smoking & loud seedy wrestling glitz on tv. his own special 'rules' about visitors.

ducking under the large 70s balcony, crouched double, i'd feel my way through the pitch black towards the tiny bedroom window, snug at ground level. if i held my palm flat against the glass, i could slide it open easily. poking one Blundstoned foot in first, then the other, gathering up huge long trailing skirts, i'd lower myself silently over the bookcase and onto the darkened bedroom floor, closing the window behind me. pause. let eyes adjust. his bed consumed the tiny room, layers of wool flokhati's from Nepal & Canadian Tire sleeping bags, all slippery burgundy polyester, flannel lining, & lush felted wool. i'd shed my clothes, slip into the nest, and lie quietly breathing in the dark, waiting.

'night, dude,' he'd say, offering the security guard a final smoke or some other such feigned friendliness. pause. bathroom. toothbrushing. running water. flush. then the doorknob would turn, he'd slip in, drop his clothes, and slide in naked beside me, all stealth. 'good to smell you,' he'd whisper, burying his face in my hair, my neck, my shoulder, pulling me into warmest embrace. burrowing,
i'd inhale deeply. home.

image Jenny Holzer
from the "Truisms" series, 1977-79

b l u n n y * t r a v e l s ~

2012-01-21T18:42:00.001-08:00

wrapped in sesame street stripey scarf, bolt to bus stop, MEC knapsack on back, painted Blundstones point the way... lurch & careen downtown, deposit gazillion library books, gather fresh holds... wander... over to Paperie, soaking up roomfuls of exquisite imported paper products from round the world, France, Japan, Italy... sheets & sheets of thick rich wrapping papers dense with saturated colours...or spidered with ephemeral delights... scoot through mall, fast-fast... shoot through cross street in light drizzle... rain grey softness... pull open old wooden door to Lotus Pond... shy girl with bowed face & sylphy thinness whispers 'vegetable wonton soup?'... broth divine, abundance of coarse black & finest white pepper... bliss... down through Centenn Square, past dated yet strangely attractive fountain... into cavernous ceilinged cafe for shelter & oasis... with determination, transcribe entire week of dreams into document form, 15 full pages, soul life * t e e m i n g *... nibble tiny tiny tiny sweet with salt... curiously good... wifi head & emf overload... dart out for great lungfuls of wind-whipped air... dip into Haute Cuisine, shiny fancy cookwares & sparkly new gadgets... swerve through fast-falling darkness to neon-lit Market for baking supplies, tea party on the horizon... shoot up to Island Blue, sketchbook-mission... pit-stop at Simple Remedies, hello to balding Brian gleefully stamping discount cards like a merry 3 year old

putter
veer
swerve
lurch
wander
float
transcend
careen
pause
saunter
amble
trudge

& back to Base Camp

not bad, for 5 hours sleep, & a very rough start
sometimes, i amaze myself

or, better put...

2012-01-21T10:28:00.000-08:00

Bloody!
Bloody!
Bloody!

Flora,
in Jane Campion's The Piano

c a t ~

2012-01-20T21:03:00.000-08:00

:: cat bites toe. hard.

:: cat lounges on top of fridge & bites Blue Morpho butterfly wing on magnet... now sporting 2 puncture holes & popsicle stick splint.

:: cat opts to snooze on rabbit skin, smack in centre of apothecary desk. right ON the white rabbit fur. p l e a s e .

:: cat runs in to stand sentry every time i pee. purrs loudly if plopped in lap.

:: cat jumps over curled body, as i write by lamplight ~ and straight out the open window onto roof. glares knowingly with smug satisfaction. 'you can't get me, and i'm hunting birds.'

:: cat joins in trance sessions, beaching himself on bed, extending paw to connect our bodies physically, purring loudly in bliss as i trill higher & higher. who is whose familiar?

:: cat sniffs nagual's Cowichan vest with intense, prolonged interest, over & over again, piecing information together. leans hard into it, rubs her head all around it, coats herself in his scent & vice versa. she remembers.

:: cat snorkels up Temptations treats without pause to chew... but disdains all dairy. turkey meatballs no good either.

:: cat sits in window, across the street, looking mournfully over. stuck.

:: cat huddled under giant yew tree by door, in foul weather, waiting for door to open. already.

:: cat throws up on much-loved picture of Lakota veterans of Little Big Horn (1876) ~ the very night i wonder... 'should i have left that picture on the floor?'

:: cat enjoys air blown on densely furred Coon belly. blow, lost in delight, feet in the air.

:: cat's actual gender remains a mystery, as there's so damn much fur, so thick & densely grown, its all sequestered anyway.

:: cat zones out as patted on head, concave side of largest wooden spoon, repeatedly, considerable intensity. eyes shut in reverie.

:: cat slips off ironing board while lounging a little too luxuriously... crashes to floor with mighty thud, dragging all fabric after him. shakes out. pretends it didn't happen.

:: cat allows massage of pads of front feet, including delicate area between toes. on a very good day, will gently extend & curl all 5 claws around my single digit, held in a little prickly balloon cage of feline handshake.

:: cat. cat. cat.

cat art by
Tadashige Nishida,
Chairman Meow,
unknown,
& Kuniyoshi Utagawa, twice...

g u e s t * h o u s e ~

2012-01-20T17:20:00.000-08:00

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy,
a depression,
a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought,
the sham,
the malice,
meet them at the door, laughing,
and invite them in!
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

image Deborah Kerr-Chopin
at www.touchdrawing.com

t r a s h c a n * l i v e s ~

2012-01-19T16:23:00.000-08:00

the wind blows hard tonight
and it's a cold wind
and I think about
the boys on the row.
I hope some of them have a bottle of
red.
it's when you're on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything.
this is the way a democracy
works:
you get what you can,
try to keep that
and add to it
if possible.
this is the way a dictatorship
works too
only they either enslave or
destroy their
derelicts.
we just forget ours.
in either case
it's a hard
cold
wind.

Charles Bukowski

h o n o r i n g * d i f f e r e n c e s ~

2012-01-18T18:35:00.000-08:00

Honoring Every Person

In ancient times, Native Ancestors honored every kind of human being. There was no judgment against the ones who had other than heterosexual preferences, the ones who were eccentric, or the ones who were 'touched' with hearing voices.

The nonlogical or different behaviours of others were accepted because our Medicine People understood that all people are exactly where they are supposed to be, doing whatever that entails.

Those who heard voices and talked to unseen spirits often came up with very unusual and workable solutions for tribal problems. These 'touched' individuals did not operate from the same logical viewpoint that blocked others from seeing nonlogical solutions. Many times the lives of these individuals were considered Holy because they stood in both worlds at the same time, the spiritual (or nontangible) world, and the natural world.

Jamie Sams

j o u r n e y i n g ~

2012-01-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

in darkness, surrendered, the waves begin. softening, loosening, hips free, shoulders roll. as music weaves deeper & deeper into my very fibres, an ecstatic joy radiates up up up from within. heart space. pure heart space.

'everything but the girl' soars & lilts & i find initial release in the sheer aural purity of it, the crystal clear simplicity. wonderful smart pop songs, resonant with depth & sharp lyrics.

shift to fred ~ eaglesmith so low deep bassy; morose yet strong; a melancholic survivor; gritty. pelvis wakens. always does, with bass. 'its just so warm,' the boy with the joker tattoo murmured, 'its the warmth.'

sideways segue to gillian, all bright banjo's & bending, haunting notes of dissonance. leaning hard into that strange beating of staggered notes against each other, just slightly off. magic.

backtrack to lanois. real submersion begins.

d e e p e r

d e e p e r

d e e p e r

down we go...

something about lanois' mixing technique hooks me every time. sounds travel, ping-ponging geographically between speakers, creating a literal physical landscape. brain leaps with glee as both ears prick to (differing) attention. man. he just does it. the slow, rising, building crescendos in 'the beauty of winona' ~ so sleight a hand at first, innocent enough; but by end coda? the full, growly, dark, churning, majesty soars. which, of course, leads to hendrix.

opening bars of 'machine gun' ~ and i am back in that tiny house in Hamilton, on the rough old carpet in the front room, raw desire coursing through, around, against me. his lanky, wired form riddled, sprung with erotic strength. my own body matched. cannot hear that song without arousal. it aches with the taut strung longing of every hot humid summer day together.

our bodies are cells;
our bodies are fascia;
our bodies riddled with tension & old savage knots;
each form of music lulls, soothes, animates, releases another layer,
until loose relaxation reigns.

its there you discover that cells are alive with spirit;
each cell breathing memories;
awash in love;
luminous with information.

in these deep surrenders,
ego long abandoned,
spirit soaring in melodic rhythmic blisses,
i have sent out silent heart calls to loved ones,
'imaginary' spirit calls of vibrant love;
only to have them literally contact me the next day,
years of silence or absence ended.

we so barely understand our own true potential; glance sideways off the top of the iceberg of wonder, barely comprehending what we are missing.

through nightdreams, reawakened heart~longing for the boy with the tattooed joker. through our shared aural soundscape, physical desire erupted, so long submerged under illness. through ecstatic states traversed, dreams recorded, staggering volume of synchronicities, i began to perceive patterns of call & response. evolution.

the so-called 'shamanic journeying' cd's? somehow insipid. i recognise they strive to reintroduce trance states to a numbed people, stuck on rationality. but the important factor is NOT the beats per minute, or the instrument used, or even the cultural roots of the music.

the most important factor is desire ~
fearless, stripped~bare~to~core desire.

heart utterly open, vibrating in accord with its deepest longings, imagination freed, all things possible.

pick the soundtrack from there, & let it unfold its own natural organic way.

f o r k s * & * s n o w ~

2012-01-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

staggering insanity from relations. fork in my eye, run screaming through streets level insanity. who is blind? ignorance. winding in intensity.

promptly resurfaces in nightmares ~
waking hours not bad enough apparently.
in they come,
to visit & taunt in sleep,
deepest layers of oldest pain,
robbing sleep of succour,
rest of meaning,
wake with head full of anguish
on bedrock of exhaustion already

snow grinds city to halt. library apparently "cannot" open. people in winnipeg must howl. -30 degrees with metres of snow there... this small sprinkling halts our whole fine city in its tracks. strange white light, muffled quiet, grey skies temporarily banished as white white white prevails.

these grueling days of limbo do not enchant. walking between the worlds challenging enough for most sensitives. with a radically ill body & regularly blocked channels, while surfing high tsunamis of symptoms, & staggering volleys of 'family' drama makes it well-nigh impossible at times. the spiritual life is also patience, surrender, prayer; i do understand. turmoil lately immense. here i sit. poised. borderlands.

even jacob wrestled the angel.

let me see the mark death made
i dream a highway back to you...

i dream one friend sunk in a deep hole, wrapped in himself, tightly bound, refusing all warmth or contact. i email to check it out. 'in a bit of a rut' he concedes, burrowed deep in his hole.

i dream an old roommate & i exchange fripperies & soupcons of montreal nonsense, intellectual banter. hour later, contacts me in waking life.

worlds become transparent, information sifts through, questions hang in the air, unanswered. but not predictably. not on request somedays.

i want my insides like this snow ~ white, soft, pure, open, loose, wonderfully soothingly bland.

gillian croons 'i dream a highway' and the languid dissonant tones, haunting & consoling, wrap me in their aural comfort. snow banjos & forked tongues. jangling guitars & intoxicating dissonance. the sweep of a resonant chord, the plucked string, the slight 'off' of a missed beat. unwinding, ever slower, ever more languid, as the whole damn song transpires to vapour...

s t a g g e r ~

2012-01-17T18:26:00.000-08:00

day like sludge

s l u d g e

poor sleep, broken repeatedly by body symptoms, low rest factor to none. woke to freezing bedroom as the 'luxury one bedroom' sans central heating proved (again) that temperature regulation with space heaters is irksome. entire day wading through mud, hip deep in rubber gators, each step a push against heavy resistance.

ga

key meridians VERY low energy at treatment monday. heart palpitations & transgressions constant; racing, skipping, recalibrating with lurching sensation. kidney qi EXTREMELY weak. fatigue immense, staggering.

best parts of day? few hours that hold some real energy for dreaming, writing, creating. savoured calls when an old friend checks in from toronto. we laugh & share & laugh some more... until a baby monitor screels into action and he must attend. but the grinding hours of solitude, high symptom load, physical exhaustion, & mental weariness? no treat.

'i dreamed last night that my time was done
i dreamed last night that my time was done
my soul flew up to the holy son'

... jangle gillian & david. yup. indeed.

n i n ~

2012-01-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Anais Nin

downhome comfort: or macaroni & cheese ~

2012-01-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

macaroni & cheese, for just those days...

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3-4 tbsp organic unbleached white flour

1 litre Avalon organic milk (1%, 2% or homo, depending on your butterfat enjoyment factor)

1 pkg L'Ancetre Extra Old Organic Raw Milk Cheddar (200 grams), grated on coarse side of grater

1 tsp sea salt (i like Le Paludier 'sel de mer')
1/2 tsp freshly ground organic black pepper
several shakes of organic cayenne pepper
several dashes of chipotle hot sauce
a sizeable grating of fresh nutmeg, finest grater possible

1 pkg Artesian Acres kamut penne or rotini (454 grams)

instructions:-

1. in a heavy bottomed pan, heat oil on medium, add flour, stir briskly with wire whisk. allow the flour to heat enough to cook & expand the starch molecules... but do NOT brown. NOT.

2. slowly, slowly whisk in the milk. start with a 1/2 cup. it will thicken fast. add another cup. also thickens, no lumps as long as you whisk. add all the rest. keep gently whisking.

3. with pan on medium, add entire block of grated cheddar in one fell swoop. whoop if desired.

4. whisk. cheese will slowly melt into the warming milk, and by whisking you prevent scorching on the bottom.

5. toss in all of the seasonings listed. don't be wimpy.

6. let sauce come ALMOST to a simmer. not quite. ideally, it is steaming; and has thickened nicely; but do NOT boil it. put down to lowest setting, just to keep warm, while all the flavours nicely mingle & infuse.

7. fill your largest pot with water, add a teaspoon salt, lid, and bring to a roaring boil.

8. toss in all the pasta, bring back up to the boil, and cook for 8 minutes until 'al dente' ~ still springy to touch. drain.

9. pick your favourite handthrown ceramic bowl, add a cup or two of cooked pasta. using a giant ladle, salivate as you drape the penne in your silky smooth cheese sauce, steam rising. season; sprinkle with chopped flat-leaf parsley; and using only a spoon, eat.

10. thank the kamut; thank the cow; sleep well.

d e a r * s om e o n e ~

2012-01-15T12:16:00.000-08:00

I want to go all over the world
And start living free
I know that there's somebody who
Is waiting for me

I'll build a boat, steady and true
As soon as it's done
I'm going to sail along in the dreams
Of my dear someone

One little star, smiling tonight
Knows where you are
Stay, little star, steady and bright
To guide me afar

Blow, little wind, over the deep
For now I've begun
Hurry and take me straight into the arms
Of my dear someone
Hurry and take me straight into the arms
Of my dear someone

song Gillian Welch
album Time The Revelator

a l l * w r o n g ~

2012-01-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

:: no clear dreams for a week

:: Spleen 4 point ~ used in treatment ~ triggers MASSIVE blood sugar instability for remainder of week... effectively derailing the ENORMOUS work i'd put into both diet & subtle sense practice

:: try to put a ribbon in my hair. ONE ribbon. react to the formaldehyde

:: walk into MEC to use the eco bathroom sans air-freshener. no matter. the wall of formaldehyde that hits me as i get through door is enough to derail the next hour of lung function anyway

:: discover another fabrication from my 'family' who conveniently hide things they would prefer i did not know about... like European holidays & cross-country jaunts... while claiming there are no resources for real health care

:: no good sleeps in 4 nights due to blood sugar hell. sleep dep prevails

:: zero joy

:: endocrine system radically off. chinese medicinal herbs no longer doing a damn thing. roar through hormonal hell each month, leaving me overly emotional, and exhausted coping with the effects

:: attention span of a gnat, rocketting from one extreme state to another. can't settle on any activity i don't either a) react to, or b) get bored with in 5 minutes

:: process work teacher all for me paying for time to unravel HER errors, mistakes, & repeated professional fumbles. i pay the money... so SHE can use the time to process HER professional blindspots. something not quite on about that

:: toronto friend invites me out with airline ticket again, the day before xmas... not spoken to me since. gaaaaaaaaa!

:: wear my new wool scarf for an afternoon, come home with a DOZEN giant painful welts along neck, hairline, jaw, chin. clear correlation. goodbye to wool

:: mood grim; light sullen; company low; energy lower; bored stiff; tired of reinventing illness, again & again & again...

painting Cy Twombly

adventures * in * attrition ~

2012-01-12T12:32:00.000-08:00

the financial advisor wanted a once-a-week sleazy motel hookup, complete with spanky bits. 'you're married,' i pointed out. 'i've been doing the extra-marital thing for 18 years,' he replied without skipping a beat.

all suave linguistic skills, dapper word play, frenetic driven creativity, something of the rabid hamster about him ~ or a man salivating in a drought. when we met, he was exceedingly prim, propped up in an ill-tailored blue velvet jacket & mediocre shoes, sitting prissily on the bleacher bench where we agreed to meet. directly across from us, i could see the nagual's friend hanging upside down in a maple tree, doing handstands on the grass against the trunk. this made me laugh, this little cheeky otherworld wink.

mr financial advisor didn't last. i offered him a collaborative writing blog, and once-a-week platonic art gallery outings, which he swore he longed for even more than spankings. i rolled my eyes, 'we'll see about that.'

dreams of addicts, hollow gaunt bodies jonesing after their next hit. i flew to vancouver by float plane for a day. his emails became frantic, staccato ~ where was i, how would he contact me, would there be a phone. 'long term deep friendship,' he insisted, emphasising each word as if speaking to a aurally challenged child. chats that ran to 1300 lines, middle of the night phone calls. i watched, warily. the cunning plan weeded him out; designed to sift friendship-worthy wheat from lust-driven chaff. i laugh ~ his home phone number, his work number, his work place, his business club, his professional club, his sports club info, all given out freely. one tiny call. one tiny word, & 18 years deception up in smoke.

but i don't.

the dominatrix invited me to come and service her needs. i laughed; and sassed her back. 'i serve no one,' i cackled, 'and your male slave sounds more fun that you do.' as counterstroke, she offered me the slave as gift, complete with cock ring. one 20-year trained adult male consensual sex slave wanting nothing more than to be told what to do. i kindly explained that as a libertarian anarchist with dreadlock tendencies, i didn't see our kink procliviities or our politics working out.

the elementary school teacher in Maine, science geek by day, fixated on giant man role plays in which Godzilla size males seized screaming Barbie females from Empire State Buildings. i asked how he made this work in consensual reality. 'its sort of stuck at the fantasy stage,' he conceded. i challenged him to a game of US Eagle vs Canadian ThunderBird in cyber space, but that seemed to thwart him.
Canada 1: US 0.

naughty dog resurrected. he approached once; and i, in a grumpy mood, dissed him. upon reflection i apologised, and he ponied up for long emails of self-revelation, a strange blend of flirtation & correspondential therapy, via emails which always began with Re: he seemed, in profile picture, to sport a large obese cat stuck in his right armpit, which worried me. mr financial advisor laughed about that ~ but then, mr financial advisor was himself stuck irrevocably in his own armpit situation. it went on forever... we met. 'thank you for the most wonderful afternoon,' he raved afterwards... while confessing he'd viewed over 10,000 female profiles in the past year. i nodded sagely, and thought with great ~ i m m e n s e ~ relief of the nagual. i haven't heard from the dog since.

and one of them spent 10 years in a federal penitentiary...
but my lips, lush as they are, remain sealed.

image the notorious Betty Page

a l p h a * b e t a ~

2012-01-11T13:13:00.000-08:00

restlessness returns, with vengeance. ayyy. manage one day of calm, centered, open looseness... and pancreas derails all. massive blood sugar instability, twice. i spend the next two days jittering in adrenaline overdrive, awash in great cascades of stress hormones, struggling to level out glucose levels.

needless to say, subtle senses shot.

all that lovely alpha brain wave pattern skitters off into hyper-management mode ~ as heart races, pelvis freezes, stomach churgles, mood dips precariously, balance lurches, and full body trembles prevail. such a lovely condition, hypoglycemia.

prior to this,
lowered myself
into
the most lovely gorgeous bassy ambiance;
& sensed my own innate, energetic center re-establishing itself.
what a relief THAT was, however short-lived.

Tedlock writes it is the work of the shaman in any culture to shift between these two primary forms of consciousness.

...shamans combine insights that take place during various altered states ~ including ecstasy & trance ~ with insights that take place while they are cognitively aware or lucid. It is this combination of various mental states and the movement between them that typifies shamanic performance (p 80)

beta brain wave patterns great for cognitive problem solving, questioning, practical steps.

alpha patterns where altered states come more into play, lending access to deeper intuition, to body knowing, to subtle senses such as clairvoyance & clairaudience, and to the spirit world via trance.

Super Beta'd out right now.
decades of survival-mode-strategising has that side of my brain WAY developed... & recent crises just reinforce this mode.

last spring,
by contrast,
Uber Alpha ~
an incredible state to inhabit long-term;
subtles sense all up & running,
dreams lucid,
intuition laser sharp
precognition frequent.

it was as if i had entered into some invisible etheric wavelength, previously only glimpsed, and it held. wow.

suspect this so-called natural & necessary shifting between modes of consciousness is much easier to master if you are NOT dealing with several physiological disorders that flood the body with stress hormones. natch.

however, that said, i remain confident... if pissy. a good dose of a hot epsom salt bath, total & utter darkness (sensory deprivation), plus loud bass music should lower my brain waves into a softer, gentler pattern.

s m a l l * t h i n g s ~

2012-01-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

cat, driveway, 2 a.m. huddled under bumper of Dodge truck, fur bristled, gazing longingly up at bedroom window. tap pane, once. scoots across, fur streaming in hasty self-generated breeze, galloping for warmth. rush of brisk air as creak front door open. talking, talking, cat-talking. up; onto thick-piled chocolate-brown corduroy in noticeable relief. slumbers. eyes still bleary-weary at 10 a.m. languid, fuzzy-headed cat. i walk through sun-lit streets, sunshine glinting off the mesmerising fertility of moss at my feet, shimmering virulent green moistness. dreaming highways. walking slowly. post office groaning with uncollected christmas parcels. melody resonates through my bones as i swoon in its slumbrous mellow embrace.

scent exact, so penetrating, source of memory. Cowichan vest on stovetop, warm nut-brown wool felted to compaction, creams softened to tan, browns faded to cafe au lait. tiniest roach in right hip pocket, curious smile. dental floss repairs, hand-stitched patch cobbled to back. pockets gaping, seams torn with use.

i bend down; pause; inhale. pure him. pure, pure him. right there, every note of his particular scent present in waves of surfacing familiarity. like a perfume layered with top notes, mid notes, low notes, the waves of information permeate, dense with stories. clean sweat; midnight nocturnal runs. cannabis, aromatic; hand-blown pipe. ocean salt spray, pungent; beach visits & campfires. warmth, bodily warmth. spirit intoxication. 14 months later, his corporeal form breathes presence into the kitchen, my lips curving in unspeakable pleasure, heart smile.

"i'm an indisguisable shade of twilight..."

burnished chestnut floors. civil war quilt on bed, browns & pinks, turkey reds & tans, tumbled, in strict blocks. 2 yards of darkest brown velvet await my hands. needle, thread, lining, binding, yarn ties.

calm. calm at last, after so very long. evenings stretch langourously, deepening; dark indigo night skies infinite & solacing.

i * dream * a * highway ~

2012-01-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

John he's kicking out the footlights
The Grand Ole Opry's got a brand new band
Lord, let me die with a hammer in my hand
I dream a highway back to you.

I think I'll move down into Memphis
And thank the hatchet man who forked my tongue
I lie and wait until the wagons come
And dream a highway back to you.

The getaway kicking up cinders
An empty wagon full of rattling bones
Moon in the mirror on a three-hour jones,
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vison come arrest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Which lover are you, Jack of Diamonds?
Now you be Emmylou and I'll be Gram
I send a letter, don't know who I am
I dream a highway back to you.

I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight
Any second now I'm gonna turn myself on
In the blue display of the cool cathode ray
I dream a highway back to you.

I wish you knew me, Jack of Diamonds
Fire-riding, wheeling when I lead em up
Drank whisky with my water, sugar in my tea
My sails in rags with the staggers and the jags
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Now give me some of what you're having
I'll take you as a viper into my head
A knife into my bed, arsenic when I'm fed
I dream a highway back to you.

Hang overhead from all directions
Radiation from the porcelain light
Blind and blistered by the morning white
I dream a highway back to you.

Sunday morning at the diner
Hollywood trembles on the verge of tears
I watched the waitress for a thousand years
Saw a wheel inside a wheel, heard a call within a call
I dreamed a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Step into the light, poor Lazarus
Don't lie alone behind the window shade
Let me see the mark death made
I dream a highway back to you.
I dream a highway back to you.

What will sustain us through the winter?
Where did last years lessons go?
Walk me out into the rain and snow
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my soul
I dream a highway back to you

I dream a highway back to you
Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my sould
I dream a highway back to you.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlins
Time the Revelator

after listening to the full 10 minutes of this hauntingly dreamy, almost narcotic song...
please visit www.gillianwelch.com
& support their gorgeous work, artistic vision, & independent recording label

h o l y

william & pema ~

2012-01-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success.

I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces
that work from individual to individual,
creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets,
or like the capillary oozing of water,
which,
if given time,
will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

William James

Maitri is translated a lot of ways, most commonly as love,
but the way Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche translated it was
unconditional friendliness,
and in particular,
* unconditional * friendliness * to * oneself *

So, I teach about maitri a lot.
In fact, sometimes I think its the only thing I teach.
I also teach about compassion a lot,
but actually compassion is a form of maitri.
So this * unconditional * friendliness * to * oneself *
it seems to be what most of us do not have.

Pema Chodron

milkman * of * human * kindness ~

2012-01-09T09:46:00.000-08:00

If you're lonely, I will call
If you're poorly, I will send poetry

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

If you're sleeping, I will wait
If your bed is wet, I will dry your tears

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

Hold my hand for me, I'm waking up
Hold my hand for me, I'm waking up
Won't you hold my hand? I'm making up
Hold my hand for me, I'm waking up

If you are falling, I'll put out my hand
If you feel bitter, I will understand

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

song by Billy Bragg
album Life's A Riot

3 * d a y s ~

2012-01-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

... of extreme & utter irritability, restlessness, & agitation. it is unbearable. acupuncturist & i comb over possible contributing factors, work hard to even things out with physical & emotional components; but it is NOT pleasant. like one foot on the gas, pedal to the medal; the other on the brake, with emergency brake cranked up hard; & thick black smoke billowing out of the hood...

i keep dreaming of dying. Crossing Over. passing on. whatever turn of phrase fits best. apparently, this is science fiction to most people, so they ignore my remarks.

yet still, for someone who has done advanced dream analysis for over 22 years... having 6 months worth of dreams about what to let go of, who to forgive, how to prepare, what to complete first, and vivid images of After seems just a little too detailed to dismiss as science fiction. i have modeled much of my life, art, health care, relationships, and major moves on the guidance of the inner Self through dreams. when i (in my little ego self) am wrong about something... the dreams do NOT hesitate to smack me up the side of my head & let me know, in no uncertain terms! yet, the Crossing Over dreams continue on, more & more accumulating each week.

my process work teacher looks at me with a blend of amusement & veiled tolerance. 'maybe you are!' she nervously quips... and then 'maybe its symbolic!' ... and then 'what mischief would you like to get up to here & now?' none of which, obviously, given any weight or credence to the sheer volume & detail of the information passing through me... and effectively arrest all open dialogue. i call her on it, specifically & articulately. she says virtually nothing. apparently, one CAN claim to be a 'hospice/art of living & dying' specialist... and ignore serious signs of transitioning. nice.

one friend balked & said that was too scary to think about.

another friend said 'oh, yeah, i had those dreams when i was in a coma in intensive care. they're normal.' ummmmmmmmmmmmm. yes, when you were dying in a coma; and only brutally invasive medicine saved you. 'normal' when the Soul knows what is happening long before ego does.

so, tra la la!
fiddledee dee!

part of the problem is our society's terror of death, seeing it as The End... rather than ongoing evolution to new realms of spirit life.

another part of the problem is few fully comprehend just how ill i am... so assume i am nowhere near compromised enough to be at risk.

definitely part of the problem is that we don't live in a Spirit-honouring culture that heeds Dreaming, Sight, subtle senses, or Knowing. indigenous cultures do & did. we seem hell-bent on materialistic rationalism instead.

its intriguing to me,
that Gospel music,
of all things,
is so vibrantly joyful on this note!

Gospel!

"I'll Fly Away!"
or
"Where Will I Be?"
or
"By The Mark"
or
"All My Tears"
&
on and on!

they get it. they get that something continues on, to a whole new world, beyond the finite limits of this particular one we currently inhabit. 'when i Cross Over, i will shout & sing!' goes one old favourite... no fear there!

i love that. i mean, how organic! how celebratory! how utterly respectful.

its the same old, really.

nobody much wanted to listen when incest erupted up, out & through my very pores. nor did they want to listen when i talked iatrogenic damage, illness, poverty, disability rights, homelessness, addiction, homicide.

i say this by way of pointing out that some topics, in our prissy sanitised culture, are taboo. to bring them up, to stand firm at those edges of awareness that most prefer to dodge/minimise/ignore is to feel ~ intrinsically, wholly ~ the sheer power of that cultural denial. doesn't mean you have to stay there. but it does take a while to recognise the landscape; and how the lack of in-depth understanding or wholehearted support then affects one's experiences.

the quality of static interference around any honest discussion affects the ability to fully explore the topic at hand.

its only from THERE that the pioneer can make fresh choices about which way to travel & how to do it authentically, i believe.

jewel * in * the * lotus ~

2012-01-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

steaming bowl of Lotus Pond Buddhist Vegetarian wonton soup. as liberal doses of black pepper sift onto broth, heat vapourises essential oils, aroma spicy & wonderful. slippery soft wontons coddled between brilliantly coloured, just~barely~steamed veggies ~ broccoli trees vibrant green, sesame street orange carrots, yellow bamboo shoots, black seaweed. is it just me? or is there something extremely erotic about a soup wonton? so very oral ~ the slightest pressure against the roof of your mouth has it squirting hot juices down the back of your throat. mmm.

clouds of aromatic steam : : : : :

scatty jazz. bass line wanders up & down, pianist tinkles, as horn slowly eases into melody. sound of steaming milk at espresso machine. bass line saunters on. p-ching of till drawer, change being made. horn soars. low thrum of dishwasher.

I wake to dream, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go

ty, Roethke. i like.

trumpet screams approval in circular motifs. blender pounds ice cubes into froth, great churning collisions. piano wanders around a bit. bass keeps right on.

beware the potential partner who favours your least favourite instrument. interestingly, the good matches in my life have all shared my own proclivity for bass ~ low, deep, resonant bass. depth & mystery, warmth & anchoring. one non-fit raved about Jethro Tull's flute solos... and had i listened, i would have tweaked a LOT sooner. no chemistry match. when in doubt, follow the bass line. always there, steadily anchoring the whole mad ensemble, lending its serviceable mysterious weight.

more sullen grey skies
more bare black branches
i remain quite gutted energetically.
but curious, nonetheless, about what is truly transpiring.

shhhhh! listen for the bass line within, essence level flowing flowing flowing...

y a r n ! * t h r e a d ! * r i b b o n !

2012-01-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

very much loving this gorgeous yarn from Japan
Noro: The World of Nature
Silk Garden range,
colour 308

how yummy is that?
45% silk
45% kid mohair
10% lambs wool

308 is a variegated ball, identified as olive/moss/fuschia/pink...
but it has fantastic teals, indigos, and purples that give it weight & depth.

i love Noro's, as they knit up into softly modulated organic stripes, somewhat like this:-

The Button Boutique's frequent customer card finally filled; and a $25 gift was mine. i chose 308; a half meter of lush chocolate-brown grosgrain ribbon with a sateen center (elegant); and the Victoria Thistle bookmark kit below. they all seem to happily inhabit the same colour field to my eye; and i somehow imagine them in a finished cluster of earthy, yet vibrant, heathered colours on the wall.

the yarn whispers "Bamboo needles, please!" ~
some simple structure of stockinette, rib, & moss stitch to create a single panel... perhaps with wooden buttons or driftwood toggles?

while the bookmark begs to be hung with a fine botanical pencil sketch nearby, showing the intricate details of the original plant.

& the brown ribbon?
for my hair, of course!

i want chocolate-brown ribbon tails streaming out behind me, fluttering in the wind, as i walk over imaginary heathered moors, inhaling great lungfuls of wild air...

r e s t l e s s ~

2012-01-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

unbelievable restlessness!

like a horse chomping at the bit!
like a colicky teething infant!
like a teenager driven by hormones!
like the day before a wild adventure, a truly exotic voyage, begins.
all the anticipation quivering at peak...
time weighing heavy til departure!

in acupuncture today, we work with the vibrational resonance forks ~ working to keep the spirit channels * o p e n * something is going on. something. something is most definitely percolating in the Dreaming, and i am restless with longing for imminent change.

during the tent spell,
when my partner & i roughed it on the beach,
things got really hard ~
unspeakably hard at times.

body buckled from health stressors,
causing symptom havoc on numerous fronts.
no funds to spare.
damp cold, intense,
harassment from the locals building.
and still, still, i was unable to find a safe indoor home i could tolerate.

one night, i dreamed:-

i am in a complex tunnel, and i just have to keep pushing. a voice tells me, very clearly, "keep pushing. keep pushing even when you think you can't. don't wait for your friends to get it. they won't, not soon enough. just keep pushing."

an astounding dream,
as it so perfectly encapsulated not only the mammoth effort,
the sheer grit of labour involved in finding a safe home while ill;
but the social collapse around me
as people backed away, triggered, impatient, labeling.

the other day, the journal of this time fell out of the studio cupboard... three times. finally, i gave in, grabbed it, scanning the contents. this dream leapt out at me ~ and i remembered so acutely the sense of Knowing what i needed to do, Knowing, and having to just quietly keep on pushing, finding that core strength to help me carry on.

this same feeling twinkles in the atmosphere around me right now. i have a strong sense of moving on, of major major change on the horizon... but given the materialistic culture we live in, to speak of such things never works. "don't wait for your friends to get it.
they won't, not in time."

* * *

i like to imagine an alternative. a wise, crinkly Ojibwe grandmother, a seer & shaman in her own right, her dress of faded, stubbornly cheerful red calico. her feet in moosehide moccasins, beaded by loom, her silver grey hair pulled into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. we wake in the morning, smile without words, head to the creek to splash our faces in pure wild water, chewing a few dried berries as we go. she sits with me, afterwards, in the meadow, the morning sun warming the grasses & wildflowers around us, and combs my hair, singing half-murmured songs.

"i know," she says, "i know."

and nothing more is necessary,
just a shared Knowledge,
a shared twinkle in our eyes.

s l o w ~

2012-01-05T15:29:00.000-08:00

O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!

Kobayashi Issa 1763-1827

c r e a t e ~

2012-01-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

sipping homemade, organic bean, spring-water coffee from my Mason jar in starbucks, dreadlocks spun all over, absorbing warmth & spongey gingerbread... but mostly angling for a space away from 'home' to just unwind. music jingles in irritatingly tinny way ~ but the view is good, as the january light fades & the tree branches outside conjure stark designs against a sullen sky.

just used xmas gift certificate to order two delightful-looking books:

Water Paper Paint:
Exploring Creativity with Watercolour & Mixed Media
by Heather Smith Jones

&

Creative Illustration Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists:
Seeing, Sketching, Storytelling, & Using Found Materials
by Katherine Dunn

did this cheer me?
no, not really.
i'm a little too deflated still to feel cheer.

but,
as a very wise dream i once had said:

"Don't WAIT until you feel happy before you get creative.
Just start. You get happy by DOING it."

in one of the innumerable traumas of the homeless spell,
after ANOTHER shitty boarding house proved moldy,
& more personal books & belongings had been destroyed...
i stood weeping on the back porch,
frustrated beyond compare with the struggle of it all.

my friend, quietly, patiently, searched around in the already ruined vintage pink desk ~
my very favourite ever ~
which one savvy landlord had left out in the pouring rain for me & destroyed;
his large mitts pawing through the items left in the drawers.

he found something,
pocketed it,
& turned towards me.

'what was that?' i snapped, still bitterly crying over my losses.
'here,' he said, gently, 'i saved it from the garbage because i wanted to give it to you later.'

he held out a tiny metal talisman,
like a little silver skipping stone,
with a single word * c r e a t e *
engraved in cursive script

'you're always happy when you create,' he said. 'its going to be okay. come here, you.' & folded me in a bear hug.

genius shaman strikes again

i'll * fly * away * !

2012-01-03T14:50:00.001-08:00

Some bright morning when this life is o'er
I'll fly away
To that home on God's celestial shore
I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh Glory!
I'll fly away in the morning!
When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away!

When the shadows of this life have gone
I'll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly
I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh Glory!
I'll fly away in the morning!
When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away!

Oh, how glad & happy when we meet
I’ll fly away
No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away

I'll fly away, oh Glory!
I'll fly away in the morning!
When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away!

I'll fly away, oh Glory!
I'll fly away in the morning!
When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away!

Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh Glory!
I'll fly away in the morning!
When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away!

When I die Hallelujah, by and by
I'll fly away...

m o r e * r i l k e ~

2012-01-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us; the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called "apparitions," the whole so-called "spirit world," death, all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which me might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens.

For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don't think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

August 12, 1904

m a r i o n ~

2012-01-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

i am in the midst of a Marion Woodman renaissance ~
& it is * d e l i c i o u s * !

two weeks ago,
in the pre-xmas fumbles,
i found myself stalling in front of the documentary dvd shelf at my local rental outlet ~
not sure why,
but compelled to keep standing there

finally, i noticed!

"Marion Woodman: Dancing in the Flames"
a brand-new documentary about the renowned Canadian Jungian analyst,
in conversation with mystic & scholar Andrew Harvey,
filmed by Adam Greydon Reid,
& lovingly interspliced with lyrically gorgeous animated shorts by the late Faith Hubley.

oh my!

i was enchanted!
&
wholly re-inspired!

when my life, as i knew it, blew up in my early 20s, i had the good fortune to find an exceptionally wise & mature psychoanalyst, Doreen Silvera. she & i worked week by week for almost 6 years ~ sometimes twice a week even ~ to find my own true inner footing in life. our process was the dream. she didn't insist; indeed had i wanted to ignore them, she would have found other routes. but the dreams spoke; and i had a figurative, symbol-loving mind; and so the dreamwork stuck.

Doreen had done her own personal 7 year analysis under Marion Woodman;
& a further 7 year analysis under Fraser Boa, Marion's brother,
then president of the Jungian Foundation;
so not only had she trained with some of the best,
she brought her own wonderful talents & unique story to our work.

as an adjunct to these sessions with Doreen, i read Marion's books; went to her talks; listened to her tape-recorded lectures. the one that left an indelible impression on me was Dreams: Language of the Soul, pictured above. almost 3 hours of dream exploration, i can still recite entire sections of the recording by heart. in my darkest hours, her words became my mantra, her unequivocal surety & fierce~but~loving manner quite literally guiding me through the storm.

Marion is 83. she shimmers & glows in the film with a kind of embodied vitality that speaks of her vibrant spirit & her relentless drive for awareness. she is lovely. there were phases in my 30s when i rebelled ~ and Marion needed a holiday from my life. i was exploring Arnold Mindell's process-oriented psychology, and a fresh influx of alternative approaches appealed more. but now, at 44, i found myself wholly thrilled to be reunited; to savour the old familiarity; and to rejoice at her ever-growing, luminous, earthy, humour-filled spirit.

10 star recommendation!
&
juicy dreams for everybody!

r i l k e ~

2012-01-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked other before this. You send them to magazines... Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise you or help you ~ no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works; for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice; to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

February 17, 1903

reflections * on * my * least * favourite * season ~

2012-01-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

january 2nd. cafes stripped of red doodles & vinyl snow decals. music shifts to scatty jazz & standard nauseous muzak. crowds evaporate.

can't say i mind; but i do mind the toll of the season.

for some, with healthy families & good relations, it must be a time of true celebration. for others, its something to endure. one tries to make the best choices possible, and to create special events to savour outside any mainstream definition... but inevitably the sheer 'wear' of the season has its toll. every year i swear it will not... and every year it STILL does, in spite of immaculate planning & abundant creative effort. it makes me sad, really. there is real grief in watching 2 weeks of festivities fly by... yet to experience so much turmoil & illness that it sometimes may as well be like watching another planet through a telescope.

i've had xmas in total isolation;
i've had xmas in Emergency with a rusty nail in my foot;
i've had xmas stuck in a wilderness cabin with a bitterly quarreling couple, mid break-up;
i've had xmas in a rooming house, eating penny candies for breakfast;
i've had xmas at public turkey dinners in church halls for the 'disadvantaged':
i've had a perfect xmas with my friend ~ when sobriety held, and a sweetness & mutual shelter cocooned us both in self-generated happiness.

for several years,
i organised a Cakes For Christmas cake drive.

it struck me, one Christmas Eve, that all the bakeries closing at 4pm were going to waste every single item NOT sold... as by the 27th everything would be stale & dry as dust. the spectre of all this wastage galavanised me. so i approached a dozen bakeries the following year with cheerful flyers, offering to pick up all their unsold items at 4pm, and to deliver them to shelters across the city. people loved it! the fantastic part was the joy of DOING SOMETHING FOR OTHERS, and all the mad busyness it created, as we rushed about, with wagons & bikes & trailers, trying to manouever a bizillion pastries to hungry people.

a few years i've felt so ragged by january,
with the sheer emotional toll of navigation,
i feel gypped into imagining my own second Christmas,
some secret subsidiary event,
all to myself,
deep in the january gloom,
one saturday night of pure moon-gazing, feasting, ritual, creativity, singing & wild acts ~
a stealth second wind
that celebrates something truly meaningful to me
without all the cultural baggage & timing of the main deal

i like that idea
&
it has proved a good route in the past

next year,
if still earth-side
i plan full retreat ~
a monastery,
a buddhist centre,
an artists workshop,
a ski chalet in the mountains,
anything AWAY from the bustle,
totally immersed in nature ~
preferably deep snowfall ~
with art supplies,
& lots of * p e a c e *

sounds good
sounds perfect, in fact

w o l v i s h ~

2012-01-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

" i * w a s * r u n n i n g ! "

2011-12-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

A hardy & long-lasting traditional heavy-weight worsted wool, synonymous with the 8 yard hand made kilt, but with a tuck-in selvedge, from a top Scottish mill. The double width fabric means only half the normal length is required;
the ancient shades in this fabric range are typically pale and subdued.

dear * c e r t a i n * s o m e o n e *

i am imagining durable kilts, rugged thick socks, & big worsted cabled sweaters, over loose hand-stitched hemp shirts... as we spend the New Year running over wild Scottish hills & vales, rough with heather & gorse, stopping in at every pub we see glowing with light & vitality deep in the dark night all along the way. toasting & cheering & running on.

loping side by side, you & i, spirits in the wind.

sending you all my gleeful love & wonder
h a p p y * n e w * y e a r ' s !

me xox

[& perfectly on cue,
exactly as i finish typing,
the cafe starts playing
'Where The Streets Have No Name' ~

And when I go there,
I go there with you...
Being blown by the wind,
Being blown by the wind.
When I go there,
I go there with you...]

best * christmas * present ~

2011-12-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

for as long as i can remember, Molly's been on the street. in her 30s, a woman my friend always made time to visit, to whom he always said hello. most days we counted on her for a fierce, almost Mohawkan, steely gaze; and very grudging, limited, terse verbiage. she clearly had a heavy weight on her; and it clearly took all she had to get through. Molly is fierce, with absolutely penetrating eyes, very strong facial features, both of which parallel her manner.

before my friend passed, we noticed Molly gaunter, more hard-edged, and wearing (after years of butch androgynous clothing) thick eyeliner & heavy makeup, hanging out with more female street company than ever before. we both wondered. hard drugs? actively working the streets now... rather than panning? was she okay? but Molly has that ferocity, and some days you know better than to inquire.

after my friend passed, i wanted to try to be there for his other friends in some small way, whenever possible. it seemed to me i had a house, and food, and warmth; and i'd found counseling help. but many of these people were on the street. the irony was they talked more freely, more directly, & more engagingly about my friend than anybody in my stuffy neighbourhood ever did. and ended up giving me just as much back as anything i could possibly share with them.

i figured Molly might enjoy some wild nail polish colours i had, and a slew of eye liners i never used, but might well complement her new image. tentatively, i approached her, unsure, hoping she might like the gift. she crowed in delight; and offered me a manicure on the spot ~ the spot being the street corner of Blanshard & Yates. 'would you like me to do your nails for you?' she asked, eyes sparkling. overjoyed & immediate sisterly care, something as hands-on as doing my nails for me. as i left, she called out, 'i have something for you, for xmas! don't forget!'

on christmas eve,
strolling down Yates in a haze of jingle music & fatigue,
i spot Molly.
hair wet, comb marks still visible from post-shower clean-up,
lumberjack coat wrapped tight around her,
cross-legged on the concrete,
panning for change.

'hi Molly!' i call out.
'hey there, girl! how are you doing?' she asks, in all sincerity.
'bit rough, but i'm okay. you?' i reply.
'i'm in there,' she concurs. 'wait! i have something i want to give to you!'

she rifles through her pockets, searching, and pulls out a small leather change purse. reaching in, she extracts a $2 coin, a toonie; and holding it with a big beaming smile, she proclaims 'this is for you! merry xmas, girl!'

i was stunned into silence. she appeared to have almost nothing spare to her name. she remembered, all those months back, her promise; and she wanted to offer something in return. there was no question about declining it ~ to do so would be to insult her generosity. i took the coin from her chilled hands, and said "molly, thank you so much! for new years, i owe YOU a hot coffee, okay?" she said great. on i went, waving back at her.

now,
not wrapped or ribboned;
nothing i had coveted;
no 'thing' i imagined would make my life better/happier/smoother.

but it was the most moving gift given me.
i knew the value of that coin in her life;
i knew the value of her effort to be friendly,
more fierce & prickly by nature,
in a harsh world she must navigate daily;
& i knew it mattered.

coin sits on my shelf.
won't be spent.
its Molly's Coin,
& that's the real gift.

yellow * freedom * joys ~

2011-12-29T16:43:00.001-08:00

i wake exhausted, staggering dreams.
i flip & flop,
i rail & rant,
until finally i tune into the last image (energy) of the dream ~
W O L F

something fierce,
feral,
wild & savage,
rises up in me ~

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!
FEELING THIS HORRIBLE, THIS ALONE, THIS UNHEARD,
IS ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE!

& like a wolf,
i stand fierce in defense of my raw wild nature & needs...
which are for freedom & escape

suddenly its all clear
pack a light bag
call a yellow cab, silent hybrid vessel of liberation,
& go go go!

GO!

i don't care if the strain on my heart kills me;
i don't care if my muscles ache tomorrow;
i really don't care if my bank balance groans next month;
because today i know that i need ~
like any social creature ~
to feel people around me,
to feel part of something alive,
to be in the flow of the great celebration of life
which xmas alone, sick, & largely ignored was NOT...
&
certainly
i do NOT need
another day in the tomb of this wretched house

offffffffffffff i go!

these days i cannot tell if i dream of dying, truly passing on, for real;
if i dream of a part of me dying;
if i dream of a way of life dying.
the dreams come fast & furious,
& without ANY of my usual soulful support even checking in
(doo dee dooo, tra la la...)
i am spinning in the confusion,
never having traversed this terrain before.

but as Catherine Parr Trail said so famously in her epic
"The Canadian Settler's Guide" (1830)

In cases of emergency, it is folly to fold up one’s hands & sit down to bewail in abject terror: it is better to be up and doing.

aho! Catherine

better, like Catherine, to be out slipping & sliding across frozen lakes in her adopted bucksin moccasins & big layered pioneer skirts, leaning hard into her new life in the wilderness... than to sit cabin-fevered and half-mad with boredom inside four walls. it would have killed Catherine; and it could kill me.

sometimes it stuns me how lousily the Dreaming picks its timing.
you might think ~
you just might think ~
that peak cultural insanity holidays, with all key supports missing for 2 weeks, huge added stress, and low meaningful contact MIGHT be a really * g r e a t * time for some

simple
soothing
reassuring
comforting
coalescing
dreams

that would feed the dreamer precisely the feeling of nurturing & care so lacking in consensus reality.

not so the Dreaming!

in come the 3 page marathons of complex plotlines, utterly unfamiliar images, strange transitions, peculiar energies... & i buckle. i am barely staying fed, washed, & rested... let alone hair-splicing the intricacies of this stuff. ga!

in kindness to myself,
i escape.
i jump the wall of the domestic prison,
i taste freedoms,
&
trust that if W O L F spoke last in that dream
that W O L F energy wants to point the way...

so,
wolfishly,
i prowl ~
ears pricked, whiskers taut, paws smoothly traversing ground,
ever sensitive to the scent of life,
pure vibrant life
life
life
life
on the trail of spirit & life

botanical illustration by Catherine Parr Trail
portait of Trail
engraving of Trail's log cabin

g l i m m e r s ~

2011-12-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

well,
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

day creaks into awareness... big dream to record... not exactly the blissful wake-up i desired... but food for thought, no doubt.

to be honest, always glad when christmas is over. i like the anticipation more than the day itself. which probably says something rather telling about my own inclinations. if you enter, go into, expand, & amplify that gorgeous sense of wonder & possibility... THAT is the gift, in my mind.

i wonder what christmas is like in a monastery ~ THAT must be something. the pure sense of touching the sacred, the holy, a shared feeling of reverie, of communal joy. i wonder.

woman across from me in this cafe works diligently at her Apple, plowing through academic assignments. 'Ethics' by Michel Foucault plopped on the table, bracingly refreshing amongst all this seasonal syrup. a studious manner, with black bifocals; but clearly a playful spirit, with a sinuous tattoo winding up her right forearm, and a wonderful, brilliantly-coloured, handmade necklace draped over her black bosom. intriguing.

cafe buzzy.

stunning girl, all of 16 perhaps, bursting with ripe freshness; headful of thick natural red hair, body taut & trim, everything extremely elongated, face pale & rose cheeked. absolutely a Millais Pre-Raphaelite model... like the one image he painted, of the woman in utter rapture. she sits with her funky mother, and her chunky brother; and i imagine the home life they must share ~ so clearly alternative, left wing, creative beings.

my head bowed, reading the newspaper, this charming mother comes over, leans in, & gently whispers "You have THE most wonderful hair! We have been admiring it for a while now from a distance! It is just lovely. Have a Happy Christmas," smiles, and scoots off.

recalcitrant toronto friend cruising kinksters online & lackadaisically chatting simultaneously.

other toronto friend consumed by first xmas with a 3 year old in top gear & a 6 month old in crawl mode... may surface later, in a pool of exhausted sweat.

great article by Maureen Dowd in the NYT, on Dickens, the Victorian Christmas, the awareness he held, so vividly, of the fragility of life. nice read.

Midnight in Paris waits at home, to be watched in bed, with simple dinner;
Patti Smith: Dream of Life for afterwards, punk poet extraordinaire;
Everything But The Girl the soundtrack of the week,
mellow harmonies & soaring vocals;
A Tudor Feast to be shown on Knowledge Network, at 6, lovely re-creation of a true Tudor feast for a lord's holy day celebration;
putter
putter
putter

& then,
miraculously,
it will be over.
the air waves clear, the frequencies hush, & freedom & spaciousness emerge again.

y u m

The Bridesmaid
by Sir John Everett Millais

* s * i * l * e * n * c * e *

2011-12-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

xmas eve, 12 noon. downtown subdued. internet cafe deserted. cushy black leather chair on rolling casters envelopes me in its hushed embrace. keyboard supple. no blogging trouble here; laptop protesting at home. music trancey, electronic, keys paddle along in time, i savour the quiet.

a very particular quiet about xmas eve... which only occurs this one day of the year. you feel it settle in around supper time. traffic almost stopped. everything ~ shops, libraries, banks et al ~ closed. people actually at home. and then, then this gorgeous, unreal, wonderful
* h u s h *
descends on the city.
it amazes me everytime, & i get more joy from it than anything in the following 24 hours.

tonight,
in the dark,
as i listen to old carols,
or mandolin twanging bluegrass,
or ambient lanois ~
i will imagine the reindeer & the caribou
in furthest northern climes,
pushing ever through the snow, the blizzards, the soft wild hush there...
pushing ever on following intense migratory instinct,
pushing towards hidden lichens
deep beneath the snow,
grey-green lichens
incredible succour of nourishment
under all that snow.

i will imagine reindeer in their natural state,
without even the Sami or the Even to herd;
wildest reindeer
in their true element
being their essence-filled,
most innate selves;
&
if i am very blessed ~
very blessed indeed ~
perhaps,
perhaps,
the Reindeer Goddess will send me a vision,
a dream,
of her doe's heart
dancing at the centre of the world,
the heart of love & compassion that beats amongst us all
the divine feminine,
dancing wildly
silhouetted against the setting sun,
waiting to be recognised & loved

my devotion is to Her
my love of Her Wildness
my deepest admiration for her Creatures

that is the silence of silent night, for me
all the wonder

* w i n t e r * s o l s t i c e ! * pt 1

2011-12-22T12:29:00.000-08:00

well!

it is * W I N T E R * S O L S T I C E ! *

so,
rickety as all heck,
stiff, sore & tired from earlier in week,
up i get!

on goes the longest, most flowing, teal~mermaid~skirt with 12 inch white ruffle;
on goes the grecian~navy~chemise;
on goes the rippled mermaid scarf with a triple wrap;
dreadlocks washed & shining with beads, buttons, barnacles & silver trinkets,
sparkling chestnut, blonde, orange & brilliant cherry red!

off i go!

onto the bus! into the thrift store! scoop up more white fairy lights! wink at neighbour buying blue suede boots with blue suede fringe! sing along to Everything But The Girl!

air crisp
frost thick on roof tiles
paperwhites exploding in astounding scented profusion
amaryllisii both shooting up up up up up!
in giant virile shoots of green,
trumpeting white buds yet to open!

h u r r a h * f o r * h o l y * d a y s ! *

a y y

2011-12-21T13:40:00.001-08:00

feel * h e i n o u s *
more formaldehyde trouble from a triple washed quilt in progress
welts back
pushed limits VERY far to fulfill a social wish yesterday... feel it in every bone today
back to stripped-down mode
every move counts
cab to grocery store
grocery store to deliver stuffs by van
tiniest distances possible on foot
cannily conflating errands wherever possible
scouting terrain like a sherpa on K2
looking for the firmest footing in the circumstances...
the soonest can put up tent for night & ride out blizzard
tucked in the -35 degree thermaloft bag
wind howling
retreat

ayy, indeed

b y * t h e * m a r k ~

2011-12-19T13:23:00.001-08:00

When I cross over
I will shout and sing
I will know my savior
By the mark where the nails have been

By the mark where the nails have been
By the sign upon his precious skin
I will know my savior when I come to him
By the mark where the nails have been

A man of riches
May claim a crown of jewels
But the king of heaven
Can be told from the prince of fools

By the mark where the nails have been
By the sign upon his precious skin
I will know my savior when I come to him
By the mark where the nails have been

On Calvary Mountain
Where they made him suffer so
All my sin was paid for
A long, long time ago

By the mark where the nails have been
By the sign upon his precious skin
I will know my savior when I come to him
By the mark where the nails have been

'when i cross over, i will shout & sing!'

such a great, great song
aren't the harmonies incredible?

i r k y * s n i r k y ~

2011-12-18T15:08:00.007-08:00

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind
and another
his mother called him 'WILD THING!'
and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!'
so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

today?
today i am completely bored

its an odd life.
right now, for sure; with MCS in general, no doubt.
the absolute lack of ANY predictability ensures almost NO planning is possible;
NO sure energy level or focus guaranteed when most needed.

very * w e a r i n g *

not simply exacerbated sensitivity;
or the ensuing panoply of reactions & symptoms;
or the energy hijacked in dealing constructively with the results in my body;
also the sheer toll of riding the roller coaster full-time;
& very very rarely having a stretch of calm generalised good.

its makes social planning almost impossible.
and wreaks havoc on serious intellectual study or artistic focus, as well.

so, today,
after all my outings
& observations,
i simply feel IRKED

i want to be * w e l l *
is that so very much to ask?
to sincerely be well, like so many?
to have a vibrant thriving social life?
a sports life?
a work life?
a community life?

all that gets sacrificed or mangled with this illness

ga

all illustration
& quotes
by Maurice Sendak
Where The Wild Things Are

jingle * jingle * jingle !

2011-12-17T13:16:00.002-08:00

:: goggly head baby with All-Star bib lurching in his mama's arms

:: barista offering free whip-cream-topped frappareemo samples on sidewalk as bulky, be-bagged people shuffle by

:: two glorious white Clydesdale horses pass, at an extremely stately pace, pulling trolley of lush evergreen-decked benches, full of punters

:: beautifully smooth, hushed animated e-card makes my day

:: discover white rabbit fur for sale at the Cowichan Trader from up island

:: two girls busking with burnished chestnut cellos shining in the sun

:: First Nations postcards of Bear & Eagle, lyrically complex, in a tiny slip of a brown paper bag, tucked away for home

:: "What A Wonderful World" twinkles over cacophonous din of people laughing, slurping, talking, screeching their chairs, & little whatsits tugging on mommy's coat insistently

:: squirreling my own homemade coffee in Mason jar into cafe with me ~ spring water, fair trade organic beans, organic half & half, organic brown sugar. mmm.

:: a man in black from head to toe ~ with black jackboots & flapping black trench coat ~ turns, and gesturing at my hair, silently mouths
"I love your hair!"

:: eating delicately fried turnip cakes with coral-coloured plum sauce, at the Lotus Pond Buddhist Vegetarian Restaurant... squishy, chewy, & crispy all at once

:: Satin Moon Quilt Shop! sold to new owners! off to new location! the end of an era! but Sarah, my favourite sales girl, has the very same Vampire Red Manic Panic dye in her hair as i have in mine... so we talk knitting & wonder about the new owner, new location

:: brilliant bumper sticker

I'd Agree With You... But Then We'd Both Be Wrong

:: longing for snow, snow, snow...

:: rejoice! in <$10 i will have filled my Button Boutique frequent customer card; which will, in a very timely fashion, provide a free $25 Solstice Celebration gift. h u r r a h !

:: man with a blue goatee proves that randomly dyed facial hair probably isn't a good thing...

:: 4-man Barbershop Quartet sets off on a new round of carols

:: the New Age shop clerk stomps by in her 5 inch wedge soled boots, looking extremely peevish & quite harrassed

:: art supply store showing severe signs of depletion ~ colour ranges shrinking fast, paper disappearing, sketchbook choices almost nil

:: clerk with huge owlish cherry-rimmed glasses, all of 18, exults in wonder at my matching cherry colour dreads. something about this colour really calls out to people.

:: 2 fantastic looooooooooooong stripey scarves, tres Lola, $1 each, at Women In Need

:: & sneak into next cafe, previous cafe's baked goods in bag, zero plan to eat hideous thing... but it does seem to guarantee me indoor seating & warmth while i watch & write. pee hee.

image Lauren Child, of course

o n * h o l d ~

2011-12-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

exhausted. friday night, crumpled in bed. just wiped out. big week. verdict, judicial nonsense; processing, thinking on it. rush of seasonal contacts, watching the bustle rev up all around me. watching other people's plans for Christmas unfold... & find myself solitary, again.

in one way, its okay. i can't actually think of anybody with whom i truly want to spend the full day. little visits will happen, emails, phone calls, outings & coffee hello's, the usual variety of friendly connection. but the Christmas i truly want is no longer possible ~ with my friend, earthside, old style.

in a less 'raw' place than this time last year ~ but also strangely liminal feeling.

ongoing dreams about potential Crossing Over, about my own spirit path, leave me feeling suspended between worlds sometimes. i share with those i can ~ precisely two. two who truly listen & hold similar spiritual beliefs & openness. blessed absolutely in that sense. but with the remainder of my (small) world, i say nothing. how can one, in this culture?

extremely grateful
for being LESS crisis-ridden right now;
LESS dramarama-vacuumed this week;
LESS chemically or environmentally blown-out;
LESS lost in terms of subtle senses;
absolutely 100% grateful for these shifts in my climate lately.

makes the day MORE about careful choices regarding social visit or creative direction or soulful nourishment; rather than crisis management or brute survival.

still, find myself very tired. doll pattern pieces are cut out, neatly pinned with Japanese Clover pins to lush wool felt, ready to go... but i am too depleted to do more right now. then its back into bed, with a movie; with a light book; with a float in the utter dark to music, eyes closed or gazing at the stars outside in the crisp December night.

but, oh, how i miss my friend!
how i do!

as John O'Donohue writes, to have a soul mate, or anam cara, is to be known in a deep way, at a particularly special level, with unique vision ~ that only the anam cara can provide. i miss him. i miss being known so. i simply miss how we * e n g a g e *

image Mark Rothko
Ochre & Red on Red, 1954

w o n d e r * & * m y s t i c i s m ~

2011-12-14T16:55:00.000-08:00

:: waking up from triple nightmare at 2:38am... seeing my glassblowing ex online, awake with sleepless toddler... & chatting merrily for an hour. the wonder of new technology at its timely best. contact when you most need it.

:: jangling along addictively to LOTS of dissonance with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. drinking it up. noticing when i sing along over breakfast, as i lean into my enamel bowl of cereal, my voice changes! resonating cavity of bowl amplifying & clarifying sound! yi-HA!

:: anticipating doing * a b s o l u t e l y * n o t h i n g * over Christmas, under no pressure, & sincerely loving it. quiet. treats. contact from friends & soul kin. no big do. phew.

:: cafe. steamy~busy. 3 female students, early 20s, grappling with the ethics of marital infidelity from an assignment set in class, textbook 'Sex & Love' gripped in hand. ferociously arguing points & splitting logos hairs... while simultaneously figuring out how early to set the alarm for exam at 8:30am the next day.

:: massaging the Maine Coon's paw pad ~ and to my amazement, as he purrs with eyes blissfully closed, he slowly extends all 5 nails from his 5 little cat paw fingers... and gently but firmly HOLDS my finger in his grasp! i melt.

:: tree ALL decorated! yippeeeee! fairy lights, candles, advent calendar, & elfin cottages in attendance. with 2 little wooden mushrooms ($1 each) from the Moss Street Xmas Craft Market.

:: totally * a w e s t r u c k * as i look back over the spirit journey of the last year. holy. literally. dreams astound. Sight thrills & amazes. abundance of synchrony, miracles, beauty, care so wonder-filled.
w o w.

:: 2 days before i receive my sister's wishlist, seeing the most endearing little homemade Barbie outfits in Silver Threads Thrift Store. each one hand-tacked to cereal box backs, labelled with Sharpie pen in Granny capitals, all sewn immaculately with vintage fabric, lace, & perfectly turned hems. wishlist arrives. "Vintage Barbie Clothes for my Childhood Barbies." i return to shop. it is closed. woman at the office next door gives me the keys, leaves me in the shop alone, & tells me to take all the time i need. how unbelievably old school is that?! 4 vintage designer outfits, $12.50. charmed.

:: "Snow is My Favourite & My Best" by Lauren Child. i adore.

:: lovely letter from Kathleen Tracy, favourite quilt book author & intrepid group leader of Small Quilt Talks... in response to my formaldehyde dilemma. turns out, she too is very sensitive, wrote with suggestions, & thanked me for posting my safety findings for our group. hurrah! hurrah! so nice to be heard, be appreciated, to not be alone in the dilemma.

:: "Mystical Nativity" by Boticelli gorgeously discussed in a documentary i happen across. sheer loveliness of all the angels' little feet, so delicately turned; intensity of pigment; promise of joyful dancing being the True Heart of the Cosmos. 500 years old!

:: spontaneous & totally unexpected offer from first boyfriend ever to pay half my airfare to fly to Toronto for a visit. holy cats! we are quirky friends, no doubt; but he sure does surprise me delightfully at times.

* w o n d e r * : won·der/ˈwəndər/
(noun)

a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration,
caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable

upper portion of Mystical Nativity
by Sandro Boticelli
1500-1501

w e l l * s a i d ~

2011-12-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

I feel it's important for people to realize that being chronically ill is not a failure on the part of the sick person.

The idea that there is "something out there, but you just haven't found it" is also useless.

No one wants to be this debilitated, to live a half-life.

All of us with chronic illness are doing the best we can with what we have.

i read this at www.mythicmusing.blogspot
&
it truly resonated
ty

b o l t i n g ~

2011-12-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

& i bolted out the door,
cab on its way,
feeling almost instantly better!

now, what's with that?!
morning dawned sluggish & icky.
i took all practical steps to aid // stabilise // manage
all the sensible stuff of daily life ~
dishes
laundry
bath to cleanse
tidying up
herbs, potions, vitamins, & water
&
feeling horrible still... lay on the bed again

ultimately, i looked at the cat,
the cat looked at me,
& i said
'cat, i know you think sleeping all day on my bed is the Bee's Knees...
but i cannot!
i will scream if i try!'

i sensed a great scream; a mighty R O A R R R !; a humongous bellow
about to hurl itself up & out of my very being ~
loud & outraged & ferocious
with life!

this escape velocity thing is * i n v i g o r a t i n g *. i will have to find a way to fund it better. (bus pass?) just getting OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT is so utterly relieving. the house plods along; the arguments simmer up the air vents from below; the sonorous day of sickness for all three members waddles into centre stage; there is NOTHING vital percolating there. i am bored! bored! bored!

there are times when i truly believe the isolation is a huge factor in wearing down immunity. the sheer GRIND of being alone so much, trying to get to a better place.

its totally unnatural; and totally done.

w h y * i * w r i t e ~

2011-12-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

why do i write?
why do i write here?

i write because i like to bring understanding to my life, to give shape & form to my experiences. i write because writing makes me feel better ~ even when i am writing about horrible events. i write because the medium of writing ~ blue ballpoint or keyboard ~ provides a simple soothing technical anchor in fairly chaotic life. i write to record, to celebrate, to express ALL facets of my life.

i started this blog two years ago. initially, i used it as a tool to switch OFF my inner life & health challenges... and to focus OUT into the world. recipes, crafts, favourite painters, artists, poems, discoveries all shared. gradually, over time ~ and especially since the homicide ~ the blog has become more confessional, more inward-looking.
natural enough.

John O'Donohue, the Celtic mystic, writes the soul is shy; its shyness resists the neon psychology of the modern world. i wholeheartedly agree. if it therefore seems oxymoronic to explore one's most intimate experiences on an (almost unknown, but still public) blog... perhaps i can explain.

in my 20s, in turmoil, i learned little from fiction. i was an English major who grew to loathe the books she was forced to read. i truly never recovered my taste for fiction.

but non-fiction?!

non-fiction entered straight into my psyche, exclaiming 'Here! Here! This happened to me, too!' and i was hooked. i read Virginia Woolf's diaries, i read Anais Nin, i read feminists, i read artists' biographies, i read adventure travelers ~ and it seemed to me that the MOST delicious forms of writing in the world were non-fiction & poetry. life itself was wild enough; and i wanted to read read read records of that wildness.

so to leave some record of my own wild journey is inevitable. i've journaled all my adult years. the blog is an experiment in outward expression. i do it mostly for me; but when readers have taken the time to comment, or to contact me privately, i have had the great, great honour of being told that the honesty & candour of my words did, indeed, somehow make a difference in their life. maybe at a hard crossroads. maybe in a grey trough. maybe i gave shape to something someone else only just barely dared to think possible... and the contours noticed, they were free to spiral off on their own journey again. i know that is how confessional writing has functioned in my own life. for sure.

i have a huge huge debt on writers like Anais Nin & Woolf; on their determination to express their inner worlds with such fierce candour & splendid bravery. so for me, confessional writing is manna; life itself, grist for the mill.

to sit,
in reflection,
paper & pen at hand ~
or laptop humming ~
at a spacious old wood table
by a giant open window
in the utter quiet...
& let light shine onto awareness

m a n n a

a n a m * c a r a ~

2011-12-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

The soul needs love as urgently as the body needs air. In the warmth of love, the soul can be itself. When love comes into your life, unrecognised dimensions of your destiny awaken & blossom & grow.

This quiet & secret world of the eternal is the soul. Love is the nature of the soul. When we love and allow ourselves to be loved, we begin more & more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal.

With your anam cara, you awaken the eternal. In this soul-space, there is no distance. Love is our deepest nature. We do not need to go out to find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.

Love is the deepest language & presence of the soul.

Since the body is in the soul, when you let someone so near, you let the person become part of you. In the sacred kinship of real love, two souls are twinned. The outer shell & the contour of identity become porous. You * s u f f u s e * each other.

With the anam cara ~ soul friend ~ you share your innermost self, your mind, and your heart. This friendship is an act of recognition & of belonging.

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
John O'Donohue

image Bower Meadow
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

m i m i !

2011-12-11T14:57:00.000-08:00

the solution is...
Mimi Kirchner's Hand-Sewn Felt Doll!
instructions posted
way back
on The Purl Bee ~
a beautiful, crisply-designed craft blog
run by Purl, in Soho, NY

if you skip over to here, you will find the free post & pattern

sometimes the simple act of following very logical instructions to make a thing of joy & beauty is the best medicine possible. i learned this at age 7; it's stood me in good stead for the following 37 years.

i'm rather taken by the contemplative, bookish girl in her mossy dress.

though, i'm also very fond of soft rose pink...

hmmm!

i' m * really * ever * so * not * well ~

2011-12-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

whoohoooooooo!

into this already rather challenging 'mezcla' sidles my acupuncturist's special "5 Weeks & Counting" lung, chest, & ears virus... which seems to have landed in MY immune system.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

this is not exactly quite particularly what i WANTED right this very second,
thank you

no siree,
not with the Full Moon to enjoy;
not with Solstice 10 days away;
not with Christmas just after that & great big humongous lovely things to do.

i thought i'd invented ALL the ways to spend one zillion hours sick & solo...
but apparently there ARE indeed new ones i've not discovered,
somewhere.

so, here we go.

s w e e t n e s s * o f * s o l i t u d e ~

2011-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

Solitude is as much an intrinsic desire in man as his gregariousness. Hermits, solitary thinkers, independent spirits, recluses, although often stigmatized in the modern world, are healthy expressions of man's dialogue with himself.

Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness & Love

It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob, utterly alone, utterly secure with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock. ...
To do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

Spiritual joys come only from solitude,
So the wise choose the bottom of the well,
For the darkness down there beats
The darkness up here.
He who follows at the heels of the world
Never saves his head.

Rumi, Solitude

A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Leopold Stokowski

image from One Song: The New Illuminated Rumi
edited by Michael Green

l i t t l e * w e e * t h i n g s ~

2011-12-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

hiding in the cupboard,
in a brown cardboard box,
tucked away for Solstice,
is...

Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls To Sew & Love
by Hillary Lang

i am verrrrrrrry excited!
hillary has a lovely blog over at www.weewonderfuls.com,
& even if i make nothing from this book ~
extremely unikely ~
its sheer prettiness enchants!

feeling especially quite taken with this fetching folk lady & her giant bulbous hair-do.

thank you, hillary, for making such wonder-filled things!

all images Hillary Lang...
now go visit her at www.weewonderfuls.com!

p r o g r e s s !

2011-12-07T19:08:00.001-08:00

phew!

:: chlorine & ammonia levels back DOWN in city water. HUGE relief for body & overall state.

:: negotiated increased health care support for next 2 weeks to help level myself out. major relief to feel less isolated in it all.

:: enforced outings ~ due to house drama ~ create beneficial side effect of increased walking mileage & physical endurance.

:: two GIANT Solstice Tree branches now up, stabilised, & almost ready to be decorated lavishly.

:: nocturnal dreams returning! yay! feels like sailing blind without them, when missing their guidance.

:: Sight returning bit by bit, as mental state relaxes, brain able to find alpha wave state. again, stunningly concise guiding images, which amaze & delight.

:: adoring the cool days, crisp air, soft grey unobtrusive light of the season... with Full Moon just around the corner.

:: Maine Coon back in daily attendance, with great brushy tail, soft love eyes, & rumblous purring.

:: new-to-me cd player found (FINALLY!) in a pawn shop, of all places. paid $40, got home to discover it was brand new last summer, original price tag $300, & sounds fantastic! hurrah!

:: therefore, shamanic journeying & trance work possible again with music.

:: getting excited about the season ahead ~ just watching, relaxing, reflecting quietly, & seeing a few choice friends.

:: feeling of * w o n d e r * peeking out again...

image Carl Larsson, of course

s c a n d i n a v i a n * c r o s s * s t i t c h ~

2011-12-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

this charming-looking book
has given me SO MUCH JOY over the years
i highly recommend it

out of print, i fear,
but can be found second-hand, and libraries often have it squirreled away in the needlework section

the patterns are gorgeous; divided into subsections for Sweden, Denmark, & Norway; truly European in flavour & design. i've translated the colours of many, changed the intended use altogether, and made an entire range of Solstice Tree ornaments on lovely oaten 14 count Aida.

the Maine Coon is kneading in agreement.

plumped up by my hip, she is leaning hard into the cream blanket, working her giant paws in a hypnotic trance of rhythmic motion, as if to say 'yeah, man, yeahhhhh.' of course, what she is really saying is 'that wet food was just great! i'm so glad i'm not sitting on the freezing concrete underneath that damn truck outside! its just great to be here on an illicit visit! where is the catnip?'

we're definitely buds. i'm better at cross-stitch; but she wins at love eyes every time...

o p e n * h e a r t ~

2011-12-05T16:29:00.000-08:00

This is love:
to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
Finally, to take a step without feet.

rumi

Fill my heart with Love,
that my every teardrop may become a star.

hazrat inayat khan

artwork Mara Freedman

d a r k n e s s ~

2011-12-04T22:33:00.000-08:00

futility & darkness. i lie & journal, untangling this mess of tangled threads creating my current reality. is this wise? its my most familiar, most reliably soothing way of coping with chaos ~ the smooth blue glide of a Bic ballpoint over a sheet of Domstock 100% recycled bond. the action of the pen itself soothes me, as the trailing spirals of blue script flow over the page like currents in a swirling river.

not good lately.
really not good.

in my own way, i'm as tough as nails. i've lived through hells; & i can stare ugly straight in the face, & stare it down. i've learned skills to muscle through hard places; & i've learned tenderness to cradle myself there.

but i'm also fragile in unexpected ways... hypersensitivity to the environment, low immunity, damaged trauma circuits, adrenal glands stressed to malfunction very young. i'm tough... but also precariously on edge, struggling for balance most of the time. which doesn't make for a satisfying existence ~ it makes for a life in almost constantly revolving illness & crisis. very depleting.

sometimes you just have to 'check out' ~ as my Process Work teacher herself says ~ you just have to go with that uncanny 'flirt' or 'signal' that can lead you into non-consensus reality (NCR) & towards relief, however brief. believe me, she knows. she's survived hells of her own. its one of the reasons she cites for loving Process Work ~ the tools & willingness to GO to the impossible places & find creative ways forward, even there.

so, 'checking out' temporarily?
can do.

i play some bluegrass... and follow the mandolin to an imaginary porch in the Appalachians with a lazy rocking chair brushed by the wind in the trees. i meet a friend for tea... and for 2 hours my life feels social & light & connective. i close my eyes in bed... fold my hands over my heart... and beam up an earnest prayer to the Reindeer Goddess, help me, please help me, and see her gentle doe eyes in my own mind's eye; and just rest there, in that softness, for even the littlest while.

but i am also a pragmatist. i find chaos ordered & understood to be more palatable that mounting unexamined chaos. hence, writing.

i've written copiously, to cope, since that very first overseas move, age 10, when the family leapt from canada to rural england. the need to put words & worlds on paper ~ to make sense of the swirling contradictions my 10 year old brain observed. lately, i write & i write; and sometimes maybe the cognitive focus sinks me in deeper... but mostly i trust the need to understand WHY things feel the way they do, in order to have any hope of CHANGING them, or of ALTERING my reaction to them, or simply HANDLING my choices differently.

for the last several weeks,
its been murder trial trauma,
press trauma,
and landlord trauma;
horrific chlorine & ammonia exposures;
full body sickness;
pushing to stay OUT of house where i feel too tense to relax;
and getting through the 1 year anniversary of the homicide.

that's full-blown emotional trauma of soulmate loss, reactivated;
public media trauma;
housing & safety trauma;
physiological trauma;
mental trauma.

good luck

neither body, nor mind, nor heart, nor spirit
are in great shape
&
all the lovely luscious subtle knowing ~
the incredible psychic blossoming that took place all year long goes
POOF!
as my body locks rigid with tension & all channels jam.

its basically my version of earth hell.
the state i hate most.
the state i feel least myself.
the state hardest to convey to anyone else.

if an Inuit hunter who relied on his subtle senses for information concerning currents of ice floes, pack thickness, snow patterns, prey location were poisoned ~ say, sprayed down heavily with DDT ~ he wouldn't be safe to himself anymore. the very channels of subtle knowing, the cells themselves, the resonating cavities inside, the nerve centres of the brain responsible for body knowing, Sight, & intuition would all be poisoned. cells don't work the same when poisoned. nerves don't either. brains certainly don't, as a glass of cheap malt liquor will prove. the Inuit would dangerously risk his life by heading out onto the ice to hunt... without all his finely honed, necessary faculties up & running.

this is precisely how i navigate my own life ~
my diet
my spirit world connection
my creativity
my art making
my dreaming
my intuition
my daily organic path ~
and
i cannot seem to access these vital subtle channels well right now

its just one trauma, after another trauma, after another;
with a coping mechanism;
a lurch;
another coping mechanism;
a drift into 'time out';
a burst into anguished sobs;
& then more strategy to get through.

b r a v e r y & s t r e n g t h

h o l l y * l o v e * s h e l t e r ~

2011-12-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

not sure why, but i find holly trees very very soothing. i always have the sense as i walk past one, or slip under its overarching boughs, that i am somehow in the presence of a very old dear friend. something about their veritable sturdiness; something about the intense darkest emerald green clustered so abundantly en masse; something about Druids & all things Olde Englande. i literally feel 'sheltered' & that is a very nice feeling indeed.

Holly is the ruler of the White Realm, King of the darker half of the year (the lunar months when the night pervades, in which winter resides). When all other flora have long lost their blush and gone dormant for the winter, the Holly can be found still be brightly verdant against the stark white landscape.

so
it is
that just 50 feet away
from the enormous holly tree on my way to the village...
i find a HUGE windfall of bare deciduous branches,
lichenous bits & all,
* p e r f e c t * for this year's Solstice Tree!

hurrah!
i noticed them a week back ~
this responsibility for tree is usually my friend's domain ~
& thought 'hmmmm! how very appropriate!'

today my tea friend, Scott,
helped me wrestle the two huge branchy trees homewards
& up the tricky staircase.
ahhhhhhhh!
phew!
done!

this is VERY exciting!
i didn't have a full-scale Solstice installation last year, given the passing being so recent;
so to be able to put up a lovely magical show this year feels 'just right' as my friend would say. just right.

let the celebrations begin!

u t t e r * g o r g e o s i t y ~

2011-11-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortions; your own light and beauty will become blurred, awkward, and ugly. Your sense of inner beauty has to remain a very private thing.

The secret and the sacred are sisters. Our times suffer from such a loss of the sacred because our respect for the secret has completely vanished. Our modern technology of information is one of the great destroyers of privacy. We need to shelter that which is deep and reserved within us. This is why there is such hunger in modern life for the language of the soul. The soul is a shy presence. The hunger for the language of the soul shows that the soul has been forced to recede to private areas; only there can it mind its own texture and rhythm. The modern world, by trumpeting the doctrine of self-sufficiency, has denied the soul, and forced it to eke out its existence on the margins.

If we are to connect with our inner life, we need to learn not to grasp at the soul in a direct or confrontational way. In other words, the neon consciousness of much modern psychology and spirituality will always leave us in soul poverty.

from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
by John O'Donohue

d i s s o n a n c e ~

2011-11-30T12:20:00.001-08:00

aha!

downtown, again; avoiding house, again; sitting at the big red dragon gates to Canada's oldest Chinatown. man with an empty gilt art frame strolls by ~ funny to see his knees moving inside the frame. very New York. some wailin' harmonica slides over the airwaves, general chitter of caffeine animating room.

exulting in Lauren Child's Charlie & Lola children's books. their wild inventiveness, vibrant collage art illustrations, & the irrepressible Lola are an impossible combination to resist.

so i find that i
"especially particularly completely quite like"
(as Lola would say...)
playing very jangly bluegrass music lately ~
the more dissonant the better.

i adore dissonance. it's very sexy. that weird, slightly off, dischordent effect... like the aural equivalent of two almost complementary colours vibrating when placed side by side. "its intoxicating! the sound of those things beating against each other!" David Rawlings exclaims, in his "oh so casual, sittin' on the couch with my guitar" way.

Gillian & David,
over & over,
these days ~
the bright cheerful zing of banjo or mandolin or bare steel strings
over their soaring alto voices,
the gloomy lyrics,
the pure lyrical spirit of mountain music

i cannot get enough

Hell Among The Yearlings
Revival
Time the Revelator
Soul Journey

still to hear The Harrow & The Harvest, their latest. can't wait.

jangle
jangle
jangle

i've gotten quite ballsy with singing my lungs out. who cares anymore?! i don't! its so * l i b e r a t i n g *, & utterly therapeutic. the more achey, moany, hurtin' the tune... the more i bend notes, and sing purposefully off-key. i should have lived in the Appalachias, where music seems to be a way of life ~ so intricately woven into culture, socialising, & the daily round, like breathing itself.

for years i was told i could not sing. my sister would make snide comments, with her trained choral voice; and no sooner did i have one line out, than i would promptly shut up. no longer.

i've discovered over the years that having a loose, open chest & resoundingly vibrating heart centre allows my voice to soar. at first the bath helped ~ suddenly all that tension in my armature released, and i discovered i really DID have a singing voice. the looser my body, the more fluid the sound. nowadays, i just lie on my back in the dark, feet still kicked up on the windowsill, and TRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRILLLLLLLLL!
my way through an entire cd. trilling is fantastic! very expressive, fast, all kinds of tonal ranges possible, resonating through the very bone cavities of one's own body ~ like a wild, internal, purring massage. after a cd's worth of trilling? man, i'll belt out anything!

so, dissonance it is!
trilling like a bird on ecstasy!
soaring & singing & wailing aloud!

* all * pure * soul *

w i n d i n g ~

2011-11-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

finding this new level of illness very winding. no sooner have i surfed through one symptom cascade... than the next one crashes in with a vengeance. no longer a hope for feeling 'good' - its hope for the grace & stamina to swerve from one extreme state to another, with some agility, making the right decisions as i go, by the seat of my pants. feeling 'good' disappeared a LONG LONG time ago. its extremely rough going, and i can't say i'm impressed, overall, with Consensus Reality these days.

musing last night on how this Blog has changed lately - i'm simply trying to survive, and so there isn't as much creative energy or mental spaciousness for loose posts on poetry, or fine art, or crafting. i haven't crafted, literally, for 4 months. literally. all systems are geared to survival. * s u r v i v a l *

survival mode is where i've spent the greater part of my adult years. i'm no stranger to it.

to be in survival mode with MCS is a double insult ~ not only are the triggering exposures NOT recognised... but the ensuing symptoms seem irrelevant & invisible to the outside world anyway. one is literally gasping for clean air, clean water... and NOBODY notices. NOBODY computes the toll. NOBODY wants to imagine how that truly feels. unlike being in your last round of failed chemo, let's say, where everyone knows you are entering palliative care, and everyone supports that. nobody is doubting your pain, your general heinous condition, your extremely limited energy. with MCS... good luck.

the drama from below was the final straw, by my calculation. i'd already lurched through the trial, the press insults, the insanity of online 'friendship's' that had no sticking power. the vehemence & malice of the landlord attack simply used the last drop in the tank; & then jumped, repeatedly, on the last unfrayed nerve. well done, landlords!

so, i stagger to acupuncture today,
after a weekend in such unbearably horrid states there is no point even trying to convey them,
get through a treatment for "depletion"...
only to have my pancreas misfire
& shoot me into a severe 2 hour blood sugar crisis.

what use is a $60 treatment,
now blown to smithereens by the ensuing unexpected chaos???

i won't be sorry to Go. when the time comes, i will not be sorry at all. i dreamed the other night that i was in the "last inning" - and that itself did not disturb me. i'm simply EXHAUSTED with the effort of living an invisible illness that is in society's best interests to deny & minimise. i have enough faith in the Soul & in the Spirit World at large to truly believe i will pass through one doorway & into a new realm of existence. a kinder realm - where my very MATERIALITY is not a factor making my daily life so hellishly challenging.

for now, i am here;
still attending,
still trying to find the little reliefs,
caring for the body & soul as very best i can.
i am a survivor;
and i will survive right on into the next realm;
whenever that time organically comes;
to blossom & be joined to my own Truest Essence for good;
delivered by Spirit as Spirit sees fit.

woodcut image Gustav Klimt

k i n k s ~

2011-11-26T19:36:00.000-08:00

isn't Lola a great song?

i mean, really.
i love that tune ~ its sly, grungy, rocky, surprise transgender denouement.
i also love this homely strange youtube ~ super minimalism, black as night, "lets grind & growl" vibe.

good theme tune lately.

kinks galore ~ of all sizes, shapes & natures!

kinks with housing.
kinks with landlord drama.
kinks with press horrors.
kinks with judicial system & murder trial.
kinks with environmental exposures.
kinks with subtle senses not up or running.
kinks with 'family' taking BACK their offer to fly me out for a break. (nice)
kinks with trusted doctor retiring.
kinks with a male slave submissive who really DOES want kink with me... and i do not with him.
kinks with grumpy male friend who sulks, pouts, & burrows.
kinks with hating being home, but needing a sanctuary to retreat to, too.

kinks, kinks, kinks!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Spirit of Boudicca roars to life!

so there!

where * will * i * be ~

2011-11-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

The streets are cracked
And there's glass everywhere
And a baby stares out
With motherless eyes
Under long gone beauty
On fields of war
Trapped in lament
To the poet's core

Oh where, oh where will I be
Oh where oh, when that trumpets sounds

Met an Indian boy in Ottawa
He laid me down on a bed of straw
Said don't waste your breath
Don't waste your heart
Don't blister your heels
Running in the dark

Oh where, oh where will I be
Oh where oh, when that trumpets sounds

Yeah I like the heat
Of your body laying under me
May your wild lip get you where your going
With your inventions your intentions, your laughter
Your forever yearning

Oh where, oh where will I be
Oh where oh, when that trumpets sounds

I walked to the river
And I walked to the rim
I walked through the teeth of the reaper's grin
I walked to you rolled up in wire
To the other side of desire

Oh where, oh where will I be
Oh where oh, when that trumpets sounds

Oh where, oh where, oh where when that trumpet sounds
Oh where, oh where oh, when that trumpet sounds

Well the heart opens wide like it's never seen love
And addiction stays on tight like a glove
Oh where oh where will I be

a l l o ! * a l l o !

2011-11-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

take my hand,
take my whole life too
for i can't help
falling in love with you...

at the last minute, this morning, i veer into a different cafe. i pay for my coffee. i add the cream & brown sugar. i head over to my seat. and there, in black & white, painted in stenciled bold CAPITAL LETTERS on canvas, hanging above the chair, are the lyrics to this old Elvis song...

which makes me laugh ~ as its the ONLY song my friend & i EVER slow danced together, holding each other close in our arms. it was our song that night ~ in the blowsy, overgrown, celebratory garden, well past 2 am, under the huge starry summer sky.

i can't help falling in love with you

b a l m * n e e d e d ~

2011-11-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

today, the toll registers. been pushing my limits extremely hard, trying to angle myself into environments or spaces that allow for relief from ONE of the major upsets right now ~ the rental drama. but that's only ONE major stressor; and this, on a bed of already severely impacted illness, trial stress & family stress, now has me waking up
* a c h i n g * with sore limbs each morning, and a brain fritzing on the biochemical cascade of stress hormones raging through me.

how could it not?!

s i g h

i think,
all things given,
i am doing the best job possible ~
i know if i looked at the situation through a Response Based Therapy approach,
a la Alan Wade,
i would only see pervasive, ever-creative attempts at resistance & coping.
it would be an impressive list, i do know that.

but it HURTS!

it hurts my entire being to be THIS tired, THIS stressed out, THIS hammered from multiple sides, THIS shaken up. old PTSD kicks in hard, understandably, as all systems careeeeeeeen into overdrive & high alert. poor dear body. how it tries, it really tries. dear body... must wonder, sometimes, when we get to just lie down under an olive tree on a blanket and watch the light ripple softly on the grass, picnic basket at hand. poor dear body.

i've been feeling this * w a v e * of compassion, lately, for my physical being ~
how much my body has been through!

from the sexual abuse,
through re-traumatising therapies that drained all energy,
into the vale of chronic severe illness,
through the monster stress of poverty & homelessness & murder.
poor body!
its a miracle that it functions for me at all, in some regards.

i'm quite sure i deserve a 5 star full-body massage at this point,
with a spa day of endless freshly made organic vegetable juices,
& unlimited spring water & lemon,
soft music,
a chlorine free pool to float in,
& my dearest warmest yum,
tumbled & brown,
to curl up beside.

poor dear body.
what this world asks of her.

b a k e r ' s * d o z e n * pt 3 ~

2011-11-22T14:28:00.000-08:00

:: an extremely * s * l * o * w * walk ~ to loosen mind, spirit, & limbs

:: thrift store Turn~Up~Stuffing a la Pippi Longstocking ~
little treasure trove including...
~ vintage circular engraved mirror (darling),
~ framed blue cornflower tapestry (pure british countryside),
~ fine bone china saucer with one dusky rose on it,
~ pristine copy of a newly illustrated "Little Mermaid" (now, how can i resist that?! $1),
~ a 30 year old book of english fairy tales (50 cents)

:: verboten coffee with even more verboten whip cream in excessive quantities of whippy frothy yumminess. but wtf, i can almost hear my friend urging me on. sometimes you just have to have a sensory pleasure.

:: stop in at favourite dvd shop, pick 5 for a week:-

Warrior Queen (for Boudicca wildness)
Michael Collins (for injustice & rebellion)
Poldark (dark, moody, brooding)
The Life Aquatic (because what is better than a dose of absurd humour & fantastic sets all wrapped in one?)
Elizabeth I (with Helen Mirren being imperious & Hugh Dancy being cheeky, no doubt...)

:: sit in ANOTHER cafe, avoiding home, soaking up warmth & comfort

:: 2 blocks of all organic butter for baking, last bits of a gift card given to me. butter IS divinity, after all. as Louisa May Alcott knew so very well.

:: write a street outreach group re: volunteer possibilities & sincere interest

:: send * l * o * v * e * to my dear friend k ~ cause i know he is busting his butt working hard for his kids, & would appreciate a red fur fabric hug ;-)

:: focus on visions of tiny bungalows with cottage gardens;
or forest cabins with front porches & tree-swings;
or anonymous apartments in charming buildings full of other artists & writers;
or a large studio, floors splashed with paint, windows galore, concrete pillars, & my skateboard whizzing across the living room

:: plan to make 3 hair wraps this week (as arms allow) of organic blue, green, and mauve silk & alpaca wool, replete with hemp, beads, shells, & abalone buttons ~ long enough to drape to mid-back

:: imagine finally getting the little crescent moon tattoo i want at my hairline;
& the magical bridge piercing between my eyes

:: awe-struck at a cluster of large white berries, so frothy & poppy against the dark shiny emerald holly leaves near them

:: resolve to find my prayer beads, in their mossy green purse, and to use them as often as needed

all images from Lauren Child's sublime illustrations
of Pippi Longstocking

s t a g g e r i n g ~

2011-11-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

from extreme state to extreme state
:: severe exhaustion
:: horrific chlorine reaction as the city ups chlorine levels in the water
:: multiple food reactions
:: drama from the murder trial, again
:: drama from the rental arrangement, again
:: drama from the 'family', again

utterly winding ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

i went & sat
under an old, old sitka spruce in the city's biggest park ~
a veritable elder,
long, swooping, emerald~green branches beckoning me into sacred sheltered space;
sat with my back to the rugged chocolate brown trunk
gnarled & rough & lovely
& wept,
just wept

my friend used to sleep under this tree
when he was homeless.
one afternoon, spent, cold, exhausted,
he curled up for a nap there, up all night guarding his knapsack & self from harm.
i went home to run a very very hot bath
prepare some food
get the bedroom cozy,
& then returned to walk him home with me, injuries & all, into safety.

i sit under the tree
&
i call out to the tree spirit 'oh wise one, help me! i miss my friend so!'
&
it is absolutely more consoling to lean my back on an elder such as this, savour its rich aroma, take in the little eco-system of private shelter, wonder at the sap running the tall trunk, soak up the soft feeling of the pine needle floor...

than it is to be at 'home' in my nasty domicile

i've decided i'll move
enough is enough
i'm not a whipping post for their financial insolvency or their mental health issues
&
if i have any hope of being the sensitive, seer, & artist i truly am
i cannot live in that force-field of hostility & mind games

when it got this bad before,
while my friend still lived earthside,
he & i would take off together to the beach for a night or two ~
preferring to brave the cold winds & rolling surf,
with giant fires, heated wrapped stones, blankets, body warmth, laughter & shared fire-cooked food on a stick...
than to spend a moment longer in THAT toxic field

i have this fantasy of lining my halls with the beach stones ~
smooth
grey
white
charcoal
speckled
like earth eggs
all along the seam where the floor meets the baseboard

i think that would be so, so beautiful

calling * all * countries !

2011-11-21T15:34:00.000-08:00

* h e l l o ! * h e l l o ! *

i see the united states (hi loyal reader!)
i see russia (over & over!)
i see ireland (hurrah! at last!)
i see germany (guten tag!)
i see france (bon jour!)

now, isn't that, really, kind of thrilling?
i think so

today alone there have been 45 visits to my wild indigo world here,
my unadvertised, unsolicited, totally ad-free,
honesty & essence blog...
&
i think that's awesome!

hello to all visitors!
so glad you find something of enjoyment here :-)

w y r r d ~

2011-11-20T17:56:00.000-08:00

i scratch my head in puzzlelation.

wondering, perplexed... what IS the nexus of this stuckness with my toronto friend? an ex, once a true intimate... lately, we lurch in & out of each other's fields ~ through dreams, through emails, through online chat, & in-person visits. yet his defenses are so rigid, the terms of engagement so limited, i feel like i am jack-hammering at an ancient stone wall with a toothpick.

s i g h

so much potential
so little follow through -------------->

the strange part is, every time i hit this frustration threshold, and send out a heartfelt goodbye in my own private, spirit-based way (a kind of cosmic send-off & blessing), recognising it may indeed be best we stop expecting anything from each other... every single time, he pops up, right after, from utter silence & non-contact, and reaches out; as if something, on some deep essence level inside him, or some spirit realm he barely acknowledges, warns him 'she's going! wake up!'

i know in my heart i'm fine with saying 'adios! good luck with your life!' in the best possible way. we did it for a good 12 years. can do!

yet, very mystically, every single time, he reappears. or i will have a dream of SUCH intense, profound, epic, core-shaking magnitude about him... i will wake up astounded at the power of the connection. something seems to want the connection to continue.

laughing out loud!
omgoddess, when you step back, it is quite absurd!
'why do we keep doing this to each other?' i ask him
'i really like you' he replies

at least i can laugh!
oh, the spirit world can move in very unexpected ways!

i know from 22 years of Dreamwork & close loving attention to the Dreaming that such signals are worth heeding. just because things are not progressing according to my own ego's little timetable or agenda, doesn't mean there isn't a percolation happening. i sent a late-night letter last week, open & high-spirited, generous & caring, inviting him to a better level of engagement. we've talked road trips, travels in Finland together, Toronto homestays & joint creative plotting... so i'm not out in left field ~ there IS something there, for sure.

but do you think he can directly ANSWER such a letter of friendly extension?!
no!
of course not!
hasn't even acknowledged receiving it!

direct goes badly. oblique, sideways, usually goes better.

well, there is plenty ELSE to attend, in consensus reality & in the Dreaming, so i will carry on... but i have to say, something very intertwined keeps happening. & i'm wise enough to notice.

wink wink!

post script dec 5
&... we're done!

after a few more misfires, and evaluating the low calibre of input & the total lack of real care i was receiving in this marred connection, i resolved "i'm done!" again. that week i woke at 3 am to his surly rude voice, in peevish question "Well, WHO are you with then?!" as he barked at me in my dream. i laughed to myself, and thought, "NOT YOU! and, frankly, its none of your business!" and went back to sleep.

no trouble since. phew!

w i c k e d * g o o d ~

2011-11-20T17:17:00.000-08:00

Caleb Meyer he lived alone
In them hollering pines
And he made a little whiskey for himself
Said it helped to pass the time

Long one evening in back of my house
Caleb come around
And he called my name till I went out
With no one else around

Caleb Meyer your ghost is gonna
Wear them rattling chains
But when I go to sleep at night
Don't you call my name

"Where's your husband Nellie Cane
Where's your darling gone?
Did he go on down the mountainside
And leave you all alone?"

"Yes my husband's gone to Bowling Green
To do some business there."
Then Caleb threw that bottle down
And grabbed me by my hair

Caleb Meyer your ghost is gonna
Wear them rattling chains
But when I go to sleep at night
Don't you call my name

He threw me in the needle bed
Across my dress he lay
Then he pinned my hands above my head
And I commenced to pray

I cried my God I am your child
Send your angels down
Then feeling with my finger tips
The bottle neck I found

I drew that glass across his neck
Fine as any blade
Then I felt his blood pour fast and hot
Around me where I laid

Caleb Meyer your ghost is gonna
Wear them rattling chains
But when I go to sleep at night
Don't you call my name

craving * pomegranates ~

2011-11-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

perhaps this is the point where i should start posting esoteric world music clips, favourite poetry stanzas, inspiring quotes by wise sages. sadly, all of those require more steps, more effort than plain old 'here's the scoop' blogging. and i have no energy to spare.

so, its sunday morning
i have pushed out to a village cafe
i see many highly groomed women in my peer group around me ~
frosted hair, coordinated accessories, jazzy handbags, designer glasses, manicured nails.

i feel 100 miles away.

sometimes the divide between the sick world reality & the well feels overwhelming. i'm wearing my one pair of trousers that have no holes, a 3 year old beaten-up corduroy jacket, large hand-made hat for heat, and thrift store scarf for colour. my boots, Blundstones which i rely on to last 4 years, are painted with green & blue stripes on their toe caps. i am sans make up, sans jewellery, sans handbag. i do have a large number of shells, buttons, barnacles, wood, & trinkets sewn in my hair.

this is clearly not my demographic.

i miss SaltSpring Island. for all the inbred politics & insanity, it had a kind of looseness of expression where i fit much better. to get from our beach tent up to town for groceries, my friend & i had to hitch-hike. the wilder the outfits i wore, the quicker the ride. we used to laugh at the wild~to~success ratio. bigger hat? sure ride! brilliantly radiant floor length skirt! zoom, car pulls over! layers of textured scarves & interswirling edible colours? for sure! he always admitted it was much harder to get a ride as a lone big bearded guy... than when we stood together and emanated 'couple.'

this finding of one's tribe,
FROM the limitations & confines of severe ill health
continues to prove a sizeable challenge

oh, for the pomegranate laden tree of kinship!
all shining red cadmium joys shared!
blooming in full splendour!

y e l l o w * c a b * j o y ~

2011-11-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

i could easily see myself getting quite fond of yellow cabs. so very canary bright, gliding silently on hybrid electric motors, transporting one effortlessly, door to door. not usually part of my budget... but lately in the equation of sanity versus extra expense, extra expense wins out.

listening to sappy music in a cafe with fireplace, giant plate glass windows facing a watery blue november sky, sans clouds. frost thicker than ever this morning, even tufting the little patches of determined green moss that sprout on the overhanging roof.

these new & staggering levels of exhaustion
continue.

ayyyy!

no crafting
no sewing
no quilting
no long distance walks
no guaranteed window of ease in the day

somedays its a Gruel-A-Thon from start to finish, propped by nettle infusions, siberian ginseng tonics, the verboten coffee, a hot bath, a collapse into endorphin-releasing tears. somedays are too heinous to ever re-visit in my journal, and the page must be turned very fast.

now, if we all had coupon books for 365 yellow cab trips per year!
what joy!
every day a new & planned & heated outing to a new site!

you could just toodle around town, doing the scenic drive, taking in the fall colours, watching the breakers crash into spumey spray down at the ocean, the swingsets zooming with gleeful airborne tots in the park. outings for all! in silent yellow capsules of guaranteed joy.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

b l u s t e r y ! ~

2011-11-17T11:59:00.001-08:00

off to Process Work i go!
into the land of Dreaming & flirts & pop-ups!
unfolding the unexpected, the marginalised, the subtle!

a blustery november day; wind dances merrily; branches noticeably barer. my first dose of Christmas carols just now... and i can't say i mind. i love * w * i * n * t * e * r * !

reading John O'Donahue's wonder-filled 'Anam Cara' last night; and just sighed this enourmous soul sigh inside ~ to bathe in such magnificent softness, depth, & warmth of spirit. he must have been a truly remarkable man. when i read his words, their poetry intrigues, engages, & eludes, drawing my soul forward into a lovely realm of understanding, searching, coming round full circle, epiphanal aha's!, savouring a perfect turn of phrase, gently underlining something that resonates so deep. pure * y u m *

'i've got my love to keep me warm...'
croons Bing Crosby

spent an entrancing evening gazing at photos of my friend. have you ever noticed how the longer you gaze at an image... the more it yields? things that are so apparent at first glance start to melt, and new layers of visual information quietly emerge with hidden secret joy. there is one photo that i used to skip past, thinking, oh, not his best... but the strange thing is, when i really started LOOKING, i realised how much extraordinary beauty lay therein. like doorways that just keep opening and leading to MORE doorways! now one of my favourites.

all the yellow leaves
all the red leaves
all the orange leaves
all the tossing wind
all the tempestuous gusty air
all the cool temperatures
all the swirling patterns of spirit joy!

c h a n g * t s u ~

2011-11-15T19:36:00.000-08:00

"When the body sleeps, the soul is unfolded into one.

When the body wakes, the openings begin to function, and many many things come out of you.

But they are all one."

from The Dreammaker's Apprentice: Using Heightened States of Consciousness to Interpret Dreams
by Arnold Mindell

a d a g i o * i n * p a t c h w o r k ~

2011-11-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

not mine, i hasten to add,
but Jeanneke's!
a lovely, talented Dutch member of Small Quilt Talk,
the online vintage quilt group to which i belong

122 fabrics
all hand pieced
with English paper piecing

just so comforting!
look how it sparkles & dances!

be sure to visit www.Jeanneke.com for her blog,
her etsy store,
& more of her lovely quilts...

verdant * green * cell * life ~

2011-11-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

holy toledo. in a health crash like i cannot remember, with all systems careening downward. something is in the field ~ a pesticide? a spray? ~ and its radically taxing my liver, my detox systems, causing huge welt-like eruptions, and altering mood & brain patterns.

the longer you have this illness,
the larger a body of awareness you build of what 'healthy' or 'normative' is in contrast to 'altered' or 'dosed.'
this is dosed, most definitely dosed.

the trouble is... such exposures are not necessarily pin-pointable. who knows what caused this, for absolute sure? and such exposures are not just physical in nature. i had the privilege of consulting with Dr Abram Hoffer, an orthomolecular psychiatrist, for a few sessions before he retired; and i remember him saying that depression is not a brain condition, but a whole body condition, because the deficiencies that cause mood trouble in the brain are simultaneously permeating the whole being. there is no wall at the neck, separating head from body. its all one.

we live in such an abstract-thinking culture, this kind of whole body knowledge is barely given any credence. nor is there any incentive to give it any credence, given that the poisonating of the world is so deeply a part of our industries, way of life, government policies. christianity did its job of shunting us out of our sensual, feeling bodies, and into the realm of cold thought & reason... with dire consequences for the planet, the animal kingdom, and the natural body itself.

so it is that not only does my body crash hard,
all energy evaporates,
limbs ache,
lungs congest,
skin protests in angry lumps,
head throbs...
but my ability to focus, to shift mental patterns fluidly, to maintain optimistic spirits are all severely taxed. i'm mush. i'm mental cornmush. i know it and i hate it, but it is what it is.

i find it sad that so much New Age thought is modeled on barely concealed old-school religion ~ whether christianity or buddhism or the like.

IF we loved matter, cells, substance, raw animate messy lifeforms more ~ and abstraction less ~ we would never have let this toxic world emerge.

IF we loved matter more ~ then the people suffering as the poisoned canaries would be showered with care, support teams, comprehensive medical back-up, empathy, even shared grieving. we would have healing circles where the environmentally ill could be supported & loved ~ not shunned & marginalised. on a day like today, i would not be expected to grit through on tears & anguish. i could call a support team, and have the help i needed.

last year, an ex of mine from long ago fell mysteriously ill. he landed in emerg, and spent the next NINE months in intensive care, to the tune of $750,000 in medical care alone. his illness, GBS or Guillean Barr Syndrome, is rare... but no more rare than mine. i rejoice in his survival & all the incredible expertise, the hair-splitting phD and doctoral level expertise lavished on him. at one point, in his coma, TEN doctors attended all night long to make sure he did not die. he is a good man, and deserved it all.

but does MCS deserve any less?

WHY DOES MY ILLNESS MERIT NO HEALTH CARE?
NO SPECIALISED COORDINATED MEDICAL TEAM?
NO PHD LEVEL EXPERTISE?
NO TEN DOCTORS CIRCLING ME IN CONCERN,
STAIR-STEPPING AN INFORMED RECOVERY PLAN
EVERY SINGLE FRACTION OF THE WAY
WITH FULL FUNDING BEHIND IT?

that is my protest.
those of us with MCS deserve better.
we pay the price for the world's environmental ignorance.

p a t t e r n * t r a c k i n g ~

2011-11-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

circling round to center again. in an equation of almost no energy ~ and certainly no health ~ center seems to be the ONLY place from which i can HOPE to taste any sustainable fulfillment. its a painful lesson to keep learning.

i envy those with energy, health, & financial abundance, who seem able to flow so easily ~ out for dinner 3 times a week; playing rec sports; engaging, excelling & succeeding in a good job. i envy that. but its clearly not my lot.

i tried to shift the picture this fall ~
an 8 week experiment in much higher levels of online interaction,
chatting,
phone friends,
& in-person outings,
including travel.
unfortunately, i have paid dearly.

at first, the exhilaration of new contact ~ oh, the fun! the laughter! ~ buoyed me.

but i felt the toll very quickly, as my body buckled. even the avenues of engagement proved challenging ~ excess online time & major pounding headaches; overnight visits in toxic hotel rooms; public exposures out in public venues, too many, too fast. not to mention the processing ~ signals, signs, double signals, flirts, back tracks, surges, retreats. i WANTED it to work, this newly tasted realm of busy socialising, i really did. but my body simply could not keep up... and the longer i kept pushing, the more my adrenals burned out, the more the symptom cascade accelerated dangerously.

yet strangely... ALL the once 'new/exciting/fun' contacts petered out!

a married man swore he was perfectly content with a creative writing 'friendship' ~ a 'long term deep friendship' were his exact words ~ and we'd spend HOURS chatting online & blogging together. he vapourised after 4 weeks, without even a goodbye.

a sweet Englishman turned out to be so deeply damaged ~ irreparably so ~ and this damage intersected so outrageously with my own buttons... i found it impossible to breach the divide without more damage to my own self.

the ex i visited by float plane was (almost, for him) chatty , teasy, flirty... until a contract at work collapsed, & it became clear his overwhelm locked out even basic rudimentary friendship.

a fourth seemed fine online... only to reveal a past even more riddled with abuse than my own within 10 minutes of our first phone talk. i haven't the energy to field it. i just don't.

dangerous waters, all ~ for a woman with no stable health, little energy, a highly wired nervous system, & a long history of trauma. suddenly ALL the fun & joy was gone, as the skeletons kept leaping out of their closets, and nobody else seemed to have the tools to deal.

the cost?

my health.
my creative focus.
my reliable sense of autonomy.

in the rush for fun, frivolity, connection... i sacrificed too much energy i myself needed, made too many compromises that bit back hard, lost too much truly center-building activity like art making, shamanic journeying, quiet hours in peaceful meditation. i'm burned, no doubt.

i'd been in an almost 18 month retreat;
learned deep succour of the Dreaming world;
meditation;
second sight;
trance journeying;
shamanic skill-building;
subtle sense expansion.

the initiate emerged from her cocoon too soon. and the lurch to social butterflydom was too intense; with the wrong group of people overall; and too reactive in nature. the shift from one way of being to another was simply too complete & too harsh.

so,
for now,
its art
& animals
& creativity
& shamanism
& spirit world journeys
& writing
& deep sleeps (i hope)
& safe safe foods
& solo dependable joys first ~ strength & certainty & core first

the rest
can come in time, at a better pace, when ready, when desired

but i am glad to turn my pea-green boat away from the beasts & the tumult,
the rocky shores & hidden dangerous currents,
into the open silvery sea,
moon glinting,
owl swooping silently
overhead...

s p e n t ~

2011-11-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

ga.

this ongoing climate of high drama in my rental arrangement, extremely low energy, & heightened sensitivity wearing me down.
s i g h . that state of uber exhaustion where even being awake to the day is painful, where body feels brittle with fragility, where mind tends to skitter into stuck loops. i'm not enjoying it.

this,
in spite of
numerous attempts to deal ~
seek support
be proactive
set a timeline for stressors (to pace myself)
take scrupulous self-care in hand
avoid draining contacts
extra gentle hours in bedrest mode

the battery has run FLAT again.

if i don't radically pull way way way back;
recalibrate to serious retreat mode;
screen phone calls & mail;
& stick to a strictly organic, chlorine-free diet;
i will be unrecognisable to my own self.
that's how frightening its getting.

forced myself out for some gusty~windy~air & a short walk today ~ bent on quietly taking in new sights, escaping the sick room, and perhaps enjoying a coffee. didn't quite work out. walk precarious, head struggled to field incoming stimulation, cafe proved an overwhelming vortex of clatter, scents, mold, jostling, & powerful wifi signals, and coffee did absolutely nothing 'beneficial' even in a fake way... and left a nasty chemical taste in my mouth & a bad chlorine hang-over.

i'm reminded of last spring
when i reeled in,
set up retreat,
weaned off all outside exposures,
squarely centred my day on indoor pacing,
self-determined goals,
&
found some eventual peace
bit
by
bit

otherwise it seems to be a scary downhill trip into ever more reactivity, lost sleep, broken immunity, and staggering levels of exhaustion.

c * e * l * e * b * r * a * t * e * !

2011-11-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

a very interesting * g l e e e e e e e e e e e ! *
is permeating this day!
&
i have to say,
i rather like it!

today is the day my friend Flew ~
off to the higher realms
&
i feel a silly beautiful radiant grin all over my face

as...
the cafe starts playing, just this very second,
'Where the Streets Have No Name'
which is, after all, a very real possibility in the Great Hereafter!

this year
has been
so FULL
of dreams, sign, synchronicities, miracles, gifts, blessings, surprises,
it has infiltrated every fibre of my being
with the strongest, unshakeable knowledge
of ongoing life ~
&
so today i am celebrating,
because
knowing my friend, as i do ~ and believe me, i do! ~
he is pushing every single boundary,
exploring every mind-boggling property,
exhilarating in every fresh dimension,
soaring with the utter freedom,
&
reveling in all the spirit he ever longed to find!

i just know

so,
all i can say,
in this state of absolute joy & glee for him, is
i * l o v e * y o u !

technical * difficulties ~

2011-11-11T10:38:00.001-08:00

blog lock-out there as pippi the laptop refused to load either google or blogger pages. #$%@^*&%$!!!

in the end, solved by full power-down, pulling out battery, rebooting with repair to discs, redownloading firefox, & sundry fiddles. ga.

back soon.

force 10 blear ~

2011-11-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

the equation:-

extreme ill health
+
zero intelligent family understanding
+
landlord dramarama
+
new uncertainty re: housing security
+
anniversary of friend's violent passing
+
ongoing financial stress
=

a b s o l u t e * e x h a u s t i o n

at this point
i'd be willing to 'beam' in a Star Trek cast member
if it would garner the year-delayed hug i need

geez beez

m a e l s t r o m ~

2011-11-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

back downtown,
attempting to surf the maelstrom
with some kind of wisdom & diplomacy.
it is a rough go, no doubt.

this was the last weekend i ever spent with my friend. to me, that's kind of a holy time ~ a special time, a time in which to remember all the truly good stuff & savour the miracle of even having had those 3 days together.

unfortunately, drama is erupting galore in my household, as old unresolved landlord tenant issues blow violently to the surface... and all sense of proportion & perspective is lost in TriggerVille. i do my best, & i leave often, as even being IN the field some days is just too much.

but it makes for very tricky waters, overall. health still very challenged, low to no energy, exacerbated reactivity; and its taking every bit of grit, brute force, grace, imagination & advanced Dreaming techniques to cope with the whole picture.

still...
up pop the sprites,
the little chittering naiads,
looking for their dose of twinkly eyed mischief!

last night, as i bumbled around downtown in the dark & neon lights, bars glowing & restaurants dancing with candle light, i remembered our old meetings.

how i loved coming out on a rainy november night, streets slick with shimmering reflections, busses hissing through puddles, inkyness all around! i used to rely on a kind of body radar ~ an intuitive skill, i suppose ~ perhaps a bit like the Aboriginals going on Walkabout in the great outback of Australia. i was never quite sure where i would find him ~ a walker, that one, prone to wandering ~ but if i silenced my rational mind, and listened in to gut checks, i'd hear pretty quickly. go left! go right! just down there, look... ok, yup!

and there he'd be, all warm & wildish & somehow mysterious. we'd both smile, with a quirky little turn of the lips & a shine to the eyes, and decide on our plan. maybe a harbour visit? maybe a shared trip to the organic pizza joint? maybe a walk across the blue bridge over to the beach to watch the city from a distance? these rambles always took a circuitous route, as he knew so many people in the downtown core, and we'd have to stop & talk to all and any. but i thrilled to it. it was 'other' ~ it was exciting ~ it was an adventure even in our sleepy little town.

:: the wiry jazz drummer who set up full drum kit on a persian rug, just outside the shoe shop, playing & playing all night long, fedora in tact

:: sketchy dealers on Douglas, twitching & jerking spasmodically, running in and out of the shockingly neon blaze of 7-11, shouting foul mouth at each other

:: the old schoolers, sipping their hidden beers, sitting on benches, nodding with perspicacity at it all

:: navy blue cops, inevitably patrolling around on their fancy-shmancy bikes, moving people along, charging for chattle, ponying up to sleeping bagged sleepers in doorframes, bent on clean-up

:: rush of busses, huge hurtling boxes, lurching in & out of the main stop, depositing fresh faced suburban teens on the sidewalk, bent on trouble, huddled in posses

:: deals, deals, deals, tiny little dime bags of weed, sequestered in pockets, hands sliding past each other's palms in discrete gestures of hidden passage, money always folded; the approach, the negotiation, the sniff test, the satisfaction

:: wildly expressive costumes & hair piled high, scarves & mitts, long sweeping skirts; ladies of the night winking at me as i passed by "Work it, honey! Work it!" everybody loves a flash of the outrageous

flowing, flowing, flowing,
tapping into the Dreaming, tapping out,
finding a path through even the impossible places,
seeking spirit & unfolding always...

naiads * are * chittering ~

2011-11-04T18:03:00.001-07:00

at * the * gates * of * Chinatown ~

2011-11-04T14:10:00.001-07:00

$10 & a yellow cab trip... and i am at the gates of Chinatown, sipping a coffee & attempting to deal.

* cd player dead
* blender dead
* & dvd player died last night

but i, apparently, am still somewhat alive ~ despite the fact that being alive feels so heinous much of the time. i suppose that is the reality of chronic illness that most don't want to hear.

so, for now, i sip coffee, try to relax, attempt to refocus. the thrift stores are calling. if i were NOT at Force 10 Exhaustion with Blear for Brain, i might actually enjoy the whole event. as it is, i am struggling hard.

such is a day when my friend would come,
zooming across town on a bike cobbled together from 3 or 4 found frames,
tires pumped to full tautness for maximum bounce,
long tousled hair streeeeeeeaming out behind him.
he'd arrive,
hit the brakes hard,
snap up with a lurch,
shake out his arms,
look up & smile,
shyly.

i love him! how can you not?

the street community down here, who knew him well, have been strong, true allies through all. it is amazing... and wonderful. i come downtown, i walk a block, & somebody ~ somebody ~ always shows up, says hello, asks what the news of the trial is, how am i doing. completely instinctive. no shying away, no avoiding the issue ~ none of the ridiculous middle class propriety of my dysfunctional neighbourhood's uptightness. one comrade noticed my bike tires were flattish ~ previously my friend`s caring domain ~ and filled them up with air while i was gone. now that's compassion in action, straight from the heart.

& i have NEVER heard a bad word. 'heart of gold' comes up often. 'good man.' 'fuck, i miss him so much!' never a bad word.

if // when my health stabilises more, i want to volunteer with a street outreach group. i have this notion of baking incredibly dense, nutrient rich, fantastically yummy muffins ~ like 600 calorie~a~pop muffins, laced with treats ~ to be given out on winter evenings when the cold really comes. something compact, portable, sweet, & yet wholly filling. the cuts to all the non-profit programs have been horrendous, and little seems to be happening to help the 1500 without homes. i'd love to do something tangible. hemp seeds, chocolate, spices. with a love label stuck on each bagged muffin.

mural, Chinatown

n e i g h b o u r l y ?

2011-11-02T10:09:00.001-07:00

now, there's an interesting concept. 'treat your neighbour as yourself' is the christian maxim; though i think the pagan law 'do as you will, and harm none' is similar.

when i moved into this house, after 18 months transiency & homelessness, the woman across the street was briefly introduced to me. it went something along the lines of... "hi, how are you?" and that ~ literally ~ has been the extent of our wordplay with each other over the last 5 1/2 years.

i might have spent more time getting to know her... but i did not. perhaps i should have. she seemed to regard me as a curiosity, and kept her distance, so i simply let it be. i myself was having a hard time acclimatising to indoor life again, and found city living quite overwhelming after our quiet idyll outdoors. so each to their own. we all have our private notions of space.

however, i then learned that she was feeding the gossip vine that was spreading rumours & lies about my friend & i. so, though she had taken NO time to get to know either of us... she apparently felt perfectly confident spreading these lies.

i was told, by one neighbour, that she "couldn't imagine what that woman is doing with that man. she could be his mother! its obvious she's just taking care of him. its so sad." well, this was news to me... seeing as he'd literally protected me through an entire winter living outdoors in the rough. we shared a deep care for each other & would always look out for each others well-being. but again, she'd taken no time to even get to know us, let alone our dynamics.

i was then told, by the same neighbour, that her husband had seen my friend downtown, on Douglas, with "very sketchy people," and that he was "a hard drug dealer." this little frisson of excitement also flew up & down my street, unchallenged & unfounded. for had she taken a nano-second to say hello to my friend, she would have discovered he was adamantly against hard drugs, and fought to help people OFF them. but then again, she would have had to behave in a friendly, responsible, mature manner... which perhaps is not her style.

last week i was down in the village, when i looked up exiting a shop. there was the neighbour. she looked straight PAST me, as if somehow to say "you are not worth even seeing, let alone nodding to," and over my head ~ refusing eye contact, nods, or hello. i, in turn, looked straight AT her, cocking my jaw slightly in inquiry, and turning my head as i went by, maintaining my gaze, as if to say "i know what you are doing, and i find it really sad, so i thought i'd let you know."

on Samhain, she sported the loudest, noisiest house on the block, covered in garish dollar store decorations, strobe lights, & amplified ghoulish noises. i watched this circus, from my tiny bedroom, and thought "does she even know what Samhain is? does she know any real witches? could she recite one line from the Charge of the Goddess?"

it seemed telling to me
that the people who made the least effort to be friendly,
while embodying so-called middle class propriety,
are the ones who spread malicious gossip,
& the ones who so unconsciously appropriate & celebrate witchy holy days...
with no Witches Heart at all.

my 2 cents

r e f l e c t i n g ~

2011-10-30T13:04:00.000-07:00

sunday morning, apartment in an uproar as i move rooms again. piles of quilts, toppling stacks of fabric, exploding towers of journals, sketchbooks all over, paintbrushes falling, books strewn wide. grey outside, crimson plum leaves falling alongside yellow birch.

i truly believe our culture is pathologically stuck on quick fixes, and our ideologies & spiritual mores of the times reflect this paucity. it saddens me. i think of the alchemists of old, the time they took to cook an idea, a notion, a dream to true fruition. i think of the incredibly slow yet powerful glacial processes of incremental movement over time, capable of creating entire geological structures. i think of all that is deep & dark & slow.

i am relieved my own baptism was in Jungian waters. it carried its own price, but it also taught me to look deep, to hold the container, to attend the Soul. over time, with care. with precise attention & profound respect for our utter individuality... & for the powerful energies that want to come to birth through us.

i don't hear that in new age blaff. i hear a lot of quick fixes via band-aid solutions which seek to forbid ~ or shame ~ us out of our darker, richer, gutsier emotions. that's not good enough. that's trying to fix a compound fracture with surface glib.

listening to Emmylou reminds me of this, searching for the water from a deeper well. i love how her voice soars, lulls, soothes; and Blades' drum work anchors all with colour, jazz, intensity. i love especially the almost dischordent churning effect ~ deep in the centre of the song ~ where the momentum really builds, where the guitar relentlessly exhorts cyclical patterns against the ferocity of drum. THAT is alchemy. THAT is the soul on fire, in process, blazing... building... hearkening... pushing... seeking. full bore, balls-out, ON. that song, to me, is pure adoration, a pure song of worship of the dark chthonic processes.

'The dream is EXACT,' Woodman used to say, 'Exact. If you look at an image and say to yourself 'that's funny, that makes no sense at all' & you ignore it... you throw away the gold.'

'I just believe in the Soul,' she used to intone in her recorded lectures & talks, such as Dreams: Language of the Soul.

'I just believe in the Soul.'

b i g * t i m e * s e n s u a l i t y *

2011-10-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

h a p p y * b i r t h d a y * y o u !

2011-10-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

dear you,

h a p p y * h a p p y * b i r t h d a y !

i am sending stars of hugs & cosmos of kisses straight to your heart...
& any other bits that might want attention ;-)

you continue to amaze me, delight me, & thrill me!

i sure hope those folks up in Avalon can bake a damn fine
100% organic fair-trade Hopped Up on Caffeine Chocolate Cake with extra thick Chocolate Ganache Icing...
because its what you absolutely deserve!
plus unlimited whip cream fights!
& be sure to leave some bitty bits in a trail all around you.

i love you, b
you know that
all my love
me xox

gaia's party dress
image francene hart

the * nagual ~

2011-10-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

"He was a big man,” Parker said of 6-foot-3 Henderson. “But so gentle. He’s the kind of person you fall in love with right away. He had a lot of love in his eyes.”

“Everybody loved him,” said Day, who had been Henderson’s neighbour for nine months.

“Everybody just loved him.”

j u s t i c e ?

2011-10-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

today i learn
that the man accused of murdering my nagual,
the accused who has spent the last 2 months slandering him in court,
fabricating lies,
whining about his own victimhood,
branding my friend a "bully",
blaming everyone but himself...

was suicidal.

oh, yes.

so. the accused had TWO knives in his room. not one.
he was drunk, very drunk.
he said his life was "wasted" and he should just "self sacrifice."
he held the knives up to his chest, as if to impale himself.

& the nagual stepped in. refused to let him. intervened. forcibly removed the knives from his hands. had the knives put away. left the room.

& for his trouble,
he was murdered an hour later.

so,
i'm just wondering when that spick of a reporter is going to eat her garbage dump worth of humble pie, and actually write something of substance... rather then repeating the defence lawyers twisted lies. i just wonder.

ALL that garbage turned up. ALL that shit. ALL those lies.

& in the end,
look who was trying to save who's life.

o n g o i n g * l i f e ~

2011-10-26T20:02:00.001-07:00

increasingly,
incrementally,
bit by bit by bit,
i have the strange sense that my body & i may not be around here as long as i once thought!

initially, this began as simply an exacerbated awareness of how truly ill i've been, a weary reckoning of the sheer struggle to just get through each day.

but beyond the physical awareness of decline, i started to have dreams of Crossing Over & dreams of soul work to complete beforehand. i noted them all, and worked with them carefully, sharing them with my closest supports & allies.

there were also clear clairvoyant images, arriving spontaneously in deep meditation & trance, which just kept coming. beautiful images ~ i might add ~ with only joy & love portrayed of the Otherworld, of the Spirit Realm, of reunion with my friend.

its an odd thing to have a sense of one's own possible Passing ~ without a terminal diagnosis to back it up. its got nothing to do with self-eradication, which i took OFF the books many many many years ago, when i steadfastly vowed i would never commit a self-harm. so, to have these dreams & visions of Crossing Over naturally ~ sans diagnosis, sans self-infliction ~ is a curious, intriguing, & gifty thing.

not so bad, to my way of thinking!

i've been violently ill for 17 years.
i still have no true health care for the condition.
i still live 60% below the poverty line.
i still feel rotten most days.
there has been a marked decline in energy over the last year;
& a marked increase in the severity of reactions & chemical sensitivity;
both of which make the navigation even harder.
& i miss my best friend, partner, & lover so.

when he was killed,
that terrible morning,
after the first surge of anguish roared through me,
my immediate instinct ~ immediate ~ was:~
Stay in the Heart Space.
Stay in the Heart Space.

this advice rang out clear as a low-struck bell
&
that is exactly the modus operandi that i adopted.

a
lucid
conscious
open-minded
heart-wide
slow-paced
meditative
attention
to his physical death, his soul crossing, & his ongoing life in the spirit realm.

which catapulted me into an even * d e e p e r * level of shamanic initiation than i had known before... yet so organic, so natural, so innately timed, it felt like an extension of everything i'd already known with him, with the Dreaming, with my own spirit path. everything just kept unfolding ~ more & more layers of subtle knowing, insight, learning.

since that day,
i've been blessed with innumerable dreams,
otherworldly visits,
too many synchronicities to count,
stunning miracles,
shamanic gifts,
clairvoyant visions,
clairaudient hearings,
intuitive amazements...

in short, all manner of confirmation of the very real ongoing life of spirit in the Otherworld. its undeniable to me.

so,
to Cross Over in my own natural way ~
whatever that is according to Spirit ~
seems no hardship.

why be here,
struggling in a deeply entrenched illness,
with insufficient care & support,
away from my soul mate & partner...
when in Crossing Over i can open with joy & love to a whole new wondrous plane of existence?

it is still unfolding, this motif ~ but i have to say its there, clearly there. it is not something one can talk about much in our society, as we barely have the tools to handle 'death' properly... let alone an intelligent discussion on anticipating the Otherworld & spirit realm. so i've kept quiet, mostly, watching. and that is the way it should be. for now, i attend. and continue with my practice ~ watching, recording, praying, journeying, surrendering. its all in process. its all unfolding. i'm good with that.

in the end, isn't it ALL just consciousness, love, & openness to the Tao inside?